Diolch yn fawr. I'd like to thank all Members for their interest and their contributions to the debate today. Like Mike, who has his own local government experience, I would like to join him in really recognising the level of expertise that we do have in the Senedd. I do make a point, I hope, of making the most of that level of expertise that we have on all benches and I'm keen to continue those constructive discussions that we have on all matters relating to local government.

While this is a good settlement building significantly on improved allocations in recent years, I do recognise that this is still not a settlement that can reverse the years of constraint as a result of overall austerity in public finances. Local governments will still need to make some difficult decisions in setting their budgets and it is important, of course, that they engage meaningfully with their local communities as they start to consider their priorities for the forthcoming year.

The core funding we provide to local government is distributed, of course, through a well-established formula and it is created and developed in collaboration with local government and agreed annually with local government through the finance sub-group of the partnership council for Wales. And the formula is free of any political agenda and is driven by data and it does have collective buy-in from local government. The formula is constructed and governed in such a way that it can't be manipulated unfairly by any one authority or group of authorities or by politicians, whether they're locally elected councillors or Welsh Government Ministers.

There of course have always been calls for a fundamental review of the formula and, indeed, I recall that we debated this point in detail in one of the opposition debates just last month, but these calls have been isolated and not collective, because, of course, any formula produces relative winners and losers. But all authorities, as we've heard, will see an increase in funding on a like-for-like basis next year of at least 8.4 per cent. And I do want to reassure all areas of Wales that there's no deliberate bias or unfairness in the formula and to suggest so is unfair to those who engage so positively in the work that they do to deliver it.

Of course, the formula is kept under review and it's right that the core revenue funding is distributed according to relative need. The largest drivers of service expenditure are population levels, deprivation levels and sparsity, and the formula uses indicators of need as opposed to direct measures of service use to ensure that funding allocations can't be directly influenced or manipulated. It is the case that around 72 per cent of the funding distributed through the local government settlement formula relies on data that is updated annually. As a result of the pandemic and the staggered roll-out of universal credit, a number of the indicators are currently frozen and undergoing investigation by the distribution sub-group. But, once these issues are resolved, over 80 per cent of the funding distributed through the local government settlement formula will rely on data that is updated annually. And, of course, we very much look forward to the results of the census, which will be published over a series of weeks and months in the near future. And, of course, there will be other data that is available to update the formula. And this is one of the reasons why, of course, we've provided those clear funding allocations for year 1 of the spending review, but, years 2 and 3, we gave that all-Wales figure so that we could allocate funding on the most up-to-date kind of data.

I will just refer to a meeting that I had with the finance sub-group on 9 February, where we did discuss the issue of the suitability of the local government settlement funding formula and the timeliness of the data that feeds in to the formula. Local authority leaders noted the need for any funding formula to balance the need for stability in funding and responsiveness to changing relative needs. But we will discuss—. At our next meeting of the finance sub-group, in July, we'll be looking at components of the local government funding formula and whether there should be work to review some of those components in particular. So, I think that that is a welcome step.

Any change to the formula, of course, would result in winners and losers, and these could be substantial, and that's why I've said previously that, if there is that kind of collective appetite from local government to have that fundamental review, then of course we would act on it together. I will mention, though, that we have agreed to—or we have committed to—making council tax fairer in Wales. Of course, this is something that we're doing in partnership with our co-operation agreement partners in Plaid Cymru, although I'm not aware of a commitment in that agreement to take powers away from local authorities—I'm not sure that's something that any of us would have signed up to—but we are absolutely committed to working to make council tax fairer. As part of that work, we will be considering how the funding formula needs to respond to this and to other changing circumstances when providing authorities with stability and certainty. So, the formula will form part of our thinking, particularly when we get the updated indications as to what the change might be for local authorities in Wales as a result of any council tax reform. And when we start thinking about whether transitional arrangements are needed, for example, all of these things will inevitably have a link across to the funding formula.

And then just finally, to respond to the point relating to the situation in Ukraine, we are a nation of sanctuary, we are very much ready and willing to welcome people from Ukraine. And we had an absolutely incredible meeting, I thought, with the leader of the WLGA, the leaders of all local authorities in Wales, the third sector and the police, and my colleague Jane Hutt, the Minister for Social Justice, was also at the meeting—