Questions now from the party spokespeople. The Conservative spokesperson, Sam Rowlands. 

Diolch, Llywydd, and good afternoon, Minister. As you may have seen from social media over the weekend, Minister, a 2022 council candidate from Newport received hundreds of pounds-worth of damage to his car, and that isn't the first attack on his property, with targets to his house, nails pushed into his car tyres and social media trolling during the recent council and Senedd elections. So, in light of this, Minister, what are your views on council candidates, who are willing to put their head above the parapet and represent their communities, having to deal with this abhorrent abuse?

First of all, I would just like to say—and I know that Sam Rowlands agrees with me on this—that we have to give respect to anybody who puts themselves forward as a candidate for a community council, town council or county council election, because it does take an element of bravery to do that. And the abuse of any candidate is absolutely unacceptable and we have to do everything that we can to prevent it. 

One of the things that I'm really pleased that we were able to do was to ensure that we removed the need for candidates to provide publicly their home address, which I think does provide a level of safety and security, although I know that candidates are often very well known anyway within their communities, so we have to bear that in mind. And we're also currently undertaking some work looking at a survey that we did of members of the public to gauge their understanding of councillors and the role that councillors play within their communities, to see what more we can do in terms of helping people better understand the role of councillors and, hopefully, that might bridge some of that gap between the lack of understanding that some people will have and the actual immense dedication that people put into these roles. And whether or not they are eventually elected, I think that we have to pay due respect to those people for putting themselves forward.  

Thank you, Minister, for your response and for outlining some of the actions that are already in plan. Clearly, this is not just a recent issue as well, or a single issue for one candidate. We saw, in May's elections, that paint was thrown over cars owned by a long-serving Swansea councillor, which led to irreparable damage; we saw two councillors in Caerphilly receive abuse letters, calling them all sorts of things and the police had to get involved in that; in addition, a Cardiff councillor, who'd been a councillor here for a long time, shared some horrific stories about some of the abuse that she has had to face up to over recent years. So, you've outlined already, Minister, some of the work and the actions that you're undertaking. I'd be really keen to understand when you expect some fruit off the back of that, and when we can expect to see not just the understanding of it, but the actual real implementation of those potential actions, because it's really important, as you say, and as we all agree, that we protect our local councillors, our local candidates, from this disgusting behaviour. 

I think one of the important things that we have to do as well is to help councillors understand that this kind of behaviour isn't acceptable, because there's often an inclination on the part of elected representatives to think that abuse just comes with the job, and it absolutely shouldn't, and I know that we all appreciate that in this Chamber. And that's one of the reasons, again, why we've recently refreshed 'The good councillor's guide', and that very much is about helping those councillors understand what is and isn't acceptable in terms of the response that they receive and potentially the abuse that they receive, and it also then helps them to understand what support might be available to them. So, you would expect individual local authorities to be putting in place the appropriate plans to support the welfare and the well-being of those councillors, but also to be working in partnership locally with the police, who can also provide additional support and advice, as necessary, for the more serious kind of abuse and, in some cases, almost violence, that you've described.

Yes. Thank you, again, Minister for that, and it's pleasing to see that. I'm sure we all agree around this Chamber that more needs to be done and is being done to ensure that our candidates and elected members are being properly protected. But, again, we did see, in May's election, 74 uncontested seats, with many people suggesting that they're not willing to stand because of the fear, at times, of some of the abuse and behaviour pointed towards candidates. Of course, it's this level of democracy that is absolutely so fundamental not just to delivering services, but also as an example of elected individuals being able to make those decisions without fear or favour. We do have a new cohort of councillors elected in May's elections, so I wonder what work you may be doing with them to ensure that they, now in their elected positions, feel confident to make some of those difficult decisions without that fear of intimidation from all sorts of people who, sadly, are in our community?  

Thank you again for that important question. Like you, I was disappointed at the level of uncontested seats. I think that having contested seats and giving local people a choice is a really positive thing, which is why the work that we're doing through our diversity and democracy programme is so important in terms of widening up access to elected office by all people in our community. We've introduced our access to elected office fund, which will, hopefully, support a wider range of people to become candidates, and we had some success with that. It was administered at the last election by Disability Wales, but we're considering now what other protected characteristics we can bring into that wider work as well. But I know that the Welsh Local Government Association and individual local authorities do work hard to support incoming councillors to understand these things, and, hopefully, to signpost them to where they can find local support, in the event that they should feel threatened or undermined in any way in their particular role, but I'm more than happy to have some further conversations, if there are good ideas as what more we or local authorities can be doing in this important space. 

