Can I first of all put on record, Cabinet Secretary, that I think I'd rather live next to you than with you? There may still be time for your charm to work on me, but as things stand at the moment, I'm happy as a next-door neighbour. [Laughter.]

You certainly deserve credit for your courage in pursuing issues seemingly designed to reduce your popularity, probably as much in the Labour Party, given today's speeches, as across other political parties. Look, I welcome your statement today. I think it is an interesting debate. We do, all of us, want to talk about how we progress public services in Wales. But I must say, I don't quite understand why this Green Paper starts off by saying that local government is about more than drawing lines on maps, and then on the next page you go on to draw a bunch of lines on maps. There are no options as to how those lines should be drawn. It's sort of shoved in the middle of the document as though this is the obvious way that it should be done, but there's no actual logic to it, to me. 

There are lots of interesting statistics, ranging from population to council tax bases, but no recognition of the importance of the feel of an area, its character, its brand—to use the modern term. Why are you going about it in this way, rather than looking at the factors that, for instance, in my area, make Monmouthshire successful in harnessing the energy of its people, of promoting its history and heritage, and growing the local economy, because the brand works? It's not the case that across the whole of Wales local government has been a total disaster. There have been elements of good practice and there have been elements of poor practice. I think your intention—at least, I think your intention at the start of this process—is to try and make sure that it's the good practice that wins over the poor practice. We would certainly support that.

There's no explanation about how local government area 10, which I think I'll end up living in—. I trust that's a working title, it does sound a little bit like something from Nineteen Eighty-Four—very Orwellian—perhaps there's something behind this. How will that area 10 provide a more successful brand? Will it be identifiable or respected by or accepted by the people who will live in it? As Gareth Bennett said in his comments earlier, if you're talking about joining an area like Monmouthshire with Blaenau Gwent—okay, you've got the Heads of the Valleys road, which is being developed, and there might be some arguments for building on that, but it doesn't seem to me that the public, the people out there these bodies are supposed to represent, are really involved or engaged in this at all. So, if you want to come to my area at some point, I'll take you around one of the country shows, and I'm sure you'll get people's opinions very quickly.

Look, like you, I'm an optimist, Cabinet Secretary, but optimism does require a basis for that optimism and not simply a leap in the dark. I do fear that at this point in time this paper is closer to the latter than the former.