9. Will the First Minister make a statement on council tax collection rates in Wales? OAQ(5)0110(FM)

Yes. In 2015-16, billing authorities collected 97.2 per cent of council tax billed.

Thank you very much for the reply, Minister. Figures released by your Government reveal that Blaenau Gwent, Merthyr Tydfil and Torfaen councils have the worst council tax collection rates in Wales. The citizens advice bureau has labelled council tax as Wales’s biggest debt problem—6,000 people are now struggling to pay their bills. Will the First Minister explain to those families in Wales’s poorest areas why he decided not to use the funds provided by the UK Government to freeze council tax in Wales to the purpose for which they were actually intended?

Well, devolution means it’s not for a purpose intended, for a start; it’s a matter for the Assembly to decide how it spends its money. Nevertheless, the majority of authorities in England turned down the council tax freeze grant this year and they chose to increase council tax instead. Despite that fact, council tax in Wales is lower on average than it is in England, and, indeed, he will remember, because he was in the Chamber when council tax benefits were devolved, only 90 per cent of the budget followed. I did not see him advocating strongly at that time that Wales should receive its full share of money in order to deal with council tax benefits.

Finally, Adam Price.

Surely, the fact that the highest percentage of people who don’t pay the tax live in our poorest areas reflects the fact that this tax is fundamentally unfair. The burden weighs most heavily on those people who are least able to pay. So, isn’t it now time for us to reform this tax so that it is fairer, as Plaid Cymru argued, of course, during the election campaign back in May?

We are always open to consider new methods of funding local authorities and people are talking about a local income tax, but that would have to be collected locally so that the tax didn’t go to where people work rather than where they live. It’s true to say—well, this is not universally true, of course—the higher the price of the house, the greater the income of the resident. That is not always true, I understand that, but the system that we have at present is one that works because it’s a tax that has been applied to a house. But, of course, in the years to come, there’s always an argument about whether there might be a more effective method of funding local authorities.

Thank you, First Minister.