Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Local Government and Public Services – in the Senedd at 3:01 pm on 13 June 2018.
Not only do we speak to each other, but we agree with each other. I had a meeting with Vaughan at the beginning of this week to discuss this issue, and I will be seeing him later on this afternoon to continue discussing that. May I say this? I don’t agree with your analysis. For me, if regional collaboration in the way that you describe, and in the way that the parliamentary review demands and hopes to see and is planning for—if that is dependent on local government's capacity and the capacity of their departments to contribute to that, it’s not a matter of one doing the work of the other; it’s a matter of creating capacity and strength within the councils. At the moment, the councils themselves are saying that the status quo is not sustainable, and so it’s not possible to build collaboration on an unsustainable system. So, what’s important to me is that we put a structure in place that generates capacity to collaborate in the future and to secure the future for social care, and the capacity to deliver for the plan that we have published. So, I don’t see it as a choice or an option; I see it as a process.