Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:46 pm on 18 July 2017.
First Minister, I had hoped you’d be far better briefed than that. It isn’t exclusively a matter for Cardiff and Vale health board by any stretch of the imagination. This is a health board that is in some measure of special measures from the Welsh Government—financial scrutiny, in particular, because it faces a huge financial deficit of £30 million to £35 million, at the last estimate, in this financial year. The contract that was agreed and the terms of employment in certain respects were paying £1,000 a day plus expenses, plus VAT, according to the auditor general. There is little or no transparency; there is little or no accountability. There is an inability for the auditor general to actually understand how the appointments were made, because there does seem, amongst the former senior executives of the health board, to be pointing to someone else as making the decision and just going round and round in circles. The one clear person who is involved here, because she was on the selection panel when the final appointment was made, is the health board chairman, who was sitting on that selection. Do you have confidence in the health board chairman given the accusations that are put—not the accusations, sorry—the proposals that have been put in this report from the auditor general himself? Because we have seen it time and time again: when these things run out of control, they can have disastrous consequences for the running and management of the health board in delivering services here in Cardiff and Vale.