Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:40 pm on 29 June 2022.
Thank you for the question. As you say, we have a three-year spending outlook now as a result of the UK Government's three-year spending review, which in itself was welcome. But, one of the challenges that we've all recognised is that it was very much frontloaded into year one of the settlement. So, we had an uplift in this financial year, which we were able to pass on very well, I think, to local government, who described the settlement—at the time, at least—as exceptionally good. But, of course, we're facing inflationary pressures now, which are causing concern right across local government. So, what I can say is that we would look to the UK Government to provide a general uplift to departments—as they call all of us regardless of if we're devolved Governments—to look across all departments to provide an uplift to reflect the impact that inflation is having. And, of course, we would look to see what we can do then to support local government further. But, as it stands, I think the UK Government—. The messages that I'm increasingly hearing quite clearly, I think, from Treasury Ministers is that we will all be expected to live within the funding envelopes that we have, which means that there won't be any further funding, I'm afraid, at this point to pass on.