There's no doubt that this has been a difficult settlement for local government in Wales, as Rhun ap Iorwerth said earlier. The core grant for local government has fallen 22 per cent since 2009-10. I was a county councillor in Swansea for several years, as others in this place were, and the pressure on our counties was clear then. It's deteriorated significantly in recent years. Talking about Oliver Twist is not a fitting response to this crisis either.

And the impact that this has: well, we heard last week in the debate on social care funding about the challenges that face social care. Funding care comes under the auspices of local government, and expenditure on social care has remained flat since 2009-10, despite the increase in demand for services and the increase in staffing costs as well—increases in pensions, wages and external contracts. And some care charities, locally, are returning contracts to the counties because of lack of funds. The result of lack of funds is that the threshold to receive a service increases every year, with the result that our older people, vulnerable people, lonely people often don't reach the threshold, so they don't receive any services at all. 'Well, no problem', you might say, 'Pay for it', as we heard last week, but that isn't a choice for a number of our older people, without money, without family, who are lonely, and people are dying as a result of the lack of care. Twenty-two thousand people are dying beyond the expected level annually because of a lack of care in England, and when there is family, the pressure is very heavy on those voluntary carers. That's the result of the funding decisions and cuts to services, and a lack of care services in the community mean that people have to remain in expensive hospital beds as well, and, as I said last week, care deserves the same response as health does, namely a national care service funded from general taxation with salaried, talented staff who are registered exactly in the same way as doctors and nurses in the health service.

Now, I'll turn to education as well. As chair of the governing body of a primary school in Swansea for several years now, I see on a daily basis that our schools are under a great deal of pressure as well, with wage increases—deserved wage increases—for our teachers, increases in pensions for teachers as well—very much deserved—but the funding doesn't flow down from the United Kingdom Government nor does it come from the Welsh Government, and that doesn't pay for these deserved increases. The decisions are being made, but the funding doesn't follow as a result of those decisions, and especially in terms of pensions. And with pressure on the budgets of our counties, the reserves held by our schools are being eroded very swiftly. Now, these are, indeed, hard times for local government. We can't support this. We will be voting against the motion. Thank you.