Extract from Welsh Parliament - Business statement - Mar 29

Altaf Hussain MS: Minister, you will be aware of a recent internal audit report at Bridgend council that exposed the payment of £316,192 to a company for home insulation work, where the director was a Labour council cabinet member, and where the moneys were paid to a company that the auditors could not establish had actually existed. I believe that South Wales Police should be investigating it. I have called for them to do so. Will the Government make a statement in the Chamber, setting out how Welsh procurement policies will be tightened to reduce the chance of this occurring again? Thank you very much. 

Lesley Griffiths MS (Minister for Rural Affairs and North Wales, and Trefnydd): Thank you, and it is very nice to see you back in the Chamber. I think you've done the right thing by writing directly to the local authority. Procurement is an important matter, which the Minister for Finance and Local Government is doing a big piece of work on within our programme for government, and I'm sure this is something that could be looked at.