3. Will the Minister make a statement on future collaboration in local government? OAQ(5)0059(FLG)[R]

I thank the Member for that question. I set out my proposals for future collaboration between local authorities on 4 October. The proposals for mandatory and systematic regional collaboration will build on the many collaborative arrangements local authorities already have in place across Wales.

Does the Cabinet Secretary believe that such mandatory collaboration has to lead to a return on investment, whether that be delivering more for less, more for the same, or the same for less, and, if that’s the case, how does he anticipate local authorities being able to justify collaboration, as a mandatory requirement, when the business case for collaboration may not necessarily bring a direct benefit to one or other of the individual local authorities engaging in the collaboration process?

I thank Hefin David for that supplementary question because he puts his finger on exactly why I have said throughout that these arrangements will have to be mandatory as well as systematic. There are too many examples in local authorities in Wales where an individual local authority has invested a great deal of time and effort in trying to bring about a collaborative regional arrangement only to find that, at the last minute, one of the participating authorities moves away from the table because they don’t see how their own narrow interest has been taken forward in what they all agree is a wider pattern of benefit. We cannot have arrangements in Wales where individual local authorities take such a narrow and time-limited view of their own interests and then sacrifice the wider interests of a region where progress could be made. So, the only way to overcome that, as I see it, is by agreeing these arrangements; I’m very keen to continue that conversation. But, once it is agreed, they will be mandatory and everybody will have to play their part in them.

Cabinet Secretary, we’re of the same generation and probably the only two people in this Chamber that remember the 1994 White Paper to establish unitary authorities. I’m sure we’re the only people that would have read it. It said that at the heart of the concept of unitary authorities was that they’d have to collaborate, but a generation later—there have been some partnerships, of course—that sort of culture of collaboration is yet to be established. And that’s as important as what I would welcome—the more coercive measures that may have to be taken to ensure that, at last, we get them to co-operate effectively.

Well, I’m afraid I was a county councillor myself back then, when those reforms were being advanced and discussed. So, I do remember them very well. Dirprwy Lywydd, can I say that, actually, when I go around local authorities in Wales I am often struck by the richness of collaboration that is already there? Every local authority can describe to you places where they are collaborating across their borders for very important purposes. The problem with it so far has been that there is no national pattern here. We’re not good at learning from positive experience in one part of Wales and making it happen elsewhere. That’s why, once we’ve agreed on the new co-operative arrangements there are to be, I am determined that they will have to be systematic—they will be the same across Wales, and they’ll be mandatory. Everybody will be involved in delivering them.

Cabinet Secretary, as well as collaboration within and between local government, there are also important partnerships between local authorities and other partners. One of those has been Powys council and the Powys teaching health board, who have entered into an agreement on health and social care in particular. Can you tell me whether there has been any assessment made of that collaboration and whether the outcomes have been positive?

Well, Dirprwy Lywydd, Joyce Watson makes a very important point, which is always made to me by local authorities when I am meeting them: that the agenda for local authorities goes much wider than local authorities themselves. They all have really important partners, whether that is the local police service, the national park or, in the Powys case, as she says, the collaboration between Powys teaching health board and Powys council. I met the leader of Powys County Council recently and received an account from him of the work that they are doing. Interestingly, in relation to Suzy Davies’s earlier point, occupational therapy services are one of the very first things that they believe they can provide as a single service across both authorities. They tell me that good progress is being made. We’ve provided grant funding of more than £300,000 to assist the council and the LHB to get that collaboration off the ground, and I look forward to seeing further practical fruits of those endeavours.