The Minister for Culture, Welsh Language and Sport (Alun Pugh): With your permission, Presiding Officer, I make a statement to bring the Assembly up to date with events since the arts debate on 1 February. First, on the review of the Arts Council of Wales, Members will recall that the Plenary motion on 1 February committed the Assembly Government to carrying out a Government review of the arts council. We are, of course, complying fully with that Plenary decision. The terms of reference for the review have now been agreed by the Culture, Welsh Language and Sport Committee after constructive discussions among party spokespersons and leaders. The review will be wide-ranging. It will look at the future framework for funding arrangements that support the arts, including the role of the Arts Council of Wales. The review will advise me on the existing and future role of ACW in relation to its funding of the arts. It will include the national arts organisations, the development of the arts in Wales, the development of access and inclusion in the arts, and tackling social inequalities. The future roles of the Arts Council of Wales and the Welsh Assembly Government will be examined, taking account of the need for democratic accountability, transparency and openness, artistic freedom, an environment within which the arts can develop in all parts of Wales, improving access to the arts, which is a key interest of mine, excellence, and the active management and development of arts funding recipients. It is particularly important that the review looks beyond Wales. It will consider levels of arts funding and funding mechanisms in an international context.The review will report before December, and we will bring a motion to Plenary. The review will be carried out by a panel of five people, appointed by the Government. The panel’s method of working has also been agreed by the Culture, Welsh Language and Sport Committee. The panel will need to review and analyse the evidence base to ensure a sound basis for the development of policy recommendations. It will need to engage with a broad range of individuals and groups across Wales and beyond. The terms of reference are clear on this point, saying that the panel should engage directly with a wide range of arts practitioners and others in the sector. It will also conduct public discussion and thus engage with a wider range of views and opinions. I encourage everyone with an interest in the arts to engage with the panel in this most important work. I am pleased to be able to announce today that the chair of the review panel will be Elan Closs Stephens. Elan, of course, is well known in public life in Wales. She is Professor of Communications and Creative Industries in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. She is shortly to retire as the chair of S4C, she is also a member of the National Library of Wales court and council, and she is a board member of Chwarae Teg. As for the other members of the panel, discussions are continuing among the party leaders and spokespersons, and I hope that these will soon be concluded. I will make a further announcement before the Easter recess. I now turn to the matter of chairing the Arts Council of Wales. I have made it clear that I wanted to run a normal public appointments process, complete with public advertisements and the involvement of committee nominees, but the opposition amendment carried on 1 February makes it difficult to make a full-term appointment. How could a full-term appointment be made when the role of the arts council might be changed after the review? Some Members of the Assembly—and they are doing it this afternoon—are not prepared to wait for the review to do its work. I am not prepared to prejudge that review process. I have, therefore, decided to appoint an interim chair to cover the review period. I intend to complete the full-term appointment as soon as the outcome of the review process is clear. The full-term appointment will, of course, be via the normal process. During the interim period, I want the arts council to get on with business as usual, which involves distributing some £27 million of public money, which is a huge real-terms increase since the Assembly first met. Council members have important responsibilities. As I explained in committee last week, I have the responsibility to appoint the chair, and the council has the responsibility to appoint a vice-chair. Council members are also trustees of the charity and they have charitable fiduciary responsibilities to take into account. I am pleased, therefore, to announce that Professor Dai Smith will take on the role of interim chair until the process to appoint a full-term chair has been completed. Dai Smith has been a member of the arts council since 2004. As the holder of the Raymond Williams research chair in cultural history at the University of Wales Swansea, Professor Smith has a distinguished academic and public service career, and is well suited to carrying out this role. His leadership of the Library of Wales project has attracted much favourable comment. The review of the arts council provides an excellent opportunity for everyone with a genuine interest in the arts and culture to contribute to the debate. I hope that the review will be enlightening and insightful, and will fulfil the expectations that we all have in the Chamber for the best interests of the arts in Wales. Owen John Thomas: I welcome at least the changes that you have made to the panel’s terms of reference, which were made in committee and which shifted the original emphasis that you placed on the review of the arts council’s performance—a council that was reviewed some three years ago—to looking at the structural arrangements of