I’ll begin again by saying that there’s no doubt that the settlement before us today is an opportunity missed to lift some of the pressures off the shoulders of local government, which, in turn, would have had a positive impact on public services more broadly, following years of ongoing austerity. It is clearer than ever, I believe, as we’ve heard from a number of speakers already, that our councils can’t continue to operate effectively given the current financial climate. A shortage of adequate funding is certain to have a direct impact from hereon in on areas that, to all intents and purposes, have been protected to this point—education and social services are two that are foremost in my thoughts.

A failure to spend sufficiently on social services has an impact on health budgets, and by cutting the funding of crucial preventative services, it increases pressure on the health service. And, of course, on the face of it, hardly anyone would disagree with the approach of providing more funding to the health service, but doing that without taking into account the interdependency between health and local government helps no-one. It is short-termist in essence.

I would want to see the way that budgets are planned across various areas and how they overlap with strategic purpose changing. We need a government with a very clear vision to do that, with a focus on the long term and a willingness to bring strands of government and public services together, and that’s not what we’re seeing at the moment, I’m afraid.

I’m very disappointed to have to report that I haven’t received a response to a letter that I wrote jointly to the finance Minister and the education Minister before the final budget was laid, asking at the eleventh hour that the Government look again at a means of reducing the burden on our councils. Over the past months, in education specifically, I've received correspondence from council officials, heads and governors of schools—and I declare an interest as a governor myself at Ysgol Gyfun Llangefni—and I have been contacted by parents and people in the additional learning needs sector who are concerned about the impact of the budget and its effect on the education sector.

The recommendation made by Government, to all intents and purposes, as to where the level of council tax should be on Anglesey for the next year, suggests that council tax should increase by around 10 per cent. That's the Government recommendation, but that's not increasing in order to invest and to increase budgets; it's an increase of 10 per cent while at the same time making big cuts to education budgets. I know that officials are working hard to mitigate the cuts that they are going to have to make in education. There has been talk of over £1.5 million, and I do hope that that figure can be lower. But schools have no scope to make further cuts. One headteacher told me, 'I'm not going to worry anymore, because if I start worrying about the financial deficit then I'll make myself ill. So, what I'm going to have to do is try and deal with the situation and accept that there is an inevitable overspend'.

We didn't get to this question from me in the last questions session to the Minister: 'Will the Minister make a statement on school budgets given the local authority settlement for 2019-20?' The written response I received was:

'Across Government, we give priority to assisting schools through the local government settlement. We continue to provide additional grant funding above core funding for schools through local authorities. In the current Assembly term, we are committed to investing £100 million to increase standards in schools'.

Now, that response has infuriated local government and those in education in my constituency. It's an unconsidered response because core funding is the problem. Without adequate core funding, an authority such as Anglesey is pushed to close schools whilst the Government brings in a new code in order to try and mislead people by suggesting that they're trying to save small schools but without providing any additional funding to implement that code. 

The situation we're in is not sustainable. I could talk about social services, too. When council officials tell me that they're concerned that they can't afford to implement court orders in order to safeguard vulnerable children who are under threat, that makes me think that there is something fundamentally wrong with the level of funding provided to our local authorities. They will have to make it work, but that's the level we're talking about. We're talking about substantial cost to protect the most vulnerable in our society, and we've reached that point where local government can no longer afford to do those things.

Yes, there's been an unfair and unjust decade of austerity from the Conservative Government in London, but there are political decisions that have been made by the Labour Government here in Wales that mean that the vulnerable are suffering, and local government is a perfect example of that.