5. Will the Minister make a statement on the delivery of local public services in Pembrokeshire? OQ55858

Thank you, Paul. I continue to work very closely with local government, including Pembrokeshire, and other public service leaders on the key lessons learned from the COVID-19 response that will aid our strategic longer term recovery and help define the new normal of the future.

Thank you for that response, Minister. Figures from Pembrokeshire County Council have shown that, in the last year, from April 2019 to April 2020, a total of 72 per cent of all household waste was recycled, which is 10 per cent more than the previous year. To add to that, one of the council's employees, Amanda Absalom-Lowe of Haverfordwest, has been named by BBC Radio 4 as one of 30 inspiring women whose work is making a positive difference to the environment. Minister, will you join with me in congratulating Amanda Absalom-Lowe and Pembrokeshire County Council on this achievement, particularly against the backdrop of what has been a difficult year for councils across Wales? In light of this success, can you tell us what the Welsh Government can do to help to see this good progress maintained and developed for the future?  

I'm very delighted to do that, Paul. I'm really pleased with where Pembrokeshire has gone on the waste agenda. They have gone from, as you know, a sort of mixed-use bag type of arrangement to a separated-at-source arrangement. As a result, their recycling rates have rocketed up. I'm really happy to congratulate both them and the officers responsible for doing that. We will, of course, be working across local authorities to make sure that we spread out good practice of that sort much more generally in waste, as well as in every other area. I very much hope, Llywydd, that Stage 4 of my Bill will go through this afternoon. As a result of that, of course, we will be changing—assuming it does go through—to a peer-review system for local authorities, where exactly the kind of excellent practice that you have just outlined, Paul, can be spread around. We can ask the other local authorities, 'Why are you not doing it like this?' as part of the peer-review process. That's very much one of the reasons that we wanted to change the system in local authorities, so that we could do exactly the sort of learning from excellence that you have just outlined.