The breakthrough we made a year ago, to win control of the county council in Monmouthshire, has just been mirrored all over England in local elections, showing the growing support for Labour.

We are now the party of local government with the highest number of councillors in the UK.

One of our big successes since we took office has been to concentrate on affordable housing in Monmouthshire and the recent Labour pledge to make land cheaper for local government to buy for such housing strengthens our ambitious plans.

Compare that to the way the Welsh Government and all our local authorities are being pinned back by a Westminster government of a different hue.

Labour has pledged that in power it would introduce a windfall tax on energy companies, which are making huge profits for shareholders while bill-payers suffer the consequences of huge price hikes. And now, even though wholesale energy prices have fallen, your bills do not reflect this. What we are seeing is the all-too-frequent pricing cycle, with costs rising like an arrow, but only drifting down like a feather.

By contrast Labour has already discussed plans to provide additional funding for English councils which could freeze council tax during this cost-of-living crisis. In the way that funding is allocated to Wales, this could also allow a Welsh Labour government to fund a similar policy.

I would argue that the May elections show that voters realise that Labour can be trusted to put the interests of ordinary people first. Compare that to the Tories, who have cost Britain billions with huge sums paid to chums while local services stagger under the burden of 13-years of austerity.

The Westminster government claims that their funding delivers on the commitment to match the previous EU funding from the European Social Fund and European Regional Development Fund. Is that really true? Our Welsh government believes that it has received less than half of what would have been paid out.

Here in Monmouthshire we have an MP who has done nothing to redress this imbalance and we need to put this right, electing a Welsh Labour MP who will fight the case for us. We have an excellent prospective candidate in Catherine Fookes. Whenever a general election is called, she will be ready to show what fairness and quality local representation is really like!