Pressure is growing on Wales' First Minister Mark Drakeford over comments he made to the Senedd claiming the Welsh Government had acted on advice from the auditor general when it took a health board out of special measures.
Mr Drakeford has denied misleading the Senedd when he claimed this year, amid all the renewed troubles the Betsi Cadwaladr health board is facing, that the original decision to remove it from special measures in 2020 had been taken on the advice of the auditor general.
Yet Plaid Cymru has now released a further letter it has been sent by the Auditor General Adrian Crompton in which he says he wrote explicitly to the Welsh Government in 2020 to ask ministers to stop claiming they were acting on his advice. The letter states: " I wrote to the Welsh Government to indicate that it was unhelpful for the Minister to imply that he had received direct advice from me or my staff on the escalation status of the Health Board. In making those representations I emphasised that neither I nor Audit Wales staff acting on my behalf can directly advise Ministers".
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As WalesOnline reported earlier this week, the original claim that the decision to lift the health board out of special measures had been taken on advice from the auditor general was made in November 2020 by then health minister Vaughan Gething. At the time, there were accusations that this was a cynical move in order to generate good publicity ahead of the Senedd election in 2021. Plaid leader Adam Price called the decision "reckless" and "premature".
Despite the letter to ministers from Mr Crompton immediately afterwards, First Minister Mr Drakeford repeated this claim in the Senedd this year. When challenged about the decision after Betsi was put back into special measures, Mr Drakeford told the Adam Price that the original decision to take the health board out of special measures had been taken “because we were advised that that is what we should do by the auditor general."
Rhun ap Iorwerth MS, Plaid Cymru spokesperson for health and care said: "We have a clear statement, on the parliamentary record, from the former Health Minister, and more recently the First Minister that the decision to take Betsi Cadwaladr health board out of special measures was because of advice received by the auditor general, along with other participants in the so-called tripartite discussions that were held at the time. The First Minister can deny this all he likes, but it’s there as clear as day – he refers specifically to advice received from the auditor general. If this is not true, then the record must be corrected.
“We have a letter from the Auditor General to say that this statement was not true. We now have evidence that the Auditor General felt it necessary to write to the Welsh Government after Vaughan Gething’s comments in November 2020, to underline how ‘unhelpful’ it was to imply that such advice had been received from the audit office when it had not. Crucially - not only did the Welsh Government not heed the concerns raised by the Auditor General in 2020, the First Minister went on to repeat the same misleading statement in Senedd just this year.
“Caught in the middle of this row are the patients and staff of Betsi Cadwaladr, who have certainly suffered from the health board being taken in, and out, and then back in to special measures."
Despite calls for him to correct the record, Mr Drakeford doubled down on his position that he hadn't misled the Welsh Parliament. "I certainly have not misled the Senedd," he told BBC Wales. He said the process on special measures was a "complicated system for those who are not used to it" adding "It begins with the auditor general, the civil service and Health Inspectorate Wales coming together to discuss whether or not an organisation needs to have any extra intervention. Separately, civil servants then advise ministers and the third step in this chain is ministers decide." He concluded that the inspectorate "and the auditor general do not directly advise ministers, but the process does start with them".
He said he intends to write to the Llywydd, the Senedd's presiding officer, "setting this process out for people so nobody need to be confused in future."
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