Is it impossible to hold the Welsh Government to account?

Friends of the Earth Cymru has been one of the most vocal critics of the Welsh Government's plans to build a new stretch of motorway to the south of Newport. But aside from our opposition, as fans of democracy and good governance we also expect certain standards of Welsh Government and Ministers. And when those standards slip we expect to be able to hold public servants and the offices they hold to account. 

This is a rather extraordinary tale of the lengths we went to in order to hold the Welsh Government to account. 

In September 2015 the Welsh Government held a series of exhibitions at a cost of £289,527 to promote its preferred Black Route. 

We had serious concerns over the way the information was portrayed - describing the Welsh Government's interpretation as "deliberately deceitful". That's the polite way of saying that the Welsh Government lied to the public. In every single case, they'd distorted or cherry-picked the statistics to make their case look stronger than it actually is. Full details of the concerns are set out here.

So we decided to try to hold the Welsh Government to account. 

Firstly we attempted to get correspondence between the Minister and the project manager to see if civil servants had been 'leaned on' to massage the figures. But the Welsh Government's email management system requires external parties to guess which of any number of unknown and un-named folders the correspondence might be in:

Ar ran/On Behalