The
proceedings are reported in the language in which they were spoken
in the committee. In addition, a transcription of the simultaneous
interpretation is included. Where contributors have supplied
corrections to their evidence, these are noted in the
transcript.
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Dechreuodd y cyfarfod am 09:16.
The meeting began at 09:16.
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Cyflwyniadau,
Ymddiheuriadau, Dirprwyon a Datgan Buddiannau
Introductions, Apologies, Substitutions and Declarations of
Interest
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[1]
John Griffiths: May I welcome everybody to this first formal
meeting of the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee
and say how pleased I am to have been elected Chair of what I think
is a very important committee? We will have a lot of significant
and substantial work to undertake throughout this Assembly term and
I very much look forward to working with all members of the
committee in taking that work forward.
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[2]
We have apologies for this meeting from Janet Finch-Saunders,
Bethan Jenkins and Joyce Watson—none of whom are able to
attend for various reasons.
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09:17
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Ysgrifennydd y
Cabinet dros Gyllid a Llywodraeth Leol—Trafod Blaenoriaethau
Cynnar
Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government—Discussion of Early Priorities
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[3]
John Griffiths: Our first substantive matter of scrutiny for
this committee involves scrutiny of the Cabinet Secretary for
Finance and Local Government, Mark Drakeford, and I’m very
grateful to Mark for coming along at this early stage, together
with his officials. Would you like to introduce your officials at
this stage, Mark, please?
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[4]
Ysgrifennydd y
Cabinet dros Gyllid a Llywodraeth Leol (Mark Drakeford):
Diolch yn fawr,
Gadeirydd. So, gyda fi y bore yma y mae Reg Kilpatrick, cyfarwyddwr
llywodraeth leol, ac Amelia John, dirprwy gyfarwyddwr yr is-adran
dyfodol tecach.
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The Cabinet
Secretary for Finance and Local Government (Mark Drakeford: Thank you very much, Chair. Joining me this morning
are Reg Kilpatrick, director for local government, and Amelia John,
the deputy director in the fairer futures division.
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[5]
John Griffiths: Diolch yn
fawr. Could I initially, Cabinet Secretary, ask you to make
a brief opening statement, perhaps just covering some of your early
thoughts, actions and priorities for your responsibilities in this
role?
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[6]
Mark Drakeford:
Thank you, Chair. I’ll be brief.
Since I’ve become the Cabinet Secretary for local government
and finance, events elsewhere have meant that I’ve spent
probably a significant amount of my time on the finance side of my
responsibilities, particularly those relating to European funding
and working quite hard to work out the impact on our budgets of the
decision on 23 June. All of that has probably taken up a larger
part of my time than might otherwise have been
anticipated.
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[7]
But I have been spending a considerable
part of my time as well on the local government aspects of my
responsibilities, and in particular the relatively vexed question
of future arrangements for local government. As you know, the last
Assembly Government made the case for reform of local government
and in particular a reduction in the number of units of local
government in Wales. It published a map, it tried to set an agenda
and it attempted to create a momentum behind the proposals that the
Government had brought forward. As everyone here will know, it was
unable to secure a majority on the floor of the Assembly for those
proposals, and my assessment has been that there would be no
majority for that particular course of action in the fifth Assembly
either. So, my approach has had to be different.
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[8]
The approach I have taken is to spend a lot of my time out and
about. I’m meeting every chief executive and every local
authority leader. I am going to meet them, rather than suggesting
that they come here to the National Assembly to meet me, partly
because I want that to be something of a symbol of a different
relationship in which, you know, I am very keen to be seen to be
engaged with them, and partly because I think you learn a lot by
being in the locality where people discharge those responsibilities
and meeting other people while you are there, and so on. I’m
more than half way through that now, but I’m not simply
meeting local authorities directly; I’m meeting them through
the Welsh Local Government Association, I’ve met the trade
unions, I’m meeting third-sector organisations that have
close relationships with local authorities in their areas, and so
on.
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[9]
My message while I’m out and about is that I am listening and
learning. That’s what I’m there to do. I’m not
there to talk, by and large. I’m there to listen to what they
have to say to me—for them to give me some ideas of how they
think we might go about solving problems around which there is a
wide degree of agreement. It’s not hard for people to
identify what the challenges are; there’s a very shared sense
of what those may be. Trying to create a shared response to those
challenges is the more difficult task, but it is a political task,
isn’t it? It is one of the key things that we as politicians
try to do: to broker agreement, to create some common ground, to
see whether people are prepared to commit themselves to a future in
which nobody will get everything that they want, but everybody gets
sufficient of what they think is important for them to commit to
their common purpose.
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[10]
I’ve got the rest of those meetings still to go. If Members
are interested to know about how those things are going, I’m
happy to try and answer those questions. But it’s been very
important for me to say, every time I say anything about any
emerging ideas, that I must remain as open to the thoughts of the
twenty-second local authority I meet as I was to the first.
I’m very keen not to give any impression to the people
I’ve yet to meet that I am already making up my mind before I
hear what they have to say. So, I must remain open-minded until all
that is completed, although I think there are some common themes
emerging, from what I’ve heard so far.
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[11]
John Griffiths: Is it right, Cabinet Secretary, that in the
autumn, you would plan to make a statement on the way forward,
having gone through the exercise that you’ve just
described?
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[12]
Mark Drakeford: Yes, Chair. What I said to the WLGA, when I
spoke at their annual general meeting nearly two weeks ago, was
this: that I am genuinely alert to the things that local
authorities say to me about the corrosive effect of delay, and
their feeling that a question mark has hung over their future for
quite a while now, and that this has an impact on their ability to
plan ahead and an effect on the lives of people who work for local
authorities, who have got families and homes and futures to map for
themselves. So, I’m alert to the need to try and bring that
to an end.
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[13]
What I said to them was that, the better progress I am able to make
in creating a sense of consensus, the earlier in the autumn I will
be able to say something. But they have a responsibility in that,
as well as me. The more they contribute to creating a sense of
shared purpose, the earlier I will be able to make a statement.
Ideally, I said to them, I would like to be able to say something
early after we come back in September on some big building blocks
of what future arrangements might be like, and then spend the rest
of this calendar year in more detailed discussions with other
political parties here, and with local authorities and their
partners, about how the detail of all of that might work out.
