18 July 2018
Retirement of Huw Vaughan Thomas
Mike Hedges AM I welcome the opportunity to say a few words
on the retirement of the auditor general, Huw Vaughan Thomas. I've been a
member of the Public Accounts Committee, or a substitute member, since 2011. To
me, the outgoing auditor general had two great strengths, which I hope Nick
Ramsay will agree with me on: knowing what the key areas to investigate and
report on were, and proportionality in his response. If anybody
follows the auditor general's reports, the auditor general's office produces
many each year, but it's actually about identifying the key ones, going into
them in detail, and reporting back and taking them before the Public Accounts
Committee, because if the Public Accounts Committee received all of them,
they'd spend an hour each week just receiving and accepting. So, it's the
proportionality in what to deal with and highlighting major failings of
Government departments—Penmon fish farm, Kancoat, Powys Fadog, the Circuit of
Wales—projects that could never have succeeded and that should have been picked
up by the civil servants at the very earliest moment as projects that were
incapable of success. The failure to do that—. The auditor general has brought
those to the attention of Welsh Government, which I hope will work in the future—that
people will cast a critical eye over projects and whether they actually can
work or not. Many projects will fail, many good projects will fail for all
sorts of reasons, but if the auditor general leaves us with something, it's
that people cast a critical eye over projects and say, 'Can this project
actually succeed?', and when the answer is 'no', then those projects don't get
taken forward and money is not spent on them. Can I just finally wish Huw
Vaughan Thomas a long and happy retirement? I've enjoyed seven years of
discussions, not always agreements with him, but always something that I think
I've learnt a lot from, and I hope he's enjoyed.
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