5. How is the Welsh Government helping to embed co-operative principles at local and national level throughout Wales? OAQ53795

I thank the Member for that question. Co-operatives and mutuals add real value to the Welsh economy. Amongst other measures, the Welsh Government seeks to embed co-operative principles through the Social Services and Well-Being (Wales) Act 2014 and through our economic action plan.

I thank the First Minister for that answer. As we celebrate the twentieth anniversary of this democratic institution, it's also a chance to celebrate the growth in Assembly Members and Ministers, indeed, over those 20 years who are co-operators and members of the Co-operative Party as well as the Labour Party. In fact, though the Co-operative Party is, of course, a sister party of the Labour Party, it also happens to be the second largest political group, Presiding Officer, although we're not precious about that at all. So, I want to thank Welsh Government for making good in its commitment to put in place a Minister for co-operation across Government and to Lee Waters for his engagement with the group with a co-operative agenda.

In the manifesto for 2016 from the Wales Co-operative Party, we urged railways run in partnership with passengers and staff, tackling the housing crisis through co-operative housing, sports fans having a say in the club they support, credit unions as the best way to support strong, personal and community financing arrangements and financial literacy, and more and more. So, could I ask the First Minister how does he rate progress now against these and other co-operative aims—shared aims: the current campaigns on food justice, on a national community bank that can be a truly accessible bank into all our communities across Wales, and, indeed the UK Labour commitment on doubling the size of the co-operative economy?

Now, I'm sure he won't be able to answer all these questions today, so perhaps I could ask him whether he'd consider meeting with the group and with Lee Waters, at some point, so we can have a really constructive discussion around those shared aims that we have for delivering social justice and working together for the common good.

Well, Llywydd, can I thank Huw Irranca-Davies for what he said today and the work that I know he does all the time to promote the co-operative movement, to speak up for the principles of co-operation and of partnership? He's absolutely right to point to the number of Welsh Co-operative Party Assembly Members here in the Chamber. I was very pleased to ask the Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport to particularly focus on the work that is being done on the co-operative economy. I'd be very pleased to meet the Member and others who have an interest in this, because on so many of the things that he mentioned in his supplementary question, there is work that we are determined to do here in Wales.

The £25 million Welsh management succession fund that has been set up by my colleague Ken Skates, through the Development Bank of Wales, is an absolutely practical example of the way in which we want employee ownership to grow here in Wales. We've recently supported a larger-scale programme for community-led housing, in conjunction with the Nationwide federation, to develop co-operative housing here in Wales, and the prospect of a community bank, I think, is one of the most exciting prospects that we have here in Wales. We know that there are whole communities where conventional banking no longer operates on the high street and in those communities, and we have an opportunity here in Wales, working with others, to develop a different sort of model that will return banking to the core of those communities, that will offer a service to small businesses—microbusinesses in particular—and doing it on the basis of those collaborative principles that the co-operative movement exemplifies.

I've had a number of interesting conversations with Alun Davies and Mike Hedges over the last few weeks about the co-operative movement. Well, I found them interesting, anyway; you probably groan as you see me approaching you in the tea room. But it is an interesting concept, and it is a concept that has been embedded within Wales for many, many years now. My colleague Mark Isherwood often talks about the benefits of co-production in this Chamber, and co-production can be seen as one aspect of the co-operative agenda.

Can you tell us—? As you're aware, First Minister, co-production turns service users from merely passive recipients of public services into active shapers of those services and shapers of their own destiny in the future, something that I think Members from across all sides of this Chamber would buy into. Can you tell us how you're embedding those principles of co-production into Welsh public services, particularly at a local level, as Huw Irranca mentioned in his opening question?

I want to agree with what the Member has said about the co-production principles—the fact that in a co-productive model, people who use our public services are regarded as people who have assets to contribute rather than being problems to be solved. And by identifying people's strengths and the things that they bring to the table, we are able to design services that are not organised around the question that begins by asking people, 'What's the matter with you today?'—a question that inevitably focuses on people's deficits—but we start those conversations by saying to people, 'What matters to you today?' Because if we're able to do that, then we are able to draw their contribution into that conversation, and to design outcomes alongside those people that meet their priorities. And in terms of doing it locally, let me remind the Member of a visit that I made to Raglan in his constituency, where he was also present, to see that co-production principle in operation in the field of social care, where, instead of having a pre-determined list of visits to make with time set aside for each visit, the worker was able to speak to the people they were visiting and work out with them how long they thought a visit was needed, to be flexible because those needs change over time and to co-produce the service that they were receiving in a way that was really highly spoken of, both by the people providing the service but also, in the visit that I made that day, by residents in Raglan, who felt that they were genuinely involved in the service they were receiving, rather than simply the recipient of it.