The following amendments have been selected: amendment 1 in the name of Paul Davies, and amendment 2 in the name of Jane Hutt. If amendment 1 is agreed, amendment 2 will be deselected.

We move on to the next item on our agenda, which is the Plaid Cymru debate on local government. I call on Sian Gwenllian to move the motion. Sian.

Motion NDM6121 Rhun ap Iorwerth

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Notes the importance of good local government in contributing towards the local economy, health service and educational outcomes.

2. Regrets that too many public services have been ‘poor and patchy’ and characterised by a ‘poverty of ambition’, as described by the Williams Commission.

3. Calls on the Welsh Government to:

(a) increase accountability of local government through electoral reform and lowering the voting age to 16;

(b) examine the way in which local government finance can be reformed to ensure a fairer and more sustainable system;

(c) introduce a nationally decided set of pay scales, terms and conditions to control senior and chief officer pay through a national framework; and

(d) establish regional combined authorities as part of the Welsh Government’s local government reform for improved regional cooperation between existing local authorities.

Motion moved.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Public services of a high quality are central to Welsh life. This is the glue that binds our communities together. Plaid Cymru has always stood for public services, for the people who provide them, and for the communities and homes that rely on them. The public sector is a crucial partner for the private sector, to make Wales a more prosperous, fair and sustainable nation. Public services are also the foundation of the success of the private sector, from education and skills to the provision of public transport, infrastructure and job opportunities in light of strong procurement policies. The success or failure of public services is also crucial in terms of the progress of the Welsh nation, but the future of those services is at great risk at the moment. We cannot over-emphasise the gravity of the challenge posed by austerity at a time of a changing demographic.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies and others have anticipated that the demand for health services will continue to take an increasing percentage of Welsh budgets in the future, which will place a huge strain on the funding available to local authorities specifically. There’s also a specific challenge facing Wales in terms of ensuring that public services are provided at the appropriate level in order to reduce complexity and to ensure improved democracy, scrutiny and collaboration. Our motion today does concentrate on the crucial elements when we look at local government reform in the future, in order to ensure that it will serve and meet the needs of our communities effectively for the future.

I want to look first at reducing the voting age to 16. The younger we can actually attract young people and children to politics, the better. Giving young people the opportunity to vote at 16 can engender the interest of young people in schools and beyond. If young people don’t participate in the electoral process, then there’s a risk that candidates and political parties will concentrate their messages on the needs of older people. And, as we have seen a number of times over the past few years, it’s youth services that are often cut first.

Now, in looking at electoral reform, then it is clear that people have lost confidence in politics. In local elections in 2012, only 39 per cent of people actually got out and voted. And, in the Assembly election in May, only 45 per cent of people voted—that was the highest percentage since 1999, which is a problem in and of itself.

There are a number of reasons for this, of course, but one of them is without doubt the fact that a number of people choose not to vote in certain areas, because it’s the same faces that win time and again. How many times have we heard that? Particularly in those council wards that are unchallenged—there were 99 in the 2012 local elections, which is over 8 per cent of the total seats.

I’ll give you some examples. In Sketty, in Swansea, the Liberal Democrats won all the seats, although they only gained 37.4 per cent of the vote. The Labour Party won 29 per cent, and the Conservatives 20 per cent, but they failed to take any seats. And, under the current system, parties that finish third can go on to win most of the seats. In Cardiff, in 2008, the Liberal Democrats came first according to the number of seats, but third according to the number of votes cast.

A new electoral system is necessary if we are to enhance people’s confidence in politics once again. Our long-established policy in Plaid Cymru is to introduce the STV system—the single transferable vote—in order to ensure fair representation for all political views. When the Sunderland report was published in 2002, it said that STV was the most appropriate way of meeting the needs of local people in terms of the local election system, and that was after the commission actually tested seven alternative methods of voting.

In my view, the introduction of STV to local government elections in Scotland is one of the most positive developments in the age of devolution. In Scotland, local government elections are far more competitive, and the constitution of local government is far more closely aligned to the desires of the population. The Government here has had an opportunity to take action on the recommendations of the Sunderland report in the past, but, unfortunately, that hasn’t happened.

But it is important to note that this isn’t a party political point, because all political parties have benefitted disproportionately from the first-past-the-post system. The question is: do we want to accept the inequality of the process? And, as a nation, if we truly believe that all citizens are equal, then we should also believe, and ensure, that all votes are equal. There is no good reason for not introducing STV for local government elections in Wales. We therefore need to make a positive change for the benefit of the democracy in our nation.

A few words on the regional element in our motion: like any nation, Wales needs regional leadership in order to give strategic direction that reflects a set of priorities that are pan Wales, along with strong local government to ensure local accountability that is co-ordinated at a community level. Our proposal is gradual evolution, using current structures to create new leadership at a regional and community level. And others from the Plaid team will expand upon this point and other issues within the motion.

Now, in terms of the amendments, we will be voting against the Conservative amendments, clearly, because they delete many of our points. We don’t necessarily disagree with your first amendment, and, indeed, this is one of the main factors that needs to be considered when we do look at the way in which local government is funded in future, in order to ensure that rural communities aren’t disproportionately disadvantaged.

With the second amendment, in terms of transparency, although transparency is, of course, extremely important to scrutinise the expenditure of taxpayers’ money, transparency in and of itself isn’t going to actually manage wages or create a national framework.

And, in terms of the Labour amendments, I would like greater clarity on what exactly the Government means, in practical terms, with the wording in point (a), namely to

‘increase accountability of local government through electoral arrangements’.

Now, I don’t know exactly what that means. Do you agree with the need to introduce change to the electoral arrangements or not? Perhaps we will get greater clarity on that this afternoon. Other members of the team will expand on some other elements of the motion. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I have selected the amendments to the motion. If amendment 1 is agreed, amendment 2 will be deselected. I call on Janet Finch-Saunders to move amendment 1, tabled in the name of Paul Davies. Janet.

Amendment 1—Paul Davies

Delete point 3 and replace with:

Calls on the Welsh Government to:

(a) examine the way in which local government is financed, to ensure that rural authorities receive fair funding equivalent to all communities across Wales; and

(b) increase transparency in local authority senior staff budgeting to ensure that executive officer pay is sustainable and cost effective for council tax payers, and not to the detriment of the delivery of local services.

Amendment 1 moved.

Thank you. I move amendment 1 in the name of Paul Davies, and thank Sian Gwenllian for the opening address on the local government debate—a debate that’s very close to our hearts here on the Welsh Conservative benches, because it’s clear from the proposals with regard to regional combined authorities, of course, put forward by Plaid Cymru’s manifesto, and in the Cabinet Secretary’s local government reform statement earlier this month, that this is one of those mysterious areas in which Labour and Plaid have done a deal. And I have to say that we are disappointed that these workings have not been more open, and, indeed, more transparent, especially given that there have been calls for the new approach to local government reform to be put across the Chamber on a more cross-party basis—however. And it is vital to remember that, in this Chamber, and in the back-office workings upstairs on the fifth floor, it is to the people of Wales that we are all, irrespective of political colour, accountable—to the electorate. It is they for whom we are seeking to secure and improve services, and it is upon them that Labour and Plaid Cymru are now seeking to work together to deliver the aims of the Plaid Cymru political manifesto. But what matters to our hard-working families is not the intricate structures of local government, but the security of knowing that services will be improved and that they will be delivered in an efficient and cost-effective way.

Welsh Conservatives believe that public services are best delivered locally so taxpayers can hold local representatives to account for what happens in their community. Indeed, Paul Williams, of the Williams commission, himself has highlighted several concerns about the pooling of sovereignty by councils to form regional consortia and describes it to be ‘very tricky’. Now to justify these additional costings, Cabinet Secretary, how do you envisage regional combined authorities to be democratically engaged and accountable to the electorate? After spending over £130,000 on the Williams commission, and a further £434,000 on the Local Democracy and Boundary Commission for Wales last year, the cost to the taxpayer of local government in Wales reform planning and electoral reviews is well over £0.5 million, and we are no closer to seeing any meaningful changes. Instead, we have the discarded—[Interruption.] Sorry, Mike.

[Continues.]—expensive folly of reports, draft local government Bills, lining the waste paper bins of the latest Welsh Labour Government. Goodness knows the full costs associated with that process, on which we, of course, submitted questions for answer. Again, Paul Williams has spoken of his dismay that, since the publication of the report almost three years ago, requiring much-needed reform of our public services, nothing—nothing—has happened. The Welsh Conservatives make no bones about it. We have always been strong and we have always been clear. We would hold referenda to ensure public support for any local government mergers of any size. We would ensure full openness and accountability at all levels of government, and we would publish all local authority spending, such as the Welsh Conservative-led Monmouthshire council, who have been noted by the Wales Audit Office as having effective financial governance, and I hope to see more Conservative-led councils after next May.

It is abundantly clear that the Cabinet Secretary obviously does not wish to fall foul of his own Labour councillors so early on in his new portfolio role. And who could blame him, given the demise of his predecessor, charged with bringing about such reform? But we do need to look at new, smarter, more open ways of working. There’s no denying that. Certainly, we need to examine the way in which local government is financed to ensure that rural authorities receive a fair funding equivalent, and, when we once again see Powys struck by the biggest cuts in the provisional local government settlement, it is clear that you do not value or appreciate rural authorities. And it is disappointing that a Cabinet member for the Liberal Democrats, Kirsty Williams, actually has a seat at the Cabinet table and has let her own people down.

Coupled with the centralisation of social services spend, it is vital that the Welsh Government come forward with a clear strategy on how public services will be improved, not downgraded, as a result of their consistent cuts to local authorities, and those concerns are echoed in the first two points of this motion. They could and should, of course, look to Monmouthshire for examples of good practice, transparency, efficiency and democratic accountability. There the three social services localities have now co-located social care and occupational therapy staff under the management of a single integrated care manager, providing easier access to senior occupational therapy practitioners for advice on complex cases—

[Inaudible.]

Okay. And to be truly accountable for the delivery of these services. Cabinet Secretary, I applaud you for the work that you’ve done on the social services, to the budget there, and to the car parking in town centres, because that was really affecting my constituency. [Interruption.] I thank you for my contribution.

I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government to move amendment 2, tabled in the name of Jane Hutt, formally.

Amendment 2—Jane Hutt

Delete point 3 and replace with:

3. Calls on the Welsh Government to:

(a) increase accountability of local government through electoral arrangements and lowering the voting age to 16;

(b) examine the way in which local government finance can be reformed to ensure a fairer and more sustainable system;

(c) continue to examine the case for a nationally decided set of pay scales, terms and conditions to control senior and chief officer pay through a national framework; and

(d) establish regional arrangements as part of the Welsh Government’s local government reform for improved regional cooperation between existing local authorities.

Amendment 2 moved.

Formally.

Thank you very much. Neil McEvoy.

Diolch, Ddirprwy Lywydd. I will speak more to

‘(c) introduce a nationally decided set of pay scales, terms and conditions to control senior and chief officer pay through a national framework’.

