I'm grateful to the Member for her general welcome for the White Paper, and I'd certainly want to join her in congratulating the south Wales extrication team on the world rescue challenge that they have succeeded in winning again. It is one of the great pleasures of elected office that we all share the opportunity to meet people who perform such fantastic roles within our communities, and, certainly, I try to spend time talking to firefighters who are on the front line, as it were, delivering the services that we all need to see in our community. Can I say this? When I stood in the Rhondda talking to the firefighters who had just come back from Saddleworth and talking to firefighters who were dealing with the moorland fires across south Wales over the summer, I was struck by their professionalism, by their knowledge—sheer knowledge—and understanding of the threats that our communities were facing, but also their commitment to use that knowledge, to use that experience, in order to protect our people and our communities, and I think that's something that strikes me time and time again.

In terms of the role of backbench councillors, what we're seeking to do is to ensure that we have the levels of governance that are in place that can provide us with the assurance that we require in order to deliver both the local scrutiny and accountability—which we want to hold locally rather than create more national structures—but, at the same time, ensure that we do have the ability to link the work of the fire service into the work of other services being delivered by that authority. The points that were made by the Conservatives—by the Plaid Cymru spokesperson, I'm sorry—in this matter are quite important, because, in the same way as we want to see the devolution of policing to ensure that we have the coherence of ability to respond to and plan service interventions, we also want to have that same coherence between local authorities and the blue light services. And it is felt, and I feel, that by having an executive councillor or a cabinet member serving on the fire authority then we will have that link, and we will have more, and greater, coherence. Clearly, that is a debate that we will have over the coming months.

In terms of the funding models, I'm anxious that we are able to put in place a structure whereby local government and the fire and rescue authorities are able to jointly work and jointly agree a budget for the future. That is what I want. The Member quite rightly identifies areas where that can potentially not happen and where there are problems within that. Clearly, there would need to be backstop powers here to resolve that. What we're suggesting in this White Paper is that the backstop provides powers for Ministers, but powers only to intervene under certain circumstances and then to intervene to deliver a budget that is no higher than the fire and rescue authority proposes. So, those powers are delineated, if you like, or certainly have parameters beyond which a Minister could not intervene. But I see those as very much backstop powers that would enable an authority and a fire and rescue authority to reach agreement and to adjudicate if they're unable to do that. But I don't see those powers as being powers that would be available to a Minister unless the locally held powers, and unless the local authorities involved, were unable to reach agreement between themselves.