Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Trefnydd – in the Senedd at 1:55 pm on 6 March 2019.

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Photo of Mr Neil Hamilton Mr Neil Hamilton UKIP 1:55, 6 March 2019

I recognise that this is a subject in which the Minister has taken a considerable interest, and I do find that reassuring, but I think we're still a long way from being reassured that this is going to produce any practical results. The auditor general also said in this report that

'The Welsh Government has not put in place systems and processes to produce information for publicly reporting on whether overall, its financial support for business contributed to achieving its intended outcomes'.

In other words, a progress report on how successful the project has been altogether.

Much of the information that has been extracted, in some cases, had to be extracted, not from the Welsh Government's own proactive publication of information, but had to be extracted by journalists and opposition political parties in freedom of information requests. For example, the online food ordering service, kukd.com, had £1 million, failed to create the promised 100 jobs; and Bad Wolf—a well-known case of course—£4 million given to the company, out of which nearly half was paid to the executives themselves. The company ultimately showed a loss of £3.1 million. So, these are cases where the taxpayer's been fleeced for no advantage whatsoever. In such cases, surely it's vitally important in order to secure public confidence in the way that public money is being spent for the Welsh Government to be as upfront and open as possible.

So, can she assure me that, as regards value for money and effectiveness, the public reporting of business grant moneys is going to be improved in future?