the council’s board and the Welsh Assembly Government. I also welcome the fact that you want to look at international arrangements to ensure that we have the best in Wales. However, I hope that that does not mean that you will be travelling around the world, spending vast amounts of money, as I am sure that there are plenty of examples in Europe that you could visit. I see that you are again emphasising the lack of access in deprived areas. I say again, Minister, that all the evidence shows that it is the failure of Labour local authorities in those areas that is mainly responsible for the fact that the arts have not developed as they should have. I was glad to hear Huw Lewis’s proposal— Owen John Thomas: I welcomed Huw Lewis’s recent proposal to create a museum of the people—that is, the workers—in Merthyr. I support that 100 per cent. Minister, you must look more closely at what is going on in local authorities to see exactly what is going wrong. Do you welcome the proposal to develop a museum of photography in Neath Port Talbot? Perhaps you could give us more information about that museum. I welcome the appointment of Elan Closs Stephens. She has a great deal of experience in the media and the arts. Turning to matters concerning the chair of the arts council, you have known since July 2004 that it was your Government’s intention to merge ACW with the Government and, in doing so, to try to take most of ACW’s responsibilities away from it. In December 2005, almost 18 months later, and two days before Christmas— Owen John Thomas: I am not sure whether everyone does know the background to this, and it is interesting, but I will move on. I intend to write to the Commissioner for Public Appointments to draw her attention to the fact that you, Minister, have ignored the code of practice in making appointments such as this. Considering that you told the chair of the arts council in December 2005 that you were not going to extend his term of office, and that his current term of three years would end in March, which is the end of this week, you had plenty of time to start the process of advertising and holding interviews to appoint a new chair. You did not do that and you had no idea at that time that we would have a meeting at the beginning of February to prevent you from moving on with the business of integrating the arts council into the Government. You know how long the recruitment process takes, so why did you not place an advert in the press at the end of last year, in December, to ensure that that process was under way? You did not know at that time, as I said, what was going to happen in February. I would like an answer to that question. Alun Pugh: I am happy to have full and detailed discussions about the terms of reference, but I must say to you that the remit must fulfil the terms of the resolution of the debate of 1 February, not what people thought that it meant. It must comply fully with that resolution. As far as travelling is concerned, I intend to do no ministerial travelling whatsoever in this regard, as it is a matter for the committee and the review rather than for me. If the committee wants to look at practice in different parts of the European Union or the different practices emerging in various parts of the devolved United Kingdom, then that is a matter for its members. In mentioning the role of local authorities, you made a partisan point. All I want to say is that local authorities, as major funders of the arts world in Wales, have an important contribution to make to this review. I hope that we could get some local authority involvement on the panel, but that will clearly be a matter for negotiation with the leaders. You also said that we will be bringing the arts council into Government, but we have made it clear on many occasions that that is not going to happen. The Arts Council of Wales will continue as a royal charter body and, importantly, as a distributor of lottery funds, which is one of its key functions. You said that I ignored the appointments code, and I ask you to think carefully about withdrawing that remark. We certainly have not done that, and I certainly have not done that. Finally, I am not sure whether you were not listening or perhaps you have not had the opportunity to read my statement, but it was certainly my intention to have a full-term appointment in place. The problem is that we have not had a stable job to advertise since the opposition amendment was carried on 1 February. Lisa Francis: The question on everyone’s lips is why you felt that you could not appoint an interim chair. [Assembly Members: ‘ He has.’] Lisa Francis: On 23 December, you informed the chair of the arts council that you intended to initiate a full appointments procedure. Subsequently, you have said that you did not intend to proceed with advertising that post because of the motion passed in Plenary on 1 February. I do not see how that could have precluded you from advertising for or seeking an interim chair. The post of arts council chair is a high-ranking position that commands significant responsibility, and appointment to this job follows a lengthy process. You certainly did not act quickly. Your actions in leaving this matter to the eleventh hour have certainly not instilled any confidence in the arts council, as has become apparent from its members’ comments and, indeed, those of people in the arts sector. This dispute has united all who work in the arts, but your treatment of them has been cavalier, dilatory and embarrassingly shabby. Surely that is an irony. You will be quite aware that the arts council called for the current chair’s contract to be extended. Most of the arts sector wanted that to happen, and supported that. Will you confirm whether