Not only do I think it should, I thought it did. I think that part of the formula was percentage of population above a certain age, percentage of population at school age, so I think it does. I think that, really, councils protect social services and education, and one of the saddest things about local government is that most local authorities are getting very much the same. Swansea used to be really good at providing leisure services and cultural services. Rhondda Cynon Taf used to be very, very good at preschool services. But everybody's getting the same because everybody's under the same pressure and it's becoming much of a muchness in terms of services being provided.

The rate support grant used to be what was called a support for those that have a low council tax and, previously, low national non-domestic rates. The lower the local tax income, then the higher the national support, so that local authorities reached what their standard spending assessment said they ought to spend. It is not serendipity that Monmouth, which has the highest number of band D and higher properties, has the lowest Welsh Government support, whilst Blaenau Gwent, with the lowest number of band D and higher properties, has the highest. For the record, Monmouth council is Conservative-controlled, and Blaenau Gwent is independent-controlled, and just to correct something earlier, Merthyr is also independent-controlled.

What I would like to see happen is the following: I think we need an examination into local government funding. Health has the Nuffield study. If anybody had what they really needed—that Nuffield study was brilliant, because they said how much money they needed, year on year. Local government needs the equivalent of a Nuffield study to say how much it needs.

On the formula, minor changes—as Nick Ramsay just said—can have a huge effect. When I was a member of the distribution sub-group, we moved the highways from 52 per cent population and 48 per cent road to 50 per cent each. A minor change. This moved hundreds of thousands of pounds from Cardiff, Swansea and Newport to Powys, Pembrokeshire and Gwynedd.

Two immediate decisions that could help local Government would be: let local authorities set all charges—some are currently set by the Welsh Government—and give the funding for regional consortia to schools and let them decide whether they wish to pay into those regional consortia or not. From my understanding of the schools in Swansea, they would not be paying in.