I call now on the party spokespeople to ask their questions to the Cabinet Secretary, and first, Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Adam Price.

Last week, Cabinet Secretary, you announced that the business rate relief scheme currently in place in Wales will now be extended for 2017-18. Perhaps in an attempt to conceal rowing back from one of your top manifesto pledges in the recent election, this was presented as a tax cut for small businesses in Wales. Now, surely continuing with the current rate relief, whether it’s making it permanent or otherwise, is not a tax cut, is it? Can you confirm for me today whether or not you still think this is a tax cut, or, in the words of the Federation of Small Businesses, is this the worst form of spin-doctoring possible and merely an extension of the worst tax regime in the UK for small businesses?

It most certainly is a tax cut, Llywydd. The current scheme is due to lapse at the end of this financial year. Had it not been extended, £98 million-worth of tax relief would not be available to small businesses. They would have been paying that tax. Now they will not be paying that tax. The tax that they would have had to pay, had we not made this announcement, has been cut. It is a tax cut, and there’s no ambiguity about it.

I’m not sure whether this is Orwellian or Kafkaesque, but it doesn’t make any sense to me. You’re paying exactly the same taxes; it’s only a tax cut in Wales apparently now. There are other things that you as Cabinet Secretary could have done to support businesses in terms of rates. You could have indexed the business rate multiplier to the consumer prices index rather than the retail prices index in order to ensure more accurate rate bills and avoid businesses suffering from declining income. You could have actually introduced a double multiplier, a dual multiplier, reflecting the difference in terms of large businesses and small businesses as they have done in Scotland and England. Why didn’t you do that, Cabinet Secretary?

Llywydd, what I announced is this: we will extend the scheme. If the Member knew that he had a bill to pay next year of £100 and I came along with a scheme that told him he wouldn’t need to pay that £100 after all, I think he’d regard it as a cut in the liability that he would otherwise have had to meet, and that is exactly what we have done. What I have also announced is that, alongside extending the scheme for a further year, the scheme will be made permanent thereafter. So, it is a permanent tax cut for small businesses in Wales, and we will use the next 12 months to work with the small business sector and others to see if there are ways in which the scheme can be further improved to offer even more help. The ideas the Member puts forward can certainly make a contribution to that discussion.

I’ll try my best with this one then: following the revaluation of business rates by the Valuation Office Agency, which comes into effect on 1 April next year, current predictions by the retail sector and other businesses are showing that the projected rate poundage for Wales could jump by a staggering 10 per cent, making Wales the highest taxed and least attractive place to do business in Britain if your Government decides to make up the difference lost in revenue by changing the uniform business rate multiplier. We could be in the position, bizarrely, where we have the highest tax and the highest business vacancy rate in the whole of the UK. Can you confirm today that you will not change the uniform business rate in response to a potential fall in Government revenue?

Well, the Member will have to wait until 30 September, like everybody else, to see what the VOA’s revaluation of non-domestic rates will actually say rather than what people speculate on what it might say. Members here will be aware that what revaluation does is not to increase at all the amount of money taken from businesses, but it simply makes sure that the distribution of those rates reflects the most recent set of economic circumstances. We will see what the VOA has to say on 30 September.

The Welsh Conservatives spokesperson, Janet Finch-Saunders.

Diolch, Lywydd. Cabinet Secretary, figures released today by Citizens Advice Cymru show that council tax arrears actually remain now the biggest and single cause of debt in Wales. In your programme for government, there is mention of working with local government to review council tax. Just how do you intend to bring this forward and are we to assume that one of the models to be considered may even be, as suggested by Plaid Cymru, part of your ‘working together’ over this next term?

Thank you for the question. The way I intend to approach the development of council tax is in two different phases. I think there are some immediate actions that we can take to improve the operation of the scheme that we currently have and to make it fairer to individuals. But I do want us to think more widely than that. I think there are a number of ways in which local taxation could be reformed. There’s been a series of reports that rehearse the advantages and disadvantages of those models at a theoretical level. I plan to set in train some work here in Wales that will look in detail at how those different mechanisms might actually work in the Welsh context. We’ll then be able to have a better informed, applied discussion about whether any of those models offers us a better way forward on account of the council tax.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. The First Minister stated yesterday that you’re intending to have 22 local authorities, though now with regional shared services. I think this will come as news to many, and we still have no detail whatsoever on this. Would you enlighten the Chamber today as to how you will bring this forward? Will there be elected representatives at the head of these shared services as with regional combined authorities in England, and what strategic measures does the Welsh Government have in place to ensure successful delivery on shared service projects?

