Delyth also made very good points about the ongoing pandemic and its wide-ranging and disproportionate effect on deprived residents across Wales. But I am pleased to be able to say, Delyth, that the hardship fund has completely covered off the areas that you mentioned, rightly, as areas of concern. So, we have been able to replace the lost income from car parks and other venues across Wales, and we have also replaced the lost income that care homes have not received, and we have also replaced the lost income for council tax and for NDR. So, local authorities are not in a position where the pandemic has stopped them being able to do things that they would otherwise have been able to do.

I wasn't asked in this debate—but I've been asked elsewhere, and so I'll reflect on it—why we are using 'COVID funding' to allow authorities to do things like, for example, repair potholes in roads. And the answer to that is because it's replacing income they would otherwise have used to repair the potholes in the roads. That's the purpose of it. It's not just for public health purposes, it's to replace lost income and lost opportunities. So, I'm very pleased to be able to say that we've done that on an ongoing basis, and, again, my colleague Rebecca Evans has been able to say that we will be able to do that going forward for at least the next six months as part of the COVID response, and local authorities have been very glad to have had that confirmation of their ongoing efforts.

So, we will be able to continue to maintain full entitlements under our council tax reduction scheme for 2021-22, and again we're providing £244 million in the local government settlement in recognition of this, and that is because, as we said, we remain committed to protecting vulnerable and low-income households, despite the shortfall in the funding transferred by the UK Government following its abolition of council tax benefit. I'd just like to point out to Laura Jones that this council tax benefit does not exist in England. Perhaps she's forgotten that. We are protecting the most vulnerable in our society against the disproportionate effect of council tax, and that is not the case in England.

The settlement today continues to provide unhypothecated capital funding to local authorities to meet their own priorities and to invest with Welsh Government in our shared priorities. It continues the additional £35 million provided for in the budget for 2021, and £20 million for the public highways refurbishment grant, which can include support for active travel infrastructure. The budget today announced a capital stimulus programme of over £224 million. This includes an additional £147 million to ramp up housing programmes, and an extra £30 million to accelerate the ambitious twenty-first century schools and colleges programme. This capital investment is helping to support economic growth, sustainable jobs and training opportunities in every part of Wales, as well as the benefits of the capital structures themselves.

Many of you today have made the case for your own local authority, of course. The formula produces relative winners and losers, but all authorities saw an increase in funding on a like-for-like basis this year, and all authorities see an increase next year. No authority should be in a position where they're disadvantaged, as the planning assumptions that we gave them are at least what they received. The distribution formula is a joint endeavour between the Welsh Local Government Association and the Welsh Government. We agree all changes through established working groups. The formula continues to use the most up-to-date, appropriate data, and there is an ongoing programme of work to refine it and explore future development. Local government proposes changes to the distribution formula or elements of it through the established joint governance arrangements we have in place. This means that we here in Wales are absolutely confident that we deliver an equitable and objective distribution of the funding available, unlike what is happening in England before your very eyes. I want to reassure all areas of Wales that there is no deliberate bias or unfairness in our formula, and to suggest so is absolutely unfair to those who engage so positively in the work to deliver it, and that is across all local authorities and the experts again who sit on our distribution sub-group.

As I say, any formula, of course, means winners and losers. If local government collectively wishes to more fully review the formula, I am open to that. I say so endlessly on the floor of this Senedd, Deputy Presiding Officer. I will say it again. But we should be mindful of how long the fair funding review in England has taken to produce a similar concept to what we already had in Wales, though without the same level of funding for councils in England as we provide here in Wales. But no system is set in stone. Several research papers on local tax reform have been commissioned and published by the Welsh Government as part of an extensive programme of work on options for potential local government finance and local tax reform. We hope this research informs the development of the local government finance system during the next Senedd term, whoever is in power.

I am more than happy to commend this settlement to the Senedd; I am proud of it. It reflects our commitment to public services and continues to support local government across Wales to deliver for the people of Wales. I remain grateful to local government, and I am very grateful indeed to my own team of officials who have worked so very hard to deliver this settlement to us. I commend the motion, Deputy Presiding Officer.