Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:43 pm on 7 February 2023.
Minister, there are businesses the length and breadth of the country who apply to Welsh Government and the UK Government for support, sometimes for several hundred pounds, sometimes for thousands, sometimes for tens of thousands, if not millions. Here we have an intervention by the Welsh Government of £4.5 million where you cannot pinpoint a single note or minute of the interaction between the potential beneficiary of that intervention and the Government officials that were making decisions to advise the Minister at that time. In fact, the same Government officials commissioned the valuers and the legal firm to undertake the work without ministerial advice. Their advice was finished before the Minister actually said that they could spend the £60,000 on the procurement of that service.
My point is that many businesses the length and breadth of Wales—and you'll be familiar with this from your postbag as a constituency Member—bemoan the fact of all the level of information they have to provide to support grant application. We understand that there have to be the checks and balances, because it's public money. But why, in this case, was there not a single—not a single—note that could be drawn on to show the level of interaction and what was discussed, given the very quick intervention and turnaround time that the Government used in this particular aspect of purchasing the farm, which the auditor general highlights. There was no time pressure, because there wasn't another purchaser chasing the property. It's in his report. I can see the Minister turning round saying, 'That's not true.' It's in the auditor general's report. He could not find any other time constraint other than the self-imposed time constraint of Welsh Government. So, I ask you again: what examples in your ministerial career can you think of where such an interaction would not have had a minute, a note, a record so that that could be held in the accountability and transparency process and people can feel that they will get a fair crack of the whip when they apply for Government funding?