Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:36 pm on 6 February 2018.
Thank you for raising those important points. And I don't doubt the Member's sincerity in wanting to support the organisations that he set out, but there are a number of underlying causes, not least the continuing austerity programme of the UK Government in cutting the budgets to this place, quite severely, for ideological reasons. It's very difficult to separate the two things out in the way that the Member seeks to do, because these are direct results of austerity policies. On top of that, we are responding to local government's request, which I fully support, and so does the Government, to trust them, and the local democratic mandate that they have, in distributing money equitably locally. And so we are taking ring-fenced and hypothecated restraints away from them, to give them maximum flexibility, in the face of the continuing austerity agenda. So, I don't think there's any need for a debate on that. The ideological lines are very firmly drawn, and I'm afraid we are very much on the side of both trusting local government and ensuring that we do our very best to offset the austerity agenda that his Government continues to pursue.