When the National Assembly for Wales - now the Senedd - was established in 1999, we were told that it would mark a break with the political culture of Westminster.
Instead of a closed-down form of democracy where the term “official secret” had an absurdly wide application, and where openness and transparency were regarded by insiders as obstacles to good governance, a new era was to be launched in which public engagement would be paramount.
A few years later the Senedd was built in Cardiff Bay, its very design intended to reinforce the principle of openness. It’s a matter of enormous regret that now - 23 years after the institution was launched - there are very real concerns about the way things have turned out.
Read more: Mark Drakeford orders inquiry into ministers' dinner with Green Man festival boss and lobbyist
I was tipped off by a contact that Climate Change Minister Julie James and Education Minister Jeremy Miles had met Fiona Stewart, the owner of the Green Man Festival, at a dinner party hosted at her Cardiff home by the lobbyist Cathy Owens, managing director of Deryn Consulting. My informant even knew the date of the dinner - May 23.
This made it easy for the Welsh Government to check whether the information I had been given was accurate or not. It was accurate.
The festival was at the centre of a huge controversy after the Welsh Government decided to buy a farm seven miles away from its site for £4.25m. Purchasing Gilestone Farm, it was argued, would help the festival stay in Wales - although how that would be achieved was left rather vague and in any case the transaction was authorised by Economy Minister Vaughan Gething without sight of a business plan.
When Mr Gething’s Cabinet colleagues attended the dinner with Ms Stewart at Ms Owens’ home, the business plan had not been delivered by Green Man to the government. We do not, of course, know for sure what was discussed over dinner.
Neither Ms James nor Mr Miles have disclosed publicly what was talked about. Ms Stewart has declined to comment and Ms Owens has not responded to messages. Nevertheless, it would be stretching credulity to believe that no mention was made of the Gilestone Farm purchase.
Whatever the truth may be, the fact is that the Ministers did not have to declare that they had met with Ms Owens as the dinner was perceived as an “informal” occasion. Had it been a formal meeting, they would have been in breach of the Ministerial Code, which states clearly that such interactions should not take place. The distinction seems nonsensical: a meeting is a meeting.
If it’s right that ministers should be barred from meeting lobbyists who are pushing a client’s case, that should apply to both formal and informal meetings. Indeed, it’s possible to argue that it’s more reprehensible to meet informally, because minutes won’t be taken and there will therefore - at least potentially - be less constraints about what is discussed.
It’s good that First Minister Mark Drakeford has ordered an inquiry into the ministers’ meeting with Ms Owens and into whether the Ministerial Code needs to be updated.
These are not purely theoretical concerns, but touch on whether it was appropriate for the Welsh Government to spend millions of pounds on buying a farm supposedly for the benefit of a music festival being held several miles away - especially before a business case had even been submitted.
The Usk Valley Conservation Group has put a series of questions to the government about the purchase in which it alleges that the farm regularly floods, that it’s in an internationally important area for wildlife, that there could be a negative impact on the government’s own curlew recovery project, that insufficient environmental assessments were carried out, that the purchase had been kept secret from the local community, that the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority had not been consulted before the purchase and that a third party held sporting rights on the land.
Opposition politicians have also been expressing major concerns. Mabon ap Gwynfor, Plaid Cymru’s spokesman on agriculture and rural affairs, said: “It cannot be right that government Ministers have furtive meetings with interested parties at such a critical time.
“We need a full disclosure of any notes taken at that meeting, and complete transparency around the contents of those discussions.”
And he made a pertinent and wider point: “This will drain public confidence in the government, and the First Minister must accept that this was a breach that will not be tolerated, and set an example.”
Meanwhile the Welsh Conservatives have called for the Senedd’s Standards of Conduct Committee, which is examining the way lobbying works in Wales, to include the Green Farm controversy in its inquiry.
Ideally, the inquiry should look retrospectively at past interactions between lobbyists and the Welsh Government. We can only hope that the current inquiry is more thorough than earlier ones that have been carried out.
A note on the committee’s web page states: “The Fifth Senedd Standards of Conduct Committee considered lobbying, but did not make any changes to the current arrangements. In previous Senedd inquiries, it was not perceived that there was any particular lobbying problem in Wales at that time.”
But there is a lobbying problem, and it stems from a lack of transparency. Wales deserves an open democracy but it doesn’t have one at present. The Senedd and the Welsh Government between them must as a first step establish a lobbyists’ register, so we know who is pushing the interests of whom. But it needs to go further.
Any contact between a Minister and a lobbyist - whether in formal or informal meetings or by telephone, social media or any other form of communication - should be recorded. The fee paid by the client to the lobbyist should also be declared. The rule should also apply when lobbyists communicate with Ministers’ advisers, whether they are from the Civil Service or political.
Wales is a small place and there is a network of powerful and influential people who know each other, have worked with each other in the past and sometimes are in positions where they can help each other out. Sometimes such actions may be to everyone’s advantage, including the taxpayers’.
But if the influence of lobbyists is behind the scenes, in the shadows and undeclared, it’s easy for negative perceptions to arise, whether justified or not. It’s time for reform and the opportunity should not be lost.
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