Thank you for that, Minister, and I concur with Huw Irranca-Davies. I chaired, or hosted a meeting for Members to join local authority leaders, and, sadly, I was the only one who turned up, even though we had 10 south-east Wales leaders on the call sharing the scale of their issues. And the scale of the challenge is huge, and the financial outlook is challenging. But some councils are far better equipped to face this than others. Minister, as I've said on a number of occasions, the formula for funding councils is out of date and is unfair. It sees some councils able to stack up colossal useable reserves while others struggle to meet their needs. I understand reserves, I can absorb the stock answers, but I understand the situation, as most local government members here will.

As Altaf Hussain mentioned in his previous question, we saw an increase of over 35 per cent in useable reserves held at March 2021 to £2.1 billion. Now, sad as I am in taking some time to trawl through the draft statement of accounts for March 2022 over the weekend, I've noticed an increase of well over 30 per cent again, some almost 50 per cent, with a circa increase of probably £600 million at March 2022, leaving a collective useable reserve pot of £2.75 billion. However, it's not a fair distribution. Some, at March of this year, held well over £200 million whilst others hold minimal useable reserves.

Minister, do you think that, at a time of such financial pressure for our country, it's right for some councils to hold so much in reserves? I know that a portion will be school balances and some will be capital, but some councils hold significant amounts of useable reserves in dormant, unused, earmarked accounts. So, shouldn't the Government find better and fairer ways to distribute finance? Especially at the moment, so that councils don't have to rely so much on hard-pressed council tax payers who can ill afford—