To consider any questions the appropriate notice for which
have been given under Section
4.19 of the Constitution.
Minutes:
Question from Councillor Sion Jones
“What is the Leader’s view on
wasting public money on external
consultants?”
Answer from Councillor
Dyfed Edwards, Council Leader
(The Leader’s written response had been circulated to members in advance.)
“It is likely
that all of us in the Chamber can state that we are
not keen to see public money being
wasted in any situation. I believe that all of us have work
to do to ensure that any public expenditure
is undertaken in the most appropriate and efficient manner. As the answer outlines,
there is always a need to enquire about and scrutinise
the Council’s expenditure and indeed that
is the work of the scrutiny
committees and the Audit Committee and the Audit Committee
has decided to undertake a piece of work to examine expenditure on external consultants and that report
will be available for members in
due course. I do not anticipate what the outcome of that work will be but
I have said that there is a need for us
to commission work from external bodies and external agencies
to assist us in the process. The examples I think about are those
where the Council seeks to create change. Clearly, we must have an
independent person to be involved
in that work
and we should not support both sides
of the argument at the same
time. That is not possible. The presence of independent people in the situation is required to ensure fairness for everyone
and of course expenditure is associated with that. Let us see what
results are achieved by the working group that
is looking at this.”
A supplementary question by Councillor Sion Jones
“The Leader states in his written
response that if the specialist skills or necessary
capacity is not available within the Council, that we will be using external consultants. I think that that
is quite insulting. We have 7000 members of staff working for Gwynedd Council and I believe
that there are fantastic skills
in this Council
to deal with the work that is required
by these external consultants. Is the Leader willing to apologise for wasting
public money?”
Answer from Councillor
Dyfed Edwards, Council Leader
“It is not insulting to recognise that we do not always have all the skills. Is this not the reality of the situation? We are not all experts on everything. There are situations
where we require specialist support and advice. In
that situation, is not ensuring that we receive the appropriate and suitable advice
the responsible thing to
do? Indeed, unless we do that, we could be
challenged. The Wales Audit Office would
be after us and there would be situations where we could be challenged. There is also a bit of reality involved, i.e. as we
reduce the workforce, we do not have the capacity to do everything. That is impossible. There are not enough hours in the day to do everything and that is a
by-product of facing cuts which means that we reduce staff numbers. With regards to public expenditure, I am not in favour
of wasting money, whether it be at home or in any public organisation, and we
must keep a close eye on it. If you want
to look at public expenditure, and coming to a conclusion about the efficiency
and effectiveness of that expenditure is a matter for everyone, visit the
website of the Wales Audit Office. It is
noted on the website what every public body has spent on consultants. The Welsh Government has spent millions on
consultants. I am not saying that that is
wasting money, but I draw your attention to the need for public bodies to spend
money outside that body. I am not going
to apologise for what the Council has done in terms of expenditure. Let us look at the report that is going to
specifically examine expenditure on consultants in detail. Let us come to conclusions then. How can we come to a conclusion about the pattern of
the Council’s expenditure without seeing the facts? I am astounded that a member can stand in the Chamber
and make such a statement when he is a member of the committee that has
commissioned the work! Was the member
present at the committee when a decision was made to commission the work?
Perhaps he was not – no he was not! The Committee has commissioned the work and let us see
what the result of that work will be before coming to any conclusions. Doing anything else would be total madness, if I may
add.”