Wales’s radical political tradition of empowered local communities has come to be represented in modern times by our local authorities, by elected representatives, who, in some cases, experience so little buy-in from residents they serve that they can sometimes hang onto civic influence for decades. And they can hang onto ideologies for decades too: public services can only effectively be delivered by the public sector, short-term contracts with the third sector are okay as long as councils hold the purse strings and they can be ditched if they’re not liked, and, in some cases, you can’t even mention the private sector. The dominating, monolithic structures of local authorities even today no longer function as a model of community empowerment. Local government reform needs to be more than about mergers; it’s about a new balance between local authorities, society and the citizen.

Now of course we need the public sector to be a central part of the way that our communities are served, but we have to move on from this culture of, ‘Oh, that’s the council’s job’ or ‘Oh, the council won’t let you do that.’ This is not just about localism that’s characterised by the kind of asset transfer we’ve been talking about—obviously that’s part of it. It’s about recognising that local authorities can’t do it all. This is about recognising the potential of co-production. Local authorities are home to committed officers and employees, to expertise, to a range of professional skills, strategic thinkers as well, but, by dumping so many challenges on the steps of county hall, we overlook what we as citizens, individually and collectively, other organisations and other bodies can do to meet the demands of our communities. The increasing demands and shrinking budgets identified by Mike Hedges mean that we all lose out when non-statutory services are threatened by the pressure for councils to meet their statutory obligations first. Public dissatisfaction with ‘the council’ grows, disconnection between service providers and service users grows. The vocabulary we use for this just reinforces that. What on earth happened to ‘people’? Just take adult social services: a fifth of us are already over 65 and it’ll be well over a quarter by 2033. In Conwy, a quarter of the population are already pensioners. The state may have a range of public health messages to help us keep fit and healthy for longer, but it requires personal responsibility to take on those messages and make them work for us and our families and our communities.

Local authorities will come under tremendous pressure to provide support and care through the traditional adult care routes, let alone fulfil their other social services obligations. So, do we really leave it all to them? Labour has lost its fervour for the localism that underpinned the co-operative model of economic development long ago, putting its faith instead in state centralisation. Rather than leading the way in the UK, the co-operative economy in Wales is smaller per head of population than it is in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Even the plans for the not-for-profit body to run our railways have the inky fingerprints of Government all over them.

Dr Dan Boucher is right when he says that the current challenge to public service delivery

‘is not helped by Labour’s failure to embrace the opportunity of injecting a greater measure of mutuality into the organisation of our public services through the development of public service mutuals.’

While England has enjoyed the development of 106 public service mutuals in the last five years, providing over £1 billion-worth of public services, the same period has not witnessed the creation of any public service mutual in Wales. That’s quite strange as the Labour Government’s 2009 social enterprise action plan specifically said that public bodies should consider whether any aspect of their roles could be better carried out by social enterprises. In 2014, its Welsh Co-operative and Mutuals Commission supported the extension of mutuals in the economy and public services. Indeed, the commission said that mutuals were superior to state provision when it came to housing, Mike Hedges, and highlighted opportunities in a number of areas, including social care and health. However, this March, on the eve of the Assembly election, the Welsh Government action plan on alternative delivery models for public service delivery stated plainly:

‘We advocate co-operative and mutual models of delivery and other alternative delivery models only as an alternative to ceasing or privatising services, as a least worst option’.

Now, I think Robert Owen would be ashamed that a Welsh Government has signalled so clearly that its sympathies remain squarely with state centralisation.

Welsh Conservatives believe that one of the keys to success in securing policies is in speaking to our culture. We will continue, ourselves, to promote co-production, including mutuals, where appropriate, not because mutuals are the least worst option, but because they are the best option, both for the specific services in question and also because of the way they resonate with our own culture and national identity.