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.