.........
The
proceedings are reported in the language in which they were spoken
in the committee. In addition, a transcription of the simultaneous
interpretation is included. Where contributors have supplied
corrections to their evidence, these are noted in the
transcript.
Dechreuodd y cyfarfod am 09:31.
The meeting began at 09:31.
|
Cyflwyniad, Ymddiheuriadau, Dirprwyon a Datgan
Buddiannau Introductions, Apologies, Substitutions and
Declarations of Interest
|
[1]
Bethan Jenkins:
Diolch a chroeso i Bwyllgor
Diwylliant, y Gymraeg a Chyfathrebu. Eitem 1: cyflwyniad,
ymddiheuriadau, dirprwyon a datgan buddiannau. A oes unrhyw beth
gan unrhyw Aelod Cynulliad i’w ddatgan ynglŷn
â’r sesiynau yma? Na. Ymddiheuriadau a dirprwyon: cafwyd
ymddiheuriadau gan Dawn Bowden ar gyfer sesiwn y bore, ond bydd
hi’n dod i gyfarfod y prynhawn, a bydd Lee Waters yn hwyr. Ni
chafwyd unrhyw ymddiheuriadau eraill, ac nid ydym yn disgwyl
dirprwyon ar gyfer y cyfarfod heddiw.
|
Bethan Jenkins: Thank you and welcome to the Culture, Welsh
Language and Communications Committee. Item 1: introductions,
apologies, substitutions and declarations of interest. Any
declarations from Members today please regarding these sessions?
No. Apologies and substitutions: we’ve had apologies from
Dawn Bowden for the morning session, but she will be here in the
afternoon session, and Lee Waters will be late today. We
haven’t had any other apologies, and we’re not
expecting any substitutes for the meeting today.
|
09:32
|
Amgylchedd Hanesyddol: Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 1: Cadw
Historic Environment: Evidence Session 1: Cadw
|
[2]
Bethan Jenkins:
Symud ymlaen at eitem 2: yr
amgylchedd hanesyddol a sesiwn dystiolaeth 1. Y tystion heddiw yw
Jason Thomas, cyfarwyddwr diwylliant, chwaraeon a thwristiaeth;
Gwilym Hughes, cyfarwyddwr cynorthwyol, amgylchedd hanesyddol; a
Tom Cosson, sy’n uwch-gynghorydd diwylliant a thlodi ar ran
Cadw, sydd yn rhan o Lywodraeth Cymru, wrth gwrs. Byddwn yn gofyn
nifer o gwestiynau ar themâu gwahanol a byddaf i’n
cychwyn y cwestiynau, os yw hynny yn iawn gyda chi. Y cwestiwn
cyntaf sydd gen i yw: pryd mae Cadw yn golygu adolygu effaith y
Ddeddf sydd mewn grym ar hyn o bryd? Rydym ni’n deall nad yw
popeth wedi cael ei roi mewn grym eto, a bydd angen deddfwriaeth
eilaidd, er enghraifft, ond o ran yr hyn sydd wedi cael ei
basio—er enghraifft, y recordiau hanesyddol, ac yn y
blaen—beth sydd wedi digwydd gyda’r rheini? Sut maen
nhw wedyn yn mynd i gael eu hadolygu lawr y
lein?
|
Bethan Jenkins: Moving on to item 2: the historic
environment and evidence session 1. The witnesses today are Jason
Thomas, director of culture, sport and tourism; Gwilym Hughes,
assistant director, historic environment; and Tom Cosson, senior
culture and poverty adviser on behalf of Cadw, which is part of the
Welsh Government, of course. We’ll be asking you many
questions on different themes today and I’ll start off, if
that’s okay with you. The first question I have is: when will
Cadw be reviewing the impact of the Act that is in force at the
moment? We understand that not everything has been put into force
yet, and that subordinate legislation, for example, will be
required for that, but what has been passed—the historic
records, and so on—what’s happened with those? How are
they going to be reviewed further down the line?
|
[3]
Mr Thomas: Diolch, Chair, and thank you for inviting us here
today to talk about Cadw and the historic environment. I think
it’s worth saying to start, really, that the legislation that
received Royal Assent in March last year was groundbreaking. It was
really pretty pleasing to see the evidence, particularly from the
Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales,
which said they see this as some of the most progressive
legislation in the world, which was very nice of them to say and we
wholeheartedly agree with that in our sector. I will pass over to
Gwilym to give you some detailed responses.
|
[4]
Dai Lloyd: The questions will get harder.
[Laughter.]
|
[5]
Mr Thomas: I’m sure they will. I’ll pass over to
Gwilym shortly. I’ll just say, it’s been around 18
months, and given the transformative nature of that legislation,
obviously we’re reviewing things constantly. That’s
just natural when you look at the impacts of the policies that you
do, and, many of the things that we’ve done already,
we’ve been able to see how they’ve impacted on the
sector. But I think we need to be taking a long-term view on this,
and I think, really, it’s going to be, I would say, about
five years probably until we can really robustly look at the impact
of this on the sector as a whole. If I may, Gwilym will be able to
give some detail on that.
|
[6]
Mr Hughes: Yes, sure. It’s really heartening,
actually, to see some of the evidence that’s been
provided—that people have agreed that it really is
groundbreaking. And I know that colleagues outside of Wales have
been very envious, actually, looking at the things that we’ve
been able to introduce. You mentioned, Chair, the historic
environment records. That’s a classic example of where, in
England and Scotland, they’re actually quite envious that
we’ve been able to introduce statutory records, which
they’ve been aspiring to do for many, many years but have not
been able to achieve. So, we are leading the way on this.
|
[7]
We’re already starting to evaluate the impact. We’re
already starting to collect information, the statistics, about, for
example, the numbers of consultations and interim protections that
are being put in place relating to the process of designation. Some
of those measures only commenced in May of this year, so, clearly,
it’s far, far too soon. But, as Jason said, I think it would
probably be about five years before we can really make an
authoritative assessment of how effective the legislation and the
impact have been.
|
[8]
Can I just mention that some of the measures are about deterrents,
so I’m rather hoping that were won’t be very many cases
where we have to report on damage, for example, temporary stop
notices, enforcement? Some of them are deterrents to stop things
from happening, strengthening the legislation in terms of
protection. Others are about actually putting in better measures
for more transparency, more accountability and more management.
|
[9]
Bethan Jenkins: Ond a fyddwch
chi’n adolygu popeth o fewn pum mlynedd, neu beth fydd y
broses? A ydych chi’n dod ag adroddiad mas? A fyddwch
chi’n gadael i’r Cynulliad drafod yr hyn sydd wedi cael
ei ddatblygu yn rhan o’r ddeddf? Sut bydd hynny’n cael
ei sgrwtineiddio?
|
Bethan
Jenkins: But will you be reviewing everything within five
years, or what will the process be? Will you be publishing a
report? Will you be letting the Assembly discuss what has been
developed as part of the Act? How is that going to be
scrutinised?
|
[10]
Mr Hughes: Well, one of the measures that was suggested,
and, in fact, is actually in the explanatory note, is that we might
use the proposed advisory panel, which is, of course, one of
the privileges—
|
[11]
Bethan Jenkins: But that’s not in place yet,
so—.
|
[12]
Mr Hughes: It’s not in place yet, no, but, obviously,
in due course, when the advisory panel’s in place, one of
their roles might be to report back on the efficacy of the Bill and
make suggestions for any tweaks or measures that might actually
need to be introduced in the future.
|
[13]
Mr Thomas: I’d also say as well, Chair, it’s the
general performance management, really, within the civil service.
Obviously, this Bill and the implementation of the Bill forms a
large part of the work of Cadw, so, the large team within Cadw,
it’s the expectation there that they do everything that they
can to roll this out and work with the sector to make sure
it’s effective. So, there’s constant performance
management across the piece.
|
[14]
Mr Hughes: And another thing I’d like to add to that,
actually, which is quite related, is that we’ve been
fortunate in that the core team that was responsible for supporting
the Cabinet Secretary, and then the Deputy Minister, of course, in
taking the Bill through is still in Cadw, and so the people who are
actually responsible for supporting the development of the measures
are still there, helping to monitor its impact.
|
[15]
Suzy Davies: Just a quick question there: on performance
management, obviously you’re talking about members of Cadw
here, but does that extend across into local authorities? I know
you can’t directly performance manage them, but to see
whether they’re actually using some of these powers
they’ve got.
|
[16]
Mr Hughes: Yes, absolutely. We’ve got fora for that
conversation to take place, both the Historic Environment Group,
which is a group for organisations within the sector to compare
notes and collaborate, and also an organisation called the Built
Heritage Forum, which meets regularly, both at the national level
and at regional level, and—
|
[17]
Suzy Davies: There may be some questions about that later, so I
will leave that. I just wanted to know quite what the stream was.
Thank you. Sorry to cut across.
|
[18]
Bethan
Jenkins: Na,
mae’n iawn. Y cwestiwn arall sydd gen i yw bod Cymdeithas Tir
a Busnes Cefn Gwlad wedi dweud, gyda’r hysbysiadau cadwraeth,
pe bai’r rheini’n cael eu gweithredu y buasai’n
drychinebus—maen nhw’n ei ddweud. Maen nhw’n
defnyddio’r geiriau cryf hynny oherwydd y ffaith y
byddai’n ormod o risg i unrhyw brynwyr sy’n bwriadu
achub adeilad sydd mewn perygl—ei gaffael, yn hynny o beth.
Rydw i ar ddeall nad yw hynny wedi cael ei weithredu eto, ond beth
ydych chi’n ei ddweud wrth y CLA sydd â’r
consýrn hynny reit ar ddechrau’r broses yma?
|
Bethan Jenkins:
No problem. Another question I have is that the Country Land and
Business Association have said that if the preservation notices
proposed were implemented, it would be a disastrous change,
according to them. They’ve used those strong words because
they feel it’d be too much of a risk for any rescuing
purchaser to acquire a building at risk—to procure it, as it
were. I understand that that hasn’t been implemented yet, but
what would you say to the CLA, who have that particular concern
right at the beginning of this process?
|
[19]
Mr Thomas: We’ve addressed those concerns, really, so
we’ve done a very robust piece of work. We’ve been
looking at the whole issue of the implementation of preservation
notices. That report was submitted to officials. In recent months,
it’s been submitted to our Cabinet Secretary and we are
hopeful that we can publish that very shortly. Perhaps Gwilym can
touch on some themes that went into the report?
|
[20]
Mr Hughes: Yes, definitely. It’s interesting, this
question about preservation notices. It was quite a late
non-Government amendment, and it did, of course, receive support
from across the Senedd, and understandably so because, obviously,
there are some problematic buildings that are deteriorating and
Assembly Members wanted something to take action against negligent
owners. That’s totally understandable and we sympathise with
that objective, but we do also recognise the CLA’s
observation there. We don’t want there to be unintended
consequences, and, obviously, the unintended consequence of people
being reluctant to take on ownership of a listed building because
they might be threatened by fines, putting it bluntly. So,
we have to be very careful about how we shape any proposals. Of
course, that will be subject to full public consultation, and
because it is secondary legislation, as you rightly point out, it
will be fully debated. So, there’s plenty of opportunity for
making sure that we do something that actually works.
|
[21]
Bethan Jenkins:
Y cwestiwn olaf sydd gen i yw yr hyn
rwy’n credu y gwnes i ei godi ar y pryd, pan oedd y Ddeddf
hon yn mynd drwyddo, sef bod arbenigwr cynllunio yn dweud efallai y
byddai wedi bod yn well i wneud Deddf
cyfuno—consolidation. A hefyd, mae
Cymdeithas Tir a Busnes Cefn Gwlad eto’n dweud bod angen
symleiddio’r Ddeddf bresennol er mwyn i bobl allu ei deall.
Beth yw’ch barn chi ar y ddau beth hynny?
|
Bethan
Jenkins: The final question I have relates to something that I
raised at the time, when this Act was going through. A specialist
in planning made the point that it may have been better to draw up
a consolidation Bill. And the Land and Country Land and Business
Association also say that the current Act needs to be simplified so
that people can understand it. What would be your view on those
points?
|
[22]
Mr Thomas: Well, our Cabinet Secretary, in formulating the
Bill that received Royal Assent last year, was very clear that he
was hoping to see some consolidation in this space. And there is
work going on on that, so maybe Gwilym can update us perhaps on
that.
|
[23]
Mr Hughes: I know that was a concern of Assembly Members,
and I think, some members of committee, about that and the
simplification of the law. There is a programme of looking at Welsh
law and consolidation that the Welsh Government are undertaking at
the moment, and, indeed, the Counsel General mentioned only earlier
this year to the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee
the possibility of the historic environment legislation being,
effectively, a pilot study for that, a pilot project for that. At
the moment, there is a whole host of reasons, not least of which,
of course, because this legislation is relatively new. It’s
only quite recently been passed, and we’ve been looking at
it. And you’re quite right about the CLA and the observation
you’ve just made there about the complexity of the law. The
1979 Act, the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act, has
now been amended by three different national administrations, and
it is quite difficult to weave your way through it. And, so, there
are some opportunities there to make it easier.
|
[24]
Of course, it’s all in English—mostly in
English—apart from the amended bits. So, to have a
consolidated Welsh law—. The Counsel General has recognised
that and, indeed, the Cabinet Secretary has recognised that, and
are suggesting, at an appropriate time—. There are some links
between historic environment legislation and planning legislation
as well. At the moment—some Members may be
aware—there’s a Law Commission exercise looking at the
way in which planning law works in Wales, and, of course, those
connections have to be carefully meshed before we take any steps in
this area. So, we’re awaiting that.
|
[25]
Bethan Jenkins:
Sori, nid hwnnw oedd y cwestiwn olaf
gen i. Y cwestiwn olaf yw hwn, sef y sefyllfa gydag enwau lleoedd.
Yn amlwg, roedd trafodaeth ar y pryd, ac fe wnaeth rhai ohonom ni
drio rhoi diwygiadau i mewn ar y pryd. Ond ym mha amgylchiadau y
byddech chi’n ystyried cryfhau’r cam diogelu yma?
Mae’r rhestr yn dda ynddo’i hun, ond efallai y byddai
rhai yn dadlau nad yw’n mynd yn ddigon pell. Sut mae
e’n gweithio nawr, a sut fyddech chi’n gobeithio
efallai ei gryfhau e?
|
Bethan
Jenkins: Sorry, that wasn’t the final question. This is
my final question—the situation regarding historic place
names in Wales. Of course, there was a discussion at the time on
this and some of us tried to put amendments in at the time. But in
what circumstances would you consider strengthening this particular
protection? The list is a good thing in itself, but maybe some
people would say that it doesn’t go far enough. How does it
work now, and how would you perhaps hope to strengthen it?
|
[26]
Mr Thomas: I guess, similar to answers to previous questions
really, I think we implemented the list—Gwilym will correct
me if I’m wrong—in May of this year. It’s still
early days, but it’s in force now, so we are reviewing how
that’s working. But I think it’s going to be a process
of constant review. If things aren’t working, then
we’re going to look at them and see whether or not we can
improve them. Maybe Gwilym can respond to that.
|
[27]
Mr Hughes: Can I just start by saying this is a first for
Wales? This, actually, is another area where we’re taking a
lead. I’m not aware of any other—. I might be ready to
be corrected on this, but I’m not aware of any statutory list
that exists anywhere else, and certainly not in the UK. But,
anyway—. I think maybe Dai Lloyd is going to correct me on
that. [Laughter.] But, anyway, it was, as Jason says, only
launched in May, and there are a number of steps that have already
been taken to raise the profile. Part of the objective is to raise
the profile of the importance of historic place names in Wales, and
we all know how important they are. The royal commission have been
asked to actually prepare the list on the Welsh Minister’s
behalf, and they’ve done a great job. They’ve actually
put a full-time officer in place to actually manage the process,
and he will be collecting evidence from stakeholders about how the
list is actually being used. We’re also working with local
authority place-naming officers and street-naming officers. They
receive applications for changes to postal addresses, and I think
that the Welsh Language Commissioner used evidence from the example
of Ceredigion, where they’ve been pioneers in this area,
about how effective it is in raising awareness. Of course, the list
of historic place names will really add to the ammunition or
armaments that they will have to raise the profile. So, we’ll
need to see how that actually works and is effective.
|
09:45
|
[28]
Bethan Jenkins: Dai, do you want to come in? Sorry, I have
to move on.
|
[29]
Dai Lloyd: Dim ond yn fyr: mae yna restr o enwau lleoedd
hanesyddol yn eu gwahanol ffurf, ond yn ymarferol, os yw rhywun yn
penderfynu ailenwi tŷ, neu os yw mapiau yn cael eu hailenwi
efo enw Saesneg yn lle’r enw traddodiadol Cymraeg ar fynydd
neu lyn neu rywbeth, mae’r ffaith bod gyda ni restr—nid
yw’n stopio hynny o gwbl, ydy e?
|
Dai
Lloyd: Just very briefly: there is a list of historic place
names in their different forms, but practically speaking, if
someone decides to rename their house, or if maps are changed to
have English names, instead of the traditional Welsh name on a lake
or a mountain or something, the fact that we have a list
doesn’t change that at all, does it?
|
[30]
Mr Hughes: The list is about raising awareness, and I think
we do need to clarify and, of course, provide a practical mechanism
for recording and properly assessing the different historical
names. After all, names have changed through time. They continue to
change and that is part of history and archaeology—they do
continue to change. So, we’ve got to put that historical time
depth and perspective on the matter.
|
[31]
There are obviously difficulties, but one area where we can
potentially make a difference is through the work of local
authorities on the place-naming exercise. There are other areas
where there are obviously going to be problems of enforcement and
of taking practical measures to actually control the way in which
place names are being used, if that’s what people want to do,
of course. But I think what we have to focus on is making these
particular measures work and seeing how effective they are. We are
planning a new guidance document, which we’ll be consulting
upon in the new year. There’s already guidance that is
attached to the use of the historic environment records, where you
can access the list of historic place names, but we’re going
to be following that up with even stronger guidance that
we’re working on with members of the sector. In fact,
I’ll just finish by saying that I understand there was a
conference last week on historic place names, and, again, there
were quite a lot of congratulations actually for the progressive
measures that have already been introduced.
|
[32]
Mr Thomas: Just one small thing that I’d add to that
is: you mentioned the work that we’ll do next year, but, in
November as well, we’re going to be working with the Welsh
Language Commissioner to look at further opportunities to raise the
profile of the list as well. So, there’s stuff that
we’ve done and there are things that we’re going to be
doing, but just to, I guess, assure the committee, we are
constantly going to be reviewing this to see how effective it
is.
|
[33]
Bethan Jenkins: I just want to say, before we carry on, that
we’ve got quite a lot of questions, so if we can try and bear
that in mind when we’re responding, that would be great.
Jeremy.
|
[34]
Jeremy Miles: Thank you, Chair. Can I ask you some questions
in relation to the protection of buildings and monuments that are
already listed, rather than ones that are at direct risk, which
we’ll come on to shortly? Just to pick up the point that
Suzy Davies was touching on in relation
to the role of local authorities in terms of enforcement,
we’ve had evidence from the CLA, in which they describe the
‘paradox of enforcement’, where local authorities focus
on enforcing technical breaches rather than substantial, I guess,
egregious breaches because it’s better for hitting the
numbers, essentially. Do you accept that is an issue, and—?
Perhaps you can answer that first: do you accept that’s an
issue?
|
[35]
Mr Thomas: We did see that evidence, and I think that we
would challenge some of that because we haven’t seen the
evidence that would support that assertion. Gwilym knows this area,
obviously, far better than me, but we would like to see more
evidence to see if it supports it.
|
[36]
Mr Hughes: I think it’s a little unfair to local
authorities—in Wales, anyway. Of course, they represent the
whole of the UK—that organisation. I know examples where
local authorities have taken on some really, really big challenges
and have confronted buildings—. A classic example is Denbigh
hospital, where they took a significant financial risk by going
through with a particular course of action there. It is really,
really challenging. I think the answer to this really is for local
authorities to share expertise and experience, and we’re
encouraging them to do so.
|
[37]
Jeremy Miles: And when they look to Cadw for guidance on
this, what are they told?
|
[38]
Mr Hughes: Again, we’re trying to provide a national
framework for that. Actually, I’m very grateful to the CLA
for recognising that the guidance we prepared on tackling buildings
that are at risk was excellent, and I think they said that it was a
leading example in the UK. So, yes, guidance and support and
mentoring—that’s our role at a strategic framework
level.
|
[39]
Jeremy Miles: But in terms of the bias towards the nature of
breaches that they enforce, do you give guidance on that
substantively, or not really?
|
[40]
Mr Hughes: Managing change to listed buildings generally,
that’s right. Again, we have fora. I think I mentioned to
Suzy Davies earlier that we have fora for having those
conversations with local authorities and they have fora themselves
where they talk to each other to compare best practice and
experience.
|
[41]
Jeremy Miles: Okay. Can we go to the evidence of the royal
commission, which we’ve mentioned a few times? They say
that
|
[42]
‘Wales does not have any such programme of systematic
assessment, survey and evaluation’,
|
[43]
and indicate that
|
[44]
‘the lack of resources is a considerable
restraint’.
|
[45]
What’s your view of that?
|
[46]
Mr Thomas: I’ll start, if I may.
|
[47]
Mr Hughes: And I’ll go on.
|
[48]
Mr Thomas: The evidence from the royal commission was
incredibly supportive, I think, of the work that we all do in Cadw,
but on this one issue we actually think that Wales has just really
led the way on this. We’re actually ahead of the curve. So,
there were examples cited of where there is a systematic approach
in England and Scotland. You know, we did this in Wales over 10
years ago. We did the systematic survey of the entire—
|
[49]
Jeremy Miles: So, you’d refute the fact that
there’s no—
|
[50]
Mr Thomas: In one sense, because time does change and
there’s obviously going to be a need to review that, but we
introduced a system of spot-listing. So, we believe that we do have
a very thorough—. And we were pioneers in this field, so we
would challenge that.
|
[51]
Mr Hughes: Where I would agree with them is that there is a
recognition—we recognise—that more recent buildings of,
say, the later twentieth century—there is a gap there, and we
have got plans to rectify that gap. What we have done—and
this is why I want to kind of put the counter argument
here—as Jason said, is that we did a systematic survey,
community by community, of all the building stock across Wales
against the criteria for listing and we completed that in 2005,
over 10 years ago. Since then, yes, it’s been a process of
tidying that up and looking at spot-listing requests. As a
consequence of that, we have 30,000 listed buildings in Wales. In
Scotland, which has twice the population, there are 47,000 listed
buildings, where there probably should be nearer 60,000—
|
[52]
Jeremy Miles: Okay, right.
|
[53]
Mr Hughes: Scheduled monuments are the same. I’m
ignoring a lot of detail in this, but—.
|
[54]
Jeremy Miles: The other point they raise is in relation
to—. They say that there is an absence of strategy and
guidance in relation to maritime archaeology and that
infrastructure development, effectively, is a major issue here.
What’s your assessment of that?
|
[55]
Mr Thomas: Was that on maritime, did you say?
|
[56]
Mr Hughes: Maritime.
|
[57]
Jeremy Miles: Maritime archaeology.
|
[58]
Mr Hughes: We’re actually actively doing something
about that. We’re in the process of writing guidance, and, in
fact, the draft is being prepared as I speak, and we are intending
to consult upon that early in the new year. And, of course, the
provisions of the Act in terms of what we can schedule have
extended the level of protection that we could make to offshore
sites as well as onshore sites.
|
[59]
Jeremy Miles: Okay. So, there’ll be developments in
the new year that address that, then.
|
[60]
Mr Hughes: There’ll be a consultation on managing
change to marine historic assets in the new year.
|
[61]
Jeremy Miles: Okay. On a similar theme, I guess, we’ve
had evidence from the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists that
agricultural activity is a significant source of damage to
archaeological remains. What’s your analysis of that?
|
[62]
Mr Thomas: I think, in their evidence, they mentioned the
England scenario, and it’s a slightly different position in
Wales, isn’t it?
|
[63]
Mr Hughes: They’re again a UK-wide organisation, of
course, and the difficulties faced especially from ploughing and
agrarian activity is more pronounced in England than it is in
Wales. That’s not to be complacent here, of course, because
we still have damage through agricultural activities in Wales. What
we’re doing about it is that we have a programme of
inspection visits by our field monument wardens in Cadw, talking to
farmers about managing the sites on their land. Another bit of
guidance we’re going to be consulting upon in 2018 is on
managing the impact on scheduled monuments of agricultural activity
and other activities. More importantly, actually—
|
[64]
Jeremy Miles: Can I just get a sense—are you
effectively saying that that isn’t a particular issue in
Wales?
|
[65]
Mr Hughes: It isn’t—. I’m saying
it’s an issue, but it’s not as acute as it is in
England, and we’re doing other things to actually address
that. The most effective way, actually, has been through
countryside stewardship schemes, agri-environment schemes—for
example Glastir—and cross-compliance and single farm
payments. We actually protect sites, scheduled monuments, on land,
and their farm payments are dependent upon not damaging sites.
