Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Trefnydd – in the Senedd at 1:40 pm on 17 March 2021.
Well, the question that Rhun ap Iorwerth posed in his first question was, 'Is council tax fairer than it was when I came into post?' and the answer to that is, undeniably, yes, it is. The question he didn't ask me was, 'Is council tax fair?', because I would have answered that council tax is actually a regressive tax, and that's why we've been working very hard over the past couple of years to undertake a series of research projects in terms of reforming local government finance. I published the findings of that on 24 February, and that drew together all of the work that we've been doing across the past couple of years to explore reforms to council tax and, actually, non-domestic rates and the wider local government system. It considers alternative approaches to local revenue raising, such as land value tax and local income tax, as well as options for keeping and significantly improving the existing systems. It also sets out aspirations for how future funding systems should work, and those are systems that should be fairer and more progressive, strengthening local accountability and providing a sustainable footing for local services, and, of course, to be simple and to be understood. So, clearly, this isn't the end of the road in terms of making council tax fairer. We have set out research that will inform the next Government in terms of steps it might want to take, some of which are quite radical steps but nonetheless do provide, I think, a significant opportunity to improve the system.