Rebecca Evans: Non-domestic rates have been an important part of the local government finance system for more than 30 years, raising more than £1.1 billion annually, and this is not a trivial contribution to the funding required to sustain the local services that we all rely on, nor, indeed, is it a trivial contribution to the Welsh Government's annual budget. But we have to remember that every single...
Rebecca Evans: Diolch, Llywydd. The Welsh Government is absolutely on the side of Welsh businesses, and we fully recognise the challenges faced by businesses, and other ratepayers under the current economic conditions, and, indeed, the Welsh Government is also exposed to the same budget pressures.
Rebecca Evans: Formally.
Rebecca Evans: Thank you very much for raising that and also giving a really stark picture of the challenges facing local authorities, particularly the ones that you've referred to in north Wales. I've had the opportunity to meet recently with the finance sub-group of the partnership council for Wales, and also with the Welsh Local Government Association executive committee, to talk about budget pressures....
Rebecca Evans: I’m very grateful for those questions. Alun Davies is absolutely right that there are real-life, real-time consequences for people as a result of the UK Government’s decisions and the chaos that has ensued recently, not least, for example, with the mortgage rate hikes that the First Minister was referring to in his statement earlier on today. I absolutely recognise what’s been said...
Rebecca Evans: But I think that the broader points are really important in terms of having that wider conversation about the powers that are available to us here in Wales, and what an improved set of powers might look like. I think that that is a discussion that is ongoing. It's very live. The Institute of Welsh Affairs is doing some really interesting work at the moment in that kind of space, to try and...
Rebecca Evans: I'm very grateful for all of those remarks. I'll just start where we started the last time that we discussed the UK Government's mini-budget, and that is it's my view that it's not the UK that's the problem, it's the UK Government that's the problem, and we do have the opportunity to change that. I think that the current Prime Minister's position is completely untenable, in my view,...
Rebecca Evans: Thank you to the Conservative spokesperson for those comments this afternoon, and I agree with him, it's not been a good few weeks, to say the least, and it is certainly disappointing. I think that he's done the best he can there to send a strong message to his colleagues in Westminster in terms of the Welsh Conservatives' assessment of the recent shambles that we've seen in Westminster. But...
Rebecca Evans: All this while household budgets have been squeezed even further and a gaping hole has been created in public finances. The new Chancellor may have undone most of the tax-cutting measures brought in on 23 September, which as we know were designed to benefit the richest, but he cannot undo the damage the mini-budget has unleashed. Let me be clear that people in Wales will be paying for the UK...
Rebecca Evans: Diolch, Llywydd. Yesterday, the latest Chancellor reversed many of the flawed and reckless decisions that were made by his predecessor and the Prime Minister in the mini-budget less than a month ago and which were a central pillar of the new Prime Minister's so-called programme for growth. The new Chancellor's statement yesterday was made ahead of his medium-term fiscal plan on 31 October,...
Rebecca Evans: I’m very grateful for that question. I can hear the Conservatives chuntering away behind me; I do admire the way in which the leader of the opposition is doubling down in his support for the UK Government, even though the markets—and everybody—are obviously making a response to it that is very different to that of the leader of the Conservatives. I have to say, I heard him saying that...
Rebecca Evans: The tax changes announced in the fiscal statement favour the rich and will worsen inequality. The statement provides no additional help to fund public services at a time when costs are rising sharply.
Rebecca Evans: I’m grateful for that question. I do think that the £1 million that has been announced is really important in terms of helping to support some of these warm banks, with things that local authorities will seek to do, but also other organisations—churches, third sector organisations, other faith venues and so on. Obviously, we will monitor the application of that fund to understand...
Rebecca Evans: I prioritised funding for local government in the Welsh budget so that every authority in Wales received an increase in funding of more than 8.2 per cent. Our cost-of-living measures, over £1.5 billion this year alone, support people in every part of Wales directly and through local authorities and other partners.
Rebecca Evans: I'm very grateful for the question, and I've really been pleased with the work of the panel, which actually continued right the way through the pandemic and was able to keep on delivering, because we obviously have a commitment for public sector organisations to meet the net-zero 2030 ambition, and we're doing that through the panel by providing technical and financial support for renewable...
Rebecca Evans: The panel was established by the partnership council for Wales to steer local government work on climate change. Our relationship is one of partnership.
Rebecca Evans: I'm not sure where the Conservative leader thinks that this money is coming from. There's not £50 billion being handed down by the UK Government to anyone. It's £50 billion that the UK Government is offsetting in terms of providing additional funding to the energy companies, which don't need it, which is going to be borrowed and it's going to be low-income workers who are going to be paying...
Rebecca Evans: Absolutely. [Inaudible.]—the WLGA also does an excellent job in terms of trying to impress upon the UK Government the significant and very real challenges that local authorities are facing, and those challenges of course then feed into their communities and the real-world everyday lives of the people who they serve in those communities. The budget was absolutely devastating for ordinary...
Rebecca Evans: Perhaps if the Member would like to share that correspondence with me, I'll be able to take a look at it in some more greater detail and then respond to you in writing once we've had a chance to explore the concerns further.
Rebecca Evans: I have written to the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury setting out that cost of living and the energy crisis must be the foremost priority. There was nothing for cost-of-living support for local authorities in last week’s mini budget.
