I have the great fortune of being able to represent half of the wonderful county borough of Conwy, but unfortunately, residents in that county borough this year are facing the highest level of increase in their council tax bills on record, and, of course, it is the highest this year across the whole of Wales, at 9.9 per cent. That is an unacceptable increase, in my view, at a time when people are facing cost-of-living pressures, and it's particularly galling to people in my constituency to be facing that sort of increase when you look at the hundreds of millions of pounds that are being hoarded by some local authorities in south Wales, because if those resources were freed up, then, there would be more cash to go around to help hard-working families to be able to meet the cost of these bills. That's why I'm all in favour of seeing a reformed funding formula that takes into account the level of reserves that local authorities are holding, in addition to fine-tuning the formula so that it's fairer to older people, because, frankly, they're being overlooked at the moment in the way that the funding formula is working. We also, of course, have a rural sparsity issue in many rural local authorities. They don't seem to get the same sort of fair deal that urban local authorities get with their funding, and that's also something that needs to change.

I listened with interest to the comments from Llyr Huws Gruffydd, when he was objecting to any kind of assertion that—God forbid—the public should be given a right to have their say via a referendum if there's an excessive council tax increase proposed. I know it's galling for Plaid Cymru to ask the public's view on anything, particularly when independence is so unpopular in Wales, but the reality is that this system of enabling referendums for excessive council tax increases does act as an incentive for councils in England to keep their bills low, and that's why they've got lower average increases in England since the introduction of that rule than we have seen here in Wales.

Now, I expect that the Minister, in her response to this debate later on, will refer to the fact that, on average, council taxes are lower in Wales than they are in England and other parts of the United Kingdom, but we mustn't forget this: as a proportion of our income, because pay packets are much lower in Wales, we actually pay more in council tax than any other part of the United Kingdom, and that's because of the dreadful mismanagement of the economy here in Wales over two decades by the Welsh Labour Government and those who have propped them up in both the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru. So, we've got to get these things on an even keel.

Having referendums to secure a 'yes' vote prior to any significant increases being introduced, I think, is the right step forward. People in Conwy shouldn't be having to pay a 9.9 per cent increase when they're already trying to make ends meet. And we know that the UK Government—. It's not a shortage of cash—the Welsh Government seems to have enough cash to be able to send £155 million back and burn through £0.25 billion on an airport and still fork out hundreds of millions extra, even, on a metro system, today, we learn. They're able to find that down the back of the sofa, yet they can't seem to find the resources for people to be able have their council tax bills frozen in a year when they really need to see those bills frozen. So, I don't accept that there's not enough money to go around. We've got the money; we just need to get on and facilitate the freezing of council tax bills here in Wales.