6. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on the role of local government in the delivery of public services? OAQ52328

The role of local government is critical to our society and the well-being of our nation. I am committed to ensuring the sustainability and quality of those services, and the engagement of citizens and partners in that process.

Thank you. At the beginning of the week, your fellow Members of Government the Cabinet Secretary for health and the Minister for social care announced a plan for the future of health and care, and one of the objectives is to ensure better collaboration and, indeed, integration between the work of local government and health boards. Now, one question that’s been playing on my mind, and that I know is playing on the minds of some of those in local government in Wales, is: surely, in putting a health and care plan together, one would need stability in local government in order to deliver that. Reorganising local government and, therefore, social care departments isn’t likely to help with that integration process. The suggestion, as I see it—and I would like to hear your view on this—is that the different department of your Government don’t seem to be speaking to each other.

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.

Cabinet Secretary, you talk about building capacity, and I seem to remember a lot of the conversations around when the health boards were reorganised back in 2009 being about, 'By creating bigger organisations you create capacity.' That hasn't exactly been a rip-roaring success. But one of the things you could say would benefit local authorities across Wales, in particular the further away you go from Cardiff, would be the devolution of powers and responsibilities in particular around economic development. With the development of metro mayors and city mayors in England, these relationships, cross border, are vitally important so that when you look at economic development in particular, where local authorities have a key role to play, they are empowered to make decisions that affect their local communities and benefit their local communities. What assessment, in the time that you've been the Minister, have you made about what powers would be beneficial at a local level rather than them being held at a Welsh Government level when it comes to economic development?

I fear, Presiding Officer, that there might be a bit too much agreement between myself and the Conservative frontbench on some of these matters. I'm very much in favour of the devolution of additional powers and responsibilities to local government; it's what I want to see. I want to see more powers held locally and more accountability locally. The Conservative leader will remember one of my first actions after my appointment was to write to all leaders of Welsh local government and to all Members here asking what powers they believed should be devolved to local government and what powers they would want to see held locally. Personally, I would like to see a more strategic and a more generous view of the powers that should be held locally. I'm attracted by models of government where local communities and counties—for lack of a better term—are able to take very significant decisions, and are able to pursue approaches that are appropriate to that locality and the communities they represent.

The Conservative leader will be aware that the Cabinet Secretary for the economy has published an economic action plan that does actually empower regions of Wales to act in this way. I see that as part of a process by which we do empower different regions and different parts of the country to take exactly the decisions that you've mentioned as well. The Member for Anglesey made a very similar point, in many ways, about regional working. The point I will make back to you in all seriousness is that you can't simply build castles on sand. If we don't have the structures and the fundamental building blocks, which are sustainable local authorities, then all that regional working will come to nothing, because we won't be able to sustain the services. So, for me, we do need to go through a process of reform and change, and when we have done that, we will be able to deliver the sort of devolution of responsibilities and powers that the Conservative leader has described and others have described today as well.