you or the First Minister decided ever to discuss this situation regarding the interim appointment with the current chair? Obviously, he was still the chair from 23 December and, indeed, will be so until 31 March. Did you discuss the prospect of appointing an interim chair with him? Will you confirm that the appointment has been made within the terms of the royal charter? Are you satisfied that the Charity Commission and the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments will be content with your actions, and the timetable for your actions, in this matter? In the long term, your Government must come up with a proper timetable to appoint a chair proper, so that the process of the review of the arts and that of selecting the chair proper—not an interim chair—do not overlap. The wisest course of action would be to understand that the earliest time to appoint the post of chair proper should be after the completion of the review of the arts and after the Assembly has voted on it. Can you confirm what will happen, because you could not do that at the last meeting of the committee? In respect of your comments at the committee meeting on 8 March, which part of the review into the culture strategy do you hope to abandon while the review into the arts goes on? You did not make that clear either. We hope that the review into the arts will be an intelligent and expert investigation into how best to govern the arts in Wales. It will hopefully be different to the lamentable chaos that has been the hallmark of the Assembly Government’s watch and treatment of the arts council since 23 December last year. Alun Pugh: I have appointed an interim chair, and that was the subject of my announcement this afternoon. I had hoped that a long-term appointment would be resolved by now, but that would be to ignore the history of this matter, the statement that I made after Christmas, and the Plenary debate and opposition resolution, which that the Government did not support but which the Assembly decided to adopt. That has certainly changed things. The role of the arts council chair may well change depending upon the review. Therefore, it is very difficult to go through a full public appointments process, complete with public advertisements, when the job may move around. I want to make a long-term appointment as soon as possible after the Plenary discussion on it, but there does not seem to be a point in making the appointment until we have an idea of the stability of the job and until the review is completed and Plenary has given its view on it. I want to make that long-term appointment as soon as possible. You talk about responsibilities in this area. As I made clear in last week’s meeting of the committee, the arts council has a responsibility to appoint a vice-chair. That was an item on its agenda last Friday, and it decided that it could not do so then. As Minister, in terms of governance, I have a responsibility to ensure that the arts council is chaired, and that is what I have done in terms of this afternoon’s statement. You referred to the public appointments code. As a Government, we have complied with the code, and there is no doubt about that. I find it a little disappointing that the opposition parties do not want to talk about the budget for the arts, the record spending or arts policy. They are exclusively focused on process— Alun Pugh: They are exclusively focused on process and personalities, and while they do that, they will continue to lose elections. Jenny Randerson: I have read the statement with great care, and it fails to answer a number of key questions. On the timescale of the appointment of a replacement chair, you sacked Geraint Talfan Davies 95 days ago on 23 December. It might surprise some people—not in the Assembly, but outside—that the timescale for public appointments made it impossibly tight to replace him by the end of this month, even if you had acted immediately on 23 December. The guidance says that you must allow at least six months. By any estimation, you had barely three months. At the time of your statements to Plenary and to the committee on 10 January and 19 January respectively, you assured us that advertisements would appear shortly and that the code of practice for ministerial appointments to public bodies would be followed in its entirety. However, you did not proceed to follow that, but you dilly-dallied—and that is the polite word for it—until events caught up with you when, taken by surprise by the opposition in February, you were forced to reconsider your plan to appoint a replacement chair. I agree that, in the circumstances, appointing an interim chair is the only way ahead because, for obvious reasons, the person appointed would want to know what sort of job they were taking on. Can you, however, understand that there is deep suspicion about your whole behaviour, not least because, last week, you refused to confirm to the committee whom you were planning to appoint? Can you tell us exactly when you appointed Dai Smith and when you had your conversation with him? His name as someone who had been offered the job was circulating at least a week, probably a fortnight, ago, and it would have been useful to have known that. Do you recognise that there are codes of practice on this in this place? There are not just the codes of the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments but there is the Ministerial Code? That says, ‘ No appointment shall be made by an Assembly Minister without consultation with the relevant subject committee through its two nominees’. I am well aware of the usual practice on this and there is no reason why, even in these unusual circumstances, that practice should not have been followed. Have you, at