5. Will the Minister outline the Welsh Government’s plans for the financing of local government during the fifth Assembly? OAQ(5)0026(FLG)

I thank the Member for that question. We will continue to fund local government through a combination of the annual settlements and specific grants. Local authorities, of course, possess independent powers of raising both revenue and capital to fund their activities.

Thank you for that. I did listen to your answer to Gareth Bennett that you set the priorities and local government are charged with implementing them as they see fit in their local area. However, Minister, I would like to understand what ability you have to influence the fair deployment of funding throughout a local authority. One of the cinderella services ends up being enforcement. Local authorities don’t like to enforce because they say they don’t have the staff. They also worry that things will go to appeal and, therefore, they’re in for a long legal, and very costly, battle. But what that can result in is enormous areas of unfairness. So, for example, in Pembrokeshire, I have at least three communities who are separated by a number of miles who have all been subjected to illegal Gypsy and Traveller sites arriving, they’ve been terrorised and intimidated, and forced out of their homes. It’s a completely horrendous situation. I have been to everybody, the previous Minister, the police, but, above all, the county council, because they do have the enforcement capabilities. However, they simply will not step forward because they say they don’t have the funds, they say that they need the funds for other vital services and yet we are disproportionately affecting other groups of people. I think it’s incredibly unfair and I would like to understand if the Welsh Government is able to use its powers to ensure that local councils take into account all of the residents within their areas and not just look after protected minorities, because, trust me, if you or I tried to do something this illegal, we would have everything coming down on our shoulders like a tonne of bricks, and these poor people—the level of intimidation is horrific.

Well, there are a number of different strands in what the Member has said. I’ve no way of knowing what the position is in relation to the final point that she made. I would be very disappointed indeed if she were implying that some groups in our society are treated differently to others. That is not the way that things should be, as she knows.

Her general point simply goes back to what I said in answer to Lynne Neagle—that in an extraordinary 11-year period of retrenchment, local authorities face the consequences of those decisions made, foolish and flawed, to pursue the politics of austerity and the economics of austerity, with the consequences that that has for public services. In relation to local government services, there are services that are statutory and that local government must provide. It is inevitable that the squeeze is greater, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies report demonstrated, on those parts of the budget where local authorities don’t face that same level of statutory obligation. I recognise, however, what she says about the fragility of some public protection services in parts of Wales, and I hope to have something to say on that when I make my statement on 4 October.

I welcome the Government’s announcement today of the extension of council tax reduction, and I was pleased to host the launch of the Citizens Advice report, which has already been mentioned in the Chamber today, into council tax debt. We heard about lots of good practice that supports individuals struggling with council tax debt and supports councils in their recovery of council tax. Will he agree to review the recommendations in the report and act where he can to address the matters highlighted in it?

Thanks to Jeremy Miles for drawing attention to the Citizens Advice ‘Fairness for all’ report, a very important report that I take very seriously. There are three specific recommendations for Welsh Government, two of which fall into my own area of responsibility. The first was to continue with our council tax reduction scheme. It’s an expensive scheme. It costs £244 million every year, and I am proud of every single one of those pounds because they go to help the very poorest and most vulnerable households in Wales. I am very proud of the decision that this Assembly took to support that scheme, and the sharp, sharp contrast that it draws between the position of families in England, millions of whom have to pay money towards the council tax at a point when their own benefits and their ability to do so has been frozen and further compromised. So, I was very pleased indeed to be able to make the announcement today that that national council tax reduction scheme will continue for a further year, and that I will be discussing its further continuation with local authority colleagues.

However, the report does draw attention, to my mind, to some concerning evidence in relation to the deployment of bailiffs. I want to be clear that the use of bailiffs should never be anything other than a last resort, that other courses of action should always have been exhausted first, and that public authorities that contract with bailiffs need to think very carefully about who they are contracting with. I intend to commission some fresh research into the way that these things happen in Wales in order to work with public authorities to try to make sure that, where people find themselves in this degree of difficulty, we respond to them in the most sensitive way possible.