Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:58 pm on 5 July 2017.
Mark Drakeford
Labour
1:58,
5 July 2017
Well, Chair, there are—and quite properly—established procedures that govern the way that Welsh Ministers can intervene when things go astray in local government. That often relies on advice from the regulators, including the Wales Audit Office, and where we have had to intervene, where there have been failing education departments or failing social services departments, those protocols and those ways of doing things I think have generally been effective. They’ve allowed us to identify the places where Intervention is needed, and very importantly, they include a pathway out of intervention as well. So, where local authorities are able to demonstrate that they have put right the things that had been identified, then we’re able to withdraw and allow them to resume those responsibilities, and we see that being done successfully at the level of individual services. And in the case of Ynys Môn, in the case of the council as a whole, a successful recovery by that local authority. What I would say to Gareth Bennett is that I think it is very important to learn the lessons from that and, where we have other instances where processes may appear to go on for too long and be difficult to reach a resolution, then we need to look back at that and see whether those processes need to be tightened up and, where they rely on the ability of Welsh Government to intervene, to make sure that those circumstances are clear and cannot be avoided.
The cabinet is the group of twenty or so (and no more than 22) senior government ministers who are responsible for running the departments of state and deciding government policy.
It is chaired by the prime minister.
The cabinet is bound by collective responsibility, which means that all its members must abide by and defend the decisions it takes, despite any private doubts that they might have.
Cabinet ministers are appointed by the prime minister and chosen from MPs or peers of the governing party.
However, during periods of national emergency, or when no single party gains a large enough majority to govern alone, coalition governments have been formed with cabinets containing members from more than one political party.
War cabinets have sometimes been formed with a much smaller membership than the full cabinet.
From time to time the prime minister will reorganise the cabinet in order to bring in new members, or to move existing members around. This reorganisation is known as a cabinet re-shuffle.
The cabinet normally meets once a week in the cabinet room at Downing Street.
An intervention is when the MP making a speech is interrupted by another MP and asked to 'give way' to allow the other MP to intervene on the speech to ask a question or comment on what has just been said.