Will the Minister make a statement on his priorities—oh, sorry; wrong one. Apologies.

5. Will the Minister make a statement on the delivery of public services through local government? OAQ(5)0003(FLG)

Thanks to Suzy Davies for that question. Good local government plays a vitally important role in the lives of all citizens in Wales. Each and every one of us has a direct interest in shaping how public services are delivered.

Thank you for that very encouraging answer, there, First—Cabinet Secretary; I will get the hang of this. [Laughter.] There are, of course, many examples of partnership working between local authorities and others, especially health boards, on the delivery of social services, but I think that word ‘delivery’ really says it all, particularly about the way we as a population work to support those whom we seek to help. I think the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, for all its faults, points very firmly in the direction of co-production, the role of mutuals and other society-based organisations as fertile ground for developing new models of sustainable services, including social services. Do you see these, as the response to the Williams commission report suggests, as a last resort when the public sector fails or do you agree that we need to look ahead to a new balance between state and society to ensure the best fit for public services and the public they serve?

Well, I understand the point that the Member is making. In my discussions with trade unions earlier today, they emphasised their anxiety at the way in which, sometimes, alternative models can be seen as a first resort for the provision of public services. That’s not the position we take in Welsh Government. The action plan for alternative delivery models in public services makes it clear that we should come to some of these alternatives only when we are sure that it is no longer possible to go on directly providing services.

But in other areas I think the ground is more promising. The Member pointed to the social services area where the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 places a specific duty on local authorities to promote co-operative ways of providing services. To my mind, they can offer a way of bringing some of these services back closer to the public realm. So, I think we need to think of it slightly more differentially and think of what is right in particular service contexts. Where I definitely agree with the Member is that we need a different relationship between services and citizens in which we regard the people who use our services as sources of strength and assets in that joint way of doing things and treating them as equal partners in the way that services are designed and delivered.

Diolch, Lywydd. I actually think that the Cabinet Secretary has probably just answered my question, but I’ll ask it anyway. I think, Cabinet Secretary, we can all be rightly proud here in Wales that we have not seen wide-scale privatisation of local authority services as we’ve witnessed in England. That’s built on the premise that our key public services are at their best and most efficient when retained in-house and provided by directly employed workforce. So, will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on the stance of the previous administration, which reinforced the view that not only should privatisation of key public services be discouraged but also that other outsourcing options, including mutuals and co-operatives, should only ever be considered when this is the only alternative to privatisation?

I agree with the Member, undoubtedly, that public services should not be run for private profit. That is why, in this Government, we have always believed that public services should be publicly funded and publicly delivered. Now, in very tough times, I understand that those responsible for providing services sometimes have to look for other ways in which their services can be provided. Then, not-for-profit distributing mutual models can sometimes provide an alternative, but that alternative is to be pursued only at the point when the preferred model of a publicly provided, publicly delivered, publicly funded way of doing things is no longer able to be sustained.