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[14]
John Griffiths:
Thank you very much. Over to Members for
questions, then: Sian.
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[15]
Sian
Gwenllian: Diolch yn fawr iawn am ddod atom ni y bore yma. Rydych wedi
sôn yn syth am ad-drefnu llywodraeth leol, felly rwy’n cymryd bod hynny’n mynd
i fod yn flaenoriaeth penodol gennych chi yn y maes yma; ond, wrth
gwrs, mae yna fwy i lywodraeth leol na dim ond ad-drefnu. Felly,
buaswn i’n licio gwybod beth yw eich blaenoriaethau chi y tu
hwnt i’r ad-drefnu. Efallai y down ni yn ôl wedyn at
ad-drefnu.
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Sian
Gwenllian: Thank you very for
coming to see us today. You have mentioned immediately the issue of
reorganisation of local government, so I’m assuming that that’s going to be a
specific priority for you in this area; but, of course,
there’s more to local government than just reorganisation.
So, I would like to know what your priorities are further than
that. Maybe we can come back to reorganisation
afterwards.
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[16]
Mark
Drakeford: Wel, diolch yn fawr am y cwestiwn yna. Pan rwyf mas yn siarad
â phobl yn y maes, os oes tri chwarter awr gennyf, mae pob un
yn cytuno yn y funud gyntaf fod lot mwy yn y maes yma nag
ad-drefnu. Byddwn yn cymryd 43 munud yn siarad am ad-drefnu ac yn
dod yn ôl at y darlun arall yn y munud olaf. So, mae’n
help mawr i mi gael cyfle, yn gyntaf, i siarad am bethau
eraill.
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Mark Drakeford: Well, thank you very much for that question. When
I’m out speaking to people on the ground, if I have three
quarters of an hour then everyone is agreed for the first minute
that there’s a great deal more to this area than
reorganisation, but I do spend 43 minutes talking about
reorganisation and we come back to the rest for the final minute.
So, it’s of great assistance to me to have this first
opportunity to discuss other issues of importance.
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[17]
In the draft Bill that was published in the last Assembly term,
reorganisation of the map of local authorities was just one aspect
of a much wider Bill, and many other things in that Bill were
widely welcomed by local authorities. So, as Sian has said, there
is a much bigger agenda to do with local government than reforming
the map. So, some of the bigger priorities for me—I’m
trying to find time and space to concentrate on them—are
thinking through the future funding of local government. I believe
that there are some relatively immediate things we might be able to
do to try and make the system we currently have a bit fairer and
fitter for purpose. I’ve already said to my officials that I
want a purposeful piece of work to be set in hand to look in
applied detail at what some of the alternative schemes of local
government funding might look like if we applied them in Wales. So,
some Members here will know that there’s a very good report,
I think, published in December, commissioned by the Scottish
Government and COSLA—the Convention of Scottish Local
Authorities—which rehearses the big alternatives: land value,
taxation, local income tax, and so on. I don’t think we need
to go through that exercise again in Wales. We know what the big
possibilities are, and there’s quite a lot of literature now
that weighs up their pros and cons. They all say that there is no
single course of action that hugely outweighs any other.
They’ve all got pluses and minuses, including a continuation
of a reformed council tax regime.
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[18]
So, I’m keen to move on from looking at this in theory to
seeing what it might look like if we did a piece of work that
applied some of those possibilities to Welsh circumstances so that,
during this Assembly term, we will come to a more informed, shared
understanding of what those things might look like if we did them
in Wales, and then to decide whether or not we think one of those
possibilities has more attractions than the system we currently
have. The system we currently have has got some big pluses to it:
it’s well known and it’s effective, in the sense that
97 per cent of council tax is collected. It’s hard to avoid
because it’s hard to hide a house. So, it’s got some
positive things. It has that very big downside of being regressive:
that the burden of it falls more on less well-off households than
better well-off households. That is a fundamental difficulty in the
council tax. But it’s not without its merits, and we have to
weigh these others against it. That’s one priority for
me.
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[19]
A second is that we hope that, if the Wales Bill completes its way
to the statute book, we as a National Assembly will have the powers
in future to organise the way we conduct elections in Wales. I have
long, myself, been a real critic of the way that we conduct
elections and the way that that gets in the way of whole swathes of
our community being able to exercise their democratic rights. So,
we vote on a Thursday because it was half-day closing in 1886.
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09:30
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[20]
We expect people to walk long and inconvenient distances to cast
their vote with a pencil tied by a piece of string to a flimsy,
hastily erected booth. It’s no wonder that people don’t
get to vote, when the way we expect them to do it is so out of
kilter with the way they conduct the rest of their lives. So, I am
very keen that, collectively, we take as radical a look as we can
at how we may be able to use the powers we will get, so that the
business of how we go about electing people becomes more consistent
with the way people live their lives, and therefore, draws into
participation those people who we know are least likely, currently,
to be able to make their views known through the ballot box.
I’m arranging a first, very blank-sheet-type seminar in the
autumn, where we’ll get people together who have expertise in
this field to see what the possibilities are. I think that’s
a really exciting opportunity for us here in Wales, and it can be
something the Assembly will have for the first time, and I hope we
will, between us, manage to make the maximum use of the chance we
will have.
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[21]
Finally, Chair, and thirdly, in terms of big ideas beyond the Bill,
I am keen to develop a different language in the way we talk about
local government. I’m not going to be using language about
local government, I hope, that regards it as problem to be solved.
I think local authorities discharge enormously important
responsibilities day in, day out in the lives of our fellow
citizens, and every local authority in Wales is good at something.
Most of them are good at quite a lot of things; none of them is
good at everything. And, so, for me, it’s a matter of time to
build on the strengths that local authorities have, to have a
different relationship with them that’s based on that sense
of mutual recognition and respect, and I am keen that they in turn
translate that into the way they think of their citizens.
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[22]
So, I am keen to use language that moves us on from the days in
which we thought of somebody coming through the door of a local
authority as a problem to be solved. I want local authorities to
think of their populations as people who have strengths, who are
assets, and who have a contribution to make, and where the job of
our services is generally to put people back in a position where
they can manage without us, rather than creating the conditions
where they can’t manage without continuing use of services.
