I'm sorry to come back to this, Cabinet Secretary, but I do think that it's very telling that both the motion and one of the Plaid amendments reflect that the Cabinet Secretary hasn't really embarked on this process in the most politic of ways. Both refer to an inadequate approach to engaging with and influencing current council leaders. I think we all understand the need to take some action on this agenda, but in serving up old hash rather than engaging councils in preparing the menu, you really are starting to lose hope of nourishing those you need to take with you. I'm sure you remember the mess within Labour ranks in Bridgend the last time somebody kindly suggested who they should be teaming up with. There were splits and expulsions, which, of course, while they might have been a little bit of fun for other political parties, were a huge distraction, which damaged the council's authority and soaked up a lot of time when the council could have been doing something useful for its residents. And I don't actually think it was all about self-interest on the part of those who were caught up in the fight. What still lingers there is the feeling that they were pushed into having a fight by proposals that they didn't design, and where opportunities for damage limitation weren't offered in the early stages of policy development. I think a post facto consultation like the one we have now is not really going to allay that resentment.

I suspect you're also going to run into difficulties with the existing collaboration models, which have already been mentioned, and the desire for coterminosity. Your Government introduced the regional partnership boards and, at the moment, Western Bay in my region mirrors not just constituency boundaries, more or less, but also Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Local Health Board's. Moving Bridgend-based hospital care into Cwm Taf, which is as definitely on the cards as it can be, I think, completely throws that coterminosity, but, of course, would restore it if your idea of a merger between Bridgend County Borough Council and Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council goes ahead. A change of local health board responsibility, which was viewed with some understandable anxiety to begin with, has now become a change sparking anger and, again, resentment, because it looks like Welsh Government has jumped the gun by presuming that its version of local government reform will go through. 

And what's going to happen to those regional partnership boards? I guess there will be some amendments to the Local Government (Democracy) (Wales) Act 2013, but I'm quite keen to find out what you're going to do to the Local Government (Wales) Act 2015 itself. If you remember, it was based on a November 2015 deadline. So, will you be taking this off the statute books as it's otiose now? If there was ever a nonsensical piece of legislation, it was that—imposing deadlines on local authorities only for them not to be met, or, where they were, preferred plans ignored. And Janet Finch-Saunders laid bare that, the glaring faults of that legislation, as it was going through, but it was dismissed out of hand, as were, indeed, the views of council leaders.

So, if you're planning, Cabinet Minister, to be a little bit more conciliatory than the Minister at the time, perhaps you could give us an indication of which bits of that Act you will be looking at retaining, because I see some familiar phrases in the Green Paper, but I do urge you to drop the idea of powers to block local authorities designing themselves along the principles of mayoral cabinets. Why should it be Welsh Government who decides that? This place has recently been successful in acquiring the powers to determine its own structures and electoral system, opening up discussion. So, why would Government now consider closing down discussion on what councils, including merged councils, could look like?

Two final points, as others have talked more generally about cost—can you tell me whether you will be thrashing out the effects of merger on council tax and council debt before even considering any exercise of Executive power? As the terms of the withdrawal from the EU must be agreed before exit, then so should the terms of merger be agreed before merger of councils—up front, not at secondary legislation stage. And will you tell me also what you've done to ensure that this new wave of uncertainty does not impact one jot on the progress being made by the two city deals that affect my region? Plans for the new Dyfed—and Paul Davies has raised plenty of problems with them already—they're not just completely at odds with coterminosity ambitions, but it places any new merged council in a very difficult position as regards the residents of Ceredigion and their exclusion, at the moment, from the economic uplift for which only Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire councils are contracted.

Now, of course, it's always going to be pretty lairy with the council leaders. I think we probably could all have anticipated that, but I am left wondering what has happened to the Alun Davies who, when he was Minister for Welsh language, made great play in this Chamber of how he was all about his low-pressure reasonableness, strewing flowers along the path to enlightenment and bringing local councils to a place of understanding, rather than bringing them to heel, which is what we have now.