Diolch yn fawr, Ddirprwy Lywydd. Can I begin by thanking the Conservative group at the Assembly for using their time this afternoon to bring forward this debate? I’ve listened very carefully to each contribution, and I’m very glad to have this opportunity to discuss the future of local government in Wales and to set out some of my own early thinking.

My starting point, Dirprwy Lywydd, is this: that good local government plays a vitally important part in the lives of almost every citizen in Wales, from the earliest years of nursery education and the foundation phase to the social care provided to our oldest and most vulnerable. As Mike Hedges suggested, each one of us has a direct interest in the way in which our rubbish is collected, our streets kept clean, how our roads are maintained and our children are educated, and each one of those services is provided by our local authorities.

Now, Dirprwy Lywydd, I am fortunate that, partly as a result of the very close attention provided by my predecessors, I take on this portfolio at a time when, despite the very real challenges, local government in Wales has been improving. Most previous local government Ministers will have inherited a position where more than one council in Wales has been in need of intervention for its education or social services, or for its own corporate governance. Today, no council in Wales is in that position, and I am very keen to reflect that pattern of improvement in our discussion of local government.

When I met the leader of Ynys Môn council, he asked me that the first time I mentioned his authority on the floor of this Assembly, I should not describe it as a failing authority, but instead I should focus on the considerable success that his council has achieved over the last three years. That authority is in a very different position today than it was at the start of the last Assembly term, and I’m very pleased to be able to do just that—to say something about the efforts, all those efforts, here at the National Assembly, through the intervention of regulators and councils themselves, which have helped to bring about this improved picture.

Now, none of this is to suggest that real challenges do not remain, nor could we possibly believe that the provision of local authority services in Wales is uniformly as we would wish it to be simply because no local authority is currently performing below the minimum standard required of it. All Members here will be familiar with the basic position. Each and every local authority in Wales is good at something. Most are good at many things. None are good at everything. The challenge, then, will be to go on securing improvement in a future that will be very testing indeed. Local authorities face rising demand for many of their services, and they and we know that the money to meet those needs is diminishing, and, on current central Government plans, as Jenny Rathbone pointed out, will go on diminishing in each year of this Assembly term.

No-one that I have met in my meetings with local authorities so far argues that the status quo can be sustained. The nature of the problem is widely understood and shared; crafting solutions to it has been less easy. The last Welsh Government attempted to take a lead, to shape an agenda, to set out a way forward and to persuade others to follow. We would not have had the uniform commitment to change, I believe, had that work not been undertaken.

Now, one aspect of the proposed solution, the map, did not create consensus. Many other aspects of the draft Bill published by my predecessor were widely welcomed, both in this Chamber and beyond. Mike Hedges mentioned the general power of competence for local authorities, but the Bill also included greater clarity of relationships between executive and political leadership, the strengthening of the community leadership role of individual councillors, and measures to improve the responsiveness of local councils, answering the issues that Mohammad Asghar identified.