Thank you to Janet Finch-Saunders, both for what she said this afternoon but also for her willingness to engage in regular dialogue about some of these proposals and for the constructive ideas that she’s already contributed to it. I hope she will see in some of the things we are proposing in relation to town and community councils a reflection of some of her own direct experience, and I particularly wanted to thank her for her help in securing the services of William Graham as part of the review team. I agree with her very much that uncontested seats are something we would want to see eliminated in our democracy, both at a principal council level, but it is a particular feature of town and community councils. And those who operate in that sphere, and who I think often do very good work, they are themselves very aware of the fact that it’s a vulnerability when we refer to it as a democratic tier, when so often there is so little democracy involved in the way that people end up as town and community councillors.

I thank Janet Finch-Saunders for what she said about the proposals on the electoral system. I think this is a very exciting time for us in Wales. These will be new powers that we will inherit. The consultation paper is a mixture of a small number of propositions where we say the Welsh Government is pretty committed to taking ideas forward, such as extending the franchise to 16- and 17-year-olds, and then a much wider range of ideas where we are interested to hear what people have to say. The speaker drew attention to the question we raise in the consultation about whether we draw the line in the right place between people who work for a council and are able to stand for a council. I don’t think there’s any doubt that, at one end of the spectrum, very senior staff are in politically-restricted posts; they should not be allowed to stand for election. But, at the moment, we prohibit, as Janet Finch-Saunders said, somebody working for a very small number of hours from standing for election. That prohibition falls disproportionately on women and we ask the question as to whether or not we could draw the line in a different place.

An all-Wales electronic register would mean that the need for proxy voting would be reduced, but it wouldn’t eliminate it, because, if people were on holiday in England or called away to work in England, for example, you’d still need proxy voting. We will look at the point that she makes about the potentially confusing terminology.

Our proposals on permissive PR in local government are exactly that; it would be a choice for local government themselves to make. The threshold for a referendum on elected mayors: we don’t intend to change the availability of a referendum in local areas where there is a call for an elected mayor, and, again, as part of the consultation, I’m very aware in that we will look at the threshold issue that the Member has highlighted. I probably don’t share her view entirely on the number of councillors we have in Wales. I think that the number is broadly the right one. The councillors that I see work very hard and have large numbers of voters to represent. The electoral reviews have started in Ceredigion, Conwy, Gwynedd, and Powys. We expect it, over the term, to result in a modest reduction in the number of councillors in Wales. The proposals for Conwy council, for example, propose a reduction of just over 10 per cent in the number of councillors that would be available for that local authority.

Finally, to respond to the points made about the reform of principal councils, I think the difference in the proposals that you see in front of the Assembly this afternoon is that they are both the product of hard work to try and craft a consensus with local authorities, but also a determination that, when we have an agreed way forward on regional working, on frameworks, on footprints and on functions, then we will make that mandatory. Once we’ve agreed, then we need the force of the legislation under that agreement so that everybody is clear that if you’ve got around the table and you’ve agreed to discharge a function, there is no escaping from that agreement.

I think that’s in the interest of local authorities. Too many local authorities have told me of examples where they have worked very hard and have put a lot of investment into a regional arrangement, only for one of the partners to walk away from the table at the last minute, and a lot of work to unravel very quickly. That can’t be the future for local authorities in Wales, Llywydd. Regional working is the way of the future—systematic, mandatory but agreed.