That’s actually more effective than the stick approach.
|
[66]
Jeremy Miles: Yes, I’m sure. Okay, thank you.
|
[67]
Bethan Jenkins: Thanks. Suzy Davies.
|
[68]
Suzy Davies: Thank you. I’m just going to move into
the area of buildings and monuments at risk, then, rather than
those that are listed. The royal commission has identified
farmsteads and post-medieval places of worship as categories of
building—. The analysis of the at-risk databases across Wales
has identified those two types of buildings as at risk. So,
I’d like you tell me how you, as Cadw, are prioritising
attention to that. But, at the same time, can you tell
me—maybe it’s through the fora—how local
authorities themselves prioritise focus on their own data
lists?
|
[69]
Mr Thomas: I think similar things to—did you want to
touch on this one, again? We have a duty, obviously, to support the
sector to protect all assets within the sector. You mentioned a
specific example there—was it about places of worship?
|
[70]
Suzy Davies: Farmhouses and chapels, basically, I think. But
obviously these at-risk registers will contain all kinds of
buildings. Even though I want to know what Cadw’s going to do
about guiding on those two items I’ve mentioned, I want to
know what local authorities themselves do about prioritising.
|
[71]
Mr Hughes: I’m happy to respond to that. It’s
long been recognised that there are certain categories of listed
buildings that are more vulnerable and more threatened, and the
royal commission was quite right to highlight those two examples.
The problem we have is where buildings are—. Their original
use is no longer—. They’re no longer being used for
their original use. That’s the problem. And so we’ve
got to find adaptive reuses in order for those buildings to be
economically sustainable into the future. So, yes, those are
particular problems.
|
[72]
With listed places of worship, Cadw has put together an action
plan, which we’ve consulted upon across the sector. One of
the outcomes of that action plan, one of the first activities, was
to establish a Welsh historic places of worship forum.
|
[73]
Suzy Davies: Another forum.
|
[74]
Mr Hughes: Another forum. And that’s the important
thing: it’s sharing experience and it’s actually
identifying and prioritising action, because we can’t—.
We don’t have the resources to deal with everything, so
we’ve got to target and prioritise. And who’s better at
prioritising than the experts who know those sites and know those
buildings on the ground?
|
[75]
Suzy Davies: Sorry, just to cut across you there, are you
saying that Cadw, shall we say, advises—strongly
advises—local authorities to focus, say, on those two
examples, or are they saying, ‘Guys, it’s over to you.
You decide what’s important locally’?
|
[76]
Mr Hughes: It’s not just on those examples, because
there are other categories. They’ve picked out those two, but
former industrial buildings are also suffering as well, and there
are many other types and categories. We have put together—.
What we have done, as Cadw, is we have commissioned a condition
survey of all listed buildings across Wales. We’ve come to
the end of the first five-year cycle of that and identified those
buildings that are most at risk. Local authorities have access to
those lists and they can then start developing their own
prioritised programmes of action. Some are more effective than
others, inevitably, because of the resources that they have
locally.
|
[77]
Suzy Davies: I was going to ask: do they do that?
|
[78]
Mr Hughes: Good examples are Swansea, Ynys Môn—I
can pick out—
|
[79]
Suzy Davies: You might have to help me on that Swansea
one—maybe outside.
|
[80]
Mr Thomas: I’d like to just add as well, I guess,
through ourselves, we’ve got three—correct me if
I’m wrong—regional conservation officers who work with
the local authorities. So, there’s guidance, but we also
support training and, in many ways, that also provides an
opportunity to remind local authorities of the statutory powers
that they have to do things in this space. Of course, we do
recognise that a lot of this comes down to funding, when you get
down to it. How do they actually fund making reparations and
conservation to that? They are difficult decisions, obviously, that
they have to take. We are obviously, as Cadw, extremely keen and
supportive that they do that, but they have to balance their
priorities and we understand that.
|
[81]
Suzy Davies: Okay. So I’m getting the sense it needs a
strong individual who’s proactive, otherwise these lists are
just lists. I don’t mean to demean them in any way, but they
could just sit there and nobody’s looking at them.
|
[82]
Mr Hughes: Unless you’ve got lists, unless you are
able to identify the problem buildings, you can’t start to
take action against them. That’s what we’re trying to
do. We’re trying to provide local authorities with the
information that they need in order to develop strategies. Some of
them are going to be more successful than others in actually
tackling that. They all have their own priorities, don’t
they?
|
[83]
Suzy Davies: That’s fine. That’s what I wanted
to—. They’ve got different priorities. Can I just ask
you finally, then—again, it’s our friends the Country,
Land and Business Association who have raised concerns that these
powers may not be being used and powers of intervention
aren’t being exercised against recalcitrant owners, shall we
say? If they’re refusing to use these powers, what can you
do?
|
[84]
Mr Thomas: I think it comes back to the very first question,
doesn’t it, about the new legislation that now underpins all
of this. There are better procedures in place, more powers in
place, so that they can actually do that, and we need to review
whether the local authorities are actually doing that. One thing,
if I could just really quickly touch on—
|
10:00
|
[85]
Suzy Davies: Yes, by all means.
|
[86]
Mr Thomas: —following the last question, is the power
of communities in all of this. These buildings are precious to
everybody, and communities can—. There’s a role there,
I think, to do everything that they can do to support those
buildings, to actually gather momentum around doing it, because
sometimes it’s always, ‘What’s the Government
going to do to do this? Where’s the money?’, but
actually there’s power in communities to help save these
buildings. I’m not saying it’s over to them;
there’s a role for all of us in this, but I just wanted to
make that point.
|
[87]
Mr Hughes: And we also recognise that the legislation was
only part of the answer and solution. It was never going to be the
whole solution, and that’s why, right at the very beginning
of the process, we recognised we needed to look again at the
planning rules, we needed to look again at providing better
support, management and guidance. So, already we’ve produced
10 guidance documents that have gone through full public
consultation and I’ve now mentioned, I think, another three
or four already, in this session, that we’re intending to
work on in the first part of next year. That whole suite, together,
is kind of the glue that will be used, then, and can be drawn upon
by our colleagues in local authorities to take action when
it’s necessary.
|
[88]
Suzy Davies: Can I just have one final one? I’m afraid
you’ll have to give me an anecdotal answer on this, I
suspect, but have you got any sense of whether local authorities,
who themselves own buildings at risk, focus more on those buildings
and sorting them out and getting them up to scratch, or do they
focus more on privately owned buildings, where they can actually
use intervention powers? Do they worry more about themselves or
other people?
|
[89]
Mr Thomas: I’ll give our own—. If I can use an
anecdote, it’ll be an anecdote from Cadw, I guess. It comes
down to a question, I think, of accountability. So, if you look at
Cadw’s or my roles, we are directly accountable for 129
monuments.
|
[90]
Suzy Davies: I was thinking more about local
authority-owned—
|
[91]
Mr Thomas: But it’s the same point, because, if
something were to go wrong at those monuments that we are directly
accountable for, that comes back on us; they are our properties. We
have a duty to the wider sector, but it’s a non-statutory
duty. Local authorities themselves will have their own buildings
that they manage that they’re directly accountable for.
There’ll be things in their own area that they’ll want
to help and support, but that line of accountability doesn’t
necessarily lie with those. So, that’s a challenge.
|
[92]
Suzy Davies: Okay, thank you.
|
[93]
Bethan Jenkins: Lee Waters.
|
[94]
Lee Waters: Just a brief follow-up: Mr Thomas just said that
you need to review how local authorities are using the powers, so
I’m just wondering what plans you have to do that.
|
[95]
Mr Thomas: We did touch on that earlier, but do you want to
come back on that point about how we’re going to constantly
look at how we’re implementing the legislation?
|
[96]
Mr Hughes: Yes. At the beginning of the session we talked
about the evaluation and the impact of the measures that we
introduced through the legislation, and it is a bit of a long game
here because we’re assessing that it would take at least five
years before we have the full assessment of that. But, at the same
time, there’s a whole series of other measures, of course,
that we’re introducing; I’ve just explained those. We
have those opportunities to have those conversations with local
authorities on a regular basis to assess how they’re—.
And the feedback—it’s more than just quantitative,
about, you know, how many buildings have been saved. It’s
also qualitative, to assess how effective those powers are being
and are local authorities are actually using them. So, again, I
point to another one of our documents, ‘Managing Historic
Buildings at Risk’, which actually just, again, flags up and
highlights the powers that are available to local authorities,
notwithstanding the preservation notices we’ve talked about;
they already have a suite of measures.
|
[97]
Lee Waters: But the powers are a rather blunt instrument,
given the capacity restrictions, aren’t they?
|
[98]
Mr Hughes: Exactly.
|
[99]
Lee Waters: So, what creative thinking is taking place to
help support local authorities?
|
[100] Mr
Hughes: The creative thinking there is actually to support them
in working together in collaboration. So, there are some good
examples of that. The conservation officers from north Wales, they
have a forum, and they’ve already come together to look at
how they can actually produce a memorandum of understanding to
share that expertise. At the moment, they’re quite small
authorities. They often have singleton conservation officers who
may not have had experience of taking forward proceed to repair
notices followed by a compulsory purchase.
|
[101] Lee
Waters: It’s not just an issue of experience, though.
It’s an issue of capacity, isn’t it?
|
[102] Mr
Hughes: And finance as well—
|
[103] Lee
Waters: Yes.
|
[104] Mr
Hughes: —and so it’s about pooling and
collaborating and sharing. So, we’ve also put in place and
supported a task and finish group to look at the pan-Wales picture
on this as well, and that task and finish group have just produced
a report, which is now currently with the Cabinet Secretary for
consideration, looking at the way in which the local authorities
can take forward that agenda more positively, and also looking at
what Cadw can do, not just through the framework, the management
guidance that we’re preparing and that we’ve been
consulting upon, but also how we can actually support them through
mentoring and training, so we’ll be taking advantage of their
fora to help them with that.
|
[105] Lee
Waters: Okay, thank you.
|
[106] Bethan
Jenkins: Neil Hamilton.
|
[107] Neil
Hamilton: The Cabinet Secretary announced the establishment of
a strategic partnership last May. He came before this committee in
July and told us that he’d receive a report in September on
what progress had been made. Do you know if he’s received
that report, and, if so, what it contains and what it tells us
about the state of collaboration in your sector?
|
[108] Mr
Thomas: Thank you. He has received that report. He received a
letter from the joint chairs of the steering group. Gareth Howells,
who’s the chief officer for Prospect, is a joint chair of the
steering group, as is Christopher Catling, from the royal
commission. So, they wrote to the Cabinet Secretary in September.
If I could touch on some themes in there, really, I think
there’s been good progress. I’ve sat in every single
one of those meetings with my Cadw hat on, and what I’ve
seen—and this is touched on in the letter—over the five
meetings, I think, that we’ve had now, is actually the value
that you get when you get the senior leadership from each of those
organisations around the table talking about real issues that
affect the way we do things, that will affect the people visiting
our sites and the people who work for us.
|
[109] We have made
some real progress. We’ve put four different work streams in
place. The first one that we’ve prioritised is looking at
skills and how we can work jointly to help boost the skills within
the sector. We’ve been looking at some things that I
can’t touch on here that are really commercial in nature, but
I think could potentially be transformative in the way that we are
working closely together. I can say that there’s been real
progress, and, in the five or six months that we’ve been
looking at this, I think there are real tangible things that are
going to be coming out of it, and there have been things that
we’ve done already that have been successful.
|
[110] Neil
Hamilton: So, everybody’s working together very
happily.
|
[111] Mr
Thomas: Happily—. You know, yes, I think. I do. To be
honest, we’re talking about really challenging things in
these meetings. You know, you’re looking at—.
We’ve touched on the work streams that we’ve agreed on
and—Gwilym correct me, but we’ve got skills, commercial
income generation, back-office functions, customer skills
excellence. These are things that really go to the heart of each of
these different organisations, and we’ve all got different
objectives, as well, haven’t we? So, we’re trying to
work out where the common ground is there, and sometimes
there’s give and take. So, ‘happy’ would probably
be overselling it, but I think ‘constructive’ is the
word.
|
[112] Mr
Hughes: Can I just come in and just say that, yes, it’s
fine for us to say, ‘Yes, everybody’s working happily
together,’ but, actually, the evidence speaks for itself,
doesn’t it? I think that a lot of the evidence papers that
you’ve received have been talking about the consultation that
we do with the sector to make sure that they’re with us and
actually in order to form good change, good measures—good
changes that are actually effective and that actually bite.
|
[113] Neil
Hamilton: Well, we’ll, I’m sure, come back to some
of those issues, like commercialisation and so on, later on in the
course of this session. I’d just like to take this one step
further, because the royal commission told the committee that
collaboration needs to go beyond the four bodies that are in the
strategic partnership, and there are a lot of people who’ve
got a stake in tourism in Wales that are not primarily concerned
about the historic environment, but nevertheless they are
tangential to it and an important element within the whole mix. So,
what plans does Cadw have to expand your working connections with
other bodies?
|
[114] Mr
Thomas: I think it’s important to state that it’s
not really—. Cadw’s not driving it; this is a
partnership between all the four organisations there. So,
we’ve recognised, as a partnership, that there is a
significant opportunity, over the long term, to broaden who’s
part of that partnership. What we’ve agreed so far is: we
want to see material, constructive progress on these four work
streams that we’ve put in place that lead to tangible
benefits for the citizens of Wales and the people who work for us.
When those are really working effectively, then we think
we’ll have something that we can really sell to those other
bodies to come and join us. We’ve talked about different
institutions—big institutions in Wales—that we think
would add value. So, it’s very much on the table. One thing
that I’ve stressed, when I’m speaking in the
partnership is that this isn’t an initiative. It’s not
like a task and finish thing. This is—you know, it’s
for life, not just a for Christmas-type approach, really. So, this
is a long-term thing that we want to bring real value to the
sector. So, it’s very much on the table; I just don’t
think the time’s quite right now.
|
[115] Neil
Hamilton: Okay, fine. Well, several of the witnesses that
we’ve had evidence from have noted the absence of an agreed
historic environment strategy in Wales. Do you agree with that,
and, if so, what plans do you have to do something about it?
|
[116] Mr
Thomas: On strategy—. I was very fortunate, I would say,
to have been in city hall, I think three weeks ago, when our First
Minister delivered a speech to officials about the way we’re
going to do business as a Government going forward. It was great to
be there because it was a real step change. He doesn’t want
strategy factories; he doesn’t want everybody going around
and constantly talking about, ‘Well, what are we going to be
doing?’ He wants people out there delivering for the people
of Wales. We have the strategy for the country, ‘Prosperity
for All’, and I think in this sector we can do so much to
deliver on the four themes in there and the five priorities. This
does come to me a lot, not just in my Cadw hat, but in the other
bits of my portfolio, and sometimes I feel it’s deflection;
people say, ‘Well, let’s talk about another
strategy’ and then you spend 18 months not doing stuff. This
is like we want to do stuff, so that’s—. So, I’m
trying to—. It’s kind of saying, ‘I’m
saying “no” to that, but I think it’s for good
reason.’
|
[117] Mr
Hughes: Can I come in on that, Chair? I think that that’s
absolutely—. I agree with everything that you said there,
Jason, and I’d add to that—and it kind of reflects back
on your original question about extending the partnership. There is
a historic environment group that already exists. I was there
supporting them only on Monday of this week, and it’s their
opportunity, as a forum for sectoral groups, to respond to that
strategy and to explain how they, as individual organisations, can
actually contribute to that national strategy with a clear set of
actions. I think that’s where the meat of it is: what will
they do? What can they do towards meeting those national
strategies, and indeed the well-being
goals?
|
[118] Neil
Hamilton: I agree with you. I think there is a danger of
getting into a situation where we’re setting up a strategy
for strategists rather than getting on with doing the day job, as
it were. So, that is practical common sense in my view. Thanks.
|
[119] Bethan
Jenkins: Okay. Hannah.
|
[120] Hannah
Blythyn: Thanks, Chair. There have been calls for Cadw and
other heritage bodies in Wales to have a much sharper commercial
focus, and in your evidence to committee you said that 2016-17 was
Cadw’s most successful year on record in terms of visitors to
staff sites and income generated. What would you credit with
achieving this in that year?
|
[121] Mr
Thomas: Thank you for that question, it’s a very nice
question. [Laughter.] I guess where I’d start is
we—. So, Cadw, I think, is in a process of evolution from an
organisation that for many years—quite rightly, that was what
it was tasked with—was focused solely on conservation,
protection, inspection and helping the wider sector. I think
commercial performance and recognising the greatness of the
attractions, for want of a better word, that we have in our estate
was less of a priority; I think I could say that. What we’ve
recognised over a few years now is, actually, we can’t have
business as usual like that. Because of austerity, because of the
funding that’s available to Cadw for the delivery of
services, we have to do so much more to contribute to the income
that we generate.
|
[122] So, I’ve
got some figures, just to give you a brief example of the sort of
numbers on what we’ve achieved and I’ll answer your
question directly then. So, if you go back almost 10 years, the
cost of running all our services was around £20 million, and
that’s everything from the historic environment to running
the sites; the income that we generated was under £4 million.
So, it’s a £16 million gap to run Cadw. It was £16
million the year after that; it was £20 million the year after
that. The figures were broadly similar for a number of years, and
then, if you go back two or three years ago when we changed the
focus, we said, ‘Well, actually, we can’t sustain this
anymore’, we had to take a 13.5 per cent revenue cut to our
budget to help the budget match up for the portfolio. So, business
as usual wasn’t there. So, we completely—on the back of
a really thorough commercial review of Cadw, we implemented
sweeping reforms to the way in which we manage the business there.
Commercial and visitor performance was at the heart and is now at
the heart of everything that we do, and we’ve really come
significantly forward on that. So, if you look at where we were
last year, still the operating costs are around that sort of
£19 million to £20 million mark, but our income is almost
twice what it was 10 years ago. This year, we are significantly
ahead of our budget after six months. So, we’re reducing, if
I could call it, the burden to central Welsh Government to fund us.
We’ve done that, really, by acting on the back of this
review. We’ve focused on our top 10 sites.
|
10:15
|
[123] One thing that,
I guess, has wound me up over the last couple of years is people
saying about Wales, ‘You know what? You haven’t got a
Stonehenge, you haven’t got an Edinburgh castle’ and
that really drives me crazy. We have. We’ve got better than
that—we’ve got Caernarfon castle, Conwy castle, Castell
Coch. We’ve really underutilised them for years. So,
we’re actually focusing on that. I’m very passionate
about this, as you can probably tell. But if you look at the way we
price our monuments—Conwy, our most expensive monument:
£8.95 to get in. When we put it up to £8.95, colleagues
were like, ‘That’s ridiculous. No-one’s going to
come anymore. It’s too high. You’ve put the price up
too much.’ You look at our competitors—Edinburgh castle
is around £17; Dover: £19. The product is no different.
They do things more commercially there at the most, but we’re
half of that. So, we’ve made massive inroads over the last
couple of years, but we can go so much further. We’ve
invested in digital. You can buy membership online from Cadw now,
which most businesses were doing 20 years ago, but we’ve only
been doing it for the last 12 months—
|
[124] Bethan
Jenkins: Okay. We have to move on, sorry. I was just conscious
of time.
|
[125] Mr
Thomas: That’s okay. I could go on for hours.
|
[126] Bethan
Jenkins: I can feel your passion. It’s fine.
|
[127] Hannah
Blythyn: A very quick question on a related
thing—you’ve covered a lot of what I was going to ask,
but I’m just curious in terms of you’re talking about
the top 10 sites and looking in terms of staffed sites, and I
don’t know if you’ve got any way of measuring the value
of volunteers to Cadw, and particularly when you look at those
sites that, perhaps, aren’t pay-to-visit and are
understaffed, but are still very popular. How do you measure the
value of them?
|
[128] Mr
Thomas: This is a major priority for us going forward as well.
I’ll go back 12 months. So, it was only one of Cadw’s
sites where we had volunteers regularly working to help improve the
visitor experience, and they do an amazing job—that goes
without saying. That was at Plas Mawr up in Conwy. We have 50
volunteers who put in significant time every year to work at that
monument. You look at other organisations like the National Trust,
where volunteering is a fundamental part of their business—it
really adds to the mix, and speaking honestly, we’re nowhere
near that.
|
[129] So, as part of
this drive to make our visitor experience much better, we want to
really make the experience more engaging, and you do that on a
range of things, and volunteers is one of those. So, we’ve
focused on it. We’ve got two members of the team who focus
solely on promoting volunteering opportunities. They’re
making significant progress this year. So, it’s something
that’s core business for us now and we’re going to be
constantly reviewing that. We totally support it.
|
[130] Mr
Hughes: Can I just add to that? It’s not just the pay-for
sites. You mentioned about the non-paying sites, and actually
beyond Cadw’s own monuments, there’s a lot of work
being done on trying to encourage volunteers. We just launched an
event at Basingwerk Abbey, for example, quite recently—this
last week, I think it was, or the week before—where a whole
series of volunteers have been involved with actually promoting and
supporting the work that’s been done on Basingwerk and the
Greenfield Valley. But there’s also, beyond that, the work of
the organisations that we support, including the Royal Commission
on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Wales and the Welsh
Archaeological Trusts. We encourage them all to be actively engaged
in volunteers and we’ve got other projects that are coming
on-stream to help work, especially with young people, on voluntary
work, assessing the impact of those volunteers and understanding
the value they bring. It forms very much part of the requirement
that we give them, those organisations we support, but they need to
demonstrate not just the quantitative—how many volunteers
have been involved and how many volunteer days they’ve
actually been engaged in—but what is the added value that
they bring, both to the heritage and also to themselves.
|
[131] Bethan
Jenkins: Dai Lloyd.
|
[132]
Dai Lloyd: Jest i droi yn fyr—yn nhermau amser,
rwy’n sylweddoli’r amserlen y bore yma,
Gadeirydd—at adroddiad y Farwnes Andrews ar ddiwylliant a
thlodi ar waith, a sut mae diwylliant yn gallu gwneud rhywbeth am
yr holl agenda tlodi ac, wrth gwrs, creu gwaith Fusion. Roeddwn i
ond eisiau diweddariad ar fel mae pethau yn mynd ymlaen efo Fusion
a sut mae’r agenda yna’n dod at ei gilydd.
|
Dai
Lloyd: Just turning very briefly—I realise that time is
against us this morning, Chair—to Baroness Andrews’s
report on culture and poverty, and how culture can contribute to
the poverty agenda and, of course, creating the Fusion work. I just
wanted an update on what’s going on with Fusion and how that
agenda is progressing.
|
[133] Mr
Thomas: Thank you. It’s progressing well. We have a
number of projects in place this year. We ran a pilot programme for
two years that was really effective. I’ll pass over to Tom,
who’s the expert and has all the detail on this, but
it’s formed part of core business for Welsh
Government—it’s a real all-Government, all-public
sector, all-stakeholder approach. So, we’re seeing big gains
with it, and I’ll pass over to Tom who can perhaps give some
more detail.
|
[134] Mr
Cosson: Sure, thank you. So, Cyfuno-Fusion is an
example—Wales is actually the only UK nation, and, as far as
I know, anywhere in the world, with a national programme
that’s using culture and arts in this way, and heritage, to
look at addressing poverty. So, it’s a programme that works
across Cadw, it also works with the museums, archives and libraries
sector, and the arts in all their forms. So, it’s quite a
broad coalition of partners, as Jason says. I think it’s
hugely encouraging that so many bodies are engaging with it, first
of all. So, it’s a partnership between the national museum,
Cadw, the royal commission, the national library, et cetera, et
cetera. Very much in line with what Jason was saying about the
healthy attitude to collaboration, that’s definitely coming
through very strongly.
|
[135] In terms of the
Andrews report, the primary message that came through that report
was that local cultural and community bodies needed to actually
work much more closely together in order to reach the kind of
people who we want to reach through Fusion, who are essentially
people from disadvantaged communities and those termed hardest to
reach, I think. So, we’ve seen a lot of progress in terms of
the Andrews report. There were 33 recommendations in that report,
and 11 of those have now been completed and another 19 of those are
ongoing and seeing progress.
|
[136] As Jason
mentions, we had a pilot phase in 2015-17, where we tried to
establish a new way of working. The question was how to promote
this kind of collaborative working at a local level, and also a
national level. There was a lot of quite healthy attitude to
experimentation, I think, which has been really encouraging.
We’ve been evaluating what we do as we go along through that
phase. Just as headline figures from that pilot phase, we worked
with over 150 partners, and over 5,000 people participated in
activities through the Fusion work. That includes more than 300
people volunteering, 1,500 young people supported to do better at
school and over 100 people gaining a qualification.
|
[137] What that gave
us was a real feeling for what kind of cultural work and what kind
of interventions are most helpful, and we’ve been able to
take that on this year with a new two-year programme. At the core
of that programme is continuing this partnership approach, so
we’ve funded eight partnerships in Wales. They’re
collaborations between local authorities, local arts, heritage,
museums, archives and libraries, and also those community bodies
that are essential, so, for example, the Flying Start programme for
the younger parents and children, the Communities for Work
programme, housing associations and so on.
|
[138] Dai
Lloyd: Fine.
|
[139] Bethan
Jenkins: Can I just ask quickly, if any of those projects are
in current Communities First areas, what happens then with the
transition funds and with many of the schemes coming to an end?