So, I’m sorry if that sounds like a slightly more nebulous
agenda, but I think it does get at some quite fundamental things in
the way we think about local government, and we try and put local
government services in a place where they are better able to meet
the challenges of the future.
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[23]
John Griffiths: Thank you very much. That’s very
useful, I think, and very informative for the committee in the
scrutiny session that we’re currently undergoing. Did you
want to follow up on that, Sian?
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[24]
Sian Gwenllian:
Diolch yn fawr. Rwy’n cyd-fynd
efo chi, yn sicr, bod angen edrych ar adolygu’r dreth gyngor,
a’r ffordd annheg y mae hynny yn disgyn ar ein dinasyddion ni
ar hyn o bryd, ac hefyd, eich pwynt chi ynglŷn ag etholiadau a
sut rydym yn pleidleisio. Ac, wrth gwrs, byddwn yn dadlau
ynglŷn â’r angen i gael pleidleisio
cyfrannol—PR—a’r system STV. Rwy’n
meddwl bod angen inni archwilio hynny i gyd. Felly, diolch i chi am
hynny, ond i ddod yn ôl at yr ad-drefnu llywodraeth leol,
rydych wedi sôn bod rhai themâu cyffredin yn dechrau
dod i’r fei. Efallai y gallech sôn wrthym ni am ychydig
o’r rheini. Hefyd, cwestiwn mwy penodol: mi fuodd yna
ymgynghoriad efo rhanddeiliaid ynglŷn â’r Bil
drafft, wnaeth ddim pasio yn y diwedd, felly, ond byddai’n
ddiddorol gweld hynny. Rwy’n meddwl eich bod chi wedi
cyhoeddi rhywbeth ddoe; nid wyf wedi cael cyfle i edrych ar hynny.
Ond os allech chi sôn yn fras iawn, efallai, am rai o’r
themâu oedd yn dod allan o hynny.
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Sian
Gwenllian: Thank you very much. I agree with you, certainly,
that we need to look at reviewing the council tax, and the unfair
manner in which that is distributed amongst our citizens at the
moment, and also, your point about elections and how we vote. And,
of course, I would argue about the need to have proportional
representation and a single transferrable vote system. I think we
do need to look at that. So, thank you for that, but coming back to
the reorganisation of local government, you have mentioned that
there are some common themes that are starting to emerge. Perhaps
you could tell us about some of those. Also, a more specific
question: there was a consultation with stakeholders regarding the
draft Bill, which wasn’t passed in the end, but it would be
interesting to see that. I think you published something yesterday;
I haven’t had a chance to look at it. But, if you could tell
us a little about that, perhaps about some of the themes in
that.
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[25]
Mark Drakeford:
Wrth gwrs. Diolch yn fawr.
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Mark
Drakeford: Of course. Thank you very much.
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[26]
I’ll do it in English. In terms of the bigger picture
that’s emerging so far—and, Chair, just one more time
to say that what I’m doing here is I am feeding back to you
the things I am being told by others, rather than saying
‘This is my concluded position.’ But in terms of what I’ve heard so far, a
possible way ahead might be something like this: that we could
retain the 22 local authorities that we have, minus any voluntary
mergers, which local authorities themselves might still want to
pursue. We retain them as the democratic tier. That’s the
place where local authority councils are elected and that’s
where the citizen goes through the front door for services that
local authorities provide. So, there is still a local presence that
people know, recognise, and have had now for nearly 30 years. But
behind the front door, we would have a new set of regional
arrangements, where local authorities pool some of their
responsibilities and resources to discharge responsibilities that
are currently discharged just at the local level.
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[27]
One of the debates that I have had with
local authority colleagues is if we were to move to that more
regional approach, then I think that regional approach would have
to be more systematic and more mandatory than it has been in the
past, because we have a lot of regional arrangements in Wales and
every local authority I go to is able to point to some services
that they now share with some other local authorities. But it is a
very scattergun picture when you look at it: everybody is doing
something different; everybody is doing it in a slightly different
footprint. My discussion with them has been about, if this were to
be the picture, then I think that we would have to have a more
disciplined approach, and that would apply to Government as much as
to local authorities. We would have to find a way of agreeing what
these regional footprints are and then we would have to have a
shared understanding that would be true right across Wales as to
what services are going to be discharged in that way.
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[28]
So, the idea of regional working does not
seem to be much disputed. There is the economic ambition board in
north Wales, where people already act in that way. The city deal
for Cardiff has 10 local authorities acting very clearly together.
So, the idea of regional working is not disputed. The discussion
gets a little bit more uncertain when you say to people,
‘Well, we’d have to have a clearer
understanding’—and as I say, a more mandatory approach.
I don’t think at the moment that I’m attracted to what
some local authority colleagues say to me, which is, sort of,
‘Well leave it up to us. Don’t you worry; it’ll
all be fine and we’ll do it for you and you needn’t go
any further than to just give us that sense of direction.’
I’m afraid there are too many examples of where just
encouragement brings people together and, at the last minute, when
commitment to a joint course of action has to be made by everybody,
somebody decides that it’s not quite in their own particular
interest to do that and the whole scheme unravels.
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[29]
So, there’s a third strand in it,
Sian, which is to do with shared services and what we might want to
do there. Some people have argued, when I’ve been out there,
for a national shared services centre for Wales—it’s
what the health service has. Others have argued for doing that on
the regional footprint, but I do think we have to have a proper
conversation as part of the big picture as to how we move more
decisively towards a set of shared services.
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[30]
A final big-picture discussion, which
I’d be very interested in Members using here, as the
committee goes on in its work, is that, if we’re to have a
democratic tier at the level of 22, where quite a lot of what those
22 do now is in a regional arrangement, how does the citizen have a
clear line of sight in all of that? If I am a resident of
Porthmadog, how do I know where a decision about something
that’s important to me is being made? How do I know where to
go to have some influence over it? So, that democratic
answerability, I think, is another big theme in it.
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[31]
Very briefly, in terms of the
responses to the draft Bill, which were published yesterday—a
lot of very rich material there, a lot of strong support for some
of the things that were in the Bill: the general power of
competence and use of performance regime between Welsh Government
and local authorities, the strengthening of the role of local
councillors as community leaders and so on. Plenty of support for
those sorts of things. Much, much more mixed views on the map, of
course, and a mixture of views as to whether the Bill was too
prescriptive in some of the ways in which it said local authorities
should go about some of the things we were asking them to do, and a
bit of a call for Welsh Government to be clear about its
objectives, but then to leave the ‘how’—so, clear
about the ‘what’ and leaving the ‘how’
freer in the hands of local authorities to decide what works best
for them in their particular circumstances.
