I don’t think local government provide direct mental health services, but they do provide services that have an impact on mental health and well-being. We all recognise that. For example, the conversation earlier about physical health and activity. Being physically active isn’t just a good thing for your physical health; it’s actually incredibly good for your mental health and well-being too. And there’s an honest challenge here as well for all of us in this Chamber. Whenever we talk about budgets—and you mentioned cuts to local government—the honest truth is that to maintain a high level of spend in the NHS and social care, which we have done—and I’m proud of the fact that we’ve done that—we’ve had to make a difficult choice. And to do that, to have 48 per cent of the Government spend in this particular department, means there’s been less money to spend on local government. That’s an honest choice that we made. If people want to come to me or anyone else and say, ‘We want to see more money in local government,’ you’ve got to find it from somewhere else, and that means compromises in other areas of service.

I actually have great sympathy for people in local government of all political shades and colours, who are running local authorities, for the really difficult choices they will make. That is the honest reflection of having a falling level of funding available for public services in Wales, and across the rest of the piece: really difficult choices to be made. It’s not just about making services more effective with less money, but the honest reality that people are now choosing what not to do. So, I don’t want to give a glib answer by saying that local authorities just need to up their game; we all need to do what we can do to improve services and outcomes; we all need to face the reality that there is less money to spend, and we are making a choice to fund the NHS, and that means less money for local government.