CARWYN INQUIRY ‘TO BE HELD IN PRIVATE’
THE public inquiry into how Carwyn Jones handled his decision to sack his cabinet colleague Carl Sargeant will held in private and will not report until until the end of this year.
It means that Mr Jones is likely to have stood down as Welsh Labour leader and First Minister by the time the report by senior QC Paul Bowen has delivered his findings.
Carl Sargeant was sacked from Mr Jones’ cabinet on November 3 and is believed to have taken his own life four days afterwards. A number of investigations were launched but the only remaining one is being led by Mr Bowen. The inquiry was announced by the First Minister’s spokesman who said a senior QC should lead it. They had said the inquiry must “answer the questions that need to be asked” and have criticised delays in the process.
Mr Sargeant’s family say there were “serious failings in following the correct procedures practices and protocols” and a “complete abdication of responsibility and duty of care that was owed to Carl”.
Mr Jones announced at the Labour conference he would stand down this autumn and a new Welsh Labour leader and First Minister in place in December.
In his speech announcing he would stand down, Mr Jones said he intended to “give every answer to every question”.
Mr Bowen has today announced the scope of his investigation.
He will “conduct an investigation into the First Minister’s actions and decisions in relation to Carl Sargeant’s departure from his post as Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children and thereafter.”
He said: “I intend to carry out a thorough and independent investigation into the First Minister’s actions and decisions in relation to Carl Sargeant’s departure from his post. “I hope that anyone who can provide evidence relating to the Investigation’s terms of reference will do so fully and as soon as possible, so that my team and I are able to complete all phases of our work within the sixmonth timescale set for us.
“Given the sensitive nature of this investigation, my hearings will not be held in public or open to the media and I do not intend to make further comment in advance of publication of my report towards the end of the year. I would particularly like to thank Mr Sargeant’s family for their patience and participation to date at what must be an extremely difficult time for them.”
The Investigation intends to complete its work by the end of the year, when a report will be tabled in the Welsh Assembly and published.
A website about the inquiry has gone live and lists the “preliminary issues” which they are inviting people to read before deciding if they have evidence to provide which could help the inquiry.
CARWYN Jones has compared the UK Government’s approach to the Brexit negotiations to a boxing match between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Anthony Joshua and called for a general election if the Conservatives cannot unite.
Mr Jones also stamped on calls for a second referendum on whether Britain should remain in the EU – but said there could be a public vote on the exit deal.
The First Minister went to London to deliver a speech on Britain’s departure from the EU a day after 75 Labour MPs defied Jeremy Corbyn and voted for Britain to stay in the European Economic Area (EEA). Cardiff North Labour MP Anna McMorrin and Gower’s Tonia Antoniazzi stepped down from their roles as parliamentary aides in order to vote for Britain staying in this trading block.
The Welsh Labour leader sought to turn the spotlight on Tory divisions and gave a scathing account of the negotiations so far: “It’s been like watching Jacob ReesMogg square up to Anthony Joshua – hot air versus tough reality.”
When asked if he expects a general election this year, he said: “It really depends on how effectively the Conservative party can actually cover up the massive cracks that are appearing in its own structure. There are massive differences within the Tory party and I don’t know whether those cracks can be papered over.
“If they can’t, let’s have a general election and let the people decide.”
But he attacked the argument people should vote again on whether the UK should leave the EU. He argued the 1997 referen- dum to create the Assembly – which was won by just 6,721 votes – had not been rerun and neither should the Brexit vote.
He said: “I remember in 1997 when people argued for a second referendum then... I argued against it, saying, ‘Look, it’s close but the people have spoken.’”
However, he suggested that people could have a say on the exit deal.
He said: “If we end up in a situation, though, where there’s no support in the different parliaments of the UK for the deal and there is again a general election which is again inconclusive, I think actually then [you] start looking at a referendum on the deal. Because at the end of the day people have decided the direction they want to go in but they also have the right to decide how fast the car is going to travel as well.”
Commenting on the resignation of the Gower and Cardiff North MPs from their junior roles, he said: “It’s inevitable that if you vote that way then you have to stand down from that position.
“They’ll have voted according to their consciences but that’s accepted practice that where people want to do that then have to resign the position they hold in shadow government.”
He declined to criticise Mr Corbyn’s leadership on Brexit. When asked if the UK Labour leader’s hopes for a bespoke UK-EU customs union could be negotiated in the time that remains, he said this would be “difficult” but “that doesn’t mean of course by mutual agreement that the time period can’t be extended if that’s what’s required to get the right deal”.
Mr Jones dismissed the suggestion that the coming Labour leadership election could lead to instability as Wales
prepares for Brexit. He said: “No, there’ll still be a First Minister. The way it works is that there won’t be a leader of Welsh Labour, that’s true, from the end of September onwards but there will be a First Minister.
“I’ll be there; there’ll still be a government. We did this back in 2009.”
In his speech, he restated his fear that a botched Brexit could lead to the end of the UK.
He said: “I’ve always maintained that, handled badly, Brexit contains the seed of the UK’s own destruction as a constitutional entity – which I don’t want to see.”
The Bridgend AM warned of the “very real possibility of a catastrophic no deal Brexit” and called for Theresa May to take a new approach, saying: “We’ve got to go back to the drawing board, rub out the red lines and argue for a dynamic and positive relationship with the single market.”
He said a short-term hit to the economy was not a price worth paying for Brexit: “I am not prepared to accept a decline in our economy, a decline in our living standards, in incomes, a decline in investment purely to satisfy the ideological desires of some. As a politician, as a socialist, as someone who’s seen the damage to generations of Welsh citizens of wholesale closures of industries, I know what my answer is – I am not prepared to see that.”
Insisting that single market access must be the priority, he said: “Why would we put walls up when none previously exist? That’s bad for Welsh business, that’s bad for Welsh jobs.”
ALTHOUGH perhaps not immediately apparent, the letters from David Pritchard, Andrew Nutt and myself grouped together on June 11 have a common base.
The sort of ignorant superiority portrayed by Chris Grayling is a hangover from a British Empire that has long since been as violently dismantled as it was assembled and administered. Of course, the earliest violent exit from the “Empire” was that of what is now the United States, with which we are joined at the hip by the soundbite “the special relationship”. That might have been the case if the USA were populated exclusively by people from “the old country”. But it is a melting pot of people from around the world: they include people whom the British state either uprooted from Africa and enslaved in the Americas, or whose laissez-faire policy saw it stand idly by as it happened.
In any event, even the people from “the old country” had to fight their way out of the Empire and there was a heavy economic price to pay for the USA’s intervention in the world wars. There might be another as the current President implements his “Put America First” policy.
On that front alone the certainties of trade outside the European Union trumpeted by the Brexiteers look less certain. The uncertainty is increased when taking account of the history of Britain’s treatment of the powerhouses of modern-day China and India.
The only certainty is that on the night, come what may, those modern-day laissez-faire politicians and multi-millionaires who promoted and funded Brexit will be all right Jack: sadly, the same might not be the case for many of those they convinced that it would be.