any point up to now, consulted either of the two nominees of the Culture, Welsh Language and Sport Committee? I know, for a start, that you have not consulted one of them, and I would like your answer in relation to the other one. Having wasted time, put yourself in a position where you could not possibly have made an appointment from the outset, having decided on this strange course of action of not reappointing the chair and having failed to consult with the opposition parties, which, even at this late stage, could have brought co-ordination and co-operation in terms of the new chair, because the new chair deserves the support of everyone at a difficult time, you have managed to create further chaos in an already chaotic situation, which is 100 per cent of your making. At what point, on what date, did you consult the Commissioner for Public Appointments in order to be able to deviate from the normal standards of public appointments because of exceptional circumstances? Alun Pugh: You have several simple facts wrong there, I am afraid, Jenny. You used the word ‘ sacked’. No-one has been sacked. The current chair’s appointment runs out on Saturday, 1 April. No-one has been sacked. I said in my statement way back in January that I intended to advertise the post and go through the full, normal process, which involves public advertisements and bringing in the members of the Culture, Welsh Language and Sport Committee. The code has been followed and there has been a dialogue between the Assembly Government and the Commissioner for Public Appointments. I was saddened, but not surprised, by the Plenary business that we had on 1 February. It was only natural that, after the opposition parties voted to cut culture funding in the budget, which is what happened— [Assembly Members: ‘ No.’] Yes you did. If you look at the Assembly Government’s original published intentions for culture spending, you will see that as a result of the budget dialogue, culture funding was cut. That was not the Assembly Government’s intention. Therefore, it was only natural that you would seek to engage in party political mischief to cover that up. I do not accept that I behaved improperly in any way whatsoever. This row has largely been manufactured. Let us face it: we have an interim chair of the arts council, who is a member of the arts council, and he will be taking the chair on a temporary basis while the review completes its business. I do not see anything strange or special about that. Rosemary Butler: I would like to congratulate you on appointing such a distinguished person as Elan Closs Stephens to chair the review panel. I look forward to the announcement on the other members in the near future. I welcome Professor Smith to his role, and I look forward to his attendance at the Culture, Welsh Language and Sport Committee and to hear how he will deliver on your ambitions and priorities between now and December. I am sure that you will join me in thanking all the members of the arts council for giving so much of their time freely for the benefit of the arts across Wales. I would particularly like to thank Geraint Talfan Davies for his hard work during the past three years. I would like to thank you, Minister, for taking the committee’s recommendations on board. Will you assure us that the review panel will be asked to look at best practice across Europe, and not just in Wales, so that we have a review that will recommend a programme of excellence for the twenty-first century? Alun Pugh: We have a pair of first-rate appointments. Elan Closs Stephens will do a great job in bringing together the review team, and I look forward to engaging in a dialogue as that review unfolds. I keenly anticipate the outcome of the report. Again, Professor Smith will be the interim chair of the arts council for a few months. I am anxious to get this onto a full-time basis as soon as possible, shortly after the review. In terms of your remarks about Geraint Talfan Davies, who continues to chair the arts council until Saturday, he is an incredibly hard worker. I know that he has been enormously active in the arts, particularly during the past few months. Denise Idris Jones: I, along with the Chair of the committee, would like to welcome the appointment of Professor Dai Smith to the interim position of chair of the arts council. I am pleased that you confirmed that his appointment was in accordance with the national appointments regulations. I am sure that you would agree that Professor Smith has done an excellent job with the Library of Wales. Alun Pugh: Professor Smith has done a tremendous job on behalf of the Assembly Government in terms of the Library of Wales project. The academic scholarship that he has brought to the series enhances the titles immeasurably. As well as being an excellent academic success, the books seem set to be an enormous commercial success. Leighton Andrews: I also wish to welcome the appointment of Elan Closs Stephens, who will bring academic rigour to the review of the arts. I also thank Geraint Talfan Davies for his work as chair of the arts council. Do you agree that Professor Dai Smith is one of our leading social and cultural historians? Do you also agree that he had a distinguished career at BBC Wales as head of English-language programmes, where he commissioned dramas of significance, such as Karl Francis’s Street Life and Trevor Griffiths’s Food for Ravens? Do you agree that Dai Smith’s robust common sense and intellectual integrity are precisely the qualities that the arts council needs at this moment? Alun Pugh: Indeed. Professor Smith has a long record of scholarship, and you are right to draw the Chamber’s attention to that. He has also had a successful management career, and