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Llyr Gruffydd. 

Diolch, Llywydd. Afternoon, Minister. Cumulatively, the financial pressures building up in the local government system, of course, are beyond anything, really, that we've probably ever seen before, even though pressures in the current financial year were offset somewhat by a better than expected settlement for this year. That feels a different world away, doesn't it—only, what, eight months ago when that 9.4 per cent settlement was confirmed.

It is becoming clear that additional in-year pressures, amounting to over £0.25 billion, are potentially facing local councils in Wales this year, and there's an expected cumulative shortfall of over £800 million by the end of this three-year spending or funding cycle. Every authority is now reporting budget gaps, and other maybe than the experience of the early months of the COVID pandemic, these are unprecedented pressures that are being faced. So, the risks to all local government services, including, of course, significant statutory services, such as education and social care, can't be underestimated. So, if, as is being suggested, statutory services are facing significant cuts, what discussions have you had or what consideration are you giving to actually advising local authorities about which statutory services they should be prioritising? Because many of those councils are telling me that they need a clear steer from the Welsh Government. In a climate where they just can't deliver what they're expected to deliver, the message I'm getting is that the Welsh Government really needs to make it clear what councils are expected to prioritise when it comes to protecting key services.

Well, I've had the opportunity to discuss these issues in depth with the local authority leaders very recently. So, as you've heard, we have now fortnightly meetings with local authority leaders. In last week's meeting, actually, one of the substantive items was budgetary pressures, and they were able to give those figures to me at that meeting. We also had, last week or the week before, a meeting of the finance sub-group, which again delved into those figures in greater detail. Obviously, they are extremely concerning in terms of the pressures that are being faced.

So, I'm being told that key areas include pay inflation, energy costs, schools, social care, the response to the situation in Ukraine and wider migration issues, alongside housing, homelessness and, of course, capital investment and the associated investment in climate change—so, lots of important areas there. Some of them aren't statutory, but nonetheless absolutely vital. So, we are having discussions with local authorities to see what we can practically do to support them. One of those things might be to assist them in terms of the prioritisation exercise locally. We're also looking at the grants that we provide to local government. So, £1.2 billion of grants are provided to local government every year, and local government is making the case that perhaps some of those should go into the revenue support grant rather than through particular grants, so I've said that I would broker discussions with whichever relevant Ministers need to be involved in those. And also looking again to see around the capitalisation of some costs—they've asked us to look at that. So, we've returned to local government asking for some more detail on those discussions. So, we are being as helpful as we possibly can be, obviously, to local government at what is a really worrying time for them and for us.

Okay, well, that was very nearly everything that you're prioritising, so I'm not sure whether that's possible, but I am glad that that engagement and that discussion is happening, because the message is coming through clearly that they need to know what the Government's priorities are in terms of what you're asking them to deliver under these circumstances. 

I'm glad that you said that you're looking at what you 'can practically do'—your words—to support local councils, because they are very conscious as well that additional responsibilities and roles and duties are coming in their direction from Welsh Government through regulations, through legislation et cetera. They see things such as enforcing the single-use plastic ban, which I know all of us—very many of us—want to see implemented. That may well lead to additional costs. Dare I say it, implementing the 20 mph speed limit as well does bring with it additional work that needs to be done. So, councils are making it clear that, without additional resources, something else has to give.

So, can you confirm whether you're committed either to providing those additional resources to meet the new duties that the Government is asking local authorities to deliver, or, if you don't provide those additional resources, are you discussing what else they do not need to do in order to free up that capacity to deliver those additional duties, or, indeed, whether the Government is taking a step back, looking at the bigger picture and proactively profiling the implementation of new responsibilities in order to smooth out the workload?

I can see that the Plaid Cymru spokesperson and I have been having the same conversations with local government leaders in recent times, and that you're hearing very much the same message as I am, which I think is a positive thing. Again, that's one of the other things that we're looking at in terms of what we can practically do to support local government around the additional expectations that we're placing on local government, the additional things that we're asking them to do, exploring with them now what specifically—. So, you've named a couple of those specific areas, but we've asked officials to explore with local government what specifically they're finding to be putting extra pressure on their resources, on their time, on their finances and so on, to see if there are things that we can practically do to help them in that space as well. So, just to reassure you that those discussions are very live at the moment.