It’s not just Plaid Cymru Members who have been expressing concerns about the Government’s failure to recognise the pressures on local government. We heard Barbara Jones, the deputy leader of Caerphilly council, saying recently that we can’t now place all of the blame on the Conservative Government in London. It hurts her to say, as a staunch socialist, that the Welsh Government hasn’t treated them fairly. That’s the view across local government in Wales. It’s not a matter of complaining or of making unreasonable demands by councillors. We can’t discount them, as the Cabinet Secretary for local government did, comparing councillors to Oliver Twist. That is not acceptable. They are caring for their constituents, for people the length and breadth of Wales—that’s what our councillors are doing across the nation. This is a matter of realising the real implications of our ability to provide fundamental services within our communities. And, as I’m explaining, this is Labour’s austerity this time.

But this budget also reflects broader problems within Government and its failure to think and to act holistically when it comes to budgetary decisions, and a failure to take preventative steps now. Cutting funds from crucial preventative services provided by local government is of course going to increase the pressure on our health service. We see this in the response of the Royal College of General Practitioners to the budget too, which notes the huge pressures on primary care services, therefore, because of a lack of long-term planning and a lack of investment in preventative services. We need to change the way in which we plan budgets across all areas and how they come together. We need greater ambition, we need a longer term view and more collaboration between the various levels of government and public services. And we certainly need—and I would want to support this—far more focus across the budget on tackling poverty. Victoria Winckler from the Bevan Foundation told the Finance Committee that she couldn’t see an anti-poverty strategy that was sufficiently rooted within this budget. In her words: