Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:10 pm on 10 November 2020.
Diolch, Llywydd. Well, clearly I'm pleased to hear the Minister state that her officials are going to meet the Building Communities Trust. I hope that she will instruct them or invite them to ask them what the term 'involve' means. As I stated previously, this is a term widely utilised not only in the UK, but internationally, and its driving green shoots of credible programmes in many communities on the four corners of Wales and in between, whereas there's real concern about the misuse, overuse and misunderstanding of the term 'consultation' being used repeatedly as an alternative to co-production and co-productive words, in practice to improve lives and strengthen communities, when consultation is the barrier, because inevitably consultation is about rubber-stamping a decision that's already been made rather than designing and delivering services and other activities within and with local communities themselves. I look forward to the day—I hope I'll live to see it—when we have a Welsh Government that at last embraces the true meaning of this language and understands that it's not a threat. It's an opportunity to improve lives, improve prosperity, to connect people, and to tackle many of the things that we all raise in the Chamber weekly as genuine problems facing the people we represent.