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Two minutes into his appearance before the Finance Committee meeting, Danny Alexander's jacket came off. Not before he'd asked politely of course whether that was all right with the Chair. The 'respect' part of the 'respect agenda' at work.

"You may. It is in warm in here" came the response from Angela Burns, as if aware that it was about to get rather warmer.

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury seemed to have come to Cardiff with two things in his pocket - a tough message on the Barnett Formula, an open invitation on tax and borrowing powers.

His experience in front of the Welsh Grand Committee at Westminster even before the Spending Review was announced had given him the heads up that this afternoon wasn't going to be an armchair ride, so he made sure he had something in his back pocket.

It went a bit like this. How come, said the committee, that Wales got a raw deal from the Spending Review, one that left the Assembly Government worse off, in percentage terms, than either the Scottish or Northern Irish governments?

The answer, said Mr Alexander, was that non-domestic rates are devolved in Scotland and Northern Ireland but not in Wales. A fact that might have passed you by but the very simple explanation for why, when that part of the wider budget took a direct hit, Wales felt the effects rather more than either Scotland or Northern Ireland.

Almost immediately, a theme developed. Of course, said the Chief Secretary, if you want to change that and avoid such an anomaly in future, we're open to discussion. Indeed the suggestion was made more than once in the past that Wales might take over that particular bit of expenditure but chose not to take it.

In other words: if you'd asked, you'd have got it but you didn't want it. "We'd be very happy to have that discussion at any point if Jane wants to raise it" became a familiar line to those in the viewing gallery, the rather fuller than usual viewing gallery. Mrs Hutt was always 'Jane' incidentally. Mrs Gillan always "the Secretary of State".

Labour and Plaid members of the committee weren't buying it.

How come Scotland and Northern Ireland got extra "hard cash" out of the Spending Review asked Brian Gibbons - the fossil fuel levy and the bail-out of the Presbyterian Mutual Society - while all Wales got was "a wing and a promise?"

Not true, said a very measured Mr Alexander. Wales got exactly what the current funding formula dictated it should. There were very exceptional circumstances in those two cases, he added.

Wales had lost everything - St Athan, the barrage - and gained nothing, pressed Chris Franks. And no-one had got more than London. Not the case, said the Chief Secretary. He listed projects in Merseyside, Leeds, Bristol. He might have got to Wales but Chris Franks got there first. "You'll mention Wales in a minute, will you?"

He did. How about the rail renewal programme between Newport and Cardiff? Not the strongest gambit. But the Chief Secretary had another.

Frankly, he argued, it was up to the Assembly Government to make their own choices. Spending on defence doesn't appear in Welsh-only figures but secures a lot of jobs in Wales. The Assembly Goverment is, after all, "free to make other choices within the resource envelope they have".

Look at the figures - Rosemary Butler's turn. Those statistics on cuts to capital spending rather "cut off" those choices. "You talked earlier on about fairness, but it does strike me, from this side of the Severn, that fairness seems to stop at the Severn Bridge."

On Barnett and reforming the funding formula? There was no link to a 'Yes' vote in a referendum at all said Mr Alexander, as Labour and Plaid have claimed. In fact neither was there a link to a 'No' vote. Bottom line, the coalition in Westminster has no plans to reform Barnett until the overall financial situation is much improved. This was no time for "technical, detailed and lengthy discussions" about funding mechanisms.

"Not even a wing and a promise then" muttered Brian Gibbons. It seemed worth noting, said Mr Alexander, that Labour had had 13 years and benign economic circumstances to deliver change and had chosen not to. He'd had a matter of months and the aftermath of a recession. He left it there.

And then the promise he'd kept in his other pocket. This government, said the Chief Secretary, sees "a strong case" for giving Wales some tax and borrowing powers if there's a cross party consensus for them. It would be "a sensible part" of strengthening the devolution process.

They were pressing ahead with powers for Scotland, so he would look very positively on introducing a similar system for Wales. It was, he said, "very much a matter for yourselves."

Did the AMs buy Mr Alexander's tax and borrowing bird in the hand rather than Β£300m Barnett revision in the bush?

As the session came to a close, the committee chair, Conservative Angela Burns (no hard-bitten critic of the coalition she) addressed him quietly, calmly, but very directly.

"As a committee, and as an Assembly, in the main, we believe that Barnett is unequal. We're not asking, as Wales, to be extra special compared with anybody else, we're one of the four nations that make up the United Kingdom and we're simply asking to have the same kind of treatment as other areas. We are seeking a needs based formula - the Barnett formula has run its course."

They didn't buy it, I would say.

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