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[32]
John Griffiths: Okay. Diolch yn fawr, Cabinet Secretary.
Okay, Sian. Rhianon.
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[33]
Rhianon Passmore: Thank you, Chair. Firstly, I’d like
to welcome the approach that the Cabinet Secretary is taking and
the very positive moves that I think are coming out of this already
at this early stage. In terms of the reform or the review of the
finance system, you’ve mentioned one of those as your
priorities under that portfolio that you’ve just discussed.
In terms of the future finance panel and the recommendations of the
independent commission on local government finance, is there
anything there that you would feel that you are going to move
forward with? Obviously, you talked about the taxation and the
reform of council tax: is there going to be formal review of that
from your perspective at this moment in time?
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[34]
Mark Drakeford: Thank you, Rhianon. Well, the future of
finance panel was due to meet this side of the summer, and
I’ve asked them to hold off until the autumn to have their
next meeting, while I just think through how I can best use the
expertise that is around that table. As I say, I’m a bit
allergic to them and me spending a lot of time ploughing our way
through ground that I think has already been very well set out in
reports that we can draw on. So, as I say, the advantages and
disadvantages of different forms of local financial regimes, I
think, are well enough known for us not to feel we’ve got to
just do all that again.
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[35]
Therefore, I am keen to move into the next phase of all of this,
and thinking through whether the future finance panel is the best
place to get some advice on how, if, for example, we wanted to see
how a local income tax regime for Wales—what would it
actually look like? What would we need to do? What would be the
practical tasks we would have to discharge? What would be the
differential impact of that sort of regime in different parts of
Wales? How would we move to equalise, as we would inevitably need
to do, the different tax takes there would be in such a regime?
I’m sorry, I’m just keen to get on with those sorts of
practical things, and I’m keen to do it for land value
taxation as well. I’m keen to do it for a reformed, revised
council tax regime of the sort we have now, so that, by the time we
get further down this Assembly term, we will be able to share and
debate not just the abstract merits of these different ways of
doing things, but what their impact would be if we were to apply
them here in Wales. So, that’s my ambition there, and the
future finance panel, or some version of it, certainly will be
critical to that.
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[36]
I’ve seen the Tony Travers report that the WLGA commissioned.
I’m hoping to meet Professor Travers, maybe even next week,
depending on his availability and so on. I think there are some
very strong recommendations in that report. I certainly want to
talk to the WLGA about them. I think there are some potentially
problematic recommendations. It recommends, for example, 100 per
cent retention of non-domestic rates by each local authority.
I’m just looking around the table to see whether
there’s anybody here from the five out of the 22 local
authorities that would benefit from that, rather than the 17 that
would lose as a result of it. So, I’m very glad of the
report. I think it’s a very useful contribution. I’m
looking forward to meeting the author and discussing it. I think we
will need to take a nuanced response to its recommendations.
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09:45
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[37]
Rhianon Passmore:
Thank you.
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[38]
John Griffiths:
Okay, Rhianon.
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[39]
Rhianon Passmore:
Yes, that’s fine.
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[40]
John Griffiths:
Jenny.
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[41]
Jenny Rathbone:
Just going back to the way we deliver
public services, we’ve now got the Well-being of Future
Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and I just wondered where the role of
public service boards fits into all this. I appreciate it’s
hugely complicated around whether we’re going to have
regional partnerships. Are public service boards potentially one of
the ways in which we’re going to get people to deliver things
together?
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[42]
Mark Drakeford:
Thank you, Jenny. That’s a very
important question. I hadn’t mentioned public service boards,
and it is certainly true to say, Chair, that, when you start
talking about a regional level, there are a whole range of
different ways in which you could organise the governance of that.
Now, some public service boards in Wales have already decided to
act jointly. So, in the Cwm Taf area, they have one board. So, it
is one possibility, to do it that way, but there are other models
as well. When I said earlier, Chair, that my ambition would
be—and it is just an ambition at the moment—that I
could come early in the new term with a statement to the Assembly
about some of the sort of bigger building blocks, and then spend
the rest of the year talking in detail, if one of the building
blocks were to be this new regional arrangement, then the detailed
discussion would be about, ‘So, how do we now arrange all of
that?’ First of all, we would need to agree on the map, but
then we would need to agree on what are the underpinnings of it.
Are these joint committees, are these statutory things, are they
local public services boards re-engineered to discharge that
responsibility? Once again, as in the sort of complex lives we
lead, all of these things will have things to be said for them, and
all of them will have downsides as well. But a detailed
conversation, as I say, inside the Assembly with other parties and
through the committee and then with stakeholders
outside—that’s what I’d want the rest of the year
to be about: weighing up the best model.
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[43]
Jenny Rathbone:
Okay, I’ll come back to that in a
minute. I just want to pick up on the report by the auditor
general, ‘A Picture of Public Services 2015’, which was
published at the end of last year, which said very clearly that,
obviously, there are three options for local authorities: either
they can do less—and in some cases they’ve stopped
doing certain things—or they can be more efficient in the way
they deliver services, or they can do things differently. What the
report says is that there’s an awful lot further to go in
terms of doing things differently in the light of the fact that
there’s continuing high demand for services and there is not
more money. So, I just wondered how leisurely we can be about the
way we’re going to do things differently in the light of the
fact that, obviously, there is no more money, and Brexit has
obviously made that even more complicated. How urgent do you think
it is that the auditor general’s report indicates that some
local authorities might even go bust?
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[44]
Mark Drakeford:
Well, there is an urgency in the system.