I just wanted to quickly address the Labour amendment

‘(c) to continue to examine the case for a nationally decided set of pay scales’ and so on and so on. To ‘continue to examine the case’, which basically means do nothing: not good enough. I think, if you look at local government in Wales, the pay at the top end is out of control, really, and the amount of six-figure salaries, of people earning over £100,000 a year, is shocking, really. Millions upon millions could be saved every single year and that money could be put into front-line services. If you look at Swansea, the top salary, without pension contributions, is £140,000 a year—Neath Port Talbot is £125,000 a year, Cardiff is £170,000, Wrexham is £125,000. If you look at the local government ombudsman it is £140,000 a year. If we look at one single—just one single—housing association in this city, Wales & West Housing Association Limited, the chief executive earns £133,000 a year.

Will you give way? Will the Member give way?

Yes, I’ll give way.

In the spirit of parsimony, the Member could make a generous contribution in handing back the £12,000 councillor’s allowance he’s drawing by sitting as both an AM and a councillor. That would be a good start, I think.

Thanks, Lee. Thanks for that. But, if you add up the total that I am earning at the present time, it’s way under the £100,000 that we’re talking about. And what I’m actually addressing here, and have addressed for the last five years, six years, are salaries in excess of £100,000 a year. Now, the First Minister earns £140,000 a year. Should anybody really earn over that? I don’t think they should. In terms of further figures, let’s just go back to the Wales & West housing association: one person earning £133,000 a year, and in virtually every single housing association in this city and region the chief exec will earn in excess of £100,000. RCT Homes—I think it’s around £160,000 a year; I may be wrong, it’s possibly £170,000, which makes maybe the £12,000 there pale into almost insignificance really.

In terms of what we need to do, we need to legislate and, in terms of track record, what we did as a council when we ran Cardiff was phase out salaries of over £100,000 a year, because we didn’t feel that we needed to pay that kind of money. The irony is that, when Labour took control again and brought in huge salaries again—huge salaries of well over £100,000 a year—services got worse because of cuts at the front line. I pay one slight tribute to the council across the way, because they did introduce a living wage. But a little-known fact outside of the council is that, when they introduced the living wage, they then cut the hours worked by the lowest-paid on that council. So, what it really was was quite a cheap PR gimmick.

If we look at the wider picture in terms of the Welsh taxpayer, what we need to do is stop the gravy train of people earning, in my opinion, far too much: in excess of £100,000 a year. [Interruption.] I’ll take the points that I’m being heckled about in terms of my personal position. I do sit on Cardiff Council and I also sit here and, yes, I earn an excellent salary through that. But what I would point out is that, to arrive at this Assembly—[Interruption.]—to arrive at this Assembly, I actually went for 12 months without a full-time professional salary. When you go without a salary for 12 months, there are implications. What—[Interruption.]

Thank you. The Member will be winding up, hopefully, in 30 seconds. Thank you.

To some of my colleagues to my left—physically, but certainly not politically—you may have a surprise coming in the new year in terms of what I will be doing; I’ll be announcing then.

Thank you. Mike Hedges.

I think I probably am on the left, both physically and politically. Can I thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer? Can I first of all return to the motion that Plaid Cymru has put down? I’d like to agree with the statement that local government is contributing towards the local economy, health service and educational outcomes.

Taking each in turn, local government is both a very large employer and a large purchaser across Wales. It plays a crucial role in the local economy, which is a non-service-delivery reason to oppose the creation of giant councils.

Secondly, the importance of local government to health cannot be overestimated—environmental health, ensuring the safety of food, the collection of refuse and the dealing with vermin, social services providing adult social care and keeping people out of the health system. Leisure facilities keep people fit and active. Housing puts people in suitable accommodation. Each of these actually keeps people out of hospital. I know that there are Members who see health as equal to hospitals, but local government plays a major role in protecting the health of people in this country.

Providing education through the school system is helping to make Wales a wealthy country. Through support from the Welsh Government building and improving school buildings, and providing Flying Start, the quality of buildings that children are going to is continually increasing.

Could I just say that I support the nationally agreed set of pay scales? I’ve always supported the nationally agreed set of pay scales. I go back to the days when we used to have chief officers’ joint negotiating committee, where, depending on the council’s size and its type, the salary of the chief officer was set within a band. I saw no reason to end it. The Conservative Party did end it. It happened under the reign of Margaret Thatcher, and what happened was that they thought they would get better people in from outside. You had all these great businessmen who were going to rush in to run local government. It hasn’t worked. We’ve seen a huge increase in the pay of chief executives and other senior staff in Wales. Does anybody actually believe—or can maybe point out people who have been recruited because we’ve increased these salaries, who would not have been recruited previously from the old JNC scales? For the most part, they are people who were actually working in local government and have been promoted inside it.

I’m glad that Plaid Cymru have finally discovered that there is no right size for local authority functions—even the same functional area. The right size for development control is not the right size for the structural plan, which will need to cover a much larger area.

Finally, I’m going to describe how services could be organised in the Swansea city region. Firstly, and most simply, there is a fire and rescue service that can be easily realigned with the whole city region boundary as they only need to transfer out of Powys and Ceredigion.

Secondly, if there’s going to be an economic sub-region, then what is needed is to have a development plan equivalent to the old county development plan to cover the whole area. This would ensure housing, economic development and planning can be aligned over the whole region, and not only over a local authority area.

The development of the bay campus is in Neath Port Talbot, but it will almost certainly have a greater effect on Swansea than on Neath Port Talbot, and is an example of an area-based approach. There are quite a lot of these where things happen to be in one local authority area—. Trostre shopping centre has an effect on the west of Swansea. It’s not in Swansea, but it’s all part of the sub-region. So, we really do need to start putting things together.

The third Swansea bay city region policy where co-ordination is needed is transport strategy. A Swansea bay equivalent of the Cardiff city region metro system is required. This needs to ensure that there is a coherent rail and bus network that can move people from the residential areas to the main employment, retail and leisure sites. Also, the road network need to be such that movement between major population centres is at least via a dual carriageway.

Within the city region, a simple subdivision in two can be done—west Glamorgan and Dyfed—which equates to the former counties of Dyfed, minus Ceredigion, and west Glamorgan. Joint boards in Neath Port Talbot and Swansea can be set up for both social services and education, which are the two main former county council services, and the same can be done for Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire. Health boards could be realigned to these larger areas covering the joint boards. That would align health and social services, just like they were under the old health boards such as west Glamorgan health board, which existed to cover health in its days as a county council. It would also make it easier for the health board covering Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire to work more closely with west Glamorgan.

Local services should continue to be run by the current local authorities. Local authorities provide a very wide range of services, most of which are best provided at the local level. Local people making local decisions on behalf of the area in which they live is the basis of local democracy. It’s about agreeing on city regions as the basic footprint and then having within that region organised services effectively.

Can I just say one last thing on STV? STV could best be described as ‘guess how many seats you’re going to win’.

I’m very pleased to follow my colleague on the Finance Committee, and I agree with a lot of what Mike Hedges has said, apart from perhaps his final comments on STV.

I think this is an important debate, because we are trying to tease out in the debate further information from an important statement that the Cabinet Secretary made some weeks ago on the future of local government. Plaid Cymru obviously generally welcomes the approach that this new Government is taking. But can I say to the Conservatives that they’re barking up the wrong tree if they think there’s some sort of deal? They’re very fond of back-room deals, perhaps because they’ve never gone into a back room and agreed a single penny for their own priorities once in 17 years in the Assembly. There is no back-room deal—nothing at all. We put forward in the Assembly elections a comprehensive alternative to the Williams proposals, and I’m very pleased that this Government has, no doubt for its own reasons, come to a similar conclusion—not exactly the same, but a similar conclusion. And the purpose of today’s debate is to tease out some more detail around that, particularly as to how the different regional authorities could work: are they combined authorities, or do they just have some sort of collaborative agenda? The Minister has talked very clearly that there could be mandatory collaboration. Well, to me, that moves us along the path towards combined authorities, so we need to understand a little more of the detail around that.

But, clearly, whatever local authorities are going to do in Wales, they need to be funded adequately to achieve their aims. I think all of us who either took interest or started our professional political lives in local government are extremely concerned, really, that local government over the period of devolution has not strengthened. In fact, it’s been weakened, and I think that is a general weakness that we all should be concerned about.

The weakening of local government didn’t start with devolution; it dates back to the 1980s and the assertive determination of the Conservative Government then to cut back on local government, to take away the powers and to make local government less effective—less of a challenge, indeed, to the Conservative central Government. But it’s worked out, post devolution, as a regime that really holds local government back, and, particularly financially, doesn’t allow local government to make some key investments and to be the economic drivers in its area that the motion talks about. In the last few years of austerity in particular, we’ve seen extreme pressures on local government.

The Welsh Assembly Government as was, and the current Government, have done whatever they can, I think, to defend local government to a certain extent, and this year’s local government settlement and this year’s budget, following the agreement with Plaid Cymru, is one of the more appropriate and successful ones for local government. Certainly, local government in west Wales is thankful for a far better settlement than we’ve seen in the recent past. But, the reductions over the last few years have fallen disproportionately on several services that really do maintain the well-being of our local populations—libraries, cultural services and transport services have seen, particularly in west Wales, enormous cuts of between 20 per cent and 50 per cent, varying from service to service. All local authorities have certainly reacted to cuts by commercialising and outsourcing, sometimes without, it has to be said, much support of the local populations. We understand why all parties in local government have sometimes been forced to look at and examine how that might happen.

But I hope that, with the clarity on the future of local government in Wales, and with the ideas that come forward in the Cabinet Secretary’s new proposals and the budget this year, we can use this period of relative calm to try and re-establish what local government is about—it’s appropriateness and the best level of service provision, and strengthening, sometimes, town and community councils, I think, which have some general powers that could be used very creatively for their local populations.

I think, in particular, as well as the review of the formula that the motion talks about, I’m interested to know, as we move forward with our own powers for our own budgetary procedures here—the finance Bill, at the end of the day, and all the tax-varying powers here—whether that can be reflected in what we give local government. We empowered health boards to have three-year budgetary and financial planning in legislation we passed in the last Assembly. Can we now empower local government to also go on to three-year financial planning? Can we give local government wider powers to do things that are actually now easier to do in England, which is curious, than they are in Wales—for example, setting up your own local energy company? The Robin Hood Energy company, set up by the city of Nottingham and councils around there, was really empowered by the Localism Act 2011, as I understand it. We need to examine how devolution in Wales could also deliver that kind of devolution to our local authorities. I’d be very interested to look at some experiments around Bethesda, I think, with Ynni Ogwen and so forth—where local energy provision can be scaled up with local government help.

So, this debate is certainly intended to throw light on the current situation and to tease out some more detail from what the Government proposes, but let’s be clear: devolution in Wales has to work hand in hand with local government in order to get the wider support for our own Assembly as well.

This motion refers to the Williams commission describing public services as being characterised by ‘poverty of ambition’. Of course, the Williams commission report also stated that 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. The need to make this change, they said, is shared across the developed and democratic world.