Will there be new projects put in place, or will they come to an
end with the Communities First funding?
|
[140] Mr
Cosson: So, in the pilot phase it was very much targeted not
just at Communities First areas, but also a lot of the funding was
through the Communities First lead delivery bodies, so, mostly,
local authorities. Now, obviously, with the changes to the
Communities First programme, we needed to look quite hard at how we
delivered Fusion, as well as a lot of other programmes we’ve
had to look at in the same way. So, the approach now is not based
on the Communities First programme, it’s now standing
slightly aside from that, because, obviously, it’s not a
sustainable model for Fusion to carry on. So, we’re bringing
in new partners such as the housing associations, for example,
Communities for Work, which is ESF-funded—
|
[141] Bethan
Jenkins: But those are still Communities First areas,
though.
|
[142] Mr
Cosson: They are, and the actual projects that are happening
this year are almost exclusively in the old Communities First
areas. Obviously, the programme is still ongoing for this year. So,
the targeting hasn’t changed. It’s still being targeted
very much at those communities that most need some support and
help.
|
[143] Bethan
Jenkins: Okay.
|
[144]
Suzy Davies: Thank you very much. Part of the area I represent is
Swansea, and, obviously, we’ve seen arts and culture help
regenerate the High Street area around the station of Swansea, but
that particular bit of Swansea has still got three buildings at
significant risk and a really important old pub was demolished in
the course of that. We’ve had a statement from the royal
commission that says:
|
[145] ‘Questions need to be asked about
whether Wales is as active in regeneration as other parts of the
UK, and if not why not?’
|
[146]
I wonder if you can just explain whether
there are any tensions between the slightly easier things to do,
which are about arts helping to regenerate, and heritage being used
to regenerate. You can refer to an example, if you want.
|
[147]
Mr Thomas: I’d say that the arts stuff isn’t easy to
do. I think there’s no tension. I would call it synergy. Part
of what Fusion does is bring all these partners together. So, on
the Fusion programme, you’ve got Cadw there, you’ve got
arts and culture. We work closely together. You know, could we do
more? Of course we could, but I think we do work
closely—
|
[148]
Suzy Davies: Can I help clarify my question, then? We’ve
seen that the work of the arts has been very successful there, but
we’ve still got those three buildings at risk. Does attention
get diverted from the really difficult stuff on this?
|
[149]
Mr Thomas: I would say—. I know that area well. When I was
a transport planner, we invested in the High Street station around
there, and we hoped that that would be a trailblazer and unlock all
of this development around there. Still, seven years on, there is
still a lot more that could be done, I think. There is more that
could be done. That’s all I could say.
|
[150]
Suzy Davies: Okay, I’ll accept that as an answer then,
otherwise Bethan will be cross.
|
[151]
Bethan Jenkins:
Lee Waters.
|
[152]
Lee Waters: Thanks. Just to move on to collaboration with the
private sector, you mentioned in your approach to Cadw that there
is clearly a far greater appetite to take a commercial approach,
which I applaud, but in terms of the management of the historic
heritage sector, that mindset doesn’t seem to be quite as
prevalent—the sympathy with the private sector outlook.
We’ve had evidence that suggests there’s a public
sector mindset and that that is a frustration to private owners of
historically important buildings—that you don’t just
quite get it. So, I wonder if you can just tell me about the sort
of evolution of this approach.
|
[153] Mr Thomas: I think that many in the sector
can learn from what we’ve done in Cadw. We’re here to
help work with them—we’re already doing that on many
fronts—but also other leading organisations in this field,
like the National Trust, like other organisations across the UK and
beyond, really. I think I’d agree with that assessment.
I’ve been working in this sector for a number of years. I
think, sometimes, there can be a kind of ‘business as
usual’ mentality: ‘Don’t tell us about
commercialising this. You don’t know it—if we start
charging for things on this, it isn’t going to work; people
won’t come.’ What we’ve found in Cadw is that,
actually, if you have a visitor product that is superb, people are
prepared to pay for it. If you structure it in the right way, you
can do that to get more people through the door and you’re
not prioritising certain people, really.
|
[154] Mr Hughes: Can I come in on this as well?
Actually, we do recognise that the vast majority of historic assets
and listed buildings are owned by private owners, are in the
private sector. The vast majority of those people do the right
thing for their buildings and their structures, and that is fully
appreciated. The representatives of some of those organisations are
involved in our fora and the ongoing discussions. So, I can pick
out the Historic Houses Association and the Country Land and
Business Association, for example, who are very active and have
been providing us with enormous and good support and advice.
|
[155]
Lee Waters: And they’ve called for more cross-sector
co-operation in the promotion and management of historic assets. Do
you have plans to do that?
|
[156] Mr Thomas: We
touched on this with Historic Wales earlier on. I do think there is
this real opportunity going forward where, if we can get our act in
order with what I would call the leading institutions in this space
then we can use that to have ripple effects across the whole
sector. We’ve got a duty in Cadw where owners of listed
buildings want to do things with their buildings sometimes.
We’ve got to take a whole-Government approach. It’s not
just about the heritage sector. If they’re doing things that
are better for the future well-being of people, then we need
to find ways to help them do that. So, again, there’s more we
can do, but I’d say that we’re on to it.
|
10:30
|
[157] Lee
Waters: And just finally then, on the future status of Cadw
itself, you mentioned that there was a report going to the Cabinet
Secretary. Can you just tell us a little bit about the timing of
that, and what the decision-making framework is? What’s going
to be the key driver to the final outcome?
|
[158] Mr
Thomas: The report from the steering group that was chaired by
Justin Albert came to the Cabinet Secretary in February. The
Cabinet Secretary committed to reviewing the option on Cadw going
outside Government, and he wanted a report by the end of September.
That report was provided to him by the end of September, and there
is an item on Cabinet agenda to discuss that in the very near
future. So, I would expect that the outcome of that will be
published shortly, if everything goes to plan. So, what I think I
would say is that, genuinely, one of the most, detailed, robust,
quality pieces of work that I’ve seen in my 17 years in
Government has gone into the business case for that, and then
we’ll see the outcome of that in the coming months.
|
[159] Lee
Waters: How important was accountability and public
transparency to the future arrangements as part of that
thinking?
|
[160] Mr
Thomas: I don’t want to trail things that are in there,
because I think it’s only right that Cabinet looks at that
report and takes a view on it first, and it will all come out in
the decision from there. If I start picking out bits from within
it, then I’ll be pre-empting what Cabinet might say and do.
They might not agree with the report, and then, we’re in a
different place.
|
[161] Lee
Waters: Okay. Thank you.
|
[162]
Bethan Jenkins:
Ocê. Diolch yn fawr iawn i chi
am ddod mewn yma heddiw. Diolch yn fawr am roi eich tystiolaeth. Os
oes unrhyw beth arall gyda ni i ofyn, rwy’n siŵr y
byddwn ni’n cysylltu gyda chi, ond diolch yn fawr iawn am
ddod mewn. Cawn ni seibiant o ddwy funud cyn y tystion
nesaf.
|
Bethan
Jenkins: Okay. Thank you very much for coming in today. And
thank you for giving us your evidence. If there’s anything
else we have to ask you, I’m sure we’ll be in touch,
but thank you very much for coming in today. We’re going to
take a two-minute break now, please, before the next witnesses
arrive.
|
Gohiriwyd y cyfarfod rhwng 10:32 a 10:37
The
meeting was adjourned between 10:32 and 10:37.
|
Amgylchedd
Hanesyddol: Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 2
Historic Environment: Evidence Session 2
|
[163] Bethan
Jenkins: Diolch a chroeso. Eitem
3, sef yr amgylchedd hanesyddol a sesiwn dystiolaeth 2, a chroeso i
Christopher Catling, sef ysgrifennydd, prif weithredwr, Comisiwn
Brenhinol Henebion Cymru, ac i Dr Eurwyn Wiliam, cadeirydd Comisiwn
Brenhinol Henebion Cymru. Os yw’n iawn gyda chi, byddwn
ni’n gofyn cwestiynau ar themâu penodol, a gallwch chi
ymateb yn hynny o beth. Mae’r cwestiynau cyntaf gen i. Rwyf i
jest eisiau gwybod o’ch persbectif chi, gyda’r Ddeddf a
oedd wedi cael ei phasio ar yr amgylchedd hanesyddol, beth sydd
wedi newid ar hyn o bryd sydd yn eich plesio chi, neu a oes unrhyw
farn gyda chi am yr hyn sydd angen cael ei wneud? Fel rydym ni wedi
clywed gan Cadw yn barod, mae lot o gyngor wedi dod mas—lot o
ddogfennau guidance. A
ydych chi’n credu bod hynny’n ddefnyddiol? A sut,
wedyn, mae’r Ddeddf wedi dechrau gweithredu yn eich barn
chi?
|
Bethan
Jenkins: Thank you and welcome. Item 3: historic environment,
evidence session 2. And welcome Christopher Catling, the secretary,
CEO, Royal Commission on the
Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, and Dr Eurwyn Wiliam,
chair of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical
Monuments of Wales. If it’s okay with you, we have a series
of questions on specific themes, and you can respond as you see
fit. The first questions are from me. I just wanted to ask, please,
from your perspective, in relation to the Act that was passed on
the historic environment, what has changed up to this point that
maybe pleases you, or do you have any particular opinion around
what needs still to be done? As we’ve heard from Cadw
already, there’s been a lot of guidance documentation issued.
Do you think they have been useful? How do you think that Act has
begun to be implemented?
|
[164] Dr
Wiliam: Ie, y gwirionedd ydy,
wrth gwrs, mai dechrau gweithredu mae’r Ddeddf. Mae hi mewn
bodolaeth ers blwyddyn, neu beth bynnag. Nid yw’r holl waith tu ôl i’r Ddeddf
eto wedi’i gwblhau, ond rydw i’n meddwl ei bod
hi’n unigryw yng ngwledydd Prydain, yn sicr, fel Deddf, ac
mae hynny’n wych o beth, ond rydw i’n meddwl y bydd
hi’n flwyddyn neu ddwy eto cyn i ni weld sut mae hi yn setlo
i’w lle yn iawn.
|
Dr
Wiliam: Yes, the truth is that the Act has just started to be
implemented. It’s been in existence for a year or so, I
believe, so all of the work behind the Act hasn’t yet been
completed, but I think it’s unique in the British nations, as
an Act, and that’s excellent to see, but I think it will be
another year or two before we see how it settles into its
place.
|
[165]
Mae yna bethau hanfodol ar ôl,
rydw i’n meddwl, sydd angen eu gwneud, ac mae hi’n
fwriad, wrth gwrs, gan Cadw a’r Llywodraeth i hynny ddigwydd.
Un o’r pethau sylfaenol yn ein barn ni ydy nad oes yna ddim
eto yng Nghymru strategaeth i’r sector. Mae yna yn Lloegr;
mae yna yn yr Alban; ond cam angenrheidiol cyntaf at greu’r
strategaeth yna fyddai’r bwrdd ymgynghori yma sydd yn y
Ddeddf, ac mae hi’n fwriad—mae’r Ddeddf yn mynnu
bod yna fwrdd ymgynghori’n cael ei sefydlu.
Nid yw hwnnw eto ddim wedi cael ei
sefydlu, wedyn, buasem ni’n awyddus iawn, wrth gwrs, i hwnnw
fynd ymlaen a chael ei sefydlu, ac unwaith mae hwnnw mewn lle, mae
hwnnw yn rhoi fforwm a sianel i’r Llywodraeth a Cadw i greu
strategaeth i’r sector wedyn. Rwy’n meddwl bod
hynny’n hanfodol.
|
There are vital
things remaining that need to be done, and it’s an intention
for Cadw and the Welsh Government for that to happen. One of the
fundamental things, in our opinion, is that there’s not yet
in Wales a strategy for the sector. There is in England; there is
in Scotland; but a vital first step towards creating that strategy
would be that consultative advisory board that is mentioned in the
Act, and it is an intention—the Act does demand that there
would be an advisory board established. That hasn’t yet been
done. So, we would be very eager for that to be established, and
once that is in place, then that gives a forum and a channel to the
Welsh Government and Cadw to create a strategy for the sector as a
whole. I think that’s crucial.
|
[166]
Bethan Jenkins:
Fel rydych chi wedi clywed gan Cadw y
bore yma, efallai, maen nhw’n dweud bod grŵp sydd yn
bodoli yn barod, grŵp hanesyddol, sydd yn trafod y pethau yma.
Cyn i’r grŵp gorchwyl ddod i mewn, oni fyddai hynny yn
lle i drafod strategaeth?
|
Bethan Jenkins: As you may have heard
from Cadw this morning, they say that there is a group in existence
already, a historic environment group, which discusses these
issues. So, before the new group is put into place, wouldn’t
that be a place to discuss this?
|
[167]
Dr Wiliam: Rwy’n meddwl mai’n barn ni fyddai,
cyn i’r grŵp strategol/ arolygu/llywio newydd yma gael
ei sefydlu, rwy’n meddwl y byddai’n—. Mae’r
grŵp rydych chi’n cyfeirio ato—yr historic
environment group—yn grŵp sy’n cynnwys prif
weithredwyr a phenaethiaid yr holl sefydliadau. Hynny yw,
mae’n cynrychioli’r sefydliadau—nid yw’n
unigolion. Mae pawb sy’n dod iddo fo, er rwy’n
siŵr eu bod nhw’n ceisio gwneud y gorau dros y sector ac
nid eu sefydliadau eu hunain, yn anorfod, mae yna elfen o bledio
achos sefydliad ynddo fo.
|
Dr
Wiliam: I think our view would be that, before the new
strategic/steering group is established, I think it would
be—. The group that you are referring to—the historic
environment group—is a group that includes the chief
executives and heads of all of the institutions. So, it represents
the organisations—it’s not individuals. Everyone who
comes to that group, even though I’m sure that they try to do
their best for the sector and not their own organisations,
inevitably, there’s an element of making the case for their
own organisation.
|
[168]
Mae’n gyfrwng cydweithio, nid
oes cwestiwn am hynny. Ond, beth sy’n angenrheidiol,
rwy’n meddwl, ydy’r grŵp hollol annibynnol eu barn
yma a fyddai’n cynghori’r Llywodraeth a’r sector
ar y peth. Ond, rwy’n meddwl eich bod chi’n hollol iawn
yn hynny o beth, tra ein bod ni’n aros i’r grŵp
yna gael ei gychwyn a’i sefydlu, yn bersonol, fe fuaswn
i’n meddwl ei fod yn hollol gywir i’r grŵp yma
ddechrau meddwl am y math o bethau sydd yn angenrheidiol i’w
gwneud.
|
It’s a
means of collaboration, there’s no question about that. But,
what’s vital, I think, is that we have that entirely
independent group that would advise the Government and the sector
on these issues. But, I think you’re entirely right in that
regard, whilst we’re waiting for that group to be established
or initiated, personally, I would think that it would be entirely
right for this group to start thinking about the kinds of things
that are vital to be done.
|
[169]
Bethan Jenkins:
Jest i ddilyn ymlaen, beth ydych
chi’n credu sydd heb gael ei weithredu eto yn y Ddeddf sydd
angen cael ei weithredu ar frys? Hefyd, beth yw’ch barn chi
ynglŷn â’r hysbysiadau cadwraeth? Rydym wedi clywed
tystiolaeth, os ydyn nhw’n cael eu rhoi mewn i rym, y byddan
nhw’n drychinebus ar gyfer y sector o ran y risg i bobl sydd
yn berchen ar adeiladau, neu ar yr hyn sydd yn bodoli y maen
nhw’n berchen arno. Beth yw’ch barn chi yn hynny o
beth?
|
Bethan
Jenkins: Just following on from that, what do you think has not
been implemented yet in the Act, which needs to be looked at
urgently? Also, what is your opinion on the preservation notices?
We’ve heard evidence that, if they’re put in place,
they would be disastrous for the sector in relation to the risk for
any rescuing purchaser to acquire a building, because of the risk
posed by that. What would your opinion be on that?
|
[170]
Dr Wiliam: Rwy’n meddwl y gwnaf i ofyn i Christopher
siarad ar hynny.
|
Dr
Wiliam: I’ll ask Christopher to answer that.
|
[171] Mr
Catling: Thank you. I gave evidence to this committee when we
were considering the Bill before it was passed. I made very
strongly the point there that the best solution for buildings at
risk is a voluntary agreement and working with owners. I think
compulsion really does create problems and it’s very costly
on the local authority that decides to take that course of action.
So, I’m still very much in favour of talking to owners.
|
[172] Bethan
Jenkins: Okay. Lee Waters.
|
[173] Lee
Waters: Thank you. You describe in your evidence a sort of ad
hoc approach to designation. You talk about a lack of a programme
of systematic assessment, survey and evaluation. You said this is
the sort of thing you’d like to do but you don’t have
the resources to do it. Can you just tell us a little bit more
about the impact of the failure to take that approach and the kind
of resources that you would need in order to be able to fulfil that
obligation?
|
[174] Mr
Catling: England and Scotland both have in place a system of
thematic survey that looks at building types and monument types
across the nation and makes recommendations for those that should
be listed, which then go to the relevant Minister or Secretary of
State. It’s a long time since we’ve had that in Wales
and I think we have been criticised for lacking a sense of, for
example, when nineteenth and twentieth-century buildings come up
for development, what is special and significant about them. What
are the best?
|
[175] A case in point
is the BBC studios, which we are busy recording now because
they’re going to be demolished. Now, it might have been that,
because they’re purpose built, because they’re very
interesting architecturally, elements of those buildings might have
been preserved rather than demolished if we had done a survey of
twentieth-century buildings. I think there are some building types
in Wales that cry out for a survey of that kind. I think we
don’t know enough about public buildings, for
example—you know, town halls, libraries, and buildings of
that type. We don’t know which ones are the best, which we
would want to concentrate on preserving or conserving.
|
[176] Lee
Waters: That’s a very interesting example, the BBC
building, isn’t it?
|
[177] Mr
Catling: Yes, it is.
|
[178] Lee
Waters: Because a whole set of economic activities were
predicated on that building being knocked down. Clearly, it is of
architectural value and I think only now it’s being
threatened people are waking up to the fact that this is an
important building.
|
[179] Mr
Catling: Fortunately, we’ve been alerted in time.
We’re doing a very thorough survey and we’re training
BBC staff to do their own recording work so that we’re not
just recording the physical building, but we’re actually
recording it in use—people doing the things that they did in
the building. So, we’re going to preserve by record, and I
think there’s a proposal to preserve one of the studios,
perhaps at St Fagans.
|
10:45
|
[180] Lee
Waters: Right, but you’d have preferred to have seen the
whole thing kept up.
|
[181] Mr
Catling: No, not necessarily. I’m making a case for
knowing what the resource consists of so that we can make sensible
decisions about what to preserve. At the moment, I don’t
think we have that knowledge base to make those decisions. That
applies to, I don’t know, nineteenth and twentieth century
places of worship that are under threat as well.
|
[182] Lee
Waters: What’s stopping that being developed?
|
[183] Mr
Catling: Sorry, I missed that.
|
[184] Lee
Waters: What’s stopping that approach being adopted?
|
[185] Mr
Catling: It’s resources. It’s as simple as that. We
have a considerably lower budget now than we had 15 years ago.
We’ve got 30 staff, not 45. It’s simply a question of
not having the people to do the work.
|
[186] Lee
Waters: You described it as the lack of a willingness to take a
thematic approach. Is that a resource issue?
|
[187] Mr
Catling: It is a resource issue. I’m sure the willingness
is there.
|
[188] Lee
Waters: Okay. Can I just touch on two particular areas that
have come up through the evidence as areas of concern? One is the
impact of agricultural activity and then, secondly, the issue of
maritime archaeology. We heard, I think, from Cadw a little earlier
that there is some work on guidance taking place as we speak on
maritime, but if you can just touch briefly on both of those and
what the state of play is.
|
[189] Mr
Catling: The maritime one is urgent because the maritime
resource is under development pressure—aggregates extraction,
wind farms, tidal barriers and so on—and we simply
don’t have enough information about what lies under the sea.
We’re not just talking about wrecks here—we’re
talking about drowned landscapes from the Bronze Age, the
Neolithic, the Palaeolithic.
|
[190] Successful
policies are in place in England and Scotland whereby arrangements
have been made with people who are doing work at
sea—fishermen trawling and so on—who produce hand axes
from the bottom of the sea so that we can record where they were
found. That gives us a pinpoint on a map—somewhere we know
where there’s potential archaeology. We have not yet got that
in Wales. We need a set of guidelines and we need to start talking
to people who work in the marine environment and selling that idea
to them.
|
[191] An interesting
anecdotal story about that was that we have been working with
fishermen in Wales on a voluntary scheme. They were very, very
worried and very hostile at first, until we discovered that they
were just worried because they’d got collections at home of
stuff that they’d brought up in their nets and they thought
they were going to get into trouble for not reporting them. So,
we’ve reassured them about that and we’re now working
with them. But, it’s voluntary, it’s not a pan-Wales
policy yet.
|
[192] The guidance
that Cadw has been drawing up is taking—let me choose my
words carefully—quite a long time to emerge, and I think we
feel that there’s an urgency that that comes quite soon.
|
[193]
Farming—we’re very lucky in Wales, it’s largely
arable farming so we’re not ploughing up as much, say, as
they are in East Anglia or Bedfordshire. But changes to the common
agricultural policy, post Brexit, is the thing that’s really
worrying us. Not so much the damage that might be caused by farming
to archaeological resources, but, neglect, abandonment, and a
reversion to forest—tree roots are very, very bad for
archaeology.
|
[194] Lee
Waters: Okay, that’s interesting. I just want to briefly
ask you as well for your reflections on the evidence of the Country
Land and Business Association. They talk about what they describe
as a paradox of enforcement, where the nature of the system is to
focus on technical breaches, rather than going after a small number
of what they call
|
[195] ‘malign
and difficult owners who deliberately damage heritage.’
|
[196] Because local
authorities inevitably are incentivised, or at least it’s
made easier, to go after the former.
|
[197] Mr
Catling: It is. It’s everything for an easy life, and I
don’t blame the conservation and planning officers in that
position, they’re under pressure. We’ve got
evidence—I think you had papers at the last evidence session
saying that the number of people employed in conservation officer
and planning posts has diminished and is continuing to collapse. I
think, to be honest, they’re taking the easiest course of
action. You know, it’s only human nature to do that.
|
[198] Lee
Waters: Is there any evidence of regional working and
collaboration to try and mitigate some of that?
|
[199] Mr
Catling: This is local authority planning, which I must say I
don’t understand and I’m not as well briefed as I
should be on that. But, there has been talk in the past of creating
a regional body, a centre of expertise, a pan-Wales planning and
conversation consultancy, if you like, with local authorities
working together, but I don’t think it’s ever gone
beyond a paper dream.
|
[200] Lee
Waters: Because the pressure is going to get more intense,
isn’t it, if you look at the local government settlements for
the next few years.
|
[201] Mr
Catling: It is. We’ve got evidence that the numbers of
conservation officers—. When conservation and planning
officers leave, they’re not being replaced. So, it’s a
diminishing resource fighting a growing problem.
|
[202] Lee
Waters: Finally, Chair, sorry, is the sector doing any sort of
lateral thinking of different models that could try and overcome
this?
|
[203] Mr
Catling: We’re working with Cadw to try and train and
upskill those people who are left in the post, and we’re
taking them out with us when we do field work and giving
them—because some of the people who are being recruited
haven’t quite got as much experience as those they’re
replacing. As I say, an idea was discussed a couple of years ago
about creating a central consultancy of experts that all local
authorities in Wales could draw upon, but I don’t think
it’s got anywhere.
|
[204] Lee
Waters: Do you think that should be revisited?
|
[205] Mr
Catling: I think it’s an interesting idea.
|
[206] Bethan
Jenkins: I don’t know if I’m right in this, but I
think that was as a result of discussion over opencast mining and
not having the expertise. They were sharing expertise between local
authorities and mineral planning officers, and then Carl Sargeant,
who was the Minister at the time, said that he would try and create
this expert group that would be able to advise on that. So, we may
ask the Government, perhaps, for some more information on that.
That might help our progress on this piece of work. That’s
really interesting, thank you. Dai Lloyd.
|
[207]
Dai Lloyd: Diolch, Gadeirydd. Rwy’n credu bod y
cwestiynau sydd gyda fi’n rhannol wedi cael eu hateb eisoes,
achos roeddwn i eisiau canolbwyntio ar ddiogelu adeiladau a
henebion sydd mewn perygl rŵan.
|
Dai Lloyd: Thank you,
Chair. I think the questions I have have already been answered in
part, because I wanted to focus on protection for buildings and
monuments at risk now.
|
[208]
Rwy’n clywed beth rydych
chi’n ei ddweud, yn naturiol, ynglŷn â beth
sy’n ymarferol i’w wneud ar y llawr, ond pan rydym
ni’n sôn am bethau fel hen ffermdai a mannau addoli
ôl-ganoloesol ac ati, mae yna gonsyrn am
hynny—hynny yw, sut rydym ni’n gallu mynd i’r
afael â’r broblem rŵan.
|
I hear what you
say, naturally, about what is practical to do on the ground, but
when we’re talking about things such as farmsteads and
post-medieval places of worship and so on, there is a concern there
with regard to how we can tackle the issue now.
|
[209]
Rwy’n clywed beth rydych
chi’n ei ddweud ynglŷn â beth sydd angen ei wneud,
ond beth yw lefel y gweithgaredd sydd mewn lle rŵan, a beth
fedrwch chi ei wneud i ddiogelu’r llefydd hanesyddol yma sydd
mewn perygl rŵan?
|
I hear what you
say about what needs to be done, but what’s the level of
activity that’s happening now, and what can you do to
safeguard these historic places that are at risk now?
|
[210]
Dr Wiliam: Rydym ni’n gwybod llawer iawn mwy nag yr
oeddem ni ychydig flynyddoedd yn ôl am addoldai, er
enghraifft, yn enwedig capeli anghydffurfiol. Mi fu’r
comisiwn ei hun yn gweithio dros sawl blwyddyn ar gynllun mawr ar
hynny. Felly, rydym ni’n gwybod cryn dipyn. Nid ydy
hynny’n dweud bod pob un y dylid ei warchod wedi ei warchod.