There’s no doubt about that. One of the reasons why we have a
shared sense of that problem is that local authorities are fairly
alert to the pressures that they know they are facing, and I have
to be very frank with them, when I meet them, that even though
I’m very keen for the different sort of conversation with
them, I bring no bag of gold with me in which the answer to their
problems can be, ‘Give us more money’. Because the
Assembly will have less money every single year of this Assembly
term and it’s inevitable that local authorities will have to
shoulder their share of that burden. I don’t think I would
detect, from the discussions I’ve had so far, any sense of
complacency about the future. There is a lot of anxiety about the
future. There is a lot of concern about the future, and
there’s a shared sense that we’ve got to do something
together to make them more resilient. In one sense, Chair, if you
stood back: why? Why are we doing it all? What’s the whole
reform of local government about? Well, for me, it’s about
trying to grow more resilience into the system. That
regional way of working, if that is to be the way ahead, offers
more resilience in terms of service and doing things differently,
but it also offers some financial resilience as well in doing
things more efficiently. So, I don’t think there’s any
sense of sitting back. We have to get on with doing lots of these
things, but I do, at the same time, have to—. I am very keen
to be true to what I said to local authorities, you know, several
weeks ago, that I would listen to everybody before coming to a
conclusion. Although that’s hard for some people who want to
know the answer, I’m keen to give them the answer as soon as
possible, but only when everybody’s had a fair chance to make
that contribution.
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[45]
Jenny Rathbone: Where do voluntary mergers sit in this? I
appreciate your commitment to want to listen to everybody before
you come to a conclusion, but where local authorities themselves
have decided that they could benefit from merging with an adjacent
authority, do you think that still stands? Obviously, some of it
was offered up at a time when it looked like there would be some
direction coming from the Welsh Government.
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[46]
Mark Drakeford: Look, some local authorities undoubtedly
feel a bit bruised by the way that voluntary mergers were offered
up and then none of them were taken forward. So, I’m asked
that question routinely: you know, ‘Is it worth us thinking
about this again, or has the Welsh Government turned its back on
that way of doing things?’ My answer is that if we were to
decide that the 22 were to remain in place as the democratic tier,
then, for me, that does not rule out at all local authorities who
come to their own conclusion that voluntary mergers would be in
their interest and the interests of their local population, that I
would not be very willing to listen to those proposals, and, where
we agree that those proposals were in the interest of those local
populations, not simply to be neutral but actually to do what we
could to be helpful in bringing those voluntary mergers about. I
think the difference is that, last time, the Welsh Government
called for proposals. So, the impetus came from here and people
responded to it. What I’m saying is that, if the impetus
comes from local authorities in future, I’m certainly not
going to say, ‘You can’t do that’. In fact,
I’m quite happy to say that if, by their own assessment, a
merger is the right thing to do, then I’m very happy to get
behind it with them rather than just simply sit back and see what
happens.
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[47]
Jenny Rathbone: Okay. Obviously, the Williams report
highlighted huge differences in efficiencies: you know, comparing
road repairs in Powys versus road repairs in Ceredigion, there were
really marked differences. What work needs to be done now in terms
of ensuring that all local authorities are competent and capable of
delivering their responsibilities? We had three local authorities
in the last Assembly term where it was discovered that the chief
executives appeared to be writing their own pay cheques, without
councillors seeming to be aware that there clearly needed to be
very strict Chinese walls on how that was arrived at.
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[48]
Mark Drakeford: To be honest, Chair, I think there’s a
mixture of things in that question. At one end of the spectrum you
have real failure, where things that should never happen anywhere
have happened. For those sorts of things, you need a
regime—an inspection regime and an oversight
regime—that enables those things to be spotted and enables
those things to be put right. It’s not a matter, I think,
then of simply allowing the local authority itself to act. There
needs to be a regime beyond the local authority that puts failure
right. In the middle there’s a different set of issues, which
are to do with different priorities and performances, because I
think what you’ll find is that if one local authority is
better at something than the one next door, it’s probably
because it has put a different priority on that, and the one next
door is better than the other one on something else. Now, you know,
to what extent is it right for us to determine the priorities of
Ceredigion County Council? So, I’m in a slightly different
position there. We need a transparent reporting regime. We need to
make sure that local people understand what is happening, and then
local people make their democratic choices when they come to the
ballot box.
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[49]
I’m maybe a bit more attracted to some of the things that I
am told by local authorities—that the Welsh Government should
be clearer about our expectations, that there should be some things
we say to them, ‘These are what you must deliver’, and
then have a less direct managing regime about the way that they get
to that end. Where do you cut that? It’s a spectrum,
isn’t it? And where you decide the line is drawn is a matter
we will need to think through and debate. But I’m probably
slightly more to the end of the spectrum of feeling that local
authorities have democratic mandates of their own, that they must
be allowed to discharge them and that the major check and balance
in the system is not the Welsh Government breathing down their
neck—it’s their answerability to their local
populations for what they do and do not do well.
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[50]
Jenny Rathbone:
That’s pretty difficult for the
citizens to understand, though. If you think about the budget that
local authorities publish, it’s not easy to read for the
general citizen. So, how do we—? One of the challenges is to
encourage more people to want to get involved in their local
government. How can we—? You know, we face local elections
next year. How are we going to encourage more people to want to get
involved? Last time, there were one or two wards where nobody
wanted to be a representative.
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[51]
John Griffiths:
Can I just say, Cabinet Secretary, that
in as much as it’s possible, if you could give a brief answer
to that because I’m very keen, given the constraints of time,
to move on to items around equality and the Well-being of Future
Generations (Wales) Act 2015?
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[52]
Mark Drakeford:
It’s a very important question.
It’s well-rehearsed in the draft Bill. It’s taken up in
the responses that we published yesterday. Maybe one way in which
we encourage more people to get involved is for those people who do
get involved to feel that they are being given that extra
responsibility to do the things that they think will make a
difference in their communities.
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[53]
John Griffiths:
Thank you very much for that. I’m
going to move on at this stage to those matters of equality and
future generations, and I think Sian, you would like to begin as
far as equality issues are concerned?
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[54]
Sian Gwenllian: Diolch. Rydym i gyd yn
ymwybodol o’r agweddau dinistriol sydd yn digwydd yn sgil y
refferendwm, a’r twf anffodus iawn mewn troseddau casineb ac
achosion o hiliaeth yn cael eu hadrodd. Rydym wedi sôn am hyn
o’r blaen yn y Siambr, rwy’n gwybod, ond pa gamau
ymarferol y medrwch chi fod yn eu cymryd rŵan? Rwy’n
meddwl bod hwn yn ofnadwy o bwysig—ein bod ni’n taclo
hwn yn syth a bod yn gryf iawn yn ei gylch o.
