Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I think I will start by saying we all owe a debt of gratitude to firefighters who enter buildings when the rest of us are leaving. A huge amount of work has been done on fire prevention, and credit has been paid to you and the sprinkler system, but the huge amount that's done by the fire service in going out and putting smoke alarms in houses have obviously saved many hundreds of lives.

I was hoping this statement would have involved the reconfiguration of fire and rescue services. I have long been of the view that a mid and west Wales fire and rescue service makes little operational sense. A major fire in Welshpool, for example, will want tenders from Wrexham; it won't want them from Swansea or Neath Port Talbot.

On governance, there is a substantial democratic deficit. This is not unique to the fire and rescue service; it covers all joint working. That's why people have some concerns over joint working. How will changing the current membership of fire and rescue authorities ensure that members are accountable to their electorate? Why not have a report from the fire and rescue to a scrutiny committee at each council, or, better still, have an annual report from the chief fire officer and the fire authority to a council meeting? How will appointing non-council members and reducing the number of councillors involved improve accountability?

On funding, can the Cabinet Secretary name another council service that would not like to change the fire and rescue authorities' ability to levy on the councils concerned? I think that both education and social services would leap at the chance to have this opportunity. So, we do need a better method of funding fire services because they are funded entirely differently. And it didn't matter when we had a growing amount of money in the public services; it does matter now. And I think that the Cabinet Secretary is right—we should not be afraid of change, but what we should always do is make sure change is for the better, not for the worse.