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.