Government in ‘transparency’ row
THE Welsh Government has been ordered to apologise for a “lack of transparency” after failing to declare the fact one of the members of a body overseeing its work was a prominent Labour politician.
The Regulatory Board for Wales was set up by Climate Change Minister Julie James to advise her on how her civil servants were regulating state-supported housing associations.
A recent investigation by the Commissioner for Public Appointments found that the Welsh Government had failed to publish the “significant political activity” of one of the board’s members.
It is understood the Labour leader of Newport council, Jane Mudd, is the person referenced in the report.
According to the report, the Welsh Government did publish her appointment when she was originally appointed – but failed to provide any public declaration to the board.
The report stated “there was a lack of transparency by the Welsh Government in regard to these reappointments which were made by ministers but were not publicly announced”.
It added the reason given by the Welsh Government for not publishing is there were “resource constraints” and “having decided not to use its limited resources to send reappointment letters, the administrative procedures that normally follow to comply with the transparency provisions in the Code were not discharged.”
The Commissioner also criticised the government for “a confusing account of the status of the reappointments during the course of his investigation”, adding that a “decision was made to not undertake the usual conflicts of interest or due diligence checks in advance of the reappointments, due again to resource constraints”.
Criticisms over a lack of transparency continued, with the Commission saying there was an “opacity around these reappointments”.
The Commissioner recommends that the “Welsh Government consider the lessons learned”, and mitigate the risk of this case reoccurring.
The Western Mail approached Cllr Mudd and she declined to comment.
A Welsh Government spokeswoman said: “We are considering the report.”
The board is no longer running after being dissolved by Ms James.