I often think that, if finding an alternative funding mechanism for local government was easy, it would have been done a very long time ago. And I think that that's something that we perhaps need to give great thought to. I remember when the aggregate external finance replaced the rate support grant following the centralisation of business rates to balance up income in those authorities that had the least ability to raise local tax.

The distribution of properties in each band varies enormously and, whilst some authorities have over half their properties in the lowest two bands others, notably Monmouth, have over half their properties in band D and above. We would thus expect the councils to get the largest Welsh Government support per capita to be Blaenau Gwent, Merthyr and Rhondda Cynon Taf and the three lowest per capita to be Cardiff, Vale of Glamorgan and Monmouth, and that's what we effectively get. 

We know that council tax hits the poorest households particularly hard, with low earners paying an average of 7 per cent of their income in council tax, whilst the wealthiest households pay only 1.5 per cent. On council tax, I have the following suggestions: I would suggest a band J at £1 million, a band K at £5 million and a band L at £10 million. This would mean that those in very expensive properties would pay substantially more. An alternative reform would be a mansion tax surcharge of, say, 1 per cent on the value of properties worth over £1 million or £2 million, 2 per cent on £2 million and 3 per cent on those properties worth over £3 million. Will the Minister consider these suggestions?

On local income tax, while appearing to be a fairer system, income tax, like corporation tax, is easily avoided, and often is. Non-domiciled people owning mansions in Wales could end up paying nothing. It would shift the balance of payment on to those on lower and middle incomes. I would urge the Minister to rule out a local income tax because it will be the middle-income people who'll be paying for those who are capable of avoiding paying tax on huge sums of income.

Something we talk about regularly, and I thought Siân Gwenllian would have raised it today, is: can we remove small business rate relief from flats and houses, to remove the incentive to move them from being holiday homes into being businesses? My view is that there's no good reason to keep on giving them rate relief.

Our land value tax has a lot of benefits but if you use that to replace council tax, you'd have no social housing in some of the most expensive land areas. People would not be able to afford to pay the council tax on those properties in the areas where we've got very high land values; I know you've got those in your own constituency, Minister. So, I think that what you'd end up with, by default because of a decision, is that in those more affluent areas and very affluent areas where land values are well in excess of £1 million an acre, you would have no social housing whatsoever.

So, I think that a lot of these things need investigating, but I think sometimes the downside of some of these needs to be looked at, or why we are where we are now.