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Sian Gwenllian: Thank you. We’re all very aware of the
destructive attitudes that have come about following the
referendum, and the very unfortunate growth in hate crime and
issues relating to race being reported. We have mentioned this
previously in the Chamber, I know, but what practical steps do you
think you could take now? I think it is terribly important for us
to tackle this immediately and to be very strong in that
regard.
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[55]
Mark
Drakeford: Rwy’n cytuno yn llwyr. Mae beth rydym wedi ei weld ar
ôl y refferendwm yn bwysig, rydym yn becso amdanyn nhw ac
mae’n bwysig i ni wneud pethau nawr ac yn syth i ddweud wrth
bobl sy’n byw yn y cymunedau hynny nad ydym yn fodlon o gwbl
i weld y pethau sydd wedi digwydd yn mynd ymlaen yma yng Nghymru.
So, o ran cyfrifoldebau yn y maes yma, rydym yn rhannu y
cyfrifoldebau gyda Carl Sargeant, y Gweinidog dros gymunedau. Mae e
wedi gwneud lot o bethau yn barod; mae lot o’r pethau
ymarferol yn ei ddwylo e. Mae wedi cwrdd â’r Wales Race
Forum, mae e wedi ysgrifennu mas i aelodau y race forum, y
faith communities forum ac yn y blaen. Mae’r Prif
Weinidog wedi bod mas—mae e wedi bod yn Abertawe ac yn
Llanelli; mae wedi cwrdd â phobl. Mae’r Prif Weinidog
wedi bod yn glir hefyd am safbwynt y Llywodraeth yma yng
Nghymru.
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Mark Drakeford:
I agree entirely with your comments. What
we’ve seen after the referendum are very concerning issues,
and it’s important that we do things now, immediately, so
that we can tell people living in our communities that these things
that have happened are not acceptable, and we don’t want to
see them happening here in Wales. So, in terms of the
responsibilities on this issue, we share responsibilities with Carl
Sargeant, the Minister for communities. He has taken a number of
steps already; there are a number of practical things that sit
within his portfolio. He has met with the Wales Race Forum, and
he’s written to the members of the race forum, the faith
communities forum and so on. The First Minister has been out an
about—he’s been in Llanelli and in Swansea, and
he’s met with people. The Fist Minister has been very clear
on the Government’s stance on this issue here in
Wales.
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10:00
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[56]
Ar ochr fy nghyfrifoldebau i, rwyf i
wedi cwrdd â’r WLGA bythefnos yn ôl, ac yn y
cyfarfod blynyddol, roedd lot o sôn am beth mae pobl leol
wedi’i weld a beth rŷm ni’n gallu’i wneud
gyda’n gilydd. Rwyf i
wedi cwrdd â’r Muslim Council of Wales yr wythnos
diwethaf. Cwrddais i hefyd â grŵp o bobl sy’n dod
at ei gilydd yn y maes anabledd, ac, wrth gwrs, roedden nhw’n
fy atgoffa nad yw hate crime yn rhywbeth newydd; maen nhw
wedi wynebu pethau yn y gorffennol yn y maes hwn, ac roedd lot o
syniadau ganddyn nhw i’n helpu ni hefyd.
|
In terms of my
responsibilities, I have met with the WLGA a fortnight ago, and in
the annual meeting, there was a great deal of discussion
surrounding what local people have seen and what we can do together
to tackle this issue. I’ve met with the Muslim Council of
Wales just last week. I also met with a group of people
representing disabled people, and they reminded me that hate crime
isn’t a new thing; they have faced issues such as this in the
past, and they had many ideas that could assists us also.
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[57]
Ar un lefel, rwy’n meddwl bod y
pethau rŷm ni’n eu dweud—pob un ohonom ni fel
Aelodau’r Cynulliad—yn bwysig dros ben i’r bobl
sy’n wynebu pethau fel hyn yn eu bywydau nhw. Pan maen
nhw’n ein clywed ni’n dweud pethau eraill, mae hynny yn
cael effaith arnyn nhw—effaith bositif.
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On one level, I
think the things that we say—each and every one of us as
Assembly Members—are very important to those people who are
facing these issues in their daily lives. When they hear us saying
supportive words, that can have an impact upon them—a very
positive impact.
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[58]
Ar ochr ymarferol, mae lot o bethau
sydd ddim yn nwylo’r Llywodraeth ond yn nwylo awdurdodau
lleol a phobl yn y trydydd sector. Roeddwn i jest yn meddwl, os yw
pobl eisiau trafod hwn y bore yma, rwyf wedi dod â rhywbeth
ymarferol y daeth y Muslim council i mewn ataf i. Maen nhw
wedi creu ffurflenni newydd gyda Heddlu De Cymru jest i helpu pobl
i roi adborth yn ôl. Maen nhw’n gallu rhoi’r
adborth yn ôl i’r heddlu, neu’n syth at y
Muslim council os ydyn nhw’n teimlo’n well
i’w wneud e yn y ffordd yna. Mae’r Muslim
council yn rhoi’r wybodaeth ymlaen at yr heddlu.
Dyna un neges arall rwy’n
meddwl sy’n bwysig i ddweud wrth bobl: pan mae pethau fel hyn
yn digwydd, mae’n bwysig dros ben iddyn nhw reportio pobl a
phethau i mewn i’r system er mwyn i ni gael casglu’r
wybodaeth a gwybod mwy am y broblem a gallu gwneud mwy i ddatrys y
broblem hefyd.
|
On a practical
basis, there are a number of things that aren’t within our
powers as a Government, but are with local government and the third
sector. I was just wondering, if people want to discuss this this
morning, I’ve brought with me something very practical that
the Muslim council brought to me. They’ve created new forms
along with South Wales Police just to help people to give feedback.
They can give that feedback to the police, or directly to the
Muslim council if they feel more comfortable doing it in that way.
The Muslim council will then pass that information on to the
police. That’s another important message that we emphasise:
when these things do happen, it is extremely important that they
report things into the system, so that we can gather the evidence
and know more about what’s happening and respond to resolve
those problems.
