7. Will the Minister make a statement on council tax rises in north Wales? OQ59306

The responsibility for setting the council's annual budget and, as part of that, decisions about council tax, are matters for each local authority and its elected members.

Thank you for that response, Minister. I recognise that local authority members themselves are responsible for setting council tax, but as you will know, in Conwy, local residents there are facing an eye-watering increase in their council tax bills of 9.9 per cent this year, which is the largest increase in Wales, and one of the largest in the whole of England and Wales. Such an increase would not be permitted if that local authority had the same opportunity to have a cap fitted on it by you in your responsibility as the Minister for local government. And, of course, in England, residents there who face excessive council tax increases cannot have them imposed upon them without a 'yes' vote in a referendum. Can I ask you, will you consider the introduction of similar legislation here in Wales, so that when things go wrong with significant increases like this at a time when there are cost-of-living pressures, people can have the opportunity to have their say on their local council tax?

The Welsh Government doesn't intend to introduce any legislation of that sort, because we do believe that capping an authority's budget would be a serious imposition on the responsibilities of those locally elected members. We do provide local authorities, of course, with flexibility when setting their budgets and determining their council tax levels, and that does allow them to respond to local priorities and pressures. We believe that's an important feature of local democracy and enables authorities to be accountable to their residents. Obviously, those local referenda in England are costly. Instead, we channel our funding to the front line of local government through the local government settlement so that authorities do have that greater flexibility in terms of allocating that funding according to their local priorities.