Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:57 pm on 7 May 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:57, 7 May 2019

Well, Llywydd, council tax rates are not set on the floor of this Assembly Chamber. The Assembly is responsible now for major taxation decisions that we make every year, but setting the council tax is not one of them. It is as a result of actions agreed in this National Assembly that we still have in Wales a national council tax benefit scheme, so that people who have the least pay no council tax at all, whereas the poorest families in the land in the part of the United Kingdom to which the Member refers are now paying £200 a year on average from benefits that have been frozen since 2015 towards council tax bills, and, in Wales, those families, I'm really pleased to say, pay nothing at all. So, where we are able to act and where we have responsibility to act, I think the National Assembly and the Welsh Government have acted together to protect those families who need that protection the most, while respecting the separate democratic accountabilities that local authorities have to make decisions that fall to them to make.

In terms of respecting democratic decisions, I take note of what the Member says about the European Union referendum. I think it's his party's policy that we should now have a third referendum on whether the National Assembly should continue to be in existence, despite the fact that we've had two referendums here, both of which—the first of which brought this Assembly into being, and the second of which confirmed its existence and strengthened its powers by a completely decisive majority.