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[59]
Sian Gwenllian:
Iawn. I droi at faes arall, sef
cynrychiolaeth deg yn y broses o wneud penderfyniadau,
rydych chi’n ymwybodol,
mae’n debyg, ein bod ni’n symud yn ôl yn hytrach
nag yn symud ymlaen. Yn sicr, yn ôl adolygiad gan y Comisiwn
Cydraddoldeb a Hawliau Dynol, mae yna sawl agwedd i hyn o ran
grwpiau gwahanol ddim yn cael eu cynrychioli. Ond, yn sicr, o ran y balans dynion a merched,
rydym ni’n symud yn ôl. Mae’r Cynulliad, efallai,
yn esiampl wych lle nad yw hynny’n digwydd, ond mae hynny
oherwydd bod yna fecanwaith penodol mewn lle gan grwpiau
gwleidyddol er mwyn cyrraedd at y sefyllfa yna. Rwy’n
ymwybodol bod fy ngrŵp i angen edrych ar y mecanwaith rydym
ni’n ei ddefnyddio. Felly, rwyf i jest am wybod ychydig am
eich syniadau chi ynglŷn â hynny a sut rydym ni’n
mynd i newid y sefyllfa yma. Mae rhywun yn teimlo—rwyf i wedi bod yn cwffio dros y
materion hyn ers 40 mlynedd, ac rydym ni’n mynd yn
ôl. Wedyn, beth ydym yn
mynd i’w wneud?
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Sian
Gwenllian: Right. Can I turn, then, to another area, which is
fair representation in decision making? You are aware, I’m
sure, that we are moving backwards, if anything, rather than moving
forwards in this regard. Certainly, if we look at the review of the
Equality and Human Rights Commission, there are many aspects of
this issue in relation to different groups perhaps not being
represented. But, certainly, in relation to the gender balance, we
are regressing. The Assembly, perhaps, is an excellent example of
where that doesn’t happen, but that’s because there is
a specific mechanism in place to make sure we get to that position.
I know that my political group needs to look at the mechanism we
use. So, I’d just like to know a little bit about your ideas
in relation to that and how we’re going to change this
situation. One feels that—I’ve been fighting for this
issue for 40 years and we seem to be regressing if anything. What
are we going to do?
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[60]
Mark Drakeford:
Diolch yn fawr, Sian, am y cwestiwn.
Mae’n gymhleth ond mae’n bwysig hefyd.
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Mark
Drakeford: Thank you for that question, Sian. It is a complex
area, but it’s also extremely important.
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[61]
Some of the evidence, Chair, is contradictory; it doesn’t all
point in the one direction. We keep figures, as a Welsh Government,
on female representation on advisory boards that we have in Wales,
for example, and the balance there. We had 32 per cent of members
of advisory boards who were women on 1 April 2012 and that had
risen to 45 per cent by 1 April this year. Female representation on
executive boards was 35 per cent on 1 April 2012, and was 44 per
cent in January 2016. So, in some places, we are making progress
and in other places, we’re not doing as well as we would
like.
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[62]
We have some very practical things we’re trying to do. In the
health field, when I was health Minister, I felt we’d made
some reasonable strides in relation to gender balance. I was able
to appoint four women as chief executives of health boards and
trusts and four women as chairs of trusts and local health boards.
That was a considerable increase and improvement on the position
before, but we were very poor in bringing forward people of other
races to fill places on our boards. There’s an experiment,
which has just concluded, where we appointed up to 20 people who
made applications in the past and hadn’t been successful to
shadow boards, to be attached to members of boards. One or two of
them came and sat in on some meetings that I had with chairs of
boards so they could see how that part of the system
worked—all designed to try and put them in a better position
to make successful applications the next time vacancies came
around. People graduated, as it was called, from that programme in
March of this year and we’re busy looking to see whether that
will have made a difference to those individuals’ ability to
get to the position we are very keen to see them at.
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[63]
The Welsh Government issued a call for evidence on increasing the
representation of women and other under-represented on public
sector boards in the autumn of last year. I might ask Amelia, who
is closer to the detail, if that’s alright, Chair, just to
say something about where that has got to.
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[64]
Ms John: We had wide engagement with that and we were very
pleased with that. A summary report was published in January of
this year with all sorts of diversity of views. We’re in the
process of drawing up advice for the Cabinet Secretary to take
forward in terms of options on strengthening our approach to
greater diversification on boards and in other decision-making
roles as well.
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[65]
John Griffiths:
Thank you very much. I want to move us on
in the remaining time we have to the Well-being of Future
Generations (Wales) Act 2015, which obviously is a very important
and potentially far-reaching piece of legislation, which I know
many organisations have a very keen interest in and have great
hopes for. I wonder if you could say a little bit, Cabinet
Secretary, about where we are at the moment. Obviously, there are
considerable challenges in making the Act effective and
implementing it in a way that will produce the change that
it’s designed to achieve. I just wonder if you could give us
any early thoughts on how that will be achieved, how joining up
across Welsh Government responsibilities will take place and
perhaps whether you’ve had any early discussions with the
commissioner, particularly regarding support for public bodies in
meeting their obligations under the Act.
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[66]
Mark Drakeford:
Thank you, Chair. Well, where are we on
the well-being of future generations Act? Well, maybe I’ll
quote the commissioner because I know that she describes it, when
she’s doing her public work on it, as: ‘We’re on
a journey’. We’re at the start of the journey, really,
on the implementation of the Act. I think it’s a journey
that’s going to take us all some time to accomplish. I
haven’t met the commissioner formally as yet. I know her, of
course, from other jobs that she has done in the past, including
jobs within the Welsh Government, and I’m due to have a first
formal meeting with her this month. I’m looking forward to
the meeting because it will be an opportunity, I hope, for her to
tell me some of the things that she will have been learning from
the extensive set of engagements that she’s been involved
in.
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[67]
I was thinking, when Jenny asked me the
questions earlier, that one of the things I know the commissioner
did last week was to meet with public services boards, the network
of public services boards in Wales, and to have a concentrated
session with them on ways that public services boards can make a
difference. I’m quite sure that she will come with some ideas
of the support that we will need to be able to provide them in
discharging those responsibilities. She had a meeting earlier in
the month with a group of experts to help her think through the
future trends report that she will need to produce, and then she
met last week, again thinking of Jenny’s point, with the
Auditor General for Wales and with senior staff here to look at the
overlapping responsibilities between the audit responsibilities
that the auditor general has in relation to the Act and the
reporting that the commissioner will want to undertake. So,
I feel very confident that she has grasped her job very actively.
