Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:14 pm on 24 January 2017.
The Member is probably wise in not repeating those allegations outside of the Chamber, I expect. He has an unhappy history of libel trials, as we know. From our perspective, all we got—it was just a stream of consciousness as far as I can tell. In terms of appointments, they are done openly. He has criticised, for example, the appointment of the ombudsman; the ombudsman was appointed with a Plaid Cymru Member on the board that appointed the ombudsman. The appointments are made by the Assembly, not by Government, in many, many cases. We have had instances where we’ve investigated fraud; that is inevitable, I suppose, whenever you get a large organisation in being, and those investigations are taken forward regardless of who is the subject of those investigations. If he’s suggesting that, somehow, Welsh Government advisers have been involved in fraud, which is the tone of his investigation, then he needs to make his allegations known to the appropriate authorities, or provide evidence to back that up. This is not the current US Government that we’re talking about here; this is Wales.