As Co-production Wales have said, this is not just a nice add on, but a new way of operating for the Welsh Government as well as for public service professionals and citizens themselves.

The report says that

‘leaders at all levels will need to be open to different ways of working, including collaboration or coproduction’ and that

‘the basic purpose and nature of public service needs to be redefined. The key features of that redefinition are: a clearer shared vision and sense of common purpose between government at all levels, citizens, and communities; a much greater focus on co-production with citizens and communities to identify and implement means of pursuing those outcomes; and consequently, a much stronger emphasis on enablement, empowerment and prevention in the design and delivery of public services.’

It says that

‘new models of delivery which focus on prevention, early intervention and demand management through co-production and citizen engagement will be essential.’

The Big Lottery funded co-production network for Wales, which was formally launched in May, is showing the way with scores, if not hundreds, of organisations—public and third sector—on board as part of the revolution. It’s heartening that the Wales Audit Office is at the forefront of co-productive evaluation and behaviour-change initiatives. Their report, the Auditor General for Wales’s report, ‘A Picture of Public Services 2015’, published last December, says:

‘there is now a much clearer recognition that previous approaches have not worked as intended and that radical change is required. The narrative’s focus on reform where it matters—at the frontline of service delivery—could help to move on from a tendency to see the production of strategies and plans as a solution to practical problems. The approach also is clearer in explicitly identifying co-production as a method of reshaping and redesigning services at the frontline.’

The auditor general says

‘Co-production and behaviour change offer opportunities to improve public services but often require public services to take radically different approaches’.

It says the Welsh Government developed its updated vision for public services as part of its response to the Williams commission’s report and recommendations with a stronger recommendation or emphasis on co-production, personal responsibility and focus on prevention. In fact, the Welsh Government vision says:

‘Our public services must evolve to reflect a new relationship between the people who deliver services and those who benefit from them. In particular, public services must increasingly be delivered not to people, but with people…involving people in the design and delivery of services, recognising people’s own strengths and tailoring services accordingly.’

But, of course, delivery, and the message, has been far more ambiguous. The auditor general’s survey showed that there were differing views on the importance of co-production across Welsh public services. It said that local government respondents were far less likely to include this in their top three, and referred to the Wales public services think tank, which outlined how co-production could be combined with lean and whole-system methods to reshape public services. It also quoted Monmouthshire County Council, saying they used such an approach as part of the transformation of its approach to supporting older people and adults with a learning disability.

And, as a local government cabinet authority member quoted in the report said:

‘The need for co-production and service user involvement is immense but this is poorly understood in the public sector and the investment required in people, skills and culture change is a long term fundamental requirement.’

So, they said:

‘The gold standard of co-production is for people to consciously engage with, and embrace their involvement in, public services.’

However, regrettably, the response from Welsh Government Ministers, with some notable exemptions, including, clearly, Mark Drakeford—the general response from Welsh Government Ministers and Cabinet Secretaries has been inconsistent, ambiguous, often hierarchical, frequently confused and sometimes even dismissive, yet the letter sent by Co-production Wales to the First Minister at the end of 2014, supported by over 130 letters, started by asking the Welsh Government to agree what co-production actually means, recognising that this is not a response to austerity, but part of a global movement that is now decades old and has made significant improvements across our planet. Thank you.

I want to speak briefly about how effective local authorities in Wales are vital to maintaining health services through their work in social care. Good social care services are vital, of course, in helping to keep people out of hospitals or, if they need to receive treatment in hospitals, in allowing for them to be released from hospitals promptly.

Unfortunately, social care has traditionally been considered the poor relation of the health service, and that has led to underinvestment historically. Workforce wages are too low, and zero-hours contracts are still being used, and that is often driven by underfunding. And the relationship, I believe, between social care and healthcare is misunderstood, to some extent, too. The fact that the Conservatives at Westminster have succeeded in misleading people, by saying that they’ve been cutting local authority budgets to pay for safeguarding the NHS budget, shows how little understanding there is of the entirely symbiotic relationship between the services. There is a wide range of opinion that the effect of the cuts in local authority budgets that was the crisis in accident and emergency departments in England in 2012. In Wales, the previous health Minister blamed the pressure on A&E departments on the deficiency within social care services in being able to release people from hospitals promptly. It’s clear that that’s a problem, and that’s why this word ‘integration’ has become so important. If we integrate our services genuinely and bear in mind at every level that social care and healthcare need to be planned on a joint basis, then there is more of a chance that we will have a single smooth service with people moving up to hospitals or moving back down to social care service freely without bureaucratic or budgetary restrictions preventing that. We’re all agreed on that, it appears, but, despite local examples of very good work, it’s unfortunate that those words aren’t being turned into genuine, transformative action on a wider basis.

There are other ways that a local authorities can bring about a healthier nation. I’ll talk about some of them. We were very pleased, as part of the budget agreement, to ensure that there is no cash cut in the budget for the Supporting People programme. This is a programme that saves money, of course. Homelessness always costs more for the public purse to deal with than it would do prevent, so ensuring that local government has a strong role to play in tackling homelessness is something that we not only wish to see happen, and something that’s morally right, but it’s cost-effective, too. The role of local authorities in the broader area of housing—tackling low standards and tackling overcrowding in housing—is also important in terms of keeping people healthy and therefore saves money for the NHS. Investing in housing adaptations as well, of course, is an important way to ensure that people can stay in their homes.

Look, too, at environmental matters, local transport and the planning system, I would say. When these are effective, they can be an enormous boost in terms of things such as active travel and encouraging people to be active in their communities. These are the kinds of things that are good for people’s health.

