Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 7:24 pm on 10 November 2020.
Diolch, Llywydd. We wanted to table amendments to remove the power of the Minister to force local authorities into corporate joint committees. Some of those amendments have been tabled by Mark Isherwood, so ours are consequential amendments to those, but tabled with that same policy intention and, of course, drafted by the legal services here. This reflects our position as a party that local authorities should not be forced into CJCs. We believe that such a power would go too far in giving ministerial power to rewrite the regional footprint of government in Wales without the level of scrutiny that we would like to see. At Stage 2, the Minister said that this is a very limited power restricted to areas where regional working arrangements already exist in legislation or in practice. However, whilst we accept that clarification, we do believe that it should be possible for a local authority to remove itself from these arrangements without being forced into them. And therefore, we will be supporting our and Mark Isherwood's amendments in this section. Diolch.