4. Will the First Minister make a statement on the recent Wales Audit Office reports regarding unlawful payments in Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire County Councils? OAQ(4)1496(FM)
Carwyn Jones: I welcome the publication of the reports, and of course it is important that those councils deal with those reports with the utmost seriousness.
Janet Finch-Saunders: I am glad, First Minister, that you mentioned ‘serious’, because, as regards Pembrokeshire, the council failed to have regard to the public sector equality duty; the decision constituted indirect discrimination. Senior officers who had a disqualifying personal pecuniary interest in the decision participated in the decision-making process. As regards Carmarthenshire, the report was drafted and presented by a senior officer who had a disqualifying personal pecuniary interest. In addition, the executive board was also unlawful. First Minister, those are pretty serious findings, and show a total lack of corporate governance within our local authorities. I can tell you that this has cast shock waves now, not just across Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire, but within my local authority and authorities in north Wales where they actually do practice good governance. There are calls for the chief executive to be sacked. First Minister, will you show strong leadership as opposed to your Minister for Local Government and Government Business and support the calls for some real action on this, so that we can restore public confidence in our local authorities?
Carwyn Jones: Yes, we will show strong leadership. It is inappropriate that councils are paying as they are. We also saw it in the ‘Western Mail’ this morning. I am not angling for a pay rise, but I suspect that people will be surprised to see that the chief executive of Pembrokeshire County Council earns £65,000 a year more than the First Minister of Wales. That is very difficult for it to justify. There are serious questions that councils have to answer in terms of the way that they have paid senior officers. As a Government, we will give further consideration to what needs to be done in order to restore public confidence.