Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I move the motions. Part 5 of the Local Government and Elections (Wales) Act 2021, which was passed by the Senedd last year, provides for the establishment through regulations of corporate joint committees. Corporate joint committees, or CJCs, will be an important tool for local government to use to support collaboration, transformation, and the longer term sustainability of public services. They are also an opportunity to support the rationalisation of a number of existing and proposed regional working arrangements. CJCs will be bodies corporate, formed from the constituent principal councils, enabled to directly employ staff, hold assets and manage funding.

Through the package of regulations that we are debating today, I am seeking to put in place the necessary statutory provision to establish four CJCs in Wales, one each for mid Wales, north Wales, south-east Wales and south-west Wales. This is approached in line with the preference expressed by local government for CJCs to have the same geographic footprint as the existing city and growth deal areas. The four CJCs will be established by the following four sets of regulations: the Mid Wales Corporate Joint Committee Regulations 2021; the North Wales Corporate Joint Committee Regulations 2021; the South East Wales Corporate Joint Committee Regulations 2021; and the South West Wales Corporate Joint Committee Regulations 2021. As well as providing for the establishment of each of the four proposed CJCs, these establishment regulations also include the core constitutional arrangements and key details, such as membership, staffing and budgets. The establishment regulations also provide for the functions that will be exercised by each CJC: strategic development planning; regional transport planning; and the power to do things to promote or improve the economic well-being of their areas.

The establishment regulations have been informed by the responses to the consultation I launched on 12 October 2020 and engagement activity I and my officials have undertaken with local government and key stakeholders. I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank the local authority leaders and their officials for their constructive approach to the co-development of these regulations.

Alongside the establishment regulations, the Corporate Joint Committees (Transport Functions) (Wales) Regulations 2021 and accompanying explanatory memorandum have also been laid. The regulations make the necessary modifications to the Transport Act 2000 to require the CJCs to develop transport policies and establish a regional transport plan for their areas.

Five further statutory instruments have also been laid alongside the establishment regulations to ensure that, from the point they are established, CJCs are subject to appropriate standards of conduct, and come under the remit of the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales; are subject to appropriate accounting and financial management duties and come within the remit of the Auditor General for Wales; are subject to the public services equality duty; and will be subject to the Welsh language standards. This ensures that CJCs and their members are subject to appropriate oversight management and conduct requirements from the start.

It is my intention that the statutory instruments we are debating here today will come into force from 1 April this year. In agreement with each of the regions, the strategic development planning function, regional transport planning function, and economic well-being function will then commence in 2022. This will give the CJCs the time local government has asked for to put in place the necessary governance and administrative arrangements. I ask Members to approve these regulations today. Diolch.