Rydw i’n siŵr bod yna gryn dipyn o waith i’w wneud
yn fanna.
|
Dr
Wiliam: We know a lot more now than we did a few years ago
about places of worship, for example, especially nonconformist
chapels. The commission itself worked over a period of many years
on a large plan related to that. So, we do know quite a lot about
that area. That is not to say that every one that should be
protected is being protected. I’m sure there is still some
more work to do there.
|
[211]
Y pethau eraill, wedyn, fel—.
Fe gyfeiriodd Christopher, mewn ymateb i gwestiwn blaenorol, at
adeiladau ffarm, er enghraifft. Mae yna ddifrodi enfawr i adeiladau
ffarm hynafol—fy maes arbenigol i, fel y mae’n digwydd,
flynyddoedd mawr yn ôl—maent yn cael eu gadael yn wag ac
yn mynd i ddistryw. Nid oes cynllun cenedlaethol wedi bod o gofnodi
hen adeiladau ffarm. Mae hynny’n un o’r meysydd y mae
galw mawr amdano fo.
|
Other issues,
then, such as—. Christopher mentioned earlier, in answer to a
previous question, farmsteads, for example. There’s been a
lot of damage in relation to ancient farm buildings—that was
my area of expertise, as it happens, many years
ago—they’re being left empty and falling into ruin.
There has been no record on a national level of recording those
buildings, and there’s a great call for that.
|
[212]
Flynyddoedd yn ôl, mi gyhoeddodd
Cadw lyfryn hynod ddefnyddiol ar sut i fynd ati, fel petai, ond nid
oes yna arolwg cenedlaethol wedi’i wneud, ac mae
hynny’n un o’r pethau eraill yma y medrwch chi
ychwanegu at y rhestr lled hirfaith o waith y dylid ei
wneud.
|
Many years ago,
Cadw published a very useful booklet on how to do this, but there
has been no national survey on this, and that is one of the other
issues that perhaps you could add to the long list of things that
should be done.
|
[213]
Ac, allan o hynny, wrth gwrs—o
astudiaeth o’r math yna yn rhanbarthol neu yn
genedlaethol—fe fyddech chi wedyn yn medru dewis a dethol yr
enghreifftiau gorau a gwneud yn siŵr, wedyn, bod y
rheini’n ffitio y tu mewn i’r gyfundrefn o’u cadw
a’u gwarchod. Ond, mae’n rhaid gwneud y gwaith yna
gyntaf.
|
And from that,
then, of course—a study of that type on a regional or
national level—you could then choose the best examples and
make sure that they fit into that system of being conserved. But
that work has to be done first.
|
[214]
Bethan Jenkins:
Neil Hamilton.
|
[215] Neil Hamilton: Well, first of all,
I’d like to assure Mr Catling that there’s absolutely
no reason to think that Wales is going to revert to scrub and
ancient forest when we’re outside the EU, because agriculture
is a devolved responsibility and the Welsh Government will ensure
that everything’s preserved in top-notch condition.
|
[216]
Mr Catling:
That’s very good news.
|
[217] Neil Hamilton: Anyway, back to the
business of the day. The royal commission told the committee
earlier that collaboration needs to go beyond the four current
participants in the Historic Wales strategic partnership to embrace
all those bodies with a stake in Welsh tourism. Can you perhaps
expand upon what the advantage would be of this? I presume
you’re thinking of bodies like the National Trust, which
obviously have a synergy, but are there others that are less
obvious?
|
[218] Mr
Catling: Let me just first of all give you a quick progress
report on Historic Wales. We are having very productive meetings at
roughly six-week intervals. It’s a voluntary partnership. At
an earlier stage, there was a proposal to merge us all into one
body, but I think we all agreed that we didn’t want to get
enmired in two to three years of bureaucratic merger and so on, and
that we would make faster progress by working together on a
voluntary basis. Actually, that is working superbly. There are
eight people around the table—
|
[219] Bethan
Jenkins: It’s a very pretty version of what happened, I
must say. [Laughter.]
|
[220] Mr
Catling: Okay. Well, speaking as a member of the Historic Wales
partnership, I won’t touch on the very early vigorous defence
of the museum to retain its independence—
|
[221] Bethan
Jenkins: I was talking about yourselves.
|
[222] Mr
Catling: Well, we’ve got eight people around the table
who have come to trust each other.
|
[223] Neil
Hamilton: A bit like this committee.
|
[224] Mr
Catling: Yes. And a mindset that says, ‘Let us, in
future, not act on our own. Let us recognise that we’re part
of a historic environment sector and let’s bring issues to
the table that could be resolved as a partnership rather than
individually’. So, we’ve started, for example, to think
in terms of one workforce. We are lending a member of our staff to
Cadw to work on the statutory parks and gardens project
that’s in the Act, because he happens to have a particular
expertise in that area and is the best person to do that work.
|
[225] We’re
trying to find funding for a big advance in our digital delivery
programme—what we can make available to people via the
internet. Although we lack the budget ourselves, there is
underspend in capital budgets elsewhere within the sector that we
might be able to draw upon. Training—we’re developing
apprenticeships and training placements whereby people come in and
spend time with each of our organisations and get a good
overview.
|
[226] So, what
we’re actually doing is laying down the foundations for the
four national institutions now. Then, we want to build on that and
embrace the wider sector, and that definitely includes the National
Trust—it’s an enormously important and influential
player, not only because of the properties that it opens to the
public but the fact that it owns so much farmland in
Wales—
|
[227] Neil
Hamilton: And coastline.
|
[228] Mr
Catling: And coastline—the members of the Historic Houses
Association, the Country Land and Business Association, and the
local authorities that own and run historic properties. At the end
of the day, that objective is not only ensuring that we work
together, but that we make an offer to the visitors of Wales that
is easy to understand and coherent and looks as if we’re
working together.
|
[229] Neil
Hamilton: Cadw have been talking about the success of the
commercialisation of their properties not in conflict with
curatorial responsibilities and so on. This collaborative working
does seem to have got off to a good start.
|
[230] Mr
Catling: Yes, it does.
|
[231] Neil
Hamilton: So, you’ve answered the second question that I
was going to ask—for an update on such
activities—unless there’s anything else you want to
provide.
|
[232] Mr
Catling: The other thing that we’re doing—. In the
report that we gave to the Cabinet Secretary in February, on what
we propose to do to work more closely together, we identified four
work streams—four themes. What we’re doing now is
setting up individual work groups to take each of those forwards.
So, we’ve got a steering group and four work groups that
report into it. The model is a little bit like People’s
Collection Wales, which is another collaborative venture, where
each institution that’s part of that partnership leads the
work strand that it is strongest in. So, we’re leading the
innovation strand, for example.
|
[233] Neil
Hamilton: Reference has already been made today to an agreed
historic environment strategy for Wales. When I asked this question
of Cadw, earlier on this morning, they thought that this was a bit
of a distraction, really, and that a more practical approach is to
deal with specific issues and problems. ‘We don’t need
an overarching strategy’ seems to be their view, because
Wales has been full of strategies and a strategy for strategies, et
cetera.
|
[234] Mr
Catling: I have a lot of sympathy with that view, but I do
think that the number of problems that we face requires us to do a
little bit of prioritisation. I think that’s what my
preference, rather than strategy, would be. Where are we going to
concentrate our limited resources?
|
[235] Neil
Hamilton: Right, and what would your suggestion be on that, or
is that too broad a question?
|
[236] Mr
Catling: No, no, no. We’ve already hinted at it, which is
that there are areas of the historic environment in Wales that are
particularly under threat at the moment that we need to focus on.
They are: maritime heritage, coastline heritage, under-the-water
heritage, public buildings, nineteenth and twentieth century places
of worship.
|
[237] Neil
Hamilton: Good. Okay, that’s very interesting, thank
you.
|
11:00
|
[238]
Bethan Jenkins: Okay. Hannah.
|
[239] Hannah
Blythyn: Thank you. I’m going to turn now to the emphasis
that there’s been in recent years in terms of maximising and
broadening the value of our heritage tourism, particularly moves to
improve the commercial approach of heritage bodies in Wales. I
notice in the royal commission’s evidence to the committee,
you talk about how currently the skills capacity in the sector is
still tilted towards, perhaps understandably, the curatorial,
archives and the historic environment experience, and there’s
a lack of those kind of skills in terms of business planning and
fundraising. In your view, what steps are being taken to address
this and what else needs to be done in the short and medium
term?
|
[240] Mr
Catling: One of the work strands that the Historic Wales
voluntary partnership is looking at is customer service, and that
embraces everything from the branding and the marketing to the
reception that people get when they visit. It is early days on that
one, but I think there is a general recognition that we do need
that expertise that comes from people who’ve got experience
of marketing and the travel trade. These are not things that we
were trained in ourselves as historic environment specialists.
We’ve acquired some of those skills as we’ve gone
along. What we need to do is work more closely with Visit Wales,
which is the natural home for people with those skills. I just said
that I felt that there was a very warm rapport between all the
members of the Historic Wales voluntary partnership, but I must pay
credit to Jason Thomas who has brought a new level of communication
between us in the historic environment sector and Visit Wales,
which he now operates. That is something, really, that—. I
think that’s a very promising avenue that will lead to us
eventually developing those skills.
|
[241] Hannah
Blythyn: And do you think we’re working towards striking
the right balance between the revenue raising and marketing side
but also actually making sure you’ve still got those skills
in terms of the conservation of the historic environment as
well?
|
[242] Mr
Catling: Well, the one pays for the other. The intention is,
the model is that the more we increase the revenue, the more we
have to spend on succession planning and skill.
|
[243] Dr
Wiliam: If I might add to that one, in our particular case, the
case of the royal commission, we appreciate that budgets are
tight—nobody’s going to rain money on us,
sadly—so what we’re doing is taking the road of
establishing a separate charitable body with the aim of fundraising
for us. Because we are not ourselves a charity, unlike the national
museum and the national library, we are therefore not eligible for
certain grants that are there solely for charitable purposes. So,
we’re ineligible. But by creating this new body, which we are
in active work on at the moment—that, hopefully, should open
a new income stream for us.
|
[244] Bethan
Jenkins: Okay. So—
|
[245] Neil
Hamilton: Can I just follow that up? Why are you not eligible
for charitable status? Is there something in the legislation that
sets you—
|
[246] Mr
Catling: Yes. We are a peculiar constitutional body as a royal
commission. We’ve taken QC advice, and they’ve told us
that in order to be—. We are undoubtedly charitable in our
work, but we cannot register as a charity if we want to continue to
be a royal commission, and we feel that the benefits of being a
royal commission outweigh the benefits of a charity, so we’re
going to set up a subsidiary charity.
|
[247] Bethan
Jenkins: Suzy Davies.
|
[248] Suzy Davies: Thank you. I think you might
have partly answered my question, actually. Obviously, being part
of the strategic partnership—. I note what you say that you
and the national library aren’t seen as big income
generators—
|
[249]
Mr Catling: As part of the tourist economy, yes.
|
[250]
Suzy Davies: Nevertheless, because you are in the strategic
partnership, presumably they’ve given some advice or done
some talent spotting about how you can raise income. So, I accept
that you’ve got this semi-trading arm being set up. Have they
given you any other ideas?
|
[251]
Mr Catling: Well, we’ve contributed the ideas. What we
really want to do is trade our intellectual property, which is a
very posh way of saying that we’ve got loads of pictures in
our collection that are valuable to publishers and the media and to
other people—private individuals who want a nice picture of
their home as it was in the nineteenth century on their
walls.
|
[252]
Suzy Davies: So, less of producing the lovely books now
because—
|
[253] Mr Catling: Well
we are producing a lovely book on Wales and the sea next year to
celebrate the Year of the Sea. So, what we need is investment in an
e-commerce platform that will enable people to come to our sites,
identify things they want to buy from us and buy it at the click of
a button. At the moment, it’s much more elaborate than
that and it’s standing as a barrier to increasing our
income.
|
[254] Suzy
Davies: Just one example is fine there, really. Thank you for
that.
|
[255]
Jeremy Miles:
A gaf i droi at adroddiad y Farwnes
Andrews ar y cysylltiad rhwng tlodi a diwylliant? Yn eich
tystiolaeth, rydych chi wedi dweud nad oes diffyg uchelgais, ond
bod diffyg adnoddau i allu cyrraedd yr amcanion sydd yn yr
adroddiad hwnnw. Rŷm ni
wedi clywed gan Lywodraeth Cymru y bore yma eu bod nhw’n
teimlo bod y cynllun Cyfuno, er enghraifft, yn llwyddiant. Felly,
beth yw’ch sylwadau chi ar hynny, ac a allech chi roi
enghreifftiau o’r diffyg adnoddau a beth sydd wedi digwydd yn
ymarferol i atal cyflawni’r amcanion yn yr
adroddiad?
|
Jeremy
Miles: Can I turn to the Baroness Andrews report on the link
between culture and poverty? In your evidence, you said that
there’s no lack of ambition, but the lack of resources is an
issue in order to carry out the schemes in that report. We heard
from Welsh Government this morning that they feel that the Fusion
scheme, for example, is successful. So, what would your comment be
on that, and could you perhaps give us some examples of the lack of
resources you have and what’s happened practically to stop
these being implemented?
|
[256] Mr
Catling: Fusion has been enormously—. What we said in our
written evidence is that we’ve not had direct access to the
people we want to help; we’ve had to work through the
agencies that help and support them and they were initially
sceptical about what we could bring to help their clients. Where
we’ve won them over, we’ve had very good results. If
there’s one criticism of what we’ve tried to do, I
think we tried to hit too many targets, and I think, increasingly,
what we are doing is identifying mental health as one of the areas
that we can focus on. Because it’s very often mental health
that underlies poverty, and we’ve had conspicuous success
with helping people who suffer from depression and anxiety and
helping them to—giving them a new structure to their life, a
new motive to get up in the morning. You know, people who
previously wouldn’t have gone out of the house who are now
volunteering at their local museum and teaching other people how to
embroider—all that sort of thing. I would say that it’s
not so much—. What we now need is the means to scale up the
work that we’re doing and the lessons that we’ve
learnt, to be more targeted and to try and help more people, and I
think that you will see, emerging from us, now that we’ve got
that understanding and realisation, a better plan for how
we’re going to tackle that.
|
[257] Jeremy
Miles: There’s a suggestion in your evidence
that—and you’ve alluded to it now—there’s a
sort of scepticism, if you like, among some of the local authority
employers and social services employers about the value. Where you
have had success, how have you been able to achieve that in terms
of overcoming that scepticism?
|
[258] Mr
Catling: Where we’ve had a sympathetic social worker or
local authority employee who has seen what we can bring, and they
have designed programmes for working with their clients that have
involved us, it’s been extremely successful. The best example
I can think of is where we’ve got involved in school literacy
projects with children who’ve yet to acquire basic literacy
skills, and involving them and their whole families in activities
at museums and heritage sites that have excited and incentivised
them, so that their learning isn’t, ‘Now you’re
going to learn to read’, it’s ‘Let’s go and
have some fun’ and learning to read has become the
by-product, if you see.
|
[259] Jeremy
Miles: And is there a sense—? Obviously, there’s a
sort of relationship with yourselves, but also, is there a
relationship between peers in the same sector where this positive
experience might spread and what you’ve learnt—
|
[260] Mr
Catling: We have published case studies and we’re busy
trying to promote those case studies and we are gradually
persuading more people. But as I say, we need to be more
targeted.
|
[261] Jeremy
Miles: Okay, thank you for that.
|
[262]
Suzy Davies: The Country Land and Business Association has called
for more cross-sector co-operation in the promotion and management
of historic assets, and you’ve already explained to us that
the strategic partnership perhaps isn’t ready to
expand—give it a chance to get its act together first.
Heritage partnership agreements aren’t in yet and, of course,
they will be pretty significant in the management of the historic
assets. But on a wider scale, you talked about the need for
prioritisation, perhaps, rather than a strategy. Should that be
done nationally, regionally, or very locally? What would be your
view on that? If you don’t have one, that’s
fine.
|
[263] Mr Catling: Partnership agreements have been pioneered east of
Offa’s Dyke. The sort of people who’ve come on board
are organisations like the National Trust, like large estates where
there is a full understanding of conservation
values—identifying what’s significant historically and
architecturally and protecting and enhancing that, but giving you
greater freedom where it doesn’t have an impact on that. So,
organisations that have been able to sign up to those
principles—Oxford and Cambridge colleges, the National Trust,
and other bodies like that—have secured these kind of
agreements and they are very happy with the consequence. It cuts
out a lot of costly bureaucracy and I do see a great deal of
potential for that here in Wales as well. Does that answer the
question?
|
[264]
Suzy Davies: It does, but I was just wondering if you thought
that—. Those are going to be very place specific,
aren’t they?
|
[265]
Mr Catling: Yes. They tend to involve quite large estates, which
is what the CLA—well, no, the CLA represents smallholders as
well, doesn’t it?
|
[266]
Suzy Davies: Yes. I will leave it there, because I just wanted to
ask you about Cadw’s future status. You said in your evidence
that, because Cadw is potentially going to do the same work as
English Heritage and Historic England, we can’t afford to do
that because Cadw’s too small, but that,
|
[267] ‘keeping Cadw intact…probably
means staying close to Government in some form’.
|
[268]
Why would you say that,
necessarily?
|
[269]
Mr Catling: We couldn’t have had the Historic Environment
(Wales) Act 2016, I suspect, if Cadw hadn’t been in
Government. Earlier somebody was asking a question about how
effective it’s been and we made the point that the guidance
papers are only just being written, but those guidance papers have
been written with the help and collaboration of other parts of
Welsh Government—planning, for example. They reality-checked
them: ‘Is this actually going to work? Is it
practicable?’
|
[270]
When I worked in heritage advocacy in
England, I set up the Heritage Alliance and I couldn’t get
near a civil servant, let alone a Minister or a Cabinet Secretary.
We’re very, very fortunate in Wales that we have a much
closer working relationship and it benefits everybody in terms of
the practicality of what emerges.
|
[271]
Suzy Davies: Would you say it’s a real risk, then, that if
the arm were to get longer, if I can put it like that—is
there a risk there?
|
[272]
Mr Catling: I think that there’s a real risk that the
influence that Cadw currently has on policy on the historic
environment would be more difficult to achieve. The other point
about Cadw is that it is a very small organisation. So, whereas in
England they have split into Historic England and English Heritage,
there are 1,000 plus employees there. We’re talking about a
much, much smaller body here. And a lot of people in Cadw do more
than one—they straddle, as it were, the property presentation
side and the conservation side and the policy side. If you split
the body, you’re going to have big extra costs in
creating—.
|
[273]
Suzy Davies: I just want to test that, if you’ll give me a
minute. I understand that it’s much smaller, but we were
talking earlier about the fact that Cadw at the moment is
refocusing its work on the more commercial end of things. Bearing
in mind that Cadw is part of the strategic partnership now, it is
possible perhaps to separate those two sets of powers, because the
commercial end of it will be working more closely
with—
|
[274]
Mr Catling: Indeed. Within the one organisation, it is possible
to separate them, but what I’m arguing for is not splitting
into two separate organisations with two sets of back-office and
administration and so on.
|
[275]
Suzy Davies: No, but it is an argument for collaboration rather
than separation.
|
[276]
Mr Catling: Absolutely, yes.
|
[277]
Suzy Davies: That’s great; that’s what I wanted to get
to, thank you.
|
[278]
Bethan
Jenkins: Jest i orffen, os nad oes gan unrhyw un arall gwestiwn, rwyf
eisiau gofyn am y rhestr enwau llefydd. Yn amlwg, roedd Cadw wedi
dweud mai chi sydd yn gwneud y gwaith ar hyn ac roeddwn i eisiau
cael diweddariad. Hefyd, a ydych chi’n meddwl fod modd
cryfhau’r hyn sydd yn digwydd o ran y system yma yn y
dyfodol?
|
Bethan Jenkins: Just to conclude, if nobody else has a question, I
wanted to ask about the list of historic place names. Clearly, Cadw
said that you’re responsible for the work done on this and I
wanted an update on it. Also, do you think there’s a way to
strengthen what is happening with regard to this system in the
future?
|
[279]
Dr
Wiliam: O dan y Ddeddf, mae’r cyfrifoldeb o greu a chadw a
chynnal y rhestr wedi’i roi i'r comisiwn brenhinol. Mae'r
gwaith yna yn symud ymlaen yn arbennig o dda. Pan lansiwyd y
cynllun rhai misoedd yn ôl, roeddem ni wedi cofnodi 350,000 o
enwau. Ers hynny rydym wedi ychwanegu 100,000 arall o enwau
ac, wrth gwrs, bydd hwnnw’n tyfu. Mae gennym ni grŵp
llywio sydd yn ein cynghori, sy’n cynnwys yr holl bobl y
buasech chi’n eu disgwyl—yr arbenigwyr ar y
pwnc—ac mae hynny'n mynd ymlaen yn dda.
|
Dr Wiliam: Under
the Act, the responsibility for creating and maintaining the list
has been given to the royal commission. That work is moving forward
very well. When the scheme was launched a few months ago, we
recorded 350,000 names and, since then, we’ve added another
100,000 names. That, of course, will grow. We have a steering group
that is advising us, which includes all of the people who you would
expect—the experts on the subject— and that is
progressing well.
|
[280]
Y camau nesaf
angenrheidiol, wrth gwrs, ydy gwneud yn sicr bod unigolion, ac yn
bwysicach fyth awdurdodau lleol, yn ymwybodol bod yr adnodd yma yna
iddyn nhw ei ddefnyddio, a’i bod yn ofynnol, yn ôl y
Ddeddf, iddyn nhw ei ddefnyddio fo. Dyna'r cam pwysig nesaf. Rydym
ar ganol rhaglen ar y funud o addysgu, fel petai, swyddogion
perthnasol yr awdurdodau lleol am fodolaeth hyn. Bu cyfarfod yn
ddiweddar, ac rydw i’n
meddwl roedd yna 13 o’r awdurdodau lleol yn
bresennol.
|
The next vital steps, of course, are to
ensure that individuals and, more importantly, local authorities
are aware that this resource is available to them to use, and that
it’s a requirement under the Act for them to use it.
That’s the important next step. We are in the middle of a
programme now of educating, as it were, relevant officials in local
authorities. We had a recent meeting, and I think there were
13 local authorities present.
|
11:15
|
[281]
Bethan Jenkins:
A oes yna swyddogion ym mhob ardal
leol?
|
Bethan
Jenkins: Are there officials in every local authority?
|
[282]
Dr Wiliam: Ie.
|
Dr
Wiliam: Yes.
|
[283]
Bethan Jenkins:
Mae yna un.
|
Bethan
Jenkins: There’s one in every area.
|
[284]
Dr Wiliam: Ie. Mae pob awdurdod lleol yng Nghymru
â—. Nhw sydd a’r swyddogaeth o warchod enwau
lleoedd nawr, wrth gwrs.
|
Dr Wiliam: Yes, every local authority
in Wales—. They’re the ones who have the function of
safeguarding these place names.
|
[285]
Bethan Jenkins:
O, ie, rwy’n deall hynny, ond
mae gyda nhw y swyddog yn lleol i allu gwneud hynny.
|
Bethan Jenkins: Yes, I understand
that, but they do actually have a local officer in place, do
they?
|
[286]
Dr Wiliam: Ydyn, ydyn. Ydyn, ac wedyn mae rhai ohonyn
nhw—. Roedd un neu ddau—. Na, roedd yna dri awdurdod,
yn sicr, eisoes yn arbennig o dda am wneud hyn. Wel, nawr rydym
ni’n gobeithio bod hwn yn mynd i wella. Mae’n gynnar
eto i ddweud, wrth gwrs, ond, ar y funud, mae’n
argoeli’n dda.
|
Dr Wiliam: Yes. Yes, they do, and
then some of them—. I think one or two—. No, I think
there are three authorities who already are excellent in doing
this, and now we’re hoping that that’s going to improve
again. It’s early, of course, to draw any conclusions, but,
at the moment, it’s looking good.
|
[287]
Bethan Jenkins:
Ond beth am y cwestiwn wnes i ofyn
ynglŷn â’i gryfhau e? A fyddech chi’n dweud
bod angen gwneud asesiad o’r rhestr a sut mae’r
awdurdodau lleol yn ymwneud â hi cyn mynd ati i weld beth
fyddai’n bosib i unrhyw newid neu ddatblygiad yn y maes
hwnnw?
|
Bethan
Jenkins: And what about the question that I asked with regard
to strengthening this scheme? Would you say that there needs to be
an assessment of the list and how the local authorities are using
it before thinking about what it would be possible to change or to
develop in this field?
|
[288]
Dr Wiliam: Nid ydy’r rhestr, wrth gwrs—. Nid
yw’n rhan o’n swyddogaeth ni o dan y Ddeddf i greu
ffurfiau. Yn aml, mae yna ddewis o ffurfiau—enwau ar bentref
neu ardal neu beth bynnag. Nid yw hi’n rhan o’m
swyddogaeth ni, ac nid yw’r gallu gennym ni i nodi un ffurf
fel dyma’r ffurf ddewisol. Mae yna fodd, rydw i’n
meddwl, i gyrff eraill—. Nid ydw i’n gwybod beth
ddigwyddith i swydd y comisiynydd iaith, er enghraifft, a’i
swyddfa hi, ond mae ganddi hi, ar y funud, grŵp sy’n ei
hymgynghori hi ar enwau lleoedd. Wel, mae, rydw i’n meddwl,
ffordd o weithio rownd hyn ac atgyfnerthi'r adnodd canolog yma
mae’r comisiwn yn ei weinyddu, felly.
|
Dr Wiliam: The list itself, of
course—. It’s not part of our function under the Act,
of course, to create forms of words. Sometimes there is a choice of
forms of names and different types of names for a particular
village or area. It’s not part of our function, and we
don’t have the ability, either, to note one name as the
specific given name. I think other bodies—. I’m not
sure what will happen to the language commissioner’s post,
for example, and her office, but at the moment she has a group that
advises her on place names. I think, therefore, there is a way of
working around that and strengthening that particular resource on a
centralised basis.
|
[289]
Bethan Jenkins:
Ocê. Diolch yn fawr iawn i chi
am roi tystiolaeth y bore yma. Mae’n siŵr y byddwn ni
mewn cysylltiad ynglŷn â’r hyn sydd yn digwydd
gyda’n hadroddiad, ond diolch yn fawr eto am ddod i mewn i
roi tystiolaeth ger bron.
|
Bethan Jenkins: Thank you very
much to you both for giving evidence this morning. I’m sure
we’ll be in touch with you again about what’s happening
with our report, but thank you very much for giving your
evidence.
|
[290]
Dr Wiliam: Diolch yn fawr iawn.
|
Dr Wiliam: Thank you very much.
|
Papurau i'w Nodi
Papers to Note
|
[291]
Bethan Jenkins:
Rydym ni’n symud ymlaen yn awr
at eitem 4 a phapurau i’w nodi. Mae papur 4.1, adolygiad
annibynnol o gymorth ar gyfer cyhoeddi a llenyddiaeth yng
Nghymru, tystiolaeth ychwanegol, ac wedyn 4.2, newyddiaduraeth
newyddion yng Nghymru, tystiolaeth ychwanegol gan Google. Fe
wnaethon nhw ysgrifennu atom ni. Fe wnaethom ni ofyn iddyn nhw ddod
i mewn, ond o leiaf fe wnaethon nhw roi tystiolaeth a oedd yn
ddefnyddiol iawn. Wedyn 4.3, llythyr gan y Llywydd, menter Senedd@.
A oes yna unrhyw sylwad ar un o’r llythyrau hynny?
|
Bethan Jenkins: We move on now
to item 4, which is papers to note. We have paper 4.2, the
independent review of support for publishing and literature in
Wales, and additional evidence, and then paper 4.2, news journalism
in Wales, additional evidence from Google. They wrote to us. We did
ask them to come in, but at least they gave evidence that was
useful to us. Then 4.3, a letter from the Llywydd on the Senedd@
initiative. Do you have any comments on those letters?
|
[292]
Suzy
Davies:
Just one question: whether we are
actually going to do Senedd@Delyn.
|
[293]
Bethan
Jenkins: Yes. We are
planning—plans are in train to do that.
|
[294]
Suzy Davies: That’s fine.
|
[295]
Bethan
Jenkins: Yes,
definitely. [Interruption.] Or minibus, yes.
|
[296]
Unrhyw sylwadau
eraill? Na.
|
Any other comments? No.
|
[297]
11:17
|
Cynnig o dan Reol Sefydlog 17.42 i Benderfynu
Gwahardd y Cyhoedd o'r Cyfarfod ar gyfer y Canlynol: Eitem 6, 7 a
10
Motion under
Standing Order 17.42 to Resolve to Exclude the Public from the
Meeting for the Following Business: Item 6, 7 and 10
|
|
|
|
|
Ailymgynullodd y pwyllgor yn gyhoeddus am 12:49.
The committee reconvened in public at 12:49.
|
Newyddiaduraeth Newyddion yng Nghymru:
Tystiolaeth gan Ysgrifennydd y Cabinet dros yr Economi a’r
Seilwaith
News Journalism in Wales: Evidence from Cabinet Secretary for
Economy and Infrastructure
|
[301]
Bethan Jenkins:
Grêt, diolch i bawb. Eitem 8 ar
gyfer y pwyllgor yma heddiw yw newyddiaduraeth newyddion yng
Nghymru a thystiolaeth gan Ysgrifennydd y Cabinet dros yr Economi
a'r Seilwaith.
|
Bethan
Jenkins: Great, thank you very much, everyone. Item 8 for this
committee meeting today is news journalism in Wales and evidence
from the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure.
|
[302]
Rydym ni wedi cael ymddiheuriadau gan
Jeremy Miles y prynhawn yma.
|
We have
received apologies from Jeremy Miles this afternoon.
|
[303]
Felly, rydym ni’n
croesawu’r tystion, sef Ken Skates, Ysgrifennydd y Cabinet
dros yr Economi a'r Seilwaith, Hywel Owen, arweinydd tîm
polisi’r cyfryngau, Llywodraeth Cymru, a Paul Kindred, sef
uwch ddadansoddydd polisi, Llywodraeth Cymru—posh
iawn, rhaid dweud.
|
We welcome the
witnesses, Ken Skates, Cabinet Secretary for Economy and
Infrastructure, Hywel Owen, media policy team leader for the Welsh
Government, and Paul Kindred, who’s the senior policy analyst
for the Welsh Government—very posh, I have to say.
|
[304] Mr
Kindred: For the whole of the Welsh Government.
[Laughter.]
|
[305]
Bethan Jenkins:
Fel sydd yr arfer, mae gyda ni
themâu ar gyfer y cwestiynau, os yw hynny’n iawn. Fe
wnawn ni ofyn yn seiliedig ar y themâu hynny. Felly,
mae’r cwestiynau cyntaf gen i, a jest gofyn yn fras i’r
Ysgrifennydd Cabinet a wyt ti’n cytuno â’r hyn
roedd bwrdd ymgynghorol Ofcom yn ei ddweud, sef:
|
Bethan Jenkins: As usual, we have
themed questions that we will ask, if that’s okay with you.
We’ll ask our questions based on those themes. So, the first
set of questions come from me, and just to ask in general to the
Cabinet Secretary whether you agree with the analysis of the Ofcom
advisory committee that:
|
[306] ‘Wales is
served less comprehensively, outside the BBC, than any of the other
UK Nations, with weaker print media’.
|
[307]
A ydych chi’n cytuno
gyda’r analysis hynny?
|
Do you agree
with that analysis?
|
[308] The Cabinet
Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure (Ken Skates): Yes.
|
[309] Bethan
Jenkins: Oh, great. Well, it’s not great, obviously, but
that was a short answer.
|
[310] Ken
Skates: Yes, sorry. I do, and recent consolidation of the print
media has not helped at all. Do you mind if we can exchange ideas
and views on this? I’m conscious that I could just talk for
hours when it comes to the print media.
|
[311] Bethan
Jenkins: We’ve only got an hour so I’ll try and be
strict, if that’s okay. So, just around that point, because I
have a few more, obviously on other themes.
|
[312] Ken
Skates: Okay. There’s a major problem that we face in
terms of the print media, in terms of the media as a whole and
specifically with regard to the provision of primary source
information regarding what’s happening in this place,
what’s happening in Welsh Government, what happens within the
business community, what happens in local government at guild
halls, at city halls. I’ve got concerns that there are too
few well-resourced newsrooms now that are actually going beneath
the surface of what’s happening in Welsh society and drilling
into what the real issues are that really count in people’s
lives. I’ve got concerns, for example, that if we were to,
God forbid, lose just a handful of journalists in Wales, scrutiny
of this place, exposure of what’s happening in this place,
would be seriously damaged. You can probably name some. If we were
to lose, for example, from Media Wales the likes of David
Williamson, Martin Shipton, Sion Barry in one go, that would be a
major blow to democracy in Wales, because there are so few in the
print media who are actually drilling into what’s happening
here. And it would leave us then with, what, a really small but
dedicated team in ITV Wales and a team in BBC Wales in terms of the
English language media that’s looking at what’s
happening in this place right now. We need to strengthen the fourth
estate and, above all, we need to strengthen what’s happening
within print media.
|
[313] Now,
that’s not to say that there is no role for hyperlocal or for
digital-only news—there is—but my concern is that
there’s a paradox right now. We have more news than ever
before being circulated, but let’s not mistake repeated
information for primary-sourced news, for original content. And,
whilst each and every one of us can now be a broadcaster, we can be
a writer, what we cannot be are investigative journalists, and
that’s my fear, that there are too few journalists in the old
style, if you like—in the traditional style of what a
journalist is. There are too few I’m afraid who are being
properly trained and qualified in journalism, particularly in print
media journalism, which can be very distinctive and different to
broadcast. So—
|
[314] Bethan
Jenkins: Do you have a problem with the—? At the moment,
there’s a big—. You know, obviously, Wales Online,
it’s become expansive in relation to the—. It’s
just bought the South Wales Evening Post. Do you think that
there’s a problem with plurality? Do you think there is a
crisis like the National Union of Journalists have said?
|
[315] Ken
Skates: I think there is. I think there is, yes. If we look at
media ownership—and, here again, it’s a really complex
picture, media ownership. The people own a huge amount of power now
by virtue of being able to share online information at a hyperlocal
level, but also information about what’s happening around the
world, but where is that information actually coming from? The
origins of that information are in the hands of too few people and
too few owners of media operations. In Wales, that amounts to just
a tiny handful now of news groups, and that can’t be good for
democracy at all. It’s not good for people to be sharing news
that is commanded and which originates from just a small number of
news providers.
|
[316] Bethan
Jenkins: And what do you think about this theme that
we’re hearing about, obviously, a move to digital news? But
many journalists have said to us, ‘Well, it’s more to
do with click activity than it is about really digging deep into
the public issues of the day; they may not be as sexy as those
things.’
|
[317] Ken
Skates: It depresses me, Chair, that you need only to go to any
news site now and just look along the sidebar of what are the
top-clicked stories and, by and large, they’re lifestyle
stories. Stories that generate the greatest advertising revenue
online are those stories that are read the most, and therefore
journalists are being encouraged to be not so much reporters but
repeaters of what might be found on social media, on people’s
Facebook sites, on Twitter. And I’m afraid too much
journalism now is about repeating what’s happening
that’s perhaps salacious, but of little consequence to the
long term, rather than actually do what I believe journalists are
there to do, which is to dig beneath the service, to challenge
people like you and I, to expose injustice—
|
[318] Bethan
Jenkins: But they say that they’re just putting on what
people want to read. So, that’s why those types of stories
are coming up in your timeline.
|
[319] Ken
Skates: McDonald’s, KFC, they give people what they want
to eat, but it’s not necessarily healthy. I should just
correct myself there and say that I’m sure KFC and
McDonald’s do provide very healthy and nutritious food.
[Laughter.] But in all seriousness, fast food for the soul,
which is what I’m afraid this situation is
encouraging—. It’s instant news, which is salacity and
just encourages people to spread gossip and not actually consider
the issues that are of far greater consequence to our lives.
It’s not good. It’s not good for our well-being.
It’s not good for democracy. It’s not good for the
country, and is actually quite the opposite. In many instances, it
can be debilitating for individuals to be seeing constantly images
and stories of a lifestyle nature, which encourages us actually,
I’m afraid, to think worse of ourselves.
|
[320] I don’t
want to sound like I’ve got a real downer on social media,
but I do attribute some of the problems with body image to social
media. I do attribute some of the problems that we have with
bullying and prejudice to social media. And I’m afraid I do
think that too much journalism now is based on repeating what is
happening on social media. But, equally, Chair, I shouldn’t
be too negative about the provision of information on social media,
because I look at some Facebook pages—. I was visiting my
parents in Pantymwyn at the weekend. I decided to have a look at
the Facebook Pantymwyn and Gwernaffield webpage, and it has a
significant number of followers. There’s really good
provision of news on there and a good degree of debate. So, people
are really well informed about what’s happening on their
street, but what people are missing right now, and my real concern,
as I say, is that we’re not getting the scrutiny that we need
necessarily of this place from news providers right across
Wales.
|
[321] Bethan
Jenkins: So, what would you say they need to do, before I move
on to Suzy’s question? You seem quite angry about it, so what
are you doing as Cabinet Secretary?
|
[322] Ken
Skates: Okay. So, I have a few ideas. And one of the ideas that
I wanted to pursue, but I’ve held back from doing so
because—. I’ll come to the idea, but the reason I
didn’t pursue it at the time was because the Llywydd was
looking at commissioning a piece of work, which has now reported.
But it’s been my view that we can’t step in to plug a
gap that commercial media should be filling, and that they have a
duty to fill. However, I do think that, in some cases, a huge
proportion of people in Wales are simply not getting information
about what’s happening in Welsh Government, and the Welsh
Assembly, and in other areas of civic life—in guild halls, as
I’ve said, and city halls. And, therefore, perhaps we do need
to give attention to the potential provision of a Wales newswire
service. I believe the work of the taskforce is very helpful, but
one thing that I think we need to extend beyond is the desire to
navigate around, if you like, some of the existing news media to
get straight to people’s inboxes and Facebook pages, which is
what was proposed largely. I think we also need to recognise that
the UK national media is still incredibly influential and
persuasive over the people of Wales, and therefore we need to
provide information that can be accessed by UK— London-based
largely—media, but which can also be accessed, and I believe,
free of charge—
|
[323] Bethan
Jenkins: So, you would fund that, or run it, or—
|
[324] Ken
Skates: I think it could be funded. And this is what I was
interested in looking at, in collaboration potentially with the
Assembly Commission: I think that it could sit neatly with the BBC
local news initiative, and potentially could be backed up, I think,
by the £200,000 over two years budget deal with Plaid Cymru.
And I’ve got views on how that could be potentially
very—
|
[325] Bethan
Jenkins: We’ve got more questions on that.
|
[326] Ken
Skates: Okay. I’ll carry on a little more, if I may, with
the idea of newswire, because I think the taskforce report’s
very helpful. One concern I had with the recommendations, though,
was the degree to which there would be true editorial independence
and freedom to be incredibly critical where necessary. There was a
story—. We were featured on the front page of the Western
Mail in the last Assembly term together. We weren’t
alone; we were with the other members of this predecessor
committee. We were criticised for giving the go-ahead to, I think
it was, the translation service, and the cost of the translation
services. I disagreed with the angle of the story. However, I then
wrote an article saying, ‘Whilst I disagree with the angle
that’s been taken, I defend the Western Mail’s
right to scrutinise us, challenge us and to criticise
us.’
|
13:00
|
[327] I’m not
convinced that what is being proposed would actually lead to a
sufficiently independent news service within this place to enable
it to actually scrutinise and criticise to that degree. If we were
to establish a newswire service that could disseminate information
and news centrally from here to both UK, London-based national
media but also to regional and local papers and hyperlocal news
sites, we’d have to find a mechanism by which it would have
complete editorial independence, and I think what we could do is
look at—it’s only a suggestion—the National Union
of Journalists potentially taking a lead role in this regard, and
thereby ensure that we have trained, skilled, dedicated,
independent, committed journalists scrutinising what’s going
on in this place, scrutinising what’s happening in—
|
[328] Bethan
Jenkins: So, would it be run by—? You said the BBC
earlier, so it wouldn’t be run by the BBC.
|
[329] Ken
Skates: No, sorry. I was talking about the BBC—. The BBC
Local news service is a different initiative that the BBC have
proposed.
|
[330] Bethan
Jenkins: So, this would be a new, say, fund?
|
[331] Ken
Skates: I think it could complement it really well.
|
[332] Bethan
Jenkins: Run by the NUJ.
|
[333] Ken
Skates: Potentially. That’s only a suggestion, because
I’d want it to be sufficiently distant from any of the forms
of legislature or of government that we have in Wales, but it could
operate—it might be expensive to operate this way—on a
hub-and-spoke model as well. It could be based here, but we could
also, on a regional footing, have hub facilities that really
scrutinise what’s happening on a regional basis within local
government, within business, and so forth. I’ve not done any
number-crunching on this. It’s only an idea. I had it before
the taskforce began its work, but I thought it would be prudent to
await the outcome of the taskforce work. I think that’s very
close to what I’ve been considering, but it all—
|
[334] Bethan
Jenkins: So, when will you be putting this together, because
obviously I need to move on?
|
[335] Ken
Skates: Well, this is something I want the independent media
forum to now look at. I also think that it could sit quite neatly
with what the BBC are proposing, because the BBC are looking at, if
you like, planting journalists within existing news establishments.
Now, I don’t know whether I’ve got time to embark on a
different narrative and different analysis of that—.
|
[336] Bethan
Jenkins: We’ve got questions on these things, so if I let
Suzy ask—
|
[337] Ken
Skates: Okay, but I think there could be quite neat alignment
with this, and it could address the challenge that we have. It
would be a UK first, I think, but, given the unique challenges that
Wales faces, I think we do need to do something bold. But what we
can’t do is do something that gives the public any impression
whatsoever that we have any strings attached to the news that is
coming from here.
|
[338] Bethan
Jenkins: Okay, fine. We’ll probe that further, but
Suzy’s got questions on the independent media forum.
|
[339] Suzy
Davies: Yes, and thank you, Cabinet Secretary. You’ve
actually covered a little bit of what I wanted to ask about. Are
you going to be leaving it to the independent media forum to do a
thorough analysis of business models? Obviously, you’ve
mentioned some of your preferred models, but it would be quite
useful to know that that was a preferred model as measured against
a wider selection of potential models.
|
[340] Ken
Skates: I think it would be safer to invite the independent
media forum to carry out that work, for the reasons that I’ve
already highlighted. Perceptions or real, any belief that
Government or bureaucracies of any nature have a sway over
decisions that are being made with regard to the provision of
information could be very damaging, and so I think the independent
media forum could play a very important role in this regard, but I
also think that the NUJ could have an important role in this as
well.
|
[341] Suzy
Davies: Okay, so who would co-ordinate that, then, because what
I’m picking up is that you’d like the forum to do this
work and then advise you on potential models that Government might
be prepared to support?
|
[342] Ken
Skates: Personally—and, again, this is my immediate
view—I think that any action that’s taken in this
regard would probably be best taken jointly with the Assembly
Commission, and for an added reason, actually. You scrutinise us in
Government and, therefore, there is a natural tension that is very
healthy. If we were to separate our interventions, again there is a
risk of people perceiving our interventions as serving our purpose,
but, by doing it together, I think people would recognise and
respect the fact that the Assembly—the
Chamber—scrutinises the Government, and so there is a very
healthy check and balance already in existence, and therefore I
think it would probably be best to come from both.
|
[343] Suzy
Davies: Does Alun Davies share your view on how this forum
could be used in that way, because obviously he set that up?
|
[344] Ken
Skates: Yes, and the work programme for the forum, I think,
will be pretty exhausting, but I think this is an absolutely vital
area of work to address, and I do think that there is merit in
examining this, along with examining the proposal from the
taskforce, and also the sustainability of business models that are
being operated at the moment, to examine whether such an
intervention would really be required if existing commercial news
media could take a little more of a realistic and reasonable
approach to the level of profits that are expected in the print
media today.
|
[345]
Suzy Davies: Thank you. Just one final question; it’s up to
you how long you spend answering this. Obviously, there are two
ministerial voices on this patch: your own and Alun Davies’s.
Can you give us a sense of how that actually works and how that
influences the work programme of the independent media forum,
because, as you say, they’ve got a lot to do? I don’t
really know that much about the composition or their work
programme, but have they got any influence so far on your thinking,
or—?
|
[346]
Ken Skates: Okay. So, if I just address the first point and how
our work aligns and is split, if you like, I’m responsible
for media, including print media and print journalism. Alun is
responsible for broadcasting and Welsh language. The work of the
media forum, I expect, will focus primarily on issues concerning
the BBC and the charter and S4C, and also the role of digital in
the media. I would also hope that the forum would be able to assess
the ideas that are being put forward not just by myself, but also
by the Assembly Commission, and the forum could potentially form an
early view on the effectiveness of the BBC’s proposal for
local news journalism to be shared.
|
[347]
Suzy Davies: Is there a print media representative on that
board?
|
[348]
Ken Skates: The forum, at the moment—
|
[349]
Suzy Davies: The forum, sorry.
|
[350]
Ken Skates: The appointment process is being undertaken. I think
Alun Davies is very keen to see a chair appointed this side of
Christmas. The chair will then assist in the appointment process of
other members, which will happen as soon as possible once that
chair is appointed. I think it would be important though—you
do raise a very significant question about the skills mix of the
forum, and I would expect somebody from the print media to be
represented on the forum.
|
[351]
Suzy Davies: Thank you.
|
[352]
Bethan Jenkins:
And how is that independent, then? Who
decides? Are they Government appointments, or are they done through
the Nolan principles and such that we know they’re
truly—? We’ve got another session with you later about
people who sit on panels, so that’s why I’m asking this
question now.
|
[353]
Mr Kindred: Yes, absolutely. The intention is that there will be
an open competition for the chair, and then the chair, once
appointed, will then be involved in setting up the open competition
for the other members of the forum, which will then follow on
afterwards. So, we’ll be looking for representatives from
right across the media sector and stakeholders, consumers as well,
the unions, the broadcast and media operators,
universities—anybody who has an interest really. So, it will
be an open competition and we’ll be looking for a balance of
skills and a balance of individuals, but we’ll be doing it
with the chair, once the chair is appointed.
|
[354]
Suzy Davies: Can I just check something, Chair? Bearing in mind
there’s a level of independence in there, does that mean that
the deliberations will be made public?
|
[355]
Ken Skates: I would expect so.
|
[356]
Suzy Davies: Okay.
|
[357]
Ken Skates: Given the significance of this area and the need to
demonstrate that it is truly independent, and given that it
concerns the media, I think there has to be as much transparency as
possible in the work that is carried out and in the reporting that
takes place.
|
[358]
Suzy Davies: Okay, that’s great. Thank you.
|
[359]
Bethan Jenkins Okay. Hannah.
|
[360]
Hannah Blythyn:
Cabinet Secretary, you were keen to talk
about—. You were itching to get on to talk about the BBC
Local journalism plans earlier. From your point of view, what
assessment has the Welsh Government made of those plans, and have
you had any conversation with the BBC about them at this
time?
|
[361]
Ken Skates: Yes. In my response, I think it was to charter
renewal, I—. Was it on charter renewal that I raised this
issue with the BBC?
|
[362]
Mr Kindred: Yes.
|
[363] Ken Skates: I’m going to give a cautious welcome to this.
If we get the number of journalists that we would deserve on the
basis of proportion of population, I think we’d probably get
between seven and eight journalists. Now, I think we need clarity
on a number of fronts. One: the provision. The planting of a BBC
journalist within an established and validated news organisation
should not come at the expense of
existing journalists within that organisation; it cannot be used to
plug a gap, to fill a resource that should be filled by those news
organisations. I think one of the main points that I raised with
the BBC when I took this up concerned the sharing of information.
What this cannot be is just the BBC producing news for itself and
then sharing, on a subsequent basis, the news that it’s
intended to provide to its audience and its viewers. Instead, there
has to be a defined purpose to what those journalists are going to
be doing, and there also has to be clarity about the editorial
independence and the lines of accountability for those
journalists.
|
[364]
Hannah Blythyn:
They were some of the concerns that have
been brought up with us in previous sessions. One of the other
issues that was raised with us was which media organisations are
going to be able to benefit from these BBC journalists, because
there is not a level playing field for who has the ability to have
access to the information, access to the systems to apply. There
may be smaller newspapers or organisations that are trying to go
forward but they might not feel that they’re in a position to
actually benefit from that.
|
[365]
Ken Skates: Oh, absolutely. That’s one of my big concerns
with this. My other concern is that you’ll have shareholders
of media organisations rubbing their hands over the prospect of
getting a free journalist. I do worry about that—that
it’s the big operators that might benefit. I think it’s
incumbent upon the BBC to do as they have outlined in their vision,
which is to support local media and to support the provision of
news from across Wales right down into local communities. That
can’t be done just by planting journalists in the big
organisations where cuts have been made and where newsrooms have
gone right down to the bone, and often beneath the bone. Instead,
this proposal from the BBC must serve to benefit the whole of Wales
and, in particular, local newspapers, hyperlocal news organisations
that potentially have the most to benefit from this scheme as well
and whose audience and readers potentially have the most to benefit
from the scheme.
|
[366] Hannah Blythyn: That leads me on quite
nicely to my next couple of questions on hyperlocal and voluntary
journalism—
|
[367]
Ken Skates: If the Member’s content, I can provide a copy
of my letter concerning my observations on this particular
initiative, which was sent to the BBC.
|
[368] Bethan Jenkins: Yes, because I just wanted
to add to Hannah’s question. When we did have WalesOnline in,
they seemed to suggest that conversations were quite developed in
relation to their potential to work with the BBC on this. I think
we would be concerned that they would be taking services away, like
they have, and then putting these types of journalists back in to
where they should actually be covering anyway. So, I think
that’s something that we would still be concerned about.
|
[369]
Ken Skates: I’d be vehemently opposed to that sort of
action. This is not an alternative way of recruiting journalists.
It shouldn’t be provided to fill gaps that should be filled
by those news organisations themselves. This should be additional,
this should add value to what’s happening right
now.
|
[370]
Bethan Jenkins:
Yes, okay. If we could see that letter,
that would be great.
|
[371]
Ken Skates: Absolutely.
|
[372]
Mr Kindred: I think it’s just worth saying very quickly
that the letter that you sent in was in 2016 and that it was part
of responding to an internal review that the BBC did of news
provision as part of their preparation for charter, and we’re
still actually waiting to see the formal outcome of that review.
The Minister for Lifelong Learning and Welsh Language has written
to Tony Hall to remind him of that fact in the last week or
so.
|
[373]
Ken Skates: Where I think Media Wales could be very excited in
this regard is with the sharing of news content. What journalists
within Media Wales do very well is report at a level that the BBC
may miss and report on stories that the BBC may not have the
capacity to be able to drill into and investigate. There could be
very complementary news reporting from both BBC and WalesOnline and
indeed other news organisations. And so I think it could be,
potentially, very exciting if the likes of Media Wales and the BBC
and others were able to cross-reference stories, to share stories a
little more. At the end of the day, what they are all striving, I
would hope, to do is to better educate and better enlighten the
population. So, sharing stories, making stories available across
respective—. I see a Member shaking his head. That’s
what I would hope. That’s what I would hope they’re
striving to do.
|
[374] Neil Hamilton: Hope springs eternal.
[Laughter.]
|
[375]
Bethan Jenkins:
Okay. Hannah, carry on, sorry.
|
[376]
Hannah Blythyn:
Thanks very much.
|
[377]
Ken Skates: I’m an optimist. [Laughter.]
|
[378]
13:15
|
[379] Hannah Blythyn: On the hyperlocal and voluntary journalism,
which we’ve all seen a huge growth of in Wales over the last
few years, and you’ve seen it in your own area with
wrexham.com and across Wales, in your opening responses, you did
mention concerns that there is a platform now, where everybody can
write, everybody can broadcast, but there is that worry that there
isn’t that training and support there. And also it’s
about whether that’s a viable career option for
people—people can’t survive being volunteers. So, what
assessment have you made of the strength of the sector and the
growth of it in Wales, and what can be done to support it?
|
[380] Ken
Skates: The sector, I think, is—. Apologies, because I
probably will talk too long on this subject as well.
|
[381] Hannah
Blythyn: I’ll interrupt you, it’s okay.
|
[382] Ken
Skates: Thank you. The sector, I think, in terms of volume is
quite healthy in Wales. We’ve got about 11 to 12 per cent of
the hyperlocal sites across the UK here in Wales. Where I think the
health of the sector is not so good is with the sustainability of
hyperlocal sites—the ability to raise revenue. I’m also
concerned that a number of hyperlocal sites do not have journalists
who are qualified and properly trained and experienced.
|
[383] I went through
several years of learning on the job to get an NVQ and what I got
from my NVQ is probably more valuable to me, certainly in that job,
but probably more generally in my career as a whole, than my
degree. And I would like to see more journalists, on a hyperlocal
news basis, undergoing the training and getting the qualifications
that would not just better equip them for their roles with those
hyperlocal newsrooms, but also equip them, potentially, in other
areas of work, should their careers in journalism not continue. For
example, there are some great transferrable skills that you can
take from journalism across to public relations and marketing
and—
|
[384] Hannah
Blythyn: I thought you were going to say politics then.
[Laughter.]
|
[385] Ken
Skates: I’m a bad example for that. [Laughter.]
And this is where I think, Chair, the budget agreement could
really, really benefit hyperlocal news sites. I think
£100,000, or £200,000 over two years, could be used very
cleverly to help address the skills shortage within
hyperlocal—. It would require fleshing out, but I really
think it’s a golden opportunity, because, at the moment,
it’s 40-something per cent of journalists working on
hyperlocal news sites who actually possess the skills or
qualifications that you’d expect within an established print
or broadcast newsroom. So, there is an opportunity there.
|
[386] I also think
that there are issues around the funding model for hyperlocal
sites. Advertising revenue online is nowhere near what revenue is
being generated for the print material. Again, it’s a
paradox. We’ve got a huge audience number for online news
provision, but a tiny revenue take compared to a much smaller
number of readers of print material but a much larger revenue take.
So, the business model doesn’t yet work. There are all sorts
of ideas out there concerning how we could support hyperlocal
sites. I think some of them are very valid. I think philanthropic
giving is a valid call. Unfortunately, a lot of sites don’t
get enough of that. I think statutory notices could be another area
that should be encouraged, and I’ve certainly been
encouraging councils to do more with online hyperlocal sites. Also,
I would hope that, as we see advertising revenues pick up for
online news provision, again, the models may become more
sustainable. But I would also expect over that time, potentially,
more consolidation as well.
|
[387] You pointed to
wrexham.com, and I point to deeside.com as excellent
examples—exemplars—of hyperlocal sites, both of which,
incidentally, fill a huge gap in the news media market within that
part of Wales. Both will report on issues, for example, that, just
across the border, are of significant interest to the audience that
they serve. For example, if there was a car crash on the M56 that
tragically killed somebody, it might not make it onto Wales
Today, but it would make it onto wrexham.com or deeside.com,
because of the 10,000 or so people living within that catchment
area who use that road. So, it’s a really important
provision, and I think, often, the role of hyperlocal news sites is
really underestimated and misunderstood.
|
[388]
Hannah Blythyn:
You’re saying about them plugging
that gap—to what extent do you think there is the ability
there amongst hyperlocals yet to plug the gap that’s been
left in our communities by the traditional media?
|
[389]
Ken Skates: I don’t think they should have to—sorry,
I’ll row back on that. I don’t think they should have
to plug that gap. I don’t think we should be looking at
hyperlocal sites as the alternative to print media—not just
yet. I think print media, over time, will move more and more
online, and so the likes of the Western Mail will shift more
coverage and generate more online in revenue than it does at
present, and it will see a drop in revenue, potentially, in terms
of the advertising space in the printed material, but I don’t
think that hyperlocal news provision as currently exists can plug
the gap that could come about if some of our big titles, and some
of our smaller titles as well, were to be lost. I think it should
be seen as complementary, and serving a slightly different purpose
as well.
|
[390]
Hannah Blythyn:
Thanks.
|
[391]
Bethan Jenkins:
Mae gan Dai gwestiynau ar y materion
ariannol yn deillio o’r drafodaeth ar
hyperlocal.
|
Bethan
Jenkins: Dai has questions on financial matters arising from
the hyperlocal discussion.
|
[392]
Dai Lloyd: Ie, wel, yn rhannol, mae’r cwestiwn wedi
cael ei ateb yn rhannol am y £100,000 y flwyddyn yma
sy’n mynd mewn grantiau i gychwyn busnesau newyddion
hyperleol. Jest er mwyn y manylion—sut fuasech chi’n
asesu’r ceisiadau? A ydyn nhw yn gyfan gwbl ddibynnol ar
ddatblygiad economaidd—hynny yw, ar wneud elw—ynteu a
fydd budd cymdeithasol, ac nid o reidrwydd yr angen i greu elw, yn
dod i mewn i’r achos, neu’r cais i dderbyn yr arian
o’r cyllid yna? A beth sy’n gwneud y cyllid yma yn
wahanol i’r cyllid arferol i ddechrau
cwmnïau?
|
Dai
Lloyd: Well, yes, the question has been partially answered
already about the £100,000 a year that will be available as
grants to start hyperlocal businesses. Just in terms of the
detail—how will you assess the bids for this funding? Are
they entirely dependent on economic development—that is, on
making profit—or will there be a positive social outcome
there, and not necessarily the requirement to make a profit, when
it comes to the applications? And what makes this funding different
from the generic business start-up funding?
|
[393] Ken
Skates: Okay. There are a number of questions there. I’ll
begin with the last one. There’s nothing really that makes
this different to what we already provide through Business Wales,
other than this would be, from what I understand, ring-fenced. We
already—Business Wales’s support is of the tune of
£80-plus million in European funding to provide support and
guidance to small and medium-sized enterprises. Existing hyperlocal
operators could access Business Wales support. This, as I
understand it, is a ring-fenced fund. I’d like to—
|
[394] Bethan
Jenkins: But that it’s used for more than just the
business advice is what—? Can they apply for that money for
the ongoing progress of a hyperlocal?
|
[395] Ken
Skates: Sorry, Chair. We’ve operated a number of
non-repayable grants in recent years that could be accessed by
hyperlocal media operators or, indeed, by print media operators, or
by commercial broadcasters. But what’s unique about this is
that it’s been ring-fenced for one purpose. I would like to
explore, potentially with Plaid Cymru, the opportunities that could
be had with this money in using it for a very sustainable purpose,
that is to train up journalists in hyperlocal media. One of the
concerns that I have with using it just as a grant is that, if
it’s only going to be conducted over two years, knowing the
fragility of hyperlocal media, are we offering grants and setting
up—this is a very important question we must ask, and it will
be asked—hyperlocal media to fail, and/or are we offering
grants with the expectation that further support could come? So, I
think we just—
|
[396] Bethan
Jenkins: ‘Well, I would like to have had more money, so
if you could have given extra money for that as
well’—you can always negotiate as we speak.
[Laughter.]
|
[397] Ken
Skates: But this is why I’d like to just continue this
discussion and explore how this money can be used to best effect.
Because what I don’t want to do is see people employed, last
two years and then be out of business without the skills to then
transfer over to a different—.
|
[398] I hope Members
appreciate the position I’m coming from, because we
couldn’t operate this fund, I don’t think, in a
different way to other funds that we’ve operated recently on
the basis of economic development and sustainability of the
business model. However, that said, I also think that there would
be wider social benefits to this. Whilst it may just be judged on
the economic benefit and the credibility of each and every bid and
the sustainability of business models, I also think there would be
those obvious social benefits in having a greater degree of news
provision.
|
[399] Bethan
Jenkins: Okay. Lee Waters.
|
[400] Lee
Waters: I do worry about these budget deals where we are
agreeing headline figures and policy areas without any of the
underpinning policy work having been done in advance. It does seem
that there are lots of gaps to be filled here as we go along, and
perhaps that’s a role the committee can play.
|
[401] Bethan
Jenkins: I don’t want to go into confidentialities, but
we certainly did give ideas at that time—just for the
record.
|
[402] Ken
Skates: And we can explore further.
|
[403] Lee
Waters: Can I just return to the point about the wire service
for Wales?
|
[404] Ken
Skates: Yes.
|
[405] Lee
Waters: This is something we recommended ourselves back in
February in our report on broadcasting. So, has no work been done
on it since then?
|
[406] Ken
Skates: Not since February, no. This is something that—.
The work that’s been carried out by the taskforce is very
similar as well, I think.
|
[407] Lee
Waters: Sorry, what taskforce is this?
|
[408] Ken
Skates: The taskforce for the Llywydd. The Commission.
|
[409] Lee
Waters: Sorry, the Assembly’s taskforce. Right. Okay.
|
[410] Ken
Skates: So, it’s been very similar. I’d wished to
wait until the taskforce reported back. That’s now happened.
I think it would be beneficial now for the forum to consider the
respective ideas and then to produce something that really does sit
on very solid ground.
|
[411] Lee
Waters: The taskforce is just to do with the reporting of the
Assembly; the recommendation we made was much broader. It was about
areas where the market had withdrawn, so court reporting, council
reporting.
|
[412] Ken
Skates: Absolutely. I think we probably need to start—.
Unless we have the available resource and unless we could get local
government to contribute, and get other organisations and bodies to
contribute, it would be very expensive to roll out a newswire
service that would cover all areas of news provision. So, I think
there’s potential to start with Government and the Assembly,
given that the Llywydd has given a very strong indication that she
believes that there is a lack of reporting of what happens here,
and given that we in Government are concerned that the UK media is
not capturing in the right way, in an accurate way, what’s
happening in Wales. So, I think we could do something together to
begin with, with Government and the Assembly, but then potentially
widen it and roll it out in a way that I outlined earlier, with the
idea of hubs.
|
[413] Lee
Waters: So, our suggestion was to try and use the BBC money to
fund this service, rather than fund these embedded—. Would
you be open to trying to have a conversation with the BBC on if
their Welsh allocation could be used to fund this instead?
|
[414] Ken
Skates: I think that would make probably more sense than what
is being proposed, and it’s certainly a conversation—.
If this is the view of the Assembly committee, I would be more than
happy to take that up with the BBC, and with your permission, so
that it’s something that the Assembly Members and the
Assembly committee believe would be more beneficial to Wales.
|
[415] Lee
Waters: Just on the timeline of the forum, because I think Alun
Davies initially said that he had hoped to have that in place
before the summer, we’re now not going to have a chair until
sometime in the autumn. When are you assuming the whole thing will
be up and running and beginning its first piece of work?
|
[416] Ken
Skates: I’d need to check with Alun, I’m afraid,
but I would anticipate, with the appointment happening during this
term, it’d be up and running in the spring, with work being
conducted then.
|
[417] Lee
Waters: All right. So, we’re probably not going to get
the first outcomes until this time next year, I guess.
|
[418] Ken
Skates: No, I think it’ll be before then. Task and finish
work can be conducted on a tighter time frame.
|
[419] Lee
Waters: But this isn’t task and finish, is it?
|
[420] Ken
Skates: It would be for the forum, though. The forum would
report back on pieces of work, I would imagine, on a more regular
basis than—.
|
[421] Lee
Waters: So, you would be commissioning the forum to do
particular pieces of work, rather than giving a free hand
to—
|
[422] Ken
Skates: Sorry, no, it would have a free hand, but what we would
do is invite the forum to look at issues that are raised within
this place, within this Assembly as well. Now, it’s
independent, so it could choose to reject that, but I think it
would be entirely reasonable for the independent forum to be open
to suggestions from the Assembly.
|
[423] Lee
Waters: Well, if we are going to try to influence the BBC to
spend that money differently—
|
[424] Ken
Skates: It has to be quick.
|
[425] Lee
Waters: —we can’t wait that long.
|
[426] Ken
Skates: No, I know. I know. That’s why I say, Chair, if
committee supports the idea, then I’m more than happy to take
it up on behalf of the committee and on behalf of Government.
|
[427] Lee
Waters: Okay, thank you. Can I just go back to the hyperlocal
issue?
|
[428] Ken
Skates: Yes.
|
[429] Lee
Waters: You said, a few minutes ago, that statutory notices
were an area where we should do something, and you said you
encourage councils yourself to engage with hyperlocals. We’ve
had a fair bit of evidence that the rules on statutory notices
should be changed to make it more reflective of the digital
landscape, rather than the old classified model. Is that something
that the Welsh Government would be receptive to trying to bring
about?
|
[430] Ken
Skates: The rules shouldn’t have to change. I need to be
clear here that legislation does not prevent statutory notices from
going online only. I believe that’s correct, isn’t it?
It’s based on geographical coverage, and it’s based on
audience. I’ve been at pains on numerous occasions to say to
local government that consideration of hyperlocal media should be
given in publishing statutory notices—often because they have
a wider spread and they have a far greater volume of visitors as
well.
|
[431] Lee
Waters: So, being as the legislation isn’t a barrier, and
being as you’ve just said that we should do more, what is it
the Welsh Government can do?
|
13:30
|
[432] Ken
Skates: It’s largely for local government. We can
consider, through our procurement service, the publication of
statutory notices. I think some, actually—. In fairness, I
believe there are some instances where statutory notices are
published both online and in print. But I do think that through the
procurement service we can examine—especially given the
growth in digital media and given the growth in audience numbers,
we can look at improving the provision of statutory notices online.
It’s certainly something that I’ve taken up already
with our procurement service to ensure that there is equal and fair
play being applied to both hyperlocal and print media.
|
[433] Lee
Waters: So, the Welsh Government does publish some of your own
statutory notices.
|
[434] Ken
Skates: I’d need to get a paper to you on this.
|
[435] Mr H.
Owen: I think the aim of the notices is that they reach as many
people as possible, so I think that’s the aim. So,
obviously—. But we can provide you a note with that.
|
[436] Ken
Skates: I’d like to confirm and clarify that.
|
[437] Lee
Waters: Okay. So, there’s not been much work done on that
to date, has there?
|
[438] Ken
Skates: Not to examine the proportion of Welsh Government
statutory notices. But it’s my understanding that a
significant number, or a majority, of statutory notices come from
local government bodies, rather than just from Welsh
Government.
|
[439] Lee
Waters: Okay, and just finally, to finish then, just to go back
to this point about the agreement on the business support for
hyperlocals, when do you expect to be able to flesh that out?
|
[440] Ken
Skates: This is with Business Wales at the moment, and
officials within Business Wales are examining the options of this
additional resource, so it’s not going to be applied to any
existing funding stream. I would hope to be able to bring back a
firmer proposal soon. I would like to consult Plaid Cymru on the
proposals and the more detailed support that we can give. I’m
afraid I cannot give an assurance of when that will be that I bring
back proposals. It will be as soon as we can reach agreement.
|
[441] Lee
Waters: Given that Cardiff University has a centre of
excellence on hyperlocals, will you be involving them in the
development of your thinking?
|
[442] Ken
Skates: I’d like to involve more—. If we’re
going to involve external partners, I’d like to involve more
than just Cardiff. Given that part of the concern that has been
expressed on numerous occasions is that we don’t have a good
geographical spread of news provision across Wales, I think it
would be beneficial to also involve a few others if we are going to
reach out to external stakeholders, so potentially Cardiff, and I
know there are other good journalism departments in other
universities and other—
|
[443] Lee
Waters: It would be nice to have some academic rigour behind
this policy before we spend £100,000 on something.
|
[444] Ken
Skates: I would agree.
|
[445] Lee
Waters: Okay, thank you.
|
[446] Bethan
Jenkins: Well, it was based on some research in that area, to
be honest, that that—. Well, given the information here, it
was based on information from the very people that you’ve
quoted, so nothing was done on the back of a fag paper,
so—.
|
[447] Lee
Waters: A transparent process it was not. So, we have no
information about what it involved.
|
[448] Bethan
Jenkins: Well, hopefully, now, when we discuss further, some of
that information will come out. We’ll move on to non-funding
streams, and that’s Neil Hamilton.
|
[449] Neil
Hamilton: You’ve mentioned skills, journalistic skills,
in this session. Have you made or has the Government made any
assessment of skills capacity in what we might call the hyperlocal
news sector?
|
[450] Ken
Skates: I’ve already said I think the—. I
don’t know the exact percentage, but it’s between 40
and 50 per cent of journalists in the hyperlocal sector have the
skills and training that you would expect within a print media
environment.
|
[451] Neil
Hamilton: Right, because we’re just talking about basic
communication skills, aren’t we, in a sense.
|
[452] Ken
Skates: No, a little bit more than that. Knowledge of the law
is one.
|
[453] Neil
Hamilton: Well, I was coming on to that.
|
[454] Ken
Skates: Shorthand might be another, but it’s a long time
since I undertook my national vocational qualification; I
don’t know whether it’s still an integral part of the
NVQ; I believe it is—I think it may have moved on from the
form of shorthand I learnt. But, certainly, legal, shorthand and
ethics as well, which are very strong in print media. You may
disagree. [Laughter.]
|
[455] Neil
Hailton: I’ve been on both sides of the fence, and my
experience is just the same. [Interruption.] So, observed in
the breach more—
|
[456] Ken
Skates: Chair, I must stress, and perhaps I’m prejudiced
in favour of the training of journalists, but the skills that are
acquired through vocational opportunities are very, very valuable
to journalists and give journalists confidence. I wouldn’t
have had the confidence to write and publish stories in my name had
I not had the training that I went through when I was at North
Wales Newspapers. It can be an incredibly difficult environment in
which to operate as a journalist. You’re going to hate me
talking about when I was a journalist—
|
[457] Neil
Hamilton: No.
|
[458] Ken
Skates: But, honestly, it can be an incredibly difficult
environment in which to operate, where you have—and, Lee,
you’ll probably appreciate this as well—arrows shot at
you from every direction on a daily basis. It’s even worse,
Chair, than being in politics. And, in order to navigate through
safely such an uncomfortable environment, you need to have the
confidence that what you are doing is legally right and ethically
right as well. So, I do value the training that journalists go
through, but, equally, I think it would be wrong to assume that
there aren’t exemplars in the hyperlocal sector where pretty
much all of the journalists are trained in this way. And, again, I
could point to some hyperlocal sites where their journalists are
fully trained and equipped to be able to deal with any story and to
be able to conduct themselves in a way that is absolutely
proper.
|
[459] Bethan
Jenkins: Neil.
|
[460] Neil
Hamilton: I do agree with you about the necessity of knowledge
of the law, obviously, and that’s not something that you can
easily get off your own bat; it does need formal training. So, is
the Government able to come forward with specific proposals in this
area?
|
[461] Ken
Skates: Well, through our all-age apprenticeship offer, through
the employability plan, I would hope that new organisations would
take advantage of the skills training provision and the support
that we can offer. The problem that we face is that, all too often
today, news organisations, because they’ve cut their news
rooms to the bone, cannot release, even for one day a fortnight,
their journalists to undergo training, and that’s a real
tragedy. And, again, Chair, that might be where we could put to use
the resource we’ve already talked about. We’re
spreading that pretty thin now, but I do think that that’s an
area that could be addressed with this.
|
[462] Bethan
Jenkins: Dawn.
|
[463] Dawn
Bowden: Yes, thank you, Chair. I have just a few questions
around Welsh-language journalism.
|
[464] Ken
Skates: Okay.
|
[465] Dawn
Bowden: We’ve seen that Welsh-language journalism is
getting grants at the moment—or certainly in 2015-16—of
over £1.6 million a year, compared to just over £600,000
or nearly £700,000 for English-language journalism. What
assessment has the Welsh Government made in terms of the value for
money that that provides?
|
[466] Ken
Skates: Hywel, I’ll ask you to answer these
questions.
|
[467]
Mr H. Owen: O ran y Gymraeg, mae’n cefnogaeth ni o ran
newyddiaduraeth yn mynd, o fewn portffolio’r Ysgrifennydd
Cabinet, i’r cyllid sy’n mynd drwy’r cyngor
llyfrau i gyhoeddiadau fel Golwg360 a chylchgronau ar yr ochr
Gymraeg ac ar yr ochr Saesneg, ac wedyn, trwy uned iaith Gymraeg y
Llywodraeth, i bethau fel papurau bro. Felly, dyna’n prif
bethau ni.
|
Mr H.
Owen: In terms of the Welsh language, our support for
journalism lies within the portfolio of the Cabinet Secretary in
the funding that goes through the books council to publications
such as Golwg360 and Welsh and English language magazines, and
then, through the language unit at the Government, we support
things such as the papurau bro. So, those are our main
things.
|
[468]
Ar yr ochr Saesneg, er
enghraifft—gyda Golwg, yn amlwg, ar yr ochr Gymraeg,
heb Golwg, ni fyddai plwraliaeth; dim ond y BBC a fyddai ar
gael. Ar yr ochr Saesneg, wrth gwrs, nid oes gwasanaeth newyddion
drwy’r Saesneg sy’n debyg i Golwg360. Yn amlwg, mae
hwnnw’n rhywbeth y mae nifer o bobl sydd wedi rhoi
tystiolaeth i chi wedi sôn efallai y dylai gael ei
sefydlu.
|
With regard to
the English side of things, for example—without Golwg,
there wouldn’t be plurality; the BBC would be available
alone. On the English side, of course, there’s no
English-medium provision similar to Golwg360. That’s
something that several people who’ve given evidence to you
have spoken about, that that’s something that should be
established.
|
[469]
Yn amlwg, mae’r farchnad ar yr
ochr Gymraeg yn wahanol. Felly, yn amlwg, ni fyddem ni’n
diystyru sefydlu rhywbeth ar yr ochr Saesneg tebyg i Golwg360, ond
yn amlwg byddai’n rhaid gwneud ymchwil ac edrych ar
flaenoriaethau cyllid er mwyn sefydlu hwnnw.
|
The market on
the Welsh-language side is different. So, we wouldn’t
discount establishing something on the English side similar to
Golwg360, but we would have to undertake research and look at
funding priorities to establish that.
|
[470] Dawn
Bowden: But I think my question was: does the Welsh Government
consider that nearly £1.7 million is proven value for money in
terms of Welsh-language journalism at the moment?
|
[471]
Mr H. Owen: O beth rŷm ni’n ei weld, yn sicr. Er
enghraifft, mae’r arian sy’n mynd tuag at
Golwg—mae yna 18 o newyddiadurwyr yn cael eu cyflogi
gan Golwg. Felly, heb hwnnw—a wedyn mae’r cyllid
sy’n mynd ar bethau fel Barn ac ati. Mae llai o
newyddiadurwyr, ond mae rhai rhan amser fanna. Felly, mae yna
newyddiadurwyr ar yr ochr Gymraeg yn cael eu hariannu ac yn cael eu
penodi.
|
Mr H.
