3. Will the Minister outline the Welsh Government's policy on local government reorganisation? OAQ53242

Yes. The First Minister has made it clear we will retain the 22 local authorities we have in Wales. Where voluntary merger proposals come forward, we will act to support them. 

Thank you for that, Minister. It's well documented that your predecessor had a sometimes challenging relationship with the Welsh Local Government Association and local government in general. In fact, your special adviser is quoted in the news now saying that the previous Minister relied on alternative facts very often on which to base his policy-making decisions. Can you confirm that you will not be relying on alternative facts and that, actually, you will be informing your decisions on what is in the best interest of communities the length and breadth of Wales and that security for local government is one of the key cornerstones for them to be able to deliver the services they are charged with delivering?

Yes, I'm not in the habit of relying on alternative facts, so I can assure the Member that I won't be taking up the practice any time soon. I'm a long-term fan of local government. Members in the Chamber will know that I spent a very large part of my career in local government. I think they do a good job in constrained circumstances. They require help and assistance, and, sometimes, they could collaborate better, and sometimes we have caused them problems in the way that we've laid collaborations on top of them. I'm very pleased to be working with a working group of local government, looking to see how we can best maximise the combined talent of local government for the best effect for the people of Wales. But, in general, I'm a big fan of local government and I intend to stay that way.

Clearly, the continued talk of reorganisation breeds uncertainty and a certain paralysis of development. What are you going to do differently to your predecessors in this post to change that?

As I said, I've already had a very good meeting this morning with the finance sub-committee, talking about the funding formula. I'm meeting with the WLGA on Friday. We have a working group, which is being chaired by Derek Vaughan, looking at the way that we do regional working together, and I'm looking forward to having a good and productive relationship with local authorities across the piece.

[Inaudible.]—with you in local government. Does the Minister accept that council mergers will be extremely costly, taking money out of front-line services, remembering that the only council that failed in Britain was Northamptonshire, with a population of over three times that of Cardiff? Every time people talk about mergers, I think of Betsi Cadwaladr University Local Health Board and Natural Resources Wales. 

I just don't think that one size fits all at all. There are very good examples across Britain and across the world of both large and small local authorities that work very effectively. It's about harnessing local resources for local people and harnessing the power of local democratic decisions in order to do so. So, my own view is that if two local authorities thought they would work better as a single one, I would not be standing in the way of that, and if they think they're better to do regional collaborations and some things individually, I'd be looking to see what we could do to facilitate those working arrangements.

Minister, do you accept that Wales does not need 22 separate local authorities and that previous Ministers' attempts to solve the issue without actually reorganising local government has led to massive waste and bureaucracy? 

On Monday, I met with a group of headteachers from my region to discuss the funding crisis in education, and one of their primary concerns was with the extra tier of governance added by the regional consortia and the waste it introduced. Minister, do you agree with the Williams commission that Wales would be better served by fewer, larger councils, doing away with the need for regional consortia?

No, I don’t, and I think I said very clearly that I didn’t. I think no one size fits all at all. What we need to do is work closely with local government to agree a shared vision for the future in which we make sure that the expertise available to it is deployed to the best effect for the people of Wales. Sometimes, that expertise will sit in one authority and it needs to be shared with another. At other times, it might be spread out. As I say, no one size fits all. What we need to do is get a shared vision together on the table, agree the working arrangements and stick to them. What isn’t helpful is where we do have regional arrangements and people seek to undermine them constantly, and so they can't be relied upon. Reliability and certainty, as Dai Lloyd pointed out, is one of the absolute maxims of good local administration, and I plan to make sure that we can go forward together with local government to ensure that we have that.