Well, Llywydd, the Member knows perfectly well that when he quotes that figure of £550 million, that is not free money, that is not money just available to be allocated—£365 million of that was pre-announced back in July of this year, and it now turns out that, of that £365 million, UK Ministers have spent over half of it before a penny of it crosses the border to be allocated in the National Assembly for Wales. I am giving very careful consideration to what remains of the consequentials from the budget—consequentials that have to last for over three years, consequentials that include capital, financial capital and revenue components. So, not all of this money is money that will help local authorities meet the pressures that they, quite rightly, report to us.

The First Minister has said, as Nick Ramsay said, that local government is at the front of the queue. There's a clue in that formula: they are at the front of the queue, but there is a queue. There are many other things that we know we would like to do in Welsh public services as we enter the ninth year of austerity. Many of those things will no doubt be advocated by members of his party on the floor of the Assembly this afternoon, asking for more money for this, and more money for that, and more money for something else again. What I have to do is to use the very limited amount of money that came to us in the Chancellor's budget to balance those competing priorities, but I repeat what I have said and what the First Minister has said: the needs of Welsh local government are first in our thoughts as we go about that difficult business.