So, public services are co-dependent. I hope we can agree on that. It’s inevitable that failure in one part of the system will put strain on other parts of the system. So, why is failure happening? Making cuts without considering the implications of those is one way that this happens. Cutting in one area often leads to the need to spend more, ultimately—and I refer again to the difficulties in emergency care in England a few years ago. But poor governance is another problem, and the Williams commission drew attention to several example of poor governance. If the commission had looked at the health service, I’m sure that they would have found problems there as well, and the number of boards that are facing differing levels of intervention at present is proof of that.

So, to conclude, it’s clear that scrutiny of public services has to improve, and that’s a responsibility on our shoulders, all of us here, of course, but it also deals with empowering people out there—people who are using services. There are steps that we can take. We can give votes to younger people, at 16, change the voting regime, toensure that people who use our services have genuine influence on them.

Thanks to Sian for moving the debate today. Some of the Plaid Cymru proposals we in UKIP Wales fully support. Yes, we agree with the first part, that good local government can make—and I paraphrase here—a valuable social contribution. There’s nothing to disagree with there. On point 2, on poverty of ambition of local government, as attested by the Williams commission, well, yes, we regret that, too. Point 3 is where we have some points of departure from the Plaid proposals. Like them, we support electoral reform. To be more precise, we, too, want some form of proportional representation for local elections and, in our manifesto, we supported the introduction of the single transferable vote in Wales. We certainly do want to depart from first past the post, which can tend to deliver large Labour majorities on less than 50 per cent of the vote. So, it’s no real surprise, then, that we want an end to this unrepresentative system and Labour want to retain it. So, we are with Plaid on that one, whether they like it or not.

The national pay scale proposed by Plaid we also like. We have some absurdly overpaid local council chiefs in Wales. In Pembrokeshire, the chief executive gets £200,000; that’s more than the Prime Minister—utterly absurd. Recently, we had the pay scandal in Labour’s rotten borough of Caerphilly, and there are many other rotten Labour boroughs in Wales. So, some kind of national pay scale—

Can I intervene there, please?

Sure.

I think Gareth Bennett should be very careful about what he’s talking about there, as the majority of councillors knew nothing about the situation with the pay in Caerphilly. It was a number of cabinet members and the deputy leader of Plaid Cymru who were part of the committee, and when the majority Members found out, the Labour leadership apologised and reversed the majority of that decision. So, I think he should be very careful about the allegations he makes in this Chamber and I ask him to withdraw.

Thank you, Hefin, and, given the information you have imparted, I may, perhaps, have been mistaken and I do withdraw my comments.

This doesn’t actually detract from the substance of the need for a national pay scale, perhaps along the lines of the civil service pay scale. That would be entirely welcome.

But we now come to the issue that has only fleetingly been mentioned today—Rhun just mentioned it—votes for 16-year-olds. Well, we do completely oppose that for the following reasons. The first one being simple medical evidence. Firstly, we are dealing here with adolescents and not adults, and there are significant differences between the two groups. Parents have long observed behavioural changes that affect many children when they enter adolescence. They’ve also observed that, often, adolescents are not the most rational of creatures. Scientists are now uncovering firm evidence of genuine medical differences between the brains of adults and those of adolescents. I quote from ‘The Teen Brain: Still Under Construction’, a booklet produced by the National Institute of Mental Health in Maryland, USA, the largest research organisation in the world dealing with mental health:

‘The research has turned up some surprises, among them the discovery of striking changes taking place during the teen years. These findings have altered long-held assumptions about the timing of brain maturation. In key ways, the brain doesn’t look like that of an adult until the early 20s.

‘An understanding of how the brain of an adolescent is changing may help explain a puzzling contradiction of adolescence: young people at this age are close to a lifelong peak of physical health, strength, and mental capacity, and yet, for some, this can be a hazardous age. Mortality rates jump between early and late adolescence. Rates of death by injury between ages 15 to 19 are about six times that of the rate between ages 10 and 14. Crime rates are highest among young males and rates of alcohol abuse are high relative to other ages. Even though most adolescents come through this transitional age well, it’s important to understand the risk factors for behavior that can have serious consequences. Genes, childhood experience, and the environment in which a young person reaches adolescence all shape behavior. Adding to this complex picture, research is revealing how all these factors act in the context of a brain that is changing, with its own impact on behavior.

‘The more we learn, the better we may be able to understand the abilities and vulnerabilities of teens, and the significance of this stage for life-long mental health.’

End of quote.

We recognise that some adolescents are perfectly capable of rational thought and have a reasonably sophisticated political understanding. However, many are not and do not. In many ways, the Welsh Assembly recognised the vulnerability of this age group when it changed the law in Wales to prohibit 16 and 17-year-olds from being able to legally purchase cigarettes. If young people of this age are not to be trusted to exercise judgment over whether or not to buy a packet of fags, then why on earth are we proposing that we lay on them the responsibility for electing politicians? It’s absurd. There is an argument that this age group pays tax, so should be entitled to the vote. But the truth is that, with university expansion, this group is actually cossetted in adolescence for a longer period, with most of them institutionalised in the education system until the age of 21 or later.

Are you coming to a conclusion, please?

The reality is that, of the 16 to 24 age group, only 30 per cent pay income tax. If you want to extend the tax argument, you could extend the vote to 10-year-olds who go to the shops and pay VAT on a packet of Smarties.

Are you coming to a conclusion, please?

Yes. We support the Conservative amendments.

Thank you. I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, Mark Drakeford.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. May I begin by thanking Sian Gwenllian for opening the debate and bringing it before the Assembly this afternoon? I said on 4 October that I was looking forward to a detailed set of discussions on the future of local government at the end of this calendar year. Those discussions will include local authorities individually and jointly, as well as their important partners. These discussions must also include the political parties, and, especially, the political parties in this Assembly.

