Thank you very much for your statement. As you say, the working group was established to design and deliver together the future of local government in Wales. I love the term 'design and deliver together' because that's co-production. I consulted some colleagues in local government for their take on that. You'll be pleased that one of them came back to me stating that the working group has been very productive. There'll be nothing, he said, in your statement that will frighten colleagues in local government. He's not at liberty to share the outcomes of the work to date, but can share that it's likely that a sub-group of the partnership council will continue the work that was started throughout the summer months, and, of course, this reflects the working group's first recommendation.

However, would you please address a concern raised with me in another response from a colleague in local government, quote, that there seems to be a continual obsession with playing around with local government—can we be left to get on with what we know needs delivering for our residents and Welsh Government can get on with what they should be doing?

I think the two responses reflect the continuing concerns, perhaps: positive will to engage, but concern that this might get in the way, based on previous reviews and proposed legislation on doing things better.

You say in your statement that the group agreed a clear set of shared principles to underpin discussions and any future delivery of regional working, placing regional working firmly within a framework of democratic control and accountability. How do you envisage that might work where different local authorities have different council chambers, with different sets of elected leaderships and elected members, each of whom will be seeking to hold to account and to scrutinise the workings of potentially shared regional bodies, and possibly having different agendas between different councils, and even groups within councils, accordingly?

You say it was clear that there is already a significant amount of collaborative partnership working on both a voluntary and statutory basis throughout Wales. When we took evidence successively on previous Welsh Government proposals in the last Assembly for the future of local government, the Welsh Local Government Association and council representatives, officers and elected members emphasised to us that they are obliged to carry out a cost-benefit analysis when proposing regional working or working together with anybody on any project, as with anything else, and then presenting the findings of that analysis to full council for them to decide whether to go ahead or not. Of course, the Welsh Government itself doesn't have to do that when it's proposing changes in local government, so how will you factor that in? It was a major concern when some of your predecessors appeared not to do so. I'm sure you would, but, again, how you would you factor in that past concern of theirs?

You state that, following discussions at the working group, the WLGA leader and you have commissioned a joint review of the strategic partnership landscape to identify the key areas where it's felt to be unnecessary, and complexity or duplication—. And this will report to the partnership council in October. How, then, will you be sharing the findings with the full Assembly? What timescales and what role do you envisage the Assembly having regarding that?

You state, or you refer to, the creation of a joint working vehicle, currently referred to as a statutory joint committee—the blueprint design for local authorities working together. How will that work with and avoid replication of the work of regional partnership boards, which were meant to be a new way of regional working across public services that would be mandatory and systematic and drive the strategic regional delivery of social services in close collaboration with health, but also public services boards for each local authority, designed to improve the economic, local, environmental and cultural well-being of their areas, engaging with all public bodies and communities? So, are you proposing to replace those bodies, or is this going to be another tier, with potentially the same people sitting around a different table discussing very similar and overarching issues?

You state that you propose that Welsh Ministers should be able to require local authority functions to be delivered regionally in certain areas and that this would mean the potential establishment in service areas such as planning transport and economic development. How will that reconcile with bodies such as the North Wales Economic Ambition Board, the north Wales growth board, as it goes forward with the response to its growth bid from both Governments, hopefully later this year, where they themselves—and of course you have the city deals in Cardiff and Swansea as well—have their own asks in terms of control and executive power in some of those areas on a shared regional basis already together? You say the WLGA will co-ordinate the development of a code of collaborative practice. Will that be mandatory and how will it be enforced or will it be entirely a voluntary code?

If I can conclude by asking the obvious question about third sector representation, we know that Age Alliance Wales has continued to raise concerns about third sector representation on regional partnership boards, feeling excluded, feeling not fully engaged, and they've repeated that again very recently. We've had feedback from, for instance, the Wales Neurological Alliance that people with neurological conditions are not being signposted to services or given a voice under existing Welsh legislation. 

Only yesterday, I and my colleague Darren Millar attended an event in north Wales, the shared lives scheme, something that I know the Welsh Government is keen to support. We heard from representatives from Gwynedd and Anglesey through to north-east Wales, and the key point they made was not only is this good very much for individuals but it's good for councils and health boards that want to save money. They said that it costs less than other forms of care—an average of £26,000 a year cheaper for people, for instance, with learning disabilities, and people have much better quality of life than other kinds of care. 

So, how will this—finally—new body finally break through that wall, which is generating continued concerns from third sector providers, that, despite Welsh Government legislation and intent, they're still on the outside?