Questions now from the party spokespeople. The Conservative spokesperson, Sam Rowlands.

Diolch, Llywydd, and good afternoon, Minister. First of all, I'd like to thank you for your recent correspondence in providing an update on the next consultation around corporate joint committees. I'd like to focus my questioning on that today. First of all, Minister, do you agree with the previous Cabinet secretary for local government and public services that corporate joint committees, and I'll quote,

'are essentially reorganisation of councils through the back door'?

I think corporate joint committees are something else entirely, because this is something that is being led by local authorities. They offer opportunities to streamline existing collaboration agreements, and also provide the clarity and consistency that principal councils have been seeking in many areas, especially the areas for which they'll be responsible—for aligning economic development, for example, transport and land use and planning approaches, in order to develop successful regional economies and encourage local growth. So, I wonder if you might be misquoting Julie James in that, because she's very much of the view that this is an important step forward, which is being taken with local authorities.

Thanks, Minister. And just to be clear, I wasn't quoting Julie James there; it was the previous Minister to Julie, whose quote came through the local government committee. But thank you for your answer.

A huge concern that I have with corporate joint committees, and one that seems to be shared by many councillors and council leaders across the country, is their democratic nature, or perhaps lack of, and the potential impact of powers being taken away from councils and those democratically elected to make decisions and representations on behalf of their communities. In your letter to the Local Government and Housing Committee on 29 October, you stated that CJCs aim to bring more coherence to and strip out some of the complexity of regional governance arrangements, strengthening local democratic accountability. But that does seem at odds to the chief executive of Cardiff Council, who stated that they could, and I'll quote,

'diminish democratic accountability'.

Indeed, a councillor on Swansea Council stated that,

'If you want to be a turkey, vote for these new committees'.

So, Minister, what assurances can you give to councils across Wales that these corporate joint committees won't take powers and democracy away from councils and those locally elected to represent their communities?

I think democratic accountability is absolutely critical, and people need to have faith in the new structures that are being put in place. And that's why it's important that the leaders of each constituent council will be the members of the CJCs, and they will obviously then be accountable to their constituent councils for the decisions that they make as part of their CJC. And the CJCs will also be required to put in place the appropriate overview and scrutiny arrangements, in consultation and in agreement with its constituent councils, and that, of course, will be a really important part of the accountability of the CJC. And of course, each will have its own governance and audit sub-committees, which will have the same functions as those of one in a local authority, including to review and scrutinise the financial affairs, the risk management and the internal control of a CJC. So, I do think that we have put in place robust measures to ensure that there is democratic accountability.

Thanks, Minister. Your answer certainly answered partially in terms of the leaders having that voting responsibility on those corporate joint committees, but, of course, like in my region, you've got six councils, therefore six leaders, and you've probably got nearly 400 councillors across that region who are locally elected. And I think this is an area that's perhaps not being appreciated at the moment, in terms of that local democratic accountability. Of course, the whole point of devolution coming here into Wales is not to stop here at Cardiff, but to bring power to local people, who are best placed to represent local people in those councils as well. It's clear for many that the Welsh Government's aim in introducing these joint committees seems to be to take power away from those local councils and locally elected people. In terms of reversing that, Minister, there is an opportunity here for powers to come from Cardiff down to corporate joint committees. So, which powers, which levers, do you expect to release from Cardiff here down to those corporate joint committees to allow people locally to make decisions in their areas? 

Thank you for raising that. It is important that councillors feel that they are able to scrutinise the leaders who are representing on the CJCs. And those arrangements obviously will be in place, and public accountability is also really important. And the CJC will be required to encourage participation in its decision making by members of the public, ensuring that individuals are able to contribute to the shaping of the services that they and their families rely on, and which will obviously have an important impact on their daily lives. But this point about subsidiarity is really important, and Welsh Government is open to devolving further powers to CJCs. Now, we don't have a fixed view on which powers should be devolved. We're very much of the view that this should be an issue that is pursued from the CJCs up. So, it will be for CJCs to make the case for the further devolution of powers and responsibilities to them and then for them to have individual discussions with the relevant portfolio Minister, but we are very open to those discussions.

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Llyr Gruffydd. 