Owen: From what we see, certainly, yes. The funding that goes
towards Golwg—there are 18 journalists employed by
Golwg. So, without that—and then there’s the
funding that goes to things such as Barn. They have fewer
journalists, but there are some part-time journalists there. So,
there are journalists on the Welsh-medium side that are funded and
appointed.
|
[472]
Yn amlwg, ar yr ochr Saesneg, nid
ydym ni’n yr un sefyllfa, wrth gwrs. Yn amlwg, mae
hwnnw’n rhywbeth efallai bydd yn rhaid i ni ystyried wrth
fynd ymlaen.
|
But, on the
English side, we’re not in the same situation, clearly, and
that’s something that perhaps we will have to consider as we
move forward.
|
[473] Ken
Skates: I think, Chair, if I just may add to this, there are
wider economic and social benefits as well, because those 18
journalists, it’s my understanding—correct me if
I’m wrong—I’m not sure any of those are based
within Cardiff.
|
[474] Mr H.
Owen: There’s only one based in Cardiff; the majority are
in Lampeter, five in Caernarfon and one in Swansea.
|
[475] Ken
Skates: I think that’s really important both in terms of
sharing wealth-creating opportunities, but also making sure that
the respective regions of Wales are well catered for and well
represented.
|
[476] Dawn
Bowden: So, do you have any plans to change the current level
of funding for Welsh language journalism? Up or down? Stay the
same?
|
[477] Ken
Skates: It would largely be a decision for the Welsh Books
Council. We don’t get involved.
|
[478] Mr H.
Owen: On the Welsh language, we don’t get involved with
funding decisions, and obviously papurau bro are funded
through the Minister for Welsh language’s portfolio.
|
[479] Ken
Skates: If the committee wishes to have an additional paper
from the Minister for Lifelong Learning and Welsh Language we would
be happy to facilitate that.
|
[480] Mr H.
Owen: Obviously, with the Welsh language, all these issues
within your portfolio contribute to delivering the Welsh language
strategy.
|
[481] Dawn
Bowden: That would be useful. Just a couple of other quick
questions. I just wondered whether you feel that the Welsh
Government’s funding of Welsh language journalism sets a
precedent, in a sense, for where we can find proof of market
failure.
|
[482] Mr H.
Owen: As I said earlier, I think without our
support—going back to Golwg 360 and the plurality
there—in the Welsh language, without Golwg the BBC
would be the only provider there.
|
[483] Dawn
Bowden: It would be the only one. So, in that sense it does. Do
you think the Welsh Government successfully manages concerns about
impartiality of state-funded news? Because it’s something
generally governments move away from, but we clearly have
state-funded news here. It’s about impartiality I guess.
|
[484] Mr H.
Owen: The publications I’ve just mentioned, we
don’t get involved in any way with them.
|
[485] Dawn
Bowden: You don’t get involved. It’s arm’s
length in that sense. Okay, that’s fine.
|
[486] Ken
Skates: It’s one of the advantages of channelling it
through an arm’s-length body.
|
[487] Dawn
Bowden: That’s fine.
|
[488] Bethan
Jenkins: I just wanted to add a tiny bit to that. You are
satisfied—. Do you do a review of—? I know you say you
don’t get involved in the editorial decisions, but do you get
involved in making some sort of analysis of its effectiveness? Are
the 18 journalists, for example, enough? Are they able to cover all
bases? Are they able to perform the roles effectively? That type of
thing.
|
[489] Mr H.
Owen: The Cabinet Secretary has meetings, for example, with the
books council and Golwg have been to see you fairly
recently. We have meetings with the Welsh Books Council. So, these
issues are all discussed at those meetings.
|
[490]
Bethan Jenkins:
Ocê. Os nad oes cwestiynau
ychwanegol, rydym yn mynd i gael seibiant am gwpwl o funudau nes
ein bod ni’n cael y sesiwn arall gyda chi. Diolch yn fawr
iawn.
|
Bethan
Jenkins: Okay, if there are no further questions, we’re
going to take a break now just for a couple of minutes before the
next session with you. Thank you very much.
|
[491] Ken
Skates: Can I thank you, Chair, and the committee, for taking a
keen interest in this subject area? I really appreciate it.
|
[492] Bethan
Jenkins: Thank you.
|
Gohiriwyd y cyfarfod rhwng 13:42 ac
13:49.
The
meeting adjourned between 13:42 and 13:49.
|
Adolygiad Annibynnol o
Gymorth ar gyfer Cyhoeddi a Llenyddiaeth yng Nghymru: Tystiolaeth
gan Ysgrifennydd y Cabinet dros yr Economi a’r
Seilwaith
The Independent Review of Support for Publishing and Literature in
Wales: Evidence from Cabinet Secretary for Economy and
Infrastructure
|
[493]
Bethan Jenkins:
Rydym ni’n symud ymlaen yn awr
at eitem 9: yr adolygiad annibynnol o gymorth ar gyfer cyhoeddi a
llenyddiaeth yng Nghymru, a thystiolaeth gan yr Ysgrifennydd
Cabinet dros yr Economi a’r Seilwaith, ac rydym ni wedi yn
barod croesawu’ch tîm, heblaw Peter Owen, sef pennaeth
cangen polisi celfyddydau Llywodraeth Cymru. Croeso yn ôl i
chi i gyd, a chroeso i Peter yn benodol.
|
Bethan
Jenkins: We’re moving on now to item 9: the independent
review of support for publishing and literature in Wales, and
evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure.
We have already welcomed your team, apart from Peter Owen, head of
the arts policy branch with the Welsh Government. Welcome to all of
you and to Peter specifically.
|
[494]
Eto, mae gennym ni themâu o
gwestiynau ar y pwnc penodol yma sydd wedi tanio dychymyg y byd
llenyddiaeth yma yng Nghymru. Fy nghwestiwn cyntaf i i chi fel
Ysgrifennydd Cabinet yw: pam ydych chi’n credu bod yna
wahaniaeth barn syfrdanol rhwng yr hyn y mae Llenyddiaeth Cymru yn
ei ddweud a’r hyn y mae’r adroddiad gan Medwin Hughes
yn ei ddweud am y sefyllfa bresennol?
|
Again, we have
themed questions on this particular topic, which has certainly
sparked the interest of the literary world here in Wales. My first
question, therefore, to you as Cabinet Secretary is: why do you
think that there’s been such a disagreement between what
Literature Wales say and what the report that Medwin Hughes has
produced has to say about the situation?
|
[495] Ken Skates: Thank you, Chair, and
thanks for the opportunity for me to appear today. I imagine that
both organisations—or the panel and Literature
Wales—and others will have given their views on why they feel
so passionately about this review and the subsequent report.
It’s the first time that there’s been an independent
review of this nature. What I should say, I think, is that it
won’t be the last, because I do believe that there should be
a requirement to regularly review publishing and literature, and,
indeed, any other area of delivery that attracts taxpayers’
money. I think it’s also imperative that we recognise there
were more than 50 recommendations, but the criticism, the anger,
the upset, is focused on a small number. It’s therefore
important that we recognise that there are areas where there is
agreement, and those areas could and probably should be taken
forward.
|
[496] Inevitably,
whenever an organisation is criticised, it will seek to defend
itself, and so I’m not surprised that those
organisations—. Certainly, within the arts, people are
rightly upset if they are criticised in terms of delivery, and so I
would expect it. What I would also hope for, though, is an ability
to be able to recognise that changes must be made, and whilst
I’ve made no decision on the recommendations that have been
forwarded to me, I certainly think that the status quo is no longer
acceptable.
|
[497]
Bethan Jenkins:
A oes gennych chi farn ynglŷn
â’r ffaith bod y sefydliadau yma wedi cymryd nid yn unig
y ffaith—nid yn unig Llenyddiaeth Cymru ond y cyngor
llyfrau—? Mae yna feirniadaeth o bob sector wedi cael ei
thanlinellu yn yr adroddiad, ond a ydych chi’n cael y syniad
bod pobl wedi derbyn hynny neu’n gallu gweld ynddo’i
hun fod yna bethau mae’n nhw’n gallu eu gwella? Achos
nid ydw i wedi cael yr argraff honno, yn eistedd o’r gadair,
eu bod nhw wedi gweld bod angen gwneud hynny.
|
Bethan Jenkins: Do you have an
opinion on the fact these organisations—not only Literature
Wales, but the books council also—? There has been criticism
from all sectors noted in this report, but do you have the idea
that people have accepted this, or can people see that there are
things they can improve upon? Because I haven’t had that
impression at all, sitting here, that people are able to see that
improvements need to be made.
|
[498] Ken
Skates: I must scrutinise, to be honest, the evidence
that’s been given by those organisations to this committee to
really judge whether the acceptance for change has really been the
case right across all the organisations. I do think, though, that
change must happen, and whilst criticism is sometimes very
difficult to bear, I do believe that there are opportunities for
the sector to be strengthened, and I think it’s absolutely
essential that all organisations that are involved, that have been
criticised, that are part of this review process, look to the
sector as a whole for who they should deliver to. This is about
making sure that we make best use of taxpayers’ money, that
we strengthen the sector, that we serve the interests of the
sector, and, ultimately, the interests of the people of Wales.
|
[499]
Bethan Jenkins:
Roeddech chi wedi dweud eich bod
chi’n credu bod yr argymhellion, ac rydw i’n dyfynnu,
yn—. Rydych chi’n disgrifio
|
Bethan Jenkins: You have said that
you think that the recommendations, and I quote, here—. You
describe
|
[500]
‘cryfder a grym y dystiolaeth a
ddaeth i law’
|
‘the significant weight and compelling
nature of the evidence received’
|
[501]
yn yr adroddiad hwnnw. A ydych chi
wedi cael unrhyw dystiolaeth bellach sydd wedi peri ichi
ailasesu’r farn honno, neu a ydych chi dal o’r farn bod
yr adroddiad yn gadarn yn ei gynnwys?
|
in the report.
Have you had any further evidence that has made you rethink this
situation, or are you still of the opinion that the report is quite
strong in its content?
|
[502] Ken
Skates: Well, the report is based on evidence from more than
800 respondents, which is one of the largest numbers of responses
that we’ve ever had to a consultation, so it did provide a
compelling evidence base. I’ve met with a number of the
organisations since the report was published. I’ve met with
the panel as well. I do believe that there are areas of service
delivery that are outside the core funding and core functions of
some of the organisations that are carried out superbly, and I have
been dwelling on that over the summer months. For example, in terms
of Literature Wales, the delivery of major event supported
activities is second to none. In terms of Roald Dahl and so forth,
Literature Wales have carried out an excellent job. That is not
part of the core funding; that’s project funding as part of a
partnership approach between Literature Wales and other
organisations. So, in reflecting on additional service areas, I
think it’s fair to say that whilst the report focuses largely
on the core functions, there are additional areas of service
delivery that deserve to be recognised.
|
[503] Bethan
Jenkins: Lee Waters.
|
[504] Lee
Waters: I’m just wondering if you feel you’ve been
well served by the report.
|
[505] Ken
Skates: Yes, I do. I do. I’ve gone through it, I’ve
had additional meetings with the panel. I think the report makes
some incredibly valuable observations and recommendations. As I
said in the summer, I’m minded to accept them. I’m
going to await the outcome of this committee’s inquiry before
I reach a definitive position on each of the recommendations, but I
do think I’ve been very well served. Again, I’ve got to
go back to the start when I say this is the first review of its
kind that’s happened, and therefore it was always going to be
controversial because the organisations involved in it have not
been reviewed in this way. So, it didn’t come as a surprise
to me that there was some vociferous criticism. Since the review
was published, we have had further correspondence, but it’s
worth saying that it’s roughly even—the correspondence
that we’ve had back—in terms of volume for and against.
I think we’ve had 40 or so letters: about 20 critical of the
panel’s report, around about 16 in favour, and I think four
pretty neutral. So, by and large, if you compare the 40 to 800 plus
responses, I think it demonstrates that the panel’s
recommendations are largely in line with the sector that responded
to the consultation.
|
[506] Lee
Waters: But surely this can’t be a quantitative exercise.
In the evidence we’ve received, there are some significant
question marks about the rigour of the judgments that have been
reached based on the evidence.
|
[507] Ken
Skates: I’d welcome the committee’s views on that
and the evidence to back that up—I really would. And
that’s why I say I’m going to await the outcome of this
inquiry before I reach a final position on each of the
recommendations. But I would welcome—. Anything to elaborate
that, I’d very much welcome. It would be helpful.
|
[508] Lee
Waters: Can I just make one final general point? It was a point
I raised with you when you made the statement in Plenary on this.
There seems to be a fundamental intellectual flaw in the case,
because on the one hand the report makes a series of criticisms
against Literature Wales, and on that basis justifies moving
functions to the Welsh Books Council, which it concedes would need
to make significant changes itself to be in a position to carry out
these functions. So, I’m not entirely sure, just on the basis
of intellectual consistency, how they can say on the one hand,
‘This organisation isn’t up to the job,’ but
‘Neither is this one yet, but we’re still going to go
ahead and give it all these functions.’
|
[509] Ken
Skates: I think the Member makes a fair point. That’s why
I said in the Chamber that I was only ‘minded’ to
accept the recommendations. I’ve been considering them
further and I will await this committee’s report before
reaching the final decision on those recommendations.
|
[510] Lee
Waters: Thank you.
|
[511] Bethan
Jenkins: Suzy Davies.
|
[512]
Suzy Davies: Thank you. You’ve mentioned it twice in your
most recent answer, there, the 800 responses, and I appreciate you
wouldn’t have seen a big pile of documents, but I wonder if
you can just give us an assurance that you will investigate that
figure a little more closely, because my understanding is that one
of the questions asked in reaching that 800 figure was ‘Are
you a reader?’ Well, I would imagine that everybody else who
responded to that was going to say ‘yes’. I
suspect—but obviously don’t know—there was a huge
element of duplication in arriving at that figure.
|
[513]
Ken Skates: Chair, I did ask my officials to carry out a quality
assurance process on the responses. I can ask
Paul—.
|
[514]
Mr Kindred: The 829 figure is the number for individual responses
to the survey. I think that’s the question you were
asking.
|
[515]
Suzy Davies: Were they all from 829 different people?
|
[516]
Mr Kindred: People or organisations, yes. I mean, the survey
was—.
|
[517]
Suzy Davies: That’s what I’m trying to
establish.
|
[518]
Mr Kindred: To be absolutely clear, the survey was an anonymous
survey, so we didn’t collect the names of
individuals.
|
[519]
Bethan Jenkins:
So, they could have done it again. They
could have filled in quite a lot anonymously.
|
[520]
Mr Kindred: That’s potentially possible with any survey of
this type, I suppose, but it doesn’t—.
|
[521]
Mr H. Owen: The individuals who responded—not all of
them—provided very detailed comments as part of their
responses, and they were different responses. They weren’t
the same.
|
[522]
Suzy Davies: You’ve answered my question, really, because
it’s very easy, isn’t it, on something like this, to
just put in 500 responses that are all the same.
|
[523]
Mr Kindred: Yes.
|
[524]
Ken Skates: Chair, the Member, actually—. Suzy raised this
in the Chamber when I made the statement, and it was following Suzy
Davies’s question that I then asked officials to go through
all of that evidence again, so that we could have a level of
confidence—a good level of confidence—that there were
no repeat submissions.
|
[525]
Suzy Davies: Well, thank you for the answer.
|
[526]
Mr Kindred: It certainly isn’t the case that there’s
sort of a standard answer that’s been repeated many
times.
|
[527]
Bethan Jenkins:
Yes, template answers.
|
[528]
Ken Skates: It’s not like planning applications, where you
often get the same—.
|
[529]
Suzy Davies: Thank you very much. Thanks, Chair.
|
[530]
Bethan Jenkins:
Okay. Dai Lloyd.
|
[531]
Dai Lloyd: Diolch, Gadeirydd. Rhan o’r
her i ni fel pwyllgor i drio craffu ar y sefyllfa digon anodd yma a thrio cymharu pwy a
ddwedodd beth wrth bwy ydy’r ffaith nad ydym ni wedi gallu
gweld yr adroddiadau i gyd. Yn naturiol, mae adroddiad Medwin
Hughes, ond mae yna elfennau dylanwadol gwnaeth ddylanwadu’n
helaeth ar gasgliadau’r panel nad ydym ni’n gallu
gweld, megis, dywedwch, adroddiad y cyngor celfyddydau ar eu
cleient, Llenyddiaeth Cymru—nid ydym ni wedi gallu gweld yr
adroddiad hwnnw. Mae adroddiad Arad yr oedd yr Athro Medwin Hughes
hefyd yn sôn amdano’n eithaf helaeth, wel, yn y sawl
llythyr rydym ni wedi’i gael ers hynny—felly,
mae’r adroddiad Arad yna hefyd, yn ogystal â’r
manylion am yr 800 yma. A ydy’n bosib i ni gael gweld rheini,
achos rydym ni yn craffu ar y broses yma ac yn trio penderfynu ar y
ffordd ymlaen?
|
Dai Lloyd: Thank you, Chair. Part of the challenge for us as a
committee when we’re trying to scrutinise this
difficult situation in trying to compare who said what to whom is
the fact that we can’t see all of the reports. Naturally, the
Medwin Hughes report is available, but there are influential
elements that did influence the findings of the panel that we
can’t see. For example, the report of the arts council on
their client, Literature Wales—we haven’t seen that
report. The Arad report that Professor Medwin Hughes also mentioned
quite substantially in the several letters that we’ve
received since then—so there’s that Arad report as well
as the details about this 800. Is it possible for us to see those
reports, because we are scrutinising this process and we’re
trying to decide on a way forward?
|
14:00
|
[532] Ken
Skates: I think Dai Lloyd raises a very valuable question. If
the committee would provide me with a list of the reports that
you’d wish to see, we’ll consult with those who
provided the reports. If they’re content for them to be
shared with you, I’m happy to make them available. In terms
of the responses, we will seek to redact any information that would
give away the identity of individuals and, again, I’d be
happy for you to see the responses.
|
[533] Mr H.
Owen: And to release the Arad report is one of the
recommendations of the report. So, obviously, when we respond, you
know, we will be fully responding to that, yes.
|
[534] Dai
Lloyd: But also the—.
|
[535]
Yr un y cyngor celfyddydau hefyd ar
Llenyddiaeth Cymru.
|
There’s
the arts council report as well on Literature Wales.
|
[536] The arts
council.
|
[537] Ken
Skates: The what, sorry, I didn’t—?
|
[538] Mr H.
Owen: Investment review.
|
[539] Bethan
Jenkins: The investment review.
|
[540] Dai
Lloyd: Yes, the original, yes.
|
[541] Ken
Skates: Yes.
|
[542] Bethan
Jenkins: Ond a ydym ni’n
gallu gweld yr un Arad cyn i ni roi tystiolaeth gerbron
chi?
|
Bethan Jenkins: But can we see the
Arad report before we provide you with evidence?
|
[543] Mr H.
Owen: Mae’r un Arad, ar hyn
o bryd—. Mae’r crynodeb ar gael, felly, os ydych
chi’n mynd i’r wefan berthnasol gallwch chi gael yr
adroddiad llawn nawr.
|
Mr H.
Owen: Well, the Arad report, at the moment—. The summary
is available of the Arad report, so, if you do go to the relevant
website, you can get the full report now.
|
[544] Bethan
Jenkins: Rydym ni’n gallu
cael yr adroddiad llawn.
|
Bethan
Jenkins: We can get the full report.
|
[545] Mr H.
Owen: Ydych. Os rydych
chi’n gwneud cais amdano fe, gallwch chi gael ef
nawr.
|
Mr H.
Owen: Yes. If you apply for it, you can have it now.
|
[546] Bethan
Jenkins: O, gwneud cais. Ie,
iawn.
|
Bethan
Jenkins: Oh, apply. Okay, fine.
|
[547] Mr H.
Owen: A dyna un o’r pethau
mae’r panel wedi’i awgrymu—dylai’r
adroddiad llawn gael ei ryddhau. Felly, mae’r
adroddiad—. Os rydych chi’n gwneud cais, gallwch chi
gael yr adroddiad llawn nawr.
|
Mr H.
Owen: And that’s one of the things the panel have
recommended—that the full report should be released. So, as
long as you make an application for that, you can have it now.
|
[548] Bethan
Jenkins: Ocê. Grêt,
diolch. Dawn Bowden.
|
Bethan
Jenkins: Okay. Great, thank you. Dawn Bowden.
|
[549] Dawn
Bowden: Thank you, Chair. I think I’m just going to
follow up a little bit on some of the points that Lee was raising.
I think you may have covered this in other responses, Ken, but
initially you were talking about how you were minded to accept the
report, and that seemed to be based on the weight of evidence, but
were there any particular grounds at that initial stage that made
you take the view that you were minded to accept those
recommendations, or have you kind of moved on a little bit from
that now?
|
[550] Ken
Skates: That would be often the normal course of action, to
state that you’d be minded to accept them, based on an
initial reading of the report, based on initial access to the
information that backs it up. I felt that I required additional
time to give to further analysis of the report. I also felt it
important to engage with the organisations that were featured very
heavily within the report, and, for that reason, I thought it would
be more sensible to say that I was minded to accept the
recommendations than to, at that point, accept them all.
|
[551] Dawn
Bowden: Okay. So, if I understand you correctly, then, your
current thinking in terms of implementing any of those
recommendations is that we still have a bit of a way to go yet in
terms of the evidence coming to this committee and—
|
[552] Ken
Skates: I would like to see the outcome of this
committee’s work for reaching a position on the
recommendations.
|
[553] Dawn
Bowden: Right, and that would include the transferring of
functions from Literature Wales to the Welsh Books Council. Is that
right?
|
[554] Ken
Skates: Yes.
|
[555] Dawn
Bowden: That’s fine, thank you. Can I just ask you a
couple of questions then on the process itself, the review process
itself? If you could tell us how Welsh Government officials fed
into the review process—in other words, you know, was it
officials who were suggesting the areas for the topics of
discussion or were you just merely an enabling—?
|
[556] Ken
Skates: It was secretariat—.
|
[557] Mr
Kindred: Do you want me to take that?
|
[558] Ken
Skates: Paul, please.
|
[559] Mr
Kindred: So, in practice, it was actually Hywel and I who
provided the secretariat to the review panel. Our job was to
support their work. So, within the terms of reference that were set
upfront by the Welsh Government, it was for them to decide who they
wanted to speak to, which topic areas they wanted to look at, and
our role was as—
|
[560] Dawn
Bowden: So, you were facilitating.
|
[561] Mr
Kindred: An enabling role, absolutely.
|
[562] Dawn
Bowden: So there wasn’t any kind of direction or
recommendations from you about those areas?
|
[563] Mr
Kindred: No, no.
|
[564] Ken
Skates: No, none whatsoever.
|
[565] Dawn
Bowden: Okay. And so can you just explain then how your
existing understanding of the publishing and literature sector in
Wales fed into the report?
|
[566] Mr
Kindred: Sure. Hywel and I are the media policy team, so
we’re obviously available to them to answer questions on our
area of work. So, for example, Hywel leads on our relationship with
the books council, so he was available to them to answer questions
on that. But, separately, the
panel called officials to give evidence from the arts policy
team—Peter came to one of the meetings of the panel. Also,
Welsh language officials appeared before the panel and gave
evidence, similarly, officials from education who are involved in
the production of educational resources in Welsh and English. So, a
number of officials from across Welsh Government who either
interact with publishing and literature or are engaged with
stakeholders or are affected by what goes on in the sector gave
evidence to the panel during its work.
|
[567] Dawn
Bowden: Sure, that’s fine. Okay. That’s fine. Okay,
thank you, Chair.
|
[568] Suzy
Davies: So, following up that question, it would have been
clear to the panel what the Welsh Government expected publishing
and literature to mean, so that the final report wasn’t
prepared on something that was too narrow or too wide in its focus.
I appreciate there are terms of reference there, but there are
always fuzzy edges to those, aren’t there?
|
[569] Mr
Kindred: The panel were appointed on the basis that they were
experienced and knowledgeable of the breadth of the sector. I
understand where the question is coming from, and I think the chair
of the panel tried to address that point last week in terms of how
they took evidence from across the breadth of the sector.
|
[570] Suzy
Davies: Okay, thanks.
|
[571] Bethan
Jenkins: Dai Lloyd.
|
[572]
Dai Lloyd: Gan barhau â’r broses adolygu, a
diolch yn fawr iawn ichi, gyda llaw, Ysgrifennydd Cabinet, am yr
addewid yna i geisio rhyddhau adroddiad cyngor y celfyddydau, yr
adolygiad buddsoddi yna, a hefyd adroddiad Arad. Rydym ni’n
ddiolchgar iawn am y cymorth yn fanna. Ond, yn fwy cyffredinol
rŵan, a oedd yna unrhyw beth yn y broses adolygu ei hunan a
fuasai’n peri i chi fel Ysgrifennydd y Cabinet neu eich
swyddogion ddisgwyl yr ymateb llafar a gafwyd gan rai yn y sector,
neu a ddaeth o’n syndod llwyr ichi, yr ymateb, pan ddaeth o
allan?
|
Dai
Lloyd: To continue with the review process—thank you very
much, by the way, Cabinet Secretary, for that promise to try to
release the arts council report, that investment review, and the
Arad report. We’re very grateful to you for that support.