Well, Llywydd, I don’t think what the First Minister said yesterday will come as a surprise to many who’ve been following the developing discussions about the future of local government here in Wales over recent months. I have been grateful to the Member for her willingness to take part in those discussions. I visited all 22 local authorities in Wales over those months and an emerging set of key ideas, I think, is beginning to solidify. Members will have seen, from the business statement, that I’m due to come before the Assembly on 4 October with a statement on the future of local government and I plan to set out what I hope will be a way forward on some of these matters for Members to consider then.

Thank you. Your programme for government also sets out a promise to provide a funding floor for local government funding. However, there is no mention or consideration of rural councils, which have consistently and previously, over previous terms, been weighted against when it comes to the local government settlement. Will you commit to an immediate review of the funding formula to ensure that the local government settlement also considers and recognises the unique challenges that our rural councils face?

Llywydd, the funding formula is reviewed every year. A group of people with expertise in this field, including representation from local government look, every single year, at the formula. They look at all the component parts of it: demography, geography, economy and social factors and, every year, they bring forward proposals, and governments, in my experience, accept the advice that they get—that advice coming from local government itself.

I can say to the Member that, in those visits that I’ve made to 22 local authorities in Wales, every single authority has a story to tell about why its unique circumstances are not properly reflected in the funding formula, whether its rural authorities that believe that rurality is not properly reflected or whether it’s urban authorities that argue that the problems that go with the density of populations are not recognised. Everybody has something unique about the circumstances in which they find themselves. That’s why we have to rely on the best expert advice to make sure that our formula is as fair as it can be in balancing all those many different factors.

Llefarydd UKIP, Gareth Bennett.

Diolch, Lywydd. The Minister is probably aware that we’re facing a problem in the UK regarding waste collection. In short, there’s a lot of rubbish lying around. In Wales, we have Conwy council rolling out a four-weekly collection, but this kind of scheme has already failed across the border in Bury in greater Manchester. So, how does the Minister view these four-weekly collection cycles?

Llywydd, I think it is very important for us to get our relationship with local authorities right. The Welsh Government sets out key priorities and key ambitions that we expect local authorities to work towards and to achieve. It’s then for local authorities themselves, who are democratically elected and have democratic responsibilities of their own, to make decisions that they think best reflect their local needs and circumstances. They will meet their electorates in May of this year. If local electorates are not satisfied by the performance of their local authorities, then they will have to account to them for it. It’s not for me, as Minister, to be micromanaging each local authority and putting myself in the place of those local electorates to whom those councils are accountable.

Thank you, Minister, for that statement. I appreciate that you see a separation between your own powers and the jurisdiction of the local authorities. However, we could perhaps take more of a leading role in the Assembly in this kind of area. I note that a lot of the impetus to reduce rubbish collection was to comply with EU targets on recycling and landfill. As we are now seemingly set to leave the EU, is there a case for the Assembly to push for the amendment of these targets?

I’m heartened to hear the Member’s recognition of the excellent work that the EU did in this area in leading some of the environmental improvements that we’ve seen across the United Kingdom. The European Union was responsible for dragging the United Kingdom into some of those actions that have done so much to improve our local environment. Without the European Union—of course, he makes an important point—we will have to design our own policy approaches in this area, and it’s right of him to point out that that will be something that we will need to do in future.

Thank you, Minister; thank you for that acknowledgement that there may be a role in the Assembly for that debate. I further note that a large part of the EU legislation in this area—sorry to labour the point—was driven by Germany and Denmark, which had few available landfill sites. In the UK, we have many disused quarries and gravel pits, so we simply don’t need to comply with these targets, do we? What’s your view on that?

As I’m sure the Member knows, our ambition has been to bear down upon, and, as far as possible, eliminate the use of landfill sites, and I see no attraction whatsoever in reversing our position on that matter.