Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:01 pm on 19 March 2019.
Well, you've advocated the multiplier. We will look into that and see how effective that is and how effectively you're actually overseeing that in Wales in terms of local government. The Cardiff council chief executive is only one example of the problem that I'm highlighting today. We do have an increasing number of public sector officials in Wales on six-figure salaries. Now, we are in an era of austerity, as you keep telling us. Local councils are having to close down facilities because of their budgets being cut. But the top tier of council officials seem to be some kind of protected species who are still allowed to take home ridiculous salaries. We have the nonsense of Caerphilly council, also run by Welsh Labour, where a dispute over pay to three senior officers has led to the council wasting more than £4 million. We have a chief executive there who hasn't come into work for six years, and he's being paid £130,000 a year to do precisely nothing. And still, the situation hasn't been resolved. First Minister, how do you tally your constant wailing about austerity with the fact that we have a tier of fat-cat bureaucrats in Wales in the public sector, which is overseen by you, who are making such extraordinarily high sums of money?