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The
city region has tremendous opportunity. I’d encourage all those looking at a
city deal for Swansea bay to put that bid in before the Chancellor’s autumn statement.
It is important that local government work together in order for that to
happen. We’ve seen this happen in the capital region. The same thing needs to
happen in Swansea bay as well. But, yes, as part of the work that the local
government Secretary has been carrying through in the summer, we are looking
at how best to regionalise the delivery of services across Wales where that
is the most effective way of doing so.
Local Government
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16:11
- Mike Hedges
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Can I
also thank the Cabinet Secretary for his statement? Councils in Britain are
the largest in Europe, as the Cabinet Secretary knows. John Stewart has
said
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‘the
average size of a British local authority is 10 times the average size of
local authorities in the rest of Europe.’
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At a
Gorwel meeting last week, chaired by David Melding, it was stated that
Slovenia, a country roughly the size of Wales, has approximately 10 times
the number of councils.
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Do
large authorities perform better? Birmingham, which is the largest
authority in Britain and one of the largest, if not the largest in Europe,
has had serious problems with its social services. In Wales, three local
authorities—Swansea, Cardiff and Rhondda Cynon Taf—make up approximately a
quarter of the population of Wales. Do these authorities perform better
than medium-sized and smaller authorities? I have yet to see any evidence
to say so. If the Minister can identify evidence that I can see to show
that larger authorities are performing better, I’d be very pleased to see
it. If we look at health, is there any evidence that the two largest health
boards, Betsi Cadawaladr and Cardiff and the Vale, perform better than the
others?
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There
are two things that are guaranteed to annoy me when I hear them on the
radio. The one is, ‘Wales is the same size as Birmingham,’ despite the fact
it’s three times the size, and the other one is that larger organisations
are better than smaller ones, despite the inability to provide any evidence
to support that. Of course, before the 1970s’ reorganisation, there were
lots of little local authorities in Wales: Llwchwr Urban District Council,
Gower Rural District Council, and, perhaps the most famous of all, Tredegar
Urban District Council, where Nye Bevan was a member.
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Big
can also mean bureaucracy, big can mean inefficiency and big can mean
remoteness. With local authorities, there’s a right size for different
things. If you look at planning, for example, the right size for
development control is nowhere near the right size for a structure plan.
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Can I
raise two points and questions on what the Minister has put forward—
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16:13
- Y Dirprwy Lywydd / The Deputy Presiding Officer
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You
can ask two questions, Mike, very briefly, but you can’t make points.
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16:13
- Mike Hedges
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Okay.
Can I ask two questions very briefly? [Laughter.] Why do we want to have a
city region and another region for services? Surely, the city region is the
footprint. I think that you might want to sub-divide within the footprint,
but having it across—. Swansea and Neath Port Talbot will be called Janus,
because we look east for some things and west for the others. It just does
not make a lot of sense and it doesn’t work for building up relationships,
where we work with Bridgend for some things, Carmarthenshire for others.
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Can I
say that, of course, in terms of health, which is a part of the public
service, although not under your remit, the ARCH programme, for example,
has started to get the area to the west of Swansea working with Swansea?
The final question I’ve got is that we’ve seen in health a situation where
we’ve had primary and secondary health put together: has that actually
worked in getting them to work closer? I think that the answer most people
will come up with is, ‘No, it hasn’t.’ I think that what it has done is
move money from primary care into secondary care, and I don’t think that’s
what people particularly wanted. You’ve only got to listen to primary care
practitioners, who’ll tell you exactly how badly done by they are and that
all the money goes into hospitals.
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So,
can I finish by saying: will the Minister look again at having the two-area
model and look towards the city region as the basic footprint for public
services?
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16:15
- Mark Drakeford
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Could
I thank Mike Hedges, who I always listen to very carefully on these
matters? I’ve said to him before: it’s never been a claim of mine that size
is the determining factor in the success of public services; nor, however,
do I think that size is an irrelevant factor in the way that things are
organised. Size does bring some advantages in some aspects. So, I don’t
rule it out, but I don’t think it’s the factor that overrides all others.
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I
said in my statement that, when I said to you that you could have three
city regions discharging some functions and another set of regional
arrangements for other functions, that was what was said to me during the
visits that I have made since May and June of last year. I’m not wedded to
that dual model, and I’m very happy to have further detailed discussions.
He says to me that the city region is the footprint. Well, is it the
footprint for social services in the Cardiff capital city region, where
there are 10 local authorities, with three different health boards serving
some very diverse populations? I don’t know. I just put the question there
for us to discuss.
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Finally,
the point that I think he makes about primary and secondary healthcare
being brought together in single health boards is that organisational
boundaries do not, by themselves, dissolve professional boundaries. In that
sense, I certainly do agree with him.
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