5. 5. Plaid Cymru Debate: The Ministerial Code

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:39 pm on 29 June 2016.

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Photo of Neil McEvoy Neil McEvoy Plaid Cymru 3:39, 29 June 2016

Diolch. What we have here is a democratic Chamber where we all should come and listen to people giving their points of view, no matter what the points of view are, no matter which party, and I ask every single Member to respect that.

Right, moving on. So, if there is a dispute, as I mentioned earlier, there is absolutely no recourse for any member of the public, any Member here, and that cannot be right in a democratic chamber. What we have here is a huge, huge constitutional gap, where, potentially, any First Minister can come here and say what the hell he or she likes—anything at all. There is absolutely no recourse for anybody here. That cannot be right. So, what I’d like to finally say is that, as well as ministerial codes and as well as codes of conduct for Members, what we need here is a way to hold the First Minister to account constitutionally, because I know from my experience, both as a Member of the public and as a Member of this Chamber, that there is no way of doing that. Any First Minister can come here and they can potentially mislead this Chamber; they can potentially lie and there’s nothing we can do about it. That is not right.