THE COMMENTS by this blogger a couple of weeks ago that new Lib Dem leader Kirsty Williams was failing to make her mark in the publicity stakes seem to have had an effect, writes Clive Betts from the National Assembly press gallery.
First Minister Rhodri Morgan opened his signing-off press briefing before the summer recess – after a few words about the Ashes in Cardiff – with a stinging attack on the information Ms Williams had put out on the credit-card expenses incurred by officials of International Business Wales (IBW, the old WDA).
Told of this afterwards, Peter Black, more or less deputy Lib Dem leader, merely gave a big grin.
And when Ms Williams turned up to her own briefing, she immediately commented on how she had overcome that morning the charge that this same blog had raised against her.
Mr Morgan took care not to ridicule the publication of the figures, merely some of the conclusions reached. He knew full well that charges of “wasting” money have always to be taken carefully … particularly in the wake of the row over MPs’ spending.
Mr Morgan expressed extreme surprise that anyone working with IBW had ever travelled first class. I never have, or I don’t think so, he told us.
Told this, Mr Black responded that the sums for individual flights were so high that they must have been first class.
But, as his own party’s former leader, Mike German, had pointed out in response to criticism of his own expenses as an AM, flight-bookings are often undertaken by the Assembly fees office. This particular figure did indeed seem rather high, but that was what the fees office had booked …
The moral is simple – don’t let the civil service book your air flights; use an expert. But that means going out-of-house, and some on the Left in Labour and Plaid object …
With front-page lead in the Western Mail and lots of time on the BBC, Ms Williams certainly made her mark over the expenses.
But you didn’t have to listen to Mr Morgan to wonder whether this Lib Dem publicity triumph was really part of an old-style Tory don’t-spend-anything agenda.
No doubt, in true fact, it isn’t. It’s just a way of getting publicity about how to win good governance. But behind it lurks the likes of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, and they’re big friends of the Tory Party.
The high spending on air flights, Mr Morgan put down to the programme of office closures. For instance, there is now no office in South Korea. So someone has to fly in to meet a targeted businessman, so as to give the impression that Wales is there on the spot.
Mr Morgan challenged the Lib Dems to uncover through freedom-of-information requests the equivalent information for the other development bodies in the UK. Only when those figures arrived was Mr Morgan willing to be judged.
No doubt a few post restaurants were visited, and a few bars. But do you entertain businessmen bearing new factories and hundreds of jobs with no more than a mug of Nescafe in the office canteen ? Is that what the Lib Dems want ?
As long as the credit cards don’t include dancing girls who lie horizontal overnight … But that’s more like old-style industrial attraction, and no doubt the accountants in Cardiff will be keeping a very beady eye open for such fiddles.
Anyway, said Mr Morgan, in the modern world an accountant much prefers to receive a single bill from a credit card company, than have to deal with hundreds of receipts, some of them curly and coffee-stained. Why?
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