I am grateful to all the party spokespeople here for their willingness to participate in conversations on the future of local government in Wales since the election in May, and I am still eager to continue with those discussions as the process progresses.

Deputy Presiding Officer, the Government has tabled an amendment to the Plaid Cymru motion. The differences are relatively small in terms of the motion and the amendment, but they do set out the Government’s position.

Ddirprwy Lywydd, o ran pwynt 1 y cynnig, rydym yn hapus iawn yn wir i gefnogi’r teimladau a fynegwyd ynddo. Aeth Mike Hedges, y byddaf bob amser yn gwrando’n ofalus iawn arno ar bwnc llywodraeth leol, ati’n dda iawn i osod y rhaglen eang o wasanaethau hanfodol bwysig y mae llywodraeth leol yn eu darparu a’r rhan bwysig y mae’n ei chwarae ym mywydau pob dinesydd yng Nghymru: yn addysgu ein plant, yn edrych ar ôl yr henoed, yn cael gwared ar ein gwastraff, yn goleuo ein strydoedd a llawer iawn mwy.

O ran ail gymal y cynnig, wrth gwrs, rydym yn rhannu’r dymuniad i gael awdurdodau lleol uchelgeisiol—awdurdodau lleol sy’n uchelgeisiol ar ran eu poblogaethau lleol ac sy’n gallu darparu gwasanaethau o ansawdd uchel mewn ffordd ddibynadwy a chyffredinol. Credaf fod pethau wedi symud ymlaen ers comisiwn Williams a bod awdurdodau lleol yng Nghymru, yn aml gyda chymorth sylweddol o’r tu allan, wedi bod o ddifrif ynglŷn â’r angen i wella. Rwyf wedi dweud yn aml fy mod wedi bod yn ffodus i ddod yn gyfrifol am lywodraeth leol ar adeg pan nad yw gwasanaethau addysg yr un awdurdod lleol yn destun mesurau arbennig, pan nad oes unrhyw wasanaethau cymdeithasol yn destun mesurau arbennig, a phan nad oes unrhyw awdurdod lleol yn galw am gymorth allanol i’w ganol corfforaethol. Rwy’n pwysleisio’n rheolaidd iawn i arweinwyr awdurdodau lleol y cyfrifoldebau sydd ganddynt dros sicrhau parhad y sefyllfa hon, ac maent, yn ddigon dealladwy, yn nodi’r gwelliannau y maent wedi gallu eu gwneud dan amodau hynod o anodd o ganlyniad i gyfyngiadau cyllidebol.

Ddirprwy Lywydd, trof at drydedd ran y cynnig. Oherwydd trefn y pleidleisio y prynhawn yma, bydd ochr y Llywodraeth yn gwrthwynebu’r gwelliant a gynigiwyd gan Janet Finch-Saunders, nid yn gymaint am resymau yn ymwneud â’i sylwedd—er, fel y dywedais y prynhawn yma, mae gwledigrwydd yn ffactor arwyddocaol o ran y ffordd y mae’r fformiwla bresennol yn gweithio—ond yn fwy oherwydd rhesymau’n ymwneud â’r weithdrefn. Sylwais ar yr hyn oedd gan Janet i’w ddweud am Sir Fynwy ac wrth gwrs, roeddwn yn falch iawn o weld y Cynghorydd Peter Fox, arweinydd Ceidwadol Cyngor Sir Fynwy, yn dweud, er eu bod wedi galw’n gryf am gadw Sir Fynwy fel cyngor ar wahân, ei fod yn credu’n gryf y byddai symud at ffyrdd rhanbarthol a chydweithredol dyfnach o weithio yn caniatáu arbedion maint ac yn sicrhau dyfodol cynaliadwy i lawer o feysydd gwasanaeth. Dywedodd hynny gan groesawu’r datganiad, ac rwy’n falch o allu cofnodi ei safbwyntiau yma y prynhawn yma.

Mae gwelliant y Llywodraeth i ran 3 y cynnig wedi’i nodi er mwyn i ni allu egluro rhai—

Nick Ramsay rose—

[Continues.]—of the points—. Yes, of course.

As you’ve mentioned my colleague in Monmouthshire Peter Fox, Minister, I think you’ll remember as well that he was one of the first people within south-east Wales, or one of the first elected officials, to call for the combined authorities model that has been practised in areas such as greater Manchester. I think he even called for it before Plaid Cymru were talking about that type of model.

Well, Dirprwy Lywydd, I am keen to learn from all local authorities in Wales, of all political persuasions. I enjoyed my visit to Monmouth. I’m grateful for an invitation to return there, which I intend to take up over the coming months, and I’m sure that there’ll be an opportunity to discuss those views with the leader there.

The Government amendment is intended to clarify our position on a number of important points. We leave the second element of the original motion intact. We amend the first element to broaden the reference to electoral reform to a reform of electoral arrangements in the round. Unlike Gareth Bennett, we, on this side, support the reduction of the voting age to 16. I listened with interest to his argument: that it was unwise to provide the vote to people who are prone to brawling, and that a difficulty in sustaining a rational argument was another reason for confining the franchise. He may have been reading a pamphlet provided by his own party. Certainly, I remind him of the advice of Hayek, the famous Austrian economist, who was Mrs Thatcher’s favourite author, who argued that the voting age should be raised to 45 on many of the arguments that Mr Bennett put forward this afternoon. For us, we support the voting age at 16. I said as much to the Government Minister for the Constitution, Chris Skidmore, when he was here in the Assembly last week. I told him that I wanted to move to a system where electoral registration becomes much more of an automatic process, and that that could apply particularly to school students, so that we could make sure that 16 and 17-year-olds were on the register to vote. I want to look at ways in which people’s voting can be made easier: electronic voting, holding elections on different days of the week. We must make voting as accessible as possible, better align it to the way that people live their lives today, and our amendment is there to draw attention to that wider range of electoral reform possibilities.