She’s been discussing with other commissioners as well, and,
in a sense, I think that is a bit of a model. One of the things
I’m very keen to say to Cabinet colleagues and others is that
the worst thing in the world that would happen would be that the
Act begins to be thought of as my responsibility, because, once
that happens, then the real impact of the Act, you know,
we’ve lost it really, because the Act must be
everybody’s responsibility. It must be the responsibility of
every Minister and it must be the responsibility of every civil
servant who is providing advice to Ministers to see the proposals
that they are bringing forward through the lens that the Act
produces. So, I have an overall responsibility to make sure that
that is happening, but if it gets hived off as the responsibility
of the commissioner and the responsibility of the Cabinet
Secretary, then the impact of the Act as we will want to see it
will not deliver. So, that’s why I think she’s been
right to make sure that she’s out talking to all the other
commissioners, and other people, about how they make their
contribution, and my job is to try and do the same sort of thing
inside Government.
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[68]
John Griffiths: Would you then, Cabinet Secretary, be taking
any specific steps to try and ensure that there is necessary
co-ordination between the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales)
Act 2015, the Planning (Wales) Act 2015 and the Environment (Wales)
Act 2016, for example, in terms of the action plans, the policy
statements, the indicators that will be involved in those various
pieces of legislation?
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[69]
Mark Drakeford: I think that’s very important for us
to try and accomplish on this journey—that those indicators,
those ways of measuring the success of other pieces of legislation,
have to be seen through the lens of the future generations Act.
There’s a tension here, Chair, which I’m sure people
here will be very familiar with. I tried for quite a while, during
the passage of the abortive Public Health (Wales) Bill at the end
of the last Assembly, to argue in front of the health committee
that the future generations Act, with a healthier Wales as one of
its top seven goals, was a sufficient guarantee that decisions that
would be made in the future would take into account the health
impact of those decisions. But I didn’t convince the
committee in the end, and the Bill that failed on the floor of the
Assembly on the final day had a commitment to introduce health
impact assessments as part of what we do. That will be the
nineteenth impact assessment that we are committed to carrying out.
We have 18 already statutory and non-statutory impact assessments
that are carried out within Government, and that would have been
another one.
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[70]
So, the tension is between lots of people agreeing that we need a
more coherent, co-ordinated single sort of lens in which we see
everything that we do through the future generations Act, but a
greater reluctance to give up their particular impact assessment.
So, ‘It’s fine for the others, but not for mine.’
And that’s a bit of, ‘How do we marry up the planning
Act, the environment Act, the Social Services and Well-being
(Wales) Act 2014?’ That’s the struggle, I think.
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[71]
John Griffiths: Thank you for that. Rhianon.
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[72]
Rhiannon Passmore: You’ve almost captured this: the
main challenges of implementing the Act—how would you
encapsulate them?
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[73]
Mark Drakeford: I think part of the challenges are making
sure what it doesn’t become, so it doesn’t become
simply a tick-box exercise in which some civil servant somewhere
has to write a paragraph that says, ‘And all of this is
inconsistent with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act
2015.’ I think it’s a challenge to make sure that it
doesn’t become an end in itself—that we think that the
Act is the focus. It’s not; it’s what it does to
everything else that we do that makes the difference. And, in the
end, I think it’s a culture shift that the Act has to
achieve, and that’s sometimes the hardest thing of all,
isn’t it? If it just achieves a change in a set of
procedures, we’ll have got a little way down the track, but
what we have to try and achieve is a different cast of mind, in
which people test the decisions that they make today not just on
their immediate impact in the here and now, but what that will do
to the range of opportunities and chances of people who come after
us. And that’s why the Act is such a radical Act;
that’s why it’s been mentioned in places like the
United Nations as a groundbreaking piece of legislation. But, the
delivering on it, in that culture shift, will be a journey, quite
certainly.
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[74]
John Griffiths: Okay. Well, thank you very much for that,
Cabinet Secretary, and thanks for coming along today, and thank you
to your officials as well. I think it’s been a very useful
initial exercise in hearing from you and asking some questions,
and, obviously, we’ll be returning to many of these matters
in the autumn. Thank you very much.
|
|
[75]
Mark Drakeford: Thank you very much.
|
|
[76]
John Griffiths: Diolch yn fawr.
|
|
10:15
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|
Cynnig o dan Reol
Sefydlog 17.42 i Benderfynu Gwahardd y Cyhoedd o’r
Cyfarfod
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 to Resolve
to Exclude the Public from the Meeting
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|
Cynnig:
|
Motion:
|
|
bod y pwyllgor yn penderfynu gwahardd y cyhoedd o weddill y
cyfarfod yn unol â Rheol Sefydlog 17.42.
|
that the committee resolves
to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting in
accordance with Standing Order 17.42.
|
|
Cynigiwyd y cynnig.
Motion moved.
|
|
[77]
John Griffiths: In accordance with Standing Order 17.42, the
committee is now invited to resolve to exclude the public for the
remainder of the meeting for consideration of the evidence given by
the Cabinet Secretary, and also for consideration of the
committee’s early business and forward work programme. Are
Members content? They are. Thank you very much. We will move
into—
|
|
[78]
Gareth Bennett: Sorry, Chair, just out of interest,
what’s the actual reason for the exclusion of the public and
the press?
|
|
[79]
John Griffiths: These are matters that the committee, I
think, from the nodding of agreement to move into private session,
feel are best discussed in private session, so that they’re
not a matter of public record. But, if you have a different
view—
|
|
[80]
Gareth Bennett: I don’t have a different view. I just
wondered what the specific reason was. Is there likely to be
confidential staffing matters and things?
|
|
[81]
John Griffiths: It just allows for more open discussion. Are
you content with that?
|
|
[82]
Gareth Bennett: Yes, I’m fine, thanks.
|
|
[83]
John Griffiths: Okay. Thanks very much. We’ll move
into private session.
|
|
Derbyniwyd y cynnig.
Motion agreed.
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|
Daeth rhan gyhoeddus y cyfarfod i ben am 10:16.
The public part of the meeting
ended at 10:16.
|
