1. What action is the Welsh Government taking to improve working conditions for staff employed by local authorities in Wales? OAQ54508

Thank you for the question, and a happy shwmae day to the Member too. Today, we are encouraged to use our Welsh language no matter how much Welsh we have. This is everybody’s language. Thank you very much.

Thank you for the question. Of course, the workforce partnership council provides a forum in which the Welsh Government, trade unions and employers come together to address issues of mutual concern. Direct working conditions in local government are a matter for collective bargaining between employers and their trade unions.

Thank you, First Minister. The number of local government staff across Wales who took stress-related leave last year is 18 per cent higher than the previous two years. Caerphilly council saw 807 staff take stress-related leave last year, while in Merthyr Tydfil, the number was up more than triple, from 105 to 318. First Minister, do you share my concern at these figures, and what action will you take to reduce the pressure on council staff, which is seriously affecting their health and having consequences for the delivery of quality public services in south-east Wales?

Well, Llywydd, I agree with the Member, of course, that stress is a matter to be taken seriously. I hope that, somewhere in those figures, there is a reflection of the work that we have done and which has been supported across the Assembly, to make people more willing to report when they feel that they are suffering from any form of mental ill-health, including stress. But the figures are also a clear reflection of austerity. Time after time, I've argued on the floor of the Assembly that austerity is not simply felt in our ability to fund public services, but it's felt in the lives of people who provide those public services. Those people have had their wages held down while demands on them have gone up, and it's unrealistic to assume that they can simply park all those pressures at the door and go into work as though those things were not happening in their lives. 

The Member asks what we can do to reduce the stress in the lives of public servants who work for local government, and the answer is to have a UK Government prepared to fund public services properly, so that those people have people alongside them so that their numbers aren't reduced, and they will be better able to cope with the impact in their own lives and to provide services of a quality that we know they are committed to doing. 

Well, as you've said there, First Minister, we know that stress is increasingly becoming the reason for staff absenteeism in Welsh councils, and budget cuts initiated by Westminster, and passed on by this Labour Welsh Government, have led to significant job losses within our councils, meaning that staff are having to deliver the same service with less resource. Will you recognise that, in order to reduce the levels of stress on our local authority staff, the Welsh Government will need to provide sufficient funding to councils in the next budget round?

Well, Llywydd, funding local government has been a consistent priority for this Labour Government through the whole of this Assembly term and prior to that, too. But the Member recognises, I know, that, despite the point he makes, the money we have available to us is not the result of decisions that we make, that that money has to be stretched to provide services in the health service as well as local government, to do all the other things that we try to do as a Government, and for which Members around this Assembly Chamber every week stand up and advocate more investment in priorities that are close to their heart, that matter to local communities. We strain every sinew to put the maximum amount of money that is available to us as close to the front line as we can, in order to make sure that those services are of as high a quality as we can, and that the people who are challenged with providing them, that their welfare and well-being is protected as well. The single biggest constraint on our ability to do so is the fact that the amount of money available to us has gone down year after year after year, and will be lower in the next financial year than it was 10 years ago.