I thank the Member for those questions. Can I say that I think he made a series of important points about town and community councils? My assessment of the sector, having asked about it in all parts of Wales, is that, where town and community councils have a good relationship with their principal authority, where they have a level of resource and a level of ambition, they are doing more important public service work today than they probably ever have before in helping to defend local communities against the effects of austerity. The problem is that, too often and in too many parts, the relationship isn’t as good as it should be, the resource base of very small community councils isn’t sufficient to allow them to take on a wider range of duties and, probably most significant of all, the ambition is not always there to do so. So, the challenge that I have set for the review team is to try and identify the ingredients that are making for successful town and community councils and to be very positive about the good work they are doing but to then ask how we can generalise that into other parts of Wales, potentially including parts of Wales where town and community councils don’t currently exist. In the meantime, we are producing, with our town and community councils, with One Voice Wales, a handbook, a workbook to allow town and community councils who are willing to do more than they have in the past to learn the lessons of those who have done it successfully already and to be able to help them through that process.

As far as the conduct of elections is concerned, Gareth Bennett raised the very important issue of internet security. We asked the question in the consultation paper: are we yet at the stage where we could allow voting to take place on your phone or on your tablet or on your computer? We do many other things in many other parts of our lives—internet banking and so on—that require high levels of security, but I think it’s an important question. I want to rehearse it in the consultation exercise. Old-fashioned as our current system may be, one of its great strengths, Llywydd, is that it is trusted by people. You go, you put your cross on the ballot paper, you take the paper yourself, you put it into the ballot box—you can see how the system is working. I think we would want to think carefully about moving in directions where people’s trust in the integrity of the process could be more easily undermined, but we want to know what people in Wales think about it.

Gareth Bennett pointed to our proposals for making chief executives statutorily the returning officers in local elections and abolishing the current system of personal fees. We raised the question of where to draw the line in local authority employees. I don’t have a fixed position on that. I do think it’s an important question to rehearse. I think trade unions and others will have important views to contribute to us there.

I think it is right that candidates who are members of a political party should declare that as part of their candidacy. There is nothing to stop anybody standing as an independent, but I think that, if you do put yourself forward as an independent and you’ve been a member of a political party within the last 12 months, then voters are entitled to know that that is the case. They then take it into account with everything else that they take into account in deciding who to vote for.

We propose in our consultation that there shouldn’t be a dual mandate, that people should not be able to be Assembly Members and members of a local authority at the same time. There is the issue of pay, as Gareth Bennett said. Being an Assembly Member is paid as a full-time job, and we think it should be that, but there are conflicts of interest as well that are not simply to do with pay. We make very important decisions here that affect local authorities, and we think it’s an uncomfortable position to be both the provider and the recipient of those decisions, and our proposal is that we should not allow that to happen in the future.