Thanks, everybody, for your contributions, and I very much welcome the Minister’s closing comments.

Janet Finch-Saunders began by reminding us that the Williams commission’s recommendations to take public service delivery forward have largely been ignored, there has been little progress on the integration of health and social care, that roughshod has been ridden over our community councillors and local government officers, that early adopters of voluntary mergers have been rejected, and that with low voter turnout at local government elections and town and community council seats uncontested, it’s time to re-engage with the electorate, Welsh Local Government Association and local authorities in order to regenerate local government. She also pointed out the Welsh Government’s failure to implement powers under the UK Localism Act 2011, which could have empowered communities in Wales as they have in England and Scotland.

Sian Gwenllian put the case for a single transferrable vote in local government elections. Andrew R.T. Davies reminded us that lines on the map mean little to communities and we must engage instead of dictating what will happen. Mike Hedges told us that sports facilities are good for health. Thanks for that, Mike. Of course, the auditor general has recommended, in his report on leisure services, that councils do things differently. He says that councils have no ideal size and big is not always better. It is a shame that colleagues in the last Welsh Government failed to recognise that.

Suzy Davies talked about reform needing to be about a balance between Government, local authorities and citizens, recognising that local authorities can’t do it all and the potential of co-production. She said, ‘Whatever happened to people?’, that Labour put state centralisation before mutuality in public service delivery as the best option and that Robert Owen would be ashamed. Mohammad Asghar talked about the need to shift power to the people, giving communities a right to challenge and deliver high-quality services of good value.

Gareth Bennett talked about a need not to take services systematically away from the people they’re supposed to serve and the need to support bottom-up reorganisation. Jenny Rathbone talked about the need for fundamental reform of how we provide services in Wales and the need for that to be delivered now; Rhianon Passmore, the need for a co-productive approach; and the Cabinet Secretary, the need to celebrate local government success—of course, we must—but that real challenges remain, and his intention to spend his early weeks in his new role talking, listening, learning and seeking consensus.

At the final stage of the draft Local Government (Wales) Bill evidence sessions of the previous Communities, Equality and Local Government Committee, the leader of Gwynedd—one of the people representing the WLGA—told us, rightly, that surely the questions to ask are: what do we want to achieve through public services; what do we want to achieve through our local authorities; and then, which structure is required? There is a tendency for the horse and cart to be in the wrong order in this discussion. As the Williams commission report, which we heard referred to, on public service governance and delivery said:

‘the only viable way to meet the needs and aspirations of people is to shift the emphasis of public service towards co-production and prevention.’

As the newly established co-production network for Wales, which the Welsh Government must engage with, has said: this is about the total transformation of public services, delivering them in equal and reciprocal relationships between professionals, people using services, their families and their neighbours, enabling both services and neighbourhoods to become far more effective agents of change. After all, as Marcel Proust suggested,

‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.’

Let us hope that the Welsh Government and all parties will have new eyes on this matter.