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

Diolch, Llywydd. Before I go into my question, I'm sure, Llywydd, you'd like to join me in welcoming members of the Canadian Parliament who've joined us today through the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, and have the pleasure of observing our proceedings this afternoon. I'm sure they'll enjoy it as much as we do.

Good afternoon, Minister. You touched, in response to one of your questions earlier, on the provisional local government settlement, and, indeed, the 7.9 per cent increase to local authorities has been broadly welcomed by those authorities, but there are concerns a number of leaders have expressed. The Labour leader of the Welsh Local Government Association, Andrew Morgan, who, I'm sure, you know well, has said there are some tough decisions ahead for councils. The Plaid Cymru leader of Isle of Anglesey County Council, Llinos Medi, says hard cuts to local services are ahead, as a result of this settlement. Lib Dem-run Powys County Council are looking to close rural schools, and Labour-run Monmouthshire County Council consulted on cuts to leisure centre hours as well. All of this whilst our council tax payers are likely to face a further hike in their taxes. So, in light of this, Minister, like the comments from those council leaders, and as a result of your funding decisions, what further difficult decisions do you think our local councils will have to make? And what services do you think our residents will have to face being cut? 

I think it is important to recognise that, overall, our settlement for local government, at a 7.9 per cent increase on this financial year, has been broadly welcomed across local government. I do think that we have provided the absolute best possible settlement that we could have. We gave to local government in excess of the funding that we received in consequential funding from measures that the UK Government had outlined in its autumn statement in the fields of social care and education. We were able to do that by undertaking a very painful exercise ourselves across Government in terms of identifying areas where we could reprioritise funding towards local government and towards our health service. You'll see all of those details, of course, in the draft budget that was laid. So, I don't underestimate that local government will have to make a series of difficult decisions locally. Those decisions now should be locally led; I know that they'll be consulting with their residents as to what their residents' priorities are. But, under the circumstances, we have provided the best possible settlement. It is, of course, for the Welsh Conservatives to provide their alternative budget, which I know we were promised last year, but have yet to see materialise.

Thank you, Minister, for your response then. A key issue in regard to that funding for those local authorities is the way in which that funding is dished out. As you'll know, a significant part of funding for those councils comes in the form of grants. I believe around £1.4 billion of the funding that those councils receive comes in grants. Of course, the money itself is welcome, but perhaps the direction from Welsh Government as to where and when those grants should be spent can be both restrictive and cause an administrative burden, which holds back the work of our councils. So, in light of this, Minister, how are you working with those councils to ensure there can be further flexibility on grant allocation? How are you working to see that grants go into an unhypothecated section of their funding so they can spend that money on what is best for them and best for their local residents?

I think this is an area probably where we have more common ground, because this is a piece of work that we have been undertaking with local authorities over the past few months, at their request, to explore which areas of grant funding could potentially be moved into the revenue support grant on a short-term or permanent basis. So, that piece of work is ongoing at the moment, but we've absolutely committed to looking at that. Timescales, of course, will be important for that piece of work. But, I just want to reassure you and other colleagues who have an interest in this that our Welsh Government officials are working with officers in the WLGA and talking to treasurers across Wales to explore what might be possible.

Thank you, Minister. If I may, I just want to focus my last question on virtual council meetings. It's an issue that I've raised a number of times here in the Chamber and an issue that I raised with you last week as well. Also, we saw yesterday another media story showing a shambolic situation where it looks as though an alleged sex act took place over a Zoom meeting during a meeting of Flintshire council's cabinet—completely inappropriate, but again highlights some of the issues that we see in meetings of local government taking place virtually. Whilst virtual meetings, of course, do have positives, I raised with you last week my concerns about how these are being managed. I raised with you the concerns about a councillor allegedly driving whilst voting, we've seen evidence of proceedings being edited before they're published online, and now the latest news reports of this awful act that took place up in Flintishire council. It shows how virtual meetings can be abused in a way that can't happen in face to face, in-person meetings. So, last week, when we met, Minister, you said that you'd be looking to issue further guidance to councils. I wonder whether you would look to accelerate the issuing of that guidance and have those discussions with councils to ensure they're offering hybrid meetings and not just virtual meetings, because face-to-face meetings are so important for our residents and in the working of councils.

Thank you for raising that point this afternoon. I'd begin by recognising that hybrid working and virtual working can be a really important way in which to increase diversity in democracy, as we were discussing last week, in terms of making those meetings more accessible to people in full-time work, people with family commitments, caring commitments, people who are self-employed, and for others. But, absolutely, we would expect that the same behaviour is expected of people attending those meetings as you would expect in a council chamber. So, I will explore with the local government chief digital officer what more we can be doing in this space to ensure that everybody is clear about what's expected of them in those meetings, and perhaps we can have a further conversation about some more of your ideas in this space outside the Chamber.

Before I call the spokesperson for Plaid Cymru, can I reiterate the welcome to the parliamentarians from Canada to our Senedd, our Parliament, today? And I hope you have a fruitful visit to Wales and to our Parliament, and thank you for bringing just a tiny little bit of your winter weather to us as well. 

So, a very warm welcome to all of you. Plaid Cymru spokesperson next, Llyr Gruffydd.