But, more generally now, was there anything in the review process
itself that would cause you as Cabinet Secretary or your officials
to expect this vociferous response that came from some in the
sector, or was it a surprise to you when the response came?
|
[573] Ken
Skates: Not in terms of the process. I’m content with the
process. But, as I’ve already indicated, given that this was
the first time such a review had been undertaken and given that
there was criticism of organisations within the review, that
vociferous response did not surprise me. What I should say is that,
whilst I accept that emotions have been running quite high on this,
I do not believe that the criticism, and, at times, attacks, that
some of the panel members have had to endure have been acceptable
whatsoever.
|
[574]
Dai Lloyd: Diolch yn fawr am hynny. Felly, yn nhermau
unrhyw broses adolygu tebyg yn y dyfodol, nid ydych chi wedi gallu
gweld unrhyw ddiffygion yn y broses adolygu y tro yma wnaeth ddod
â’r fath ymateb—nid oes angen newid y broses
adolygu yn gyffredinol. Dyna beth rwyf eisiau gyrru ato.
|
Dai
Lloyd: Thank you very much for that. With regard to any similar
review process in future, have you been able to identify any
deficiencies in the review process now that caused that vociferous
response? Do we need to change the process in general? That’s
what I’m driving at.
|
[575] Ken
Skates: I think it’s important that we all learn lessons.
I think it’s important we all take criticism if it’s
going to be levelled at you and if it stands on good grounds. One
thing that I would accept is that, in the future, a similar
review—and these reviews will happen again—should be
preceded by a level of engagement with the organisations that are
going to be reviewed to gain their confidence that individual panel
members cover a wide range of subject areas. I think one area that
was of concern at the beginning of the review process involved
publishers and whether there was somebody with sufficient
experience of publishing on the panel. In the future, what
I’d like to do is make sure that all organisations, all the
representative bodies, are confident that all of the skillsets are
represented on the panel.
|
[576] Now it
subsequently—I think I’m right in saying this, Chair.
It was subsequently found that, actually, because of the evidence
that was taken from publishers, that there was confidence that the
expertise of the publishing industry was being taken account of.
But, in the future, I’d like to ensure that all of the
organisations are content with the skillset of the panel.
|
[577] Dai
Lloyd: Diolch yn fawr.
|
[578] Bethan
Jenkins: Just for me to add before I bring Lee in, I think what
I found quite odd was that there were some comments made on the
culture in Literature Wales, when, potentially, the panel may not
have been able to have made that type of analysis, having not lived
that experience outside of that panel discussion. So, I’m
just wondering what views you had on some of the perhaps more
generalised criticisms that are not from the 800 representations
you had about some of those—. I feel that some of those
criticisms are based perhaps on individuals’ attitudes at
meetings and then that was carried through to how, potentially,
they would work in another setting, as opposed to a judgment on the
evidence that was given.
|
[579] Ken
Skates: Chair, I think there were tensions during the review
process, tensions between individuals, between the panel and some
of those who gave evidence. It’s probably a question
that’s best channelled towards the panel, because I think the
views that were expressed by the panel were evidence-based, but, in
terms of commenting on the culture within organisations, I think
that is something that perhaps the panel could, or panel members
could, give more insight into.
|
[580] Bethan
Jenkins: Okay, thanks. Lee Waters.
|
[581] Lee
Waters: As far as I’m concerned, I don’t think
anybody’s emerged from this with any credit. I think the only
judgment that has come out of it well is your original one that
this was a sector that needed to be reviewed. Based on the
performance we’ve seen, I welcome what you said, that
there’ll be further reviews—
|
[582] Ken
Skates: Yes, absolutely—
|
[583] Lee
Waters: —because I think my level of confidence that the
cultures and personalities within the sector are the ones that
you’d want to see is severely in doubt. You just said that
the evidence was clear. There’s one piece of contested
evidence I wonder if your officials, perhaps, could help with. It
relates to the judgment that’s been quoted a number of times
that Literature Wales was at red risk by the Arts Council for Wales
and that, on that basis, the panel decided that there were question
marks about their suitability to continue these tasks. The panel
have told us that they had a very clear understanding from the arts
council that there was a generic statement of red risk against
Literature Wales; they confirmed that to us last week. The chief
executive of the arts council has said in writing, and again before
this committee, that the red risk applied only to the fact that
Literature Wales was going through this review and that in itself
raised a question mark about its future, and therefore it was at
risk.
|
[584] Now, there was a
meeting in October 2016, which your officials were present at. The
notes of that meeting are not publicly available, but, from what we
understand about that meeting, the arts council did say that the
company has always been at red, which is different from what they
said to us last week. So, I wonder if you’d just clarify your
understanding of that meeting and what the nature of this red-risk
assessment was.
|
[585] Ken
Skates: Chair, I’ll ask my officials to do that, but,
before they do, could I say that, if we are able to provide the
minutes that Lee Waters refers to, I’d be happy to do so.
|
[586] Lee
Waters: Thank you.
|
[587] Ken
Skates: If we’re able to do that, I think it’s very
important that the committee sees them.
|
[588] Mr
Kindred: So, I think what you’ve just said about what was
actually said at the meeting is correct. There was a discussion
about how red-risk scenarios were managed in terms of the
governance of not just Literature Wales but national companies
generally by the arts council. This issue about red risk had
previously been acknowledged in evidence from the arts council and,
at that meeting, was discussed again. The arts council, as far as I
recall—and the notes of the meeting tally with this
recollection—didn’t raise any change in the status.
|
[589] Lee
Waters: So, in your understanding, the arts council did regard
Literature Wales as being an organisation generally at red
risk—not just the fact that they were going through this
process.
|
[590] Ken
Skates: Peter, do you—?
|
[591] Mr P.
Owen: They have that red-risk rating, but I think it’s
important to understand that red risk in the arts council’s
view does not necessarily represent that an organisation is (a)
either unfit to receive public funds, or (b) in imminent danger of
collapse. It means that the organisation is facing a number of
challenges and, as you’ve already pointed out, it may also
just reflect the fact that there are external factors, like this
review, that potentially have the ability to threaten the
organisation in some way. I think you heard evidence from the arts
council the other day saying that one of the challenges with it is
that it’s a relatively new organisation. I know the word
‘new’ has become in itself quite contentious in the
context of this review, given that the organisation is five or six
years old, but, certainly, given the history of bringing those
disparate organisations together under one banner, I think we, as
officials, would accept that it was right that the arts council
continue to regard this as an organisation that needed some
nurturing and assistance. But, as the Minister’s already
pointed out, we certainly weren’t hearing anything as
officials from the arts council that it felt that Literature Wales
was in danger as an organisation and potentially not able to carry
out its work.
|
[592] Lee
Waters: It would be very helpful to us to be very, very clear
about this. So, can you just confirm that you think the panel was
reasonable in believing that there was a general risk around
Literature Wales that went beyond the fact they were going through
this review—that was a reasonable conclusion for the panel to
draw?
|
14:15
|
[593]
Mr Kindred: The panel were told about red risk status. I think
this issue about general red risk has been slightly misunderstood,
and I think the chair of the panel tried to get this point across
in his evidence. Peter’s absolutely right—there can be
red risks attached to various different types of activity within an
organisation, and that was just one of a number of factors that
influenced the panel’s conclusions. But obviously the
discussion about the six-year history of Literature Wales, which
involved evidence from the arts council about red risks throughout
that period, predated the constitution of the panel and predated
the review. So, I absolutely accept that there could be a red risk
because of the review now, but, clearly, the panel were taking
evidence from the arts council about the history of the
organisation, and some of that predated the constitution of the
review.
|
[594]
Lee Waters: So, you’re saying the panel was right in
thinking that there was a general level of risk. That was a
reasonable conclusion to draw, was it?
|
[595]
Mr Kindred: The panel were given information about red risk and
various different categories across the organisation. I think a
general red risk—that’s something that’s an
over-inflation—.
|
[596]
Lee Waters: Well, I think it’s really important. I hate to
go on about it, but it’s a really important point, because
Literature Wales were saying, with the backing of the arts council,
that this issue of red risks referred only to the fact they were
going through the review. The panel, quoting the arts council at
this meeting in October, is saying, ‘No, it’s not
that—it goes beyond that. There was a broader risk to the
organisation.’
|
[597]
Mr Kindred: It isn’t just about the risk of the review,
because there were red risks attached to Literature Wales prior to
the constitution of the review. That is the evidence that the panel
received from the arts council.
|
[598]
Lee Waters: Right. I think we need to pursue that with the arts
council, because there’s a tension between what they’ve
said there, I think.
|
[599]
Ken Skates: I feel there’s an unease at this contradiction,
and, again, I’d like to facilitate any discussion, if I may,
between the committee and the respective organisations so that this
can be dealt with properly.
|
[600]
Bethan Jenkins:
Can I just for the record as well we have
received the minutes of that meeting, but we didn’t want to
indicate that we had earlier, because we weren’t sure of the
status of that? But we have received it, so there’s no need
for you to send it to us. But we just wanted to clarify that so
that it was correct for the record.
|
[601]
Ken Skates: Thank you.
|
[602]
Bethan Jenkins:
But can I just ask you, before I bring
Suzy in—
|
[603]
Lee Waters: I’ve got one more question,
actually.
|
[604]
Bethan Jenkins:
Okay. Sorry. I just want to clarify,
though, because what I wasn’t sure of last week is whether
Medwin Hughes knew what the red risk meant. So, they were given an
explanation, were they, of what that was—the detailed
breakdown of what a red risk was?
|
[605]
Mr Kindred: There was extensive correspondence back and fore
between the panel and the arts council. It wasn’t just about
a particular evidence session. So, there was quite a detailed
explanation given, yes.
|
[606]
Bethan Jenkins:
Okay. Is it on this, or
shall—
|
[607]
Ken Skates: Chair, would you like us to—?
|
[608]
Suzy Davies: [Inaudible.]
|
[609]
Ken Skates: Sorry, would you like to ask whether that
correspondence could be made available to you on a confidential
basis?
|
[610]
Bethan Jenkins:
Yes, please.
|
[611]
Suzy Davies: And that was also my question.
|
[612]
Bethan Jenkins:
That was your question, was
it?
|
[613]
Suzy Davies: Because there’ll be several key performance
indicators against which risk is assessed, and we didn’t get
any sense of that from anybody. So, thank you.
|
[614]
Bethan Jenkins:
Yes, please.
|
[615]
Ken Skates: I’ll ask for that.
|
[616]
Lee Waters: As well as providing us with that note that we have,
it would be useful for us to be able to publish that note. So, if
you’re able to check whether or not we can do
that.
|
[617]
Ken Skates: Yes. I want us to be as transparent as we possibly
can in this regard, because there have been vociferous comments and
a vociferous response from many, and I think it’s absolutely
imperative that we provide a complete, transparent picture of
what’s been happening and what has occurred, and make sure
that people have confidence in the report.
|
[618]
Bethan Jenkins:
Okay. Did you have anything else,
Lee?
|
[619]
Lee Waters: Yes, there’s just one other thing. I’d
appreciate the clarification of another of the judgments that they
came to. So, the review concluded that Literature Wales
|
[620]
‘did not contain the right
composition of skills and experience to run a body spending public
money’.
|
[621]
Can I ask your officials whether or not
there is evidence they’re aware of that bears out this
judgment? Is that accurate and fair?
|
[622]
Mr P. Owen: Certainly, from my perspective, I attend the regular
monitoring meetings between arts council and Welsh Government, and
I also attend arts council board meetings as an observer from time
to time, and certainly, no, I’ve not had any reason from
either of those fora to believe that arts council considered
Literature Wales in that way.
|
[623]
Lee Waters: So you don’t think that’s a fair judgment
to reach.
|
[624]
Mr P. Owen: I think it’s difficult because, obviously, they
couldn’t focus on that issue in quite as forensic detail as
the arts council does day to day, but I think personally that is
probably not a fair judgment to reach.
|
[625]
Lee Waters: This is my concern, Cabinet Secretary, because you
said earlier this is an evidence-based report, but once you start
pulling at the threads, they start to unravel. These are fairly
central judgments they’ve reached, and if on these two points
there is doubt, and on that latter one your officials think
they are wrong, then that surely does question mark the whole basis
of their conclusions.
|
[626] Ken
Skates: I think it might be helpful if the committee had access
to some of the red risk reasons, the analysis of the red risk
status, because I think that may give Members a degree of
confidence in terms of the report’s findings.
|
[627] Lee
Waters: But this isn’t a point about the red risks; this
is a point of whether they are fit to spend public money, on which
your officials have just said that is not an evidence-based
conclusion.
|
[628] Mr
Kindred: With all due respect, the panel did not say that
Literature Wales isn’t fit to spend public money. The panel
said—
|
[629] Lee
Waters: ‘did not contain the right composition of skills
and experience to run a body spending public money’.
|
[630] Mr
Kindred: Yes, thank you, and that’s not quite the same
thing. The panel was saying that, at that point in time, it had
identified, following evidence that it had received from Literature
Wales, from others, from stakeholders, and that it concluded that
there were skills and experience gaps that needed to be filled. To
be fair to Literature Wales—
|
[631] Ken
Skates: And the arts council.
|
[632] Mr
Kindred:—and the arts council—they’ve
acknowledged that, and we’re aware that Literature Wales are
already looking to address some of those issues, and that’s
to be welcomed.
|
[633] Lee
Waters: But your colleague has just said, based on his
experience of these meetings, that’s not a fair
conclusion.
|
[634] Mr P.
Owen: Based on the information that I was party to and made
available to me at those meeting.
|
[635] Lee
Waters: I’m now confused.
|
[636] Mr
Kindred: Well, the point is the panel’s conclusions are
the panel’s conclusions, and—
|
[637] Lee
Waters: And I asked your colleague did he think that was a fair
judgment to make, and he said ‘No’. Now you’re
saying it is a fair conclusion.
|
[638] Mr
Kindred: No, I’m saying that the panel saw significant
evidence of—and to be fair to the panel, they acknowledged
diverse evidence they’d received about the work that
Literature Wales does well. They also cite significant evidence
from stakeholders about concerns around governance and leadership,
and not all of that evidence—on both sides—is currently
included in the report. The report contains a summary of the
evidence.
|
[639] Lee
Waters: But they—I’m sorry, I’ll finish on
this—concluded in their recommendations to the Minister,
which he’s minded to accept, that Literature Wales did not
contain the right composition of skills and experience to run a
body spending public money. That is a highly significant statement,
which Peter Owen just said was, in his experience, not based on
evidence, was not fair. So, I ask again the Government to go away
and reflect seriously on this, because the implications for these
bodies are huge, and if there are significant doubts about the
veracity of that statement, then surely you must pause and reflect
on that.
|
[640] Ken
Skates: I agree with the Member, which was one of the reasons
why I said I was minded to accept; the other reason why I believe
that it is important to scrutinise the red risk register and
reasons why Literature Wales is considered at risk to such a
degree. So, again, I’ve made the offer that I will attempt to
get that red risk reasoning to you—potentially on a
confidential basis. I think that would help to resolve this
issue.
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[641] Bethan
Jenkins: Okay. Suzy Davies.
|
[642]
Suzy Davies: Thank you. Well, yes, obviously the evidence that
Lee’s just been talking about has helped us conclude—in
my case, anyway—that some of the responses to the evidence
has been disproportionate to the concerns raised, and that in
itself, then, leads questions back to the composition of the panel
itself. Obviously, you’re going to want to reassure us that
it meets all public standards, and so forth. I wonder if you can
just tell us a little bit about, actually, how the panel was
appointed. I know we’ve covered a bit of this in Plenary, but
I think we need to ask a few more questions on the back of these
concerns.
|
[643]
Ken Skates: I don’t think the expertise or the integrity of
the panel members is in question. I think the—
|
[644] Suzy Davies: How were they appointed,
though?
|
[645]
Ken Skates: They were appointed on a task-and-finish basis. So, a
list of names was drawn up by officials and presented to the then
Minister and me, as Deputy Minister, from which the current panel
was drawn. It was carried out on a task-and-finish basis. It was
the normal process that’s used in these sorts of
circumstances and, again, I don’t think that the integrity of
those individuals can be questioned.
|
[646] Suzy Davies: No, it’s just
reassuring us, or just explaining to us this wasn’t an open
competition—
|
[647]
Ken Skates: No. It wouldn’t normally be.
|
[648]
Suzy Davies: They were chosen by you, effectively.
|
[649]
Ken Skates: That’s something that, given the contentious
nature of this subject and the review, I think, next time around,
that sort of process might be more desirable.
|
[650]
Suzy Davies: That’s interesting to hear. We are talking
about a small sector and a small group of people, so the pool from
which you could draw was actually relatively small, but, having
said that, then, it’s even more important than usual,
perhaps, to make sure that any conflicts of interest were well
covered off. You’ve explained you were already aware of
potential conflicts of interest, or those that were perceived
there. What reassurance did you—. Actually, what level of
control did you have over the processes to manage conflicts of
interest, or was that left to the panel itself to put in
place?
|
[651] Ken Skates: Paul, would you like to
address the question?
|
[652]
Mr Kindred: Yes.
|
[653] Ken Skates: I
should just say, I received a very, very detailed explanation on
this from the panel just last week, and I’m confident
that the registration of interests was comprehensive and there were
no conflicts of interests that were not identified or dealt with in
an appropriate way. But, Paul.
|
[654] Mr
Kindred: Yes, I think that’s absolutely right. So,
conflict of interest statements were taken from all of the panel
members at the outset of the review process, which they and we as
the secretariat bore in mind during all of their deliberations and
their meetings. Where there was a potential conflict of interest,
that was pointed out by the member concerned and they generally
didn’t get involved in that discussion. If their expertise
was required, they just took part in providing an information
basis, or they left the panel meeting entirely for the duration of
that agenda item. And I think, actually, there’s something in
the minutes that you’ve seen that bears that out. And at the
end of every meeting, they reassessed their potential interests and
declared any other interests that they felt were relevant following
the discussion that they had at that meeting.
|
[655]
Suzy Davies: Obviously, you’re observing this in real time.
Were there any occasions when you thought that somebody might have
overstepped the mark inadvertently? I’m not suggesting any
deviousness involved in this.
|
[656]
Mr Kindred: I don’t recall any occasion of that,
no.
|
[657]
Suzy Davies: Okay, and at the end of the meetings when the
reassessments were conducted, were there many new conflicts of
interest identified as a rule?
|
[658]
Mr Kindred: No, I think the original register of
interests—those interests were restated. There were one or
two additions that were along the lines of they’d spoken to
somebody and a member of the review panel acknowledged that
they’d met them previously and in what context—that
kind of thing.
|
[659]
Mr H. Owen: For example, the discussion on academic publishing.
To be clear, that was outside the terms of reference but the chair
wasn’t involved in any discussions around it; they left the
room.
|
[660]
Suzy Davies: That confirms the evidence they gave us, actually. I
think that’s all I’ve got to ask on that. Thank
you.
|
[661]
Bethan Jenkins:
Thanks. Hannah.
|
[662]
Hannah Blythyn:
Thanks. I think one of the things
we’ve had in evidence before was surprise and concern that
the panel didn’t feature a publisher, given what the
review’s focus was on. Is there a reason for that?
|
[663]
Ken Skates: The process of identifying the panel, as I’ve
outlined earlier, I think in the future could be amended so as to
ensure that all skill sets are represented on the future panel of
any review. The concerns I think that were expressed about the
absence of somebody from the publishing industry was subsequently
eased by virtue of attracting so much evidence from people within
the publishing industry. I accept at the outset that was a concern,
but I also think that it was dealt with during the course of the
evidence-gathering process.
|
[664]
Hannah Blythyn:
You said in response to my colleague,
Suzy Davies, that, in future, the way that the panel is appointed
needs to be looked at. What are the learning points that you think
you can take away from this, and do you think we need to perhaps
have a more transparent process for appointing such panels in the
future?
|
[665]
Ken Skates: Yes. I’ve said as well that I think, in the
future, it will be important to learn lessons from this process,
and ensuring that all of the organisations that are essentially
going to be reviewed are content with the skill set, not
necessarily—because it’s such a small, if you like,
gene pool that we’re selecting from—content with the
individuals, because I think from what we’ve learnt on this
occasion, there are some individuals that wouldn’t want to be
neighbours. And I think what’s important is that all skill
sets are represented on a future panel and that, as far as
possible, we can have an open recruitment process as well. Of
course, that will lead to initial and immediate criticism,
I’m in no doubt, because we’ll have more applicants
than we can give places on the panel to. I’m pretty sure that
we’ll then attract criticism for excluding X, Y or Z, but I
do think that that will be an important learning lesson that we
take forward.
|
[666]
Bethan Jenkins:
Neil Hamilton.
|
[667]
Neil Hamilton: It’s not unknown in the world of the arts for
personal feuds to be prosecuted, sometimes for immense lengths of
time, over matters which to an outside observer might appear either
recondite or trivial. So, has the reaction to this review revealed
anything new to you about the degree of harmony that is found in
the world of publishing and literature in Wales?
|
[668]
Ken Skates: I’m not entirely convinced that there is
harmony in the sector at present. But, equally, I’m not convinced that it’s
because of the review. I suspect that there have been disagreements and there
have been competing interests within the sector for some time and
that this review has drawn those competing interests and tensions
out. I would invite everybody within the sector to take a
Kennedy-esque approach and ask what they can do for their country
and for their sector moving forward. And crucially—.
|
14:30
|
[669] Neil
Hamilton: Kennedy was assassinated, you know.
[Laughter.]
|
[670] Ken
Skates: I should watch myself then today.
[Laughter.]
|
[671] Seriously, I
think there is a real need to see a greater degree of partnership
working and collaboration in the sector. It may be small in terms
of the overall budget that it receives from Welsh Government and
from the taxpayer, nonetheless, it serves a crucially important
purpose in society, and, equally, even though it’s not a huge
sum of money in the great scheme of things, it is, nonetheless,
taxpayers’ money and the taxpayer should expect best value
and should expect those delivering services to be working together
in the interests of the country.
|
[672] Neil
Hamilton: That said, what can you do to improve joint working
in this world?
|
[673] Ken
Skates: I think there are some recommendations that can
facilitate joint working. There are some recommendations that would
be more difficult to implement because there’d be
consequences in the way that lottery funding is administered, and
so, in those instances, we could look at a greater deal of
collaboration and joint working. In terms of services such as
providing bursaries and so forth, again, I think there’s a
greater degree of collaboration that could be taking place across
organisations.
|
[674] I think we now
need to recognise that there are differences. There are character
tensions, there are differences of opinion, conflicting and
competing interests. They’ve been laid bare now. Having been
laid bare, I would hope that those individuals and those
organisations can recognise that, to the outside world, all that
people want is the best service delivery, and, to do that, they
must work together collaboratively and put whatever individual
competing interests they have to one side.
|
[675] Bethan
Jenkins: I know that you’ve said that you’ll wait
for this committee to arrive at whatever we arrive at, but I just
wanted to ask in relation to—. Literature Wales said,
obviously, they’ve suffered in relation to potential new
work. If there were any changes to—. For example, if you took
the recommendations and enacted them as is, obviously that takes
away a chunk of their work now. Would you then be reassessing what
they would be able to do if that happened, because, obviously, they
base their working programme on the current structures that they
have? So, would they be able to then adapt sufficiently to be able
to do that?
|
[676] Ken
Skates: I think, Chair, this is a really important
consideration, and I think also we need to recognise that
Literature Wales served the purpose of providing from more than
their core functions. There are projects that are funded by Welsh
Government and other organisations that are very, very important in
terms of what Literature Wales do. But, in terms of the core
functions, I think this report is very valuable, and we will need
to consider in greater detail the implications of transferring
functions, because, as I say, there could be consequences in doing
so in terms of the impact on other organisations as well, such as
the arts council.
|
[677] Bethan
Jenkins: Okay. Unless there are other questions, we’ll
bring this session to an end and thank you. We’ll write and
confirm what information we need from you. I think that will be
simple considering it seems to be a few documents. Thank you very
much coming in today.
|
[678] Ken
Skates: And I look forward to returning after the next review.
[Laughter.]
|
[679] Bethan
Jenkins: Okay. Let’s hope that it’s a smoother
running review.
|
[680] Ken
Skates: Thank you.
|
[681] Bethan
Jenkins: Diolch yn fawr iawn.
|
[682] Ken
Skates: Thanks
|
[683]
Bethan Jenkins:
Rydym yn symud ymlaen at eitem 10 ac
ôl-drafodaeth breifat yw hon. Rydym ni wedi cytuno i fynd i
mewn i sesiwn breifat yn barod. Diolch.
|
Bethan Jenkins: We are moving on now to item 10, which is a
private discussion. We’ve already agreed to enter into a
private session. Thank you.
|
Daeth
rhan gyhoeddus y cyfarfod i ben am 14:34.
The public part of the meeting ended at 14:34.
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