Thank you very much, Llywydd. In light of COP26 last week, I want to talk abut the role of local government in helping Wales to meet its commitments in terms of cutting carbon emissions, and your role as Minister for local government in that regard. I understand that 16 local authorities have now declared a climate emergency. That's a starting point in a longer process, but it is disappointing that there are six authorities that have yet to do that. But making a declaration is the easy thing to do; it's the action that's important in light of that. And there are different local authorities at different stages of that journey—some are more bold and are dealing with the issue in a more meaningful and ambitious way than others perhaps. But my first question to you is: what are you doing to encourage, to support and even to enforce, in some scenarios, local authorities in Wales to help in achieving our aims and reducing emissions? 

So, we've worked with local authorities to ask each of them to develop a plan for reducing emissions and for addressing the needs around decarbonisation. And each of those has now been submitted, and we've been looking at those plans, exploring where the strengths are, but also where there are potential gaps or areas of weakness, so that local authorities can learn from one another and have that element of peer challenge in this particular area. We also have a decarbonisation group, which is specifically looking at what local authorities can do, and the Welsh Local Government Association plays an important part on that. And, of course, you'll have seen our recent 'Net Zero Wales' plan, and I think that's really ambitious, in terms of the responsibilities that it puts on local government to play its part in getting the public sector in Wales to net zero by 2030. So, there's a lot of work going on in this area, and, I have to say, a lot of commitment in this area. The partnership council for Wales, which I chair, has that decarbonisation group under it, which I referred to, and decarbonisation is a standing item on each one of those meetings. 

Thank you for that. You referred to the WLGA, and they, of course, have called on the Government to provide the tools and resources to local authorities to baseline and to measure progress at a local level against climate change targets, so that they can do that in an accurate and consistent way across Wales. Now, that, of course, could be the foundation for the creation of local net zero targets—so, disaggregating the net zero targets across local authorities in Wales. And I'd like to hear if you agree that that would provide an incentive to local authorities, particularly those who are a little behind, to respond with more commitment to the nature and climate emergency, and is that something that you and the Minister for Climate Change have considered? 

Thank you for raising that suggestion. It's something that I will look very closely at, because I think it's important that in this area, as in so many, we actually move at the pace of the fastest, not the slowest, and we haven't got time to wait in terms of tackling the climate change issue. So, absolutely, I will take that suggestion on board. I think that we have provided local authorities with a useful set of tools. We have a decarbonisation dashboard, for example, where local authorities can explore the impacts of various choices that they can make in terms of seeking to meet their decarbonisation targets, such as what would the impact be if they moved to more electric vehicles, for example—they can work out what the carbon impact would be. Carbon impact assessments, I think, are very important, and this is something that we've been seeking to develop over the recent years through our budget process, and it's something that we're continuing to put a strong focus on. It's certainly something that local government will be interested in as well.

I'm pleased that you've mentioned the budgetary process, because that's my next destination, and I wanted to ask about the broader budget of the Government and your role as Minister for finance. As one who's been part of scrutinising Government budgets quite closely over recent years, one criticism that's come up relatively regularly is that it's difficult to read across from Government expenditure to measurable outcomes in terms of carbon reduction. Now, how can you look at a budget line on a spreadsheet and be confident that that expenditure is having the impact that you want it to have? It's possible to look at specific projects, that's easily done, but, in order to measure the success of the Welsh Government in driving the broader change that we want to see across government and the public sector, we need to understand how every penny contributes to that aim of net zero. So, with a view to the budget you're working on now, which will be published in a little over a month, how will you ensure transparency and, in light of that, accountability for you as a Government around that particular issue? And also, do you agree that the next budget needs to be the most climate and nature friendly in the history of devolution?

Thank you for raising, again, an important question. In terms of our carbon impact assessment work, I would say we're on a journey with that; we're seeking to improve the way in which we undertake those carbon impact assessments. We had some work done, by I believe it was Cardiff University, for us, in the first instance, where we looked at the health main expenditure group and looked at how we could measure carbon through that, which was a really interesting piece of work. They drew it to our attention that, actually, about half of the Welsh Government's budget is exposed to pay—so, essentially paying salaries and so on—so what happens beyond that in terms of carbon impact assessment is really much more about the choices that we allow people to make and trying to make it easier for people to make choices that have a positive impact on decarbonisation and so on. So, we'll continue with the approach that we're undertaking on carbon impact assessments, and transparency is important. I'm not saying that we've got it perfect yet, but we are still seeking to make important steps on that journey. And, of course this budget has to recognise the seriousness of the climate and nature emergency that we face, and that work is ongoing at the moment, with a view to publication on 20 December.