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. And it was very good to share an hour of our time as well to compare notes in relation to the work that we do as the Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee as well. 

So, thank you for that.

Minister, we've heard about concerns about contracting public services, particularly in relation to local government, as a result of the financial situation that our councils find themselves in. Now, one graphic demonstration of that of course was the fact that Newport are actually considering switching off alternate street lights between midnight and 6 a.m. to cut down on energy costs. Colleagues of mine on these benches have already raised concerns about the impact that might have and the consequences particularly in terms of compromising the safety of night-time pedestrians, especially women and those who maybe aren't confident and stable on their feet maybe—older people et cetera—and potential consequences in terms then of deteriorating health, mental and physical. There is a strong correlation of course between improved street lighting and reduced crime rates as well. So, one simple decision—I say 'simple' in a qualified manner, but one decision—can obviously have much wider implications and impacts.

So, my question to you is: what advice are you giving to local councils, or what discussions are you having with local authorities? Because, obviously, at the end of the day, these isolated decisions—. And you could scale these decisions up if they're collective decisions—collective impacts of similar decisions made elsewhere. But what advice are you giving to local councils about the risk that some of these decisions, made today to save money, may well cost the public purse more money in the longer term?

I think the example that you give really serves to highlight the difficult decisions that local authorities are considering at the moment, and they span a really wide range of matters that are of importance to their residents. So, decisions must be taken, of course, through the lens of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, so, they'll be needing to consider what the decisions that they're taking mean in terms of sustainable communities. And of course, the equality impact assessments will be important as well in terms of understanding the impact on people with particular protected characteristics: on women, older people, which you've given as examples. 

So, I know that councils will be diligent in that work, but I know that councils will have to make some decisions that are difficult, because they do speak to me about the gaps that still remain in the funding that they have for next year. And I know that they're setting out some of those proposals in their consultations with local residents. So, clearly, they will have to listen very carefully to what local residents are telling them are their priorities for their communities as they move forward. But, as I say, we've provided local authorities with the best possible settlement. I think that you probably would have to go a long way to find a local government leader who'd rather be in England than in Wales and you'd probably find a fair few in England who would also prefer to be here as well. That's because, over those long years of austerity, we still protected local government as far as we possibly could. So, that remains the case, that we're protecting them in the next financial year as far as we can. And I described earlier in this session the difficult work that we did to repurpose money towards local government and health from other areas of Government. 

Well, my concern is Wales of course; I have no jurisdiction for England. But certainly I think we need to be mindful that these individual decisions will consequently lead to, maybe, pressures coming from other directions. 

Now, linked to this, really, the Welsh Government is introducing legislation and regulation, much of which we support, and they are very worthy in terms of what we want to achieve and are well intentioned, but much of this is introducing additional duties and responsibilities to local government. We've seen it happen with organisations such as Natural Resources Wales, where, a few years ago, the Planning (Wales) Act 2015, the future generations Act, the Environment (Wales) Act 2016, all stacked up additional duties on that particular organisation at the same time of course as reducing budgets, to put it on quite an unsustainable trajectory in terms of delivering on those services. I'd ask you how mindful you are of those pressures in terms of local government. I've touched on this with you before: what consideration has the Government given to re-profiling the introduction of some of these duties? The 20 mph zones are obviously bringing with them a hefty burden of work that needs to be completed. Is that something that the Government would be open-minded to maybe delaying or looking at re-profiling in terms of its expectation around local government to introduce that? Even the single-use plastic ban—there will be an enforcement responsibility on local government. Now, we would all want to see that coming into being as soon as possible, but I think we do need a pragmatism and a practical approach to some of this. So, my question is: to what extent are you actively looking at this agenda, and to what extent are you actually discussing this with local government? And if you are, maybe you could give us a few examples of some things that you are actively considering in that respect. 

So, just to return briefly to the first part of your question, I would just like to say that this is one of the reasons why the strategic impact assessments are so important, because they do look at the cumulative impact upon people of various decisions and, of course, upon people who have more than one protected characteristic as well. So, those types of impact assessments are really helpful in terms of helping us understand the impact of decisions.

But, then, in terms of local government, the things that they asked us to look at, and we were pleased to do so, included the point about moving grants into the revenue support grant, either for a time-limited period or permanently. So, that's something that we are actively looking at at the moment. We're looking at all of our different grants and exploring what might be possible. That's an ongoing discussion, as I said, with the WLGA and with treasurers across Wales.

Another thing that they asked us to look at was the impact of regulatory burdens. So, obviously, this is a programme for government commitment, that we would look at the administrative burdens on local authorities, and that's a piece of work that, again, is actively under way with local authorities. But I think some of them had a particular concern about some of the regulatory systems, so we are looking at some of those specific concerns that they had as well, because we are really open to having all of these discussions with local authorities to try and ensure that we treat them with trust to get on with the jobs that they are required to do.

And then, on the point about re-profiling or looking again at some of our commitments, again, this is something that we are exploring with local government. I think that there are different views on some of these things. For example, the 20 mph zones, clearly, that's a programme for government commitment. I know there are strong views out there about that particular commitment. But we are engaging openly in all of these discussions with local government.