The Western Mail has highlighted an important omission in the publication of Assembly Members’ expenses, namely some openness on what Ministers are spending as they go about their buisiness. It is all taxpayers’ money after all.
The paper tells us that more than £100,000 has been spent by Assembly Government ministers on overseas visits since May 2007:
Highlights of ministerial expenditure include:
£19,425 spent on a visit by Deputy First Minister and Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones to New York and Boston;
The £10,107 cost of First Minister Rhodri Morgan’s visit to Washington DC for the launch of a festival celebrating Welsh culture at the Smithsonian;
A £7,167 visit to Hong Kong, above, by Carwyn Jones, pictured left, for a Commonwealth Law Conference.
On each trip the politician was accompanied by at least one member of staff.
Kirsty Williams comments: “The question is not how much has been spent on each trip, or by each minister but whether Wales is benefiting from these activities. The public must have confidence that ministerial travel is travel with a clear purpose and within reasonable cost, not least when public budgets are set to be slashed dramatically by the Labour and Plaid ministers involved.”
Conservative AM, Nick Ramsey however hits the nail on the head on the wider point: “Labour and Plaid Cymru ministers seem more reluctant to abide by the same sort of openness rightly expected of ordinary AMs. People should not have to ask the Assembly Government for information about things like ministerial trips abroad. It should be automatically available.
“The public should be able to expect this information is freely available without having to go through the process of submitting an Freedom of Information request and relying on ministers to decide whether or not to release all the material they ask for.”
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