One of my ambitions for the consultation exercise is that we end it with a wider range of possibilities and more ideas for how we could reform the way we conduct elections in Wales than we started with. Those people who advocate compulsory participation in our democracy, I hope, will take this opportunity to make those views known and to generate the sort of debate that Lee Waters has suggested.

As for digital transformation, one of the reasons why I think regional working—and particularly in this context, sharing back-office services—is so important is that it will allow local authorities to build their own capacity to move in this direction without having to rely on buying in services and off-the-shelf solutions, as he said, from elsewhere.

Llywydd, I’ve said several times: I’ve generally been very encouraged by my interaction with local authorities and their willingness to be part of creating their own future. I was mildly disappointed by their response to the consultation exercise in relation to back-office services. I think there’s a greater reluctance than there ought to be to think of ways in which they can share across boundaries some of those services—not a sufficient grasp of digital transformational possibilities for the future. And I’ve said to local authorities and I’ll repeat it here this afternoon: our White Paper and the legislation we will bring forward signal that we are on a journey to greater shared services in Wales, and it’s a journey that all local authorities will need to be part of.