Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:48 pm on 28 March 2023.
First Minister, my question was relatively straightforward: why didn't the Welsh Government offer the support when it was requested back last September? I've used two of my three questions and I don't feel that we've advanced any further forward in trying to find out why the Minister or the director general did not respond to that direct—and these are the words of the chairman—that direct escalation of matters to the Welsh Government. That stands on the record, those are his comments, not my comments. I've relayed them to you, and we don't seem to have made much progress towards finding an explanation for why Welsh Government did not respond to those comments. But, you've identified the audit report as being the flashpoint for intervention by the Welsh Government and making sure that the board changed and the chairman was removed. In the same article, the chairman highlighted that there were, in his words, clandestine moves to recruit replacement board members to form a new board at least four weeks prior to the publication of the audit report. So, if this clandestine recruitment was going on, can you today tell us when the recruitment process began to find new board members, even though the existing board was in place? And what would that do to give confidence that the Government was working with the then board to rectify matters in north Wales?