Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance – in the Senedd at 1:48 pm on 10 October 2018.
Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. You clearly knew there were problems because you did order that review, and of course it's not just me who's being critical, it's the auditor general as well, who found that public bodies only spent £150 million with NPS in 2015-16 and £234 million the year after that. In addition, although the NPS made savings for the councils and other organisations that use its services, they lost millions of pounds on their own budget and had to be bailed out—I use that term again, not lightly—by your Government. Further still, they've been criticised by a report from the Assembly's Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee for overestimating the value of food contracts to suppliers.
So, can I ask you, what emergency management procedures and best practice measures have you now put in place in relation to Welsh Government public procurement operations to ensure that lessons have been learnt from these failings and that procurement practices in Wales from this autumn going forward see drastic improvement? Because it's not good enough to simply say to the public that all is fine and as it should be when it clearly isn't.