I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate today. Public services, and the delivery of public services, are a vital plank of support for many people the length and breadth of Wales, and local government obviously plays a vital role in delivering those public services. I did mean my comments to the First Minister in the first weeks of this Government, when I said to him that we do wish the Government well in its mission—and the Cabinet Secretaries in their mission—to deliver on the aspirations that they have had in their manifesto, because, if Government does fail, then the services that each and every Cabinet Secretary is charged with delivering have failed for the people who need those services to support them in their everyday lives. It is our job, as an opposition, obviously, to hold the Government to account, and to make sure that we do put forward an alternative as well, because it easy to carp from the sidelines, but you need to say what exactly you will do if you are serious about, obviously, one day being in Government.

From these benches, in these early weeks and months of this Assembly, we will certainly be engaging and looking to engage positively with the new Cabinet Secretary around the agenda for local government, because so much energy and so much time was spent in this Assembly in the last session dealing with—as the lead speaker, Janet Finch-Saunders, spoke—maps and lines on maps that actually didn’t mean very much to the very communities that were going to have either a service or a facility withdrawn, and ultimately carried little or no support. It really does come to something when a Conservative leader goes to the annual WLGA meeting and gets more cheers than the Labour Minister did in Swansea—bearing in mind that, I think, 16 of the 22 leaders of local authorities in Wales are Labour leaders. But that was at the height, obviously, of the previous Minister’s map about local government reorganisation. I do hope that the Minister—the Cabinet Secretary, sorry—sticks to the comments that he has made public so far, in that he does want to have that conversation, and he does want to work collaboratively with those at the coalface in local government, rather than going into those meetings over the next weeks and months and actually dictating to them what will happen, because I have yet to find someone who actually does want to destroy local government.

There are many ideas out there about which model we should look at—the combined model that Plaid Cymru have talked about, the county model that others hark to, and, ultimately, the 1974 model that, obviously, the previous Government was supporting. But what is quite clear is that, with the cost pressures that are coming through in the delivery of the service, with the ever-increasing demand on the services that local government has to deliver, the status quo is not an option. What we need to do, as the primary legislature here in Wales with responsibility for local government, is find a solution to getting a sustainable map for local government delivered here in Wales.

It is a fact that, every 20 years or so, previous Governments have come—of all shapes and colours—and redesigned local government in Wales. That cannot be a good model for governance, it cannot be a good model for delivery, and, ultimately, it cannot be a good model for those who work within the service, and those who vitally depend on those services to provide their everyday assistance. I think that what is really important today in this debate is that the Minister does use the opportunity to respond in these early weeks as to how he will take the discussions forward. Importantly, with the elections next May, is it the Government’s intention that, if there was to be a consensus about reorganisation, the mandates that politicians will be seeking from the electorate will be full mandates—i.e. will they serve the full five-year term of local government? Because they will be putting manifestos to the electorate in a little over nine or 10 months’ time, which the electorate will be voting on. So, I do hope that the Minister—the Cabinet Secretary, sorry—will give that clarity over this surety that candidates and incumbents will require when they are having those debates and having those discussions over what local government will look like over the next five years, and, indeed, as I said earlier, about the discussions that he intends to lead with local authorities, and give that genuine commitment that it will be a discussion rather than a lecture, as his predecessor, regrettably, started these discussions in the fourth Assembly.

I do want to just touch on as well, importantly, turnout at local government elections. Regrettably, that was down in 2012 by some 4 or 5 per cent, and many seats, in fact, as Janet Finch-Saunders touched on, went uncontested. It is vital that there is an awareness around the vital role that local councillors and candidates, indeed, can perform in the run-up to the election, and post the election, in supporting villages, towns and communities in any part of Wales. So, I look forward to the Minister’s response and I do hope he uses this debate as an opportunity to flesh out some of the ideas he might be having.