Leader of the Welsh Conservatives in the Assembly Nick Bourne AM has called on the Labour-Plaid Assembly Government to end its growing hostility to criticism and stop burying bad news.
During FMQs, Mr Bourne asked the First Minister when an external evaluation of Communities First will be fully published and open to scrutiny.
The evaluation was recommended by the Public Accounts Committee following a report in February that concluded the programme “has not delivered good value for the significant amount of public money spent on it.”
WAG initially called this report “unbalanced and partial”. Eventually its twelve recommendations were accepted.
Mr Bourne said: “This sustained criticism of the Assembly Government’s flagship policy on poverty must be addressed. We need to know when the external evaluation of Communities First will be complete and when we can fully debate its findings.
“It’s time to end this Labour-Plaid culture of not accepting criticism and refusing to be held to account.
“The emergence of the McKinsey Report last week, despite the Health Minister’s denials of its existence, displayed just how far this government will go to bury bad news.
“Earlier in the summer, Shadow Minister for Social Justice Mark Isherwood was given access by a third party to a critical Welsh Government funded report on residential drug and alcohol detoxification and rehabilitation. This has not yet been made public by the Health Minister.
“Communities First is the Assembly Government’s flagship anti-poverty strategy. If its mistakes are not properly addressed, how can we be confident further key legislation, such as the Children and Families Measure, will make inroads at combating poverty?”
“Without a frank assessment of all its mistakes, this Government will continue to disappoint all those whose futures depend on it.”