Do you also support the same day for polling day and electoral registration, like they have in America?

Well, Mike, I am in favour of us using the powers that we may get through the Wales Bill to be as radical as we can in allowing as many of our fellow citizens the maximum opportunity to exercise their democratic franchise. If that is one of the ways in which that could be taken forward, I’d be very keen to look at it.

The third element of the Government amendment, Dirprwy Lywydd, recognises the debate about senior and chief officer pay, and the case that can be made for nationally decided arrangements. It stops one step short of a commitment to move now in that direction, because I believe that the necessary discussions with elected members of local authorities, and the representative arrangements for senior staff, have not yet been concluded. I think we’ve shown a willingness to move in that direction here in Wales. We have the independent remuneration panel, which introduces a new national context and challenge to any changes in senior and chief officer pay, and it’s an area that I am prepared to keep properly and actively under review.

Finally, our amendment makes a change to the final part of the original Plaid Cymru motion, which refers to regional combined authorities. I put forward an amendment to that because I think that that phrase can be read as a commitment to a very particular set of legal arrangements governing regional collaborations. In my statement on 4 October I made a commitment to discuss the detailed governance arrangements for regional working with local authorities, trade unions and other partners, and I want to be open-minded to the suggestions that will be put during those discussions, and the Government amendment simply, but purposely, is less definitive than the original motion in that regard.

Dirprwy Lywydd, I particularly enjoyed the contributions from Simon Thomas and Mark Isherwood. There is far more to the debate about local government futures than simply electoral arrangements. They drew attention to that. I hope that it will be clear from all of this that we have approached this afternoon’s debate in a constructive, closely engaged way. It will be a valuable and early addition to the discussions that will continue over the rest of this year, and our amendment has been designed to allow the breadth of that discussion to continue. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I call Sian Gwenllian to reply to the debate.

Thank you very much, and thank you for the debate. I do agree with the first speaker, Janet Finch-Saunders, that we do need to be accountable to the people of Wales. For me, improving the quality of public services for future generations is a clear way of being accountable to the people of Wales, and shows our commitment to that.

There is no deal with Labour. What’s happened is that Labour has seen the wisdom of our own proposals on regionalisation. But, where we differ is that we feel that regionalisation alone doesn’t get to the heart of the problem. It is not radical enough. It doesn’t eliminate those artificial walls between health and social services, and there is no emphasis, as we have, on integration.

My colleague Neil McEvoy mentioned the need for a framework to look at the pay of senior officials. Clearly, the gap is too great between those at the top of these organisations and those on the front line—the carers, the teaching assistants, the cooks in our schools, and so on—and we must right that wrong.

Mike Hedges mentioned the importance of quality services and the need to control salaries. He had some interesting ideas for the Swansea area, and I’m sure that those will be considered as we move forward.

Simon explained that the purpose of this afternoon’s debate was to try and get more details on Labour’s proposals. I’m not sure if we’ve succeeded in that, exactly. He also voiced concern about weakening local government over a number of years. I share those concerns, particularly from the point of view of financing and the huge cuts that still face local government. Certainly, empowering councils with greater powers and three-year budgets would do a great deal to right that wrong.

Mark Isherwood mentioned the Williams commission. The problem that we see is the pace of the response to the Williams commission. We saw the chair of the commission himself, Paul Williams, voicing his frustration about that issue last week.

Rhun ap Iorwerth mentioned aspects of bringing social care—the poor relation that has seen under-investment—and health closer together and integrating that relationship. Certainly, there is some misunderstanding as to that interrelationship. Although there are some local examples of excellent collaboration, and I could name Ysbyty Alltwen near Porthmadog as an excellent example of how services can be integrated on the ground, that doesn’t happen in all areas of Wales. We do need to move towards that.

I note that UKIP agrees with us on STV. I also note that you withdrew some comments, having been corrected by the Member for Caerphilly. I also note your view that the brains of adolescents are not mature enough to vote. I see that as being interesting. Most of the young people of 16 that I know are mature, responsible, sensible, rational individuals. It’s a shame that we can’t say that about everyone in this Chamber. [Laughter.]

If I turn to the comments of the Cabinet Secretary finally, I was pleased to hear those. I’m pleased that the discussions are continuing, and that there is still an opportunity to have an influence as we progress. I share the desire for ambitious local authorities. I also note that the rurality of certain local authorities is being given some attention, and that there are differing needs arising as a result of that, and that we therefore need to see the formula reflecting those differences.

I welcome the fact that you too support lowering the voting age to 16, and note your comments on automatic registration in schools. I think that would be a positive step forward. Certainly, enabling people to vote electronically and to use far more modern methods in order to allow people to cast their vote is certainly something that we should move towards. But, I do note that you are not going to vote in favour of STV, and that is a shame this afternoon because I do think that that truly would create an empowered local government and that people would feel that it was relevant to them and that their votes truly counted.

I’m pleased, therefore, that these ideas of combined authorities—that more discussions can take place on that issue, and that it is still on the table. Therefore, we look forward to further discussions in the future on that issue. Thank you all very much.

Thank you very much. The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Member object? [Objection.] Thank you very much. We defer voting under this item until voting time.

Voting deferred until voting time.