not many people can boast having both. Michael German: I wish to repeat a question that Jenny Randerson asked, which the Minister failed to answer, which relates to the fact that even had he followed his own timetable, when he effectively sacked Geraint Talfan Davies, there was then insufficient time in which to appoint a new full-time chair. Was the Minister deluding the Assembly in believing that he could have a chair in place? If that was not the case, when did he expect to have a chair in place? By sleepwalking with his eyes wide open in terms of this matter, he has made an adamant case for having an arts council that is at an arm’s length from the Welsh Assembly Government. Alun Pugh: You mentioned the word ‘ sacked’ twice during that contribution. No-one has been sacked, effectively or otherwise. A fixed-term contract has come to its end. It is possible that there will be a short overlap of a couple of weeks. However, as I said in my statement, the Assembly’s debate and the resolution that was carried on 1 February has made it impossible to make a full-term appointment at this stage. Nick Bourne: The Minister’s alibi simply does not add up. If he really was going to appoint an interim chairman to take over for the period until 31 March, that process would have to have started long before he told Geraint Talfan Davies that he would have to reapply for his job. That was when he was effectively sacked, and the Minister knows that. His handling of this process has been absolutely disastrous. For him to stand there and lecture us about being partisan as opposition Members with regard to someone who has been as non-partisan as Geraint Talfan Davies, who was wanted by the arts community of Wales, who was wanted by the Arts Council of Wales, and who was wanted by the opposition parties, and to pretend that he has acted in anything other than a partisan, political, personal way flies in the face of the evidence. Why is it that you felt unable to reappoint Geraint Talfan Davies for that short interim period when you knew that that was the universal choice of the arts council and when you knew that it was the view of the arts community? Why, if you are not behaving in a personal way, was that not an appropriate way to move so that we could have had universal approval here? You would not then have had to wheel out the members of the Culture, Welsh Language and Sport Committee with their pre-written scripts to say what a great guy Geraint Talfan Davies is, but, nevertheless, he will not be renewed because we think that this guy is even better? He will labour under the difficulties, because of the Minister’s disastrous handling of this. Alun Pugh: We have been through this on many occasions; we have been through it in Plenary, and we have been through it in committee. The opposition is entirely fixated on issues of process and personalities. It does not want to talk about budgets, delivery or arts policy, and does not want to ensure that the record spending on the arts—£27 million of public money—gets to every single community in Wales. Nick Bourne: Answer the question, Minister. The Presiding Officer: Order. The Minister has just answered the question. [Interruption.] Yes, he has; in terms of order, he has. The content is not a matter for me. Ieuan Wyn Jones: What we expected from the Minister today was a degree of contrition and humility; what we got was bluff and bluster. This Minister has handled this situation appallingly. He has let down the arts community, and, frankly, he has let down his colleagues in Government in Wales on this issue. The reason that we cannot ask questions about the budget is that his statement is about process. His statement is about the process of the review and it is about the process of the appointment of the interim chair of the arts council. I will ask him three questions on that appointment. Will he answer the question regarding why he would not, at the request of the members of the arts council, appoint Geraint Talfan Davies as the interim chair? Can he answer that question directly? He has refused so far. Question two is: will he tell us how many members of the arts council he and the First Minister personally rang up pleading with them to take the post of interim chair of the council? The third question is: how many people did he ask to take the chair before Dai Smith was appointed, and how many refused to do so? Alun Pugh: I certainly have nothing to apologise for in terms of my conduct. Under my watch, we have delivered record spending on the arts, and venues have opened all over Wales. It is my responsibility as Minister, and no-one else’s, to ensure that the arts council is adequately chaired; I have discharged that responsibility. It is the responsibility of the arts council to appoint its vice-chair, and I look forward to that appointment taking place very soon. I have, not surprisingly, had many conversations with the arts council—collectively, in groups, and individually. The First Minister and I met the vice-chair and two members on 20 March. We said that there were advantages to one of the members becoming the interim chair. The council, at its meeting last Friday, declined to respond positively to this or, as I have said, to appoint a vice-chair. Since that meeting, I have spoken with arts council members, including Dai Smith. It became clear that, on further reflection, Dai Smith was prepared to accept appointment as interim chair and I know that he will do a superb job. [Interruption.] The Presiding Officer: Order. I do not wish to discuss the reputation of any of my old friends in the Chamber. |
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Thursday, March 30, 2006 |
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