4. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on local government budgets? OAQ53038

Local authorities in Wales set their budgets in the context of their medium-term financial plans, based on a mix of locally raised revenue and Welsh Government-provided specific grants and unhypothecated funding through the revenue support grant. This year, local authorities budgeted for over £7 billion of expenditure.

Thank you for that answer. As you will be aware, local government funding has been cut by £1 billion over the last eight years. Many councils are reporting acute pressures on schools and social care. They report fatigue and low morale amongst the workforce and project the loss of a further 7,000 jobs over the next few years just to balance the books. The call for necessary financial support by local authority leaders across Wales is seemingly falling on deaf years. Are you proud of your Government's role in driving local government and schools into the ground?

Presiding Officer, it's the easiest thing in the world for us to describe the problems facing local government, but, on these benches, we seek to describe solutions as well. It is an inadequate and insufficient response to the challenges we face today to simply issue a press release calling for additional funding of all areas of Government expenditure. It is an inadequate and an immature response. I will say this to the Member: I have met with all political leaders of Welsh local government within the last week and I've been very, very clear with them about the challenges that we face. But I'll say this as well: in the future, we need to think harder about how we organise and structure our services to meet new challenges. And that is a challenge not simply for Government and the governing party, but also, I would suggest, for all parties represented in this place, because all too often, when proposals for reform come here, we see the same people who've issued a press release saying how difficult things are, standing up and queuing up to oppose all proposals for reform. So, I would hope that we will see a great deal of maturity on benches in this place when facing challenges for local government, rather than simply listing those challenges in speeches.

Of course, it's not easy necessarily for councils that are trying to make the most of the money that they have as well in order to regenerate their city centre—in the case of Swansea—and improve the local economy there. A cabinet report from the council there last month stated that there is a risk that the local authority does not have sufficient resources to complete phase 1 of its city centre regeneration project—Swansea Central. In response to that report, the leader of Swansea Council told councillors, and I quote, that the 'public will shoot us'—slightly unfortunate, I think—referring to Swansea Council's Labour cabinet, if the regeneration scheme is dropped. We all want to see Swansea city centre thrive, and I say that even though it's a different coloured council there. How can you be confident, bearing in mind the settlement that they've just had, that the cabinet there is able to manage its funds and budgets appropriately so that they can respond appropriately to such financial warnings?

I've got complete confidence in the leadership of Swansea Council to manage funds available to it in a proper way. The leadership of Swansea Council, I think, has provided almost inspirational leadership in terms of their ambitions for that city and is putting in place the means of achieving that. The leadership shown by Rob Stewart, as the council's leader, I think, sets an example for many other leaders to look at, but also the leadership shown by all those authorities in that area in terms of putting together the Swansea bay city deal. I hope that we will see those ambitions realised, but what I will say to the Member for South Wales West is that the greatest challenge facing Swansea is not the funding formula but the policy of austerity that has meant that, for eight years, Swansea and other local authorities in Wales have not received the level of funding that we would seek to give them. And I would suggest to Conservative Members, rather than come here and list those problems, they should go to London and list those problems.