Public Services in Blaenau Gwent

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:36 pm on 11 October 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:36, 11 October 2022

Llywydd, Peter Fox speaks always with authority in relation to local government, given his experience in leading a local authority. He will know what it must be like for a local authority leader to contemplate a 15 per cent reduction in their budgets. And he's right that there was a consequential from changes to stamp duty land tax in England. But what he won't have had a chance, I imagine, to have seen is that, yesterday, the UK Government announced that they were reducing the budget of the Welsh Government by £70 million next year and another £70 million in the year after. So, there may have been £70 million as a consequence of stamp duty land tax over a three-year period, but, yesterday, they announced—and this is in advance of all the cuts that will come on 31 October—that our budget is to be reduced by £70 million next year and the year after. That means that the opportunities, small as they would have been, to have assisted local authorities with the very real pressures that Peter Fox quite rightly outlined were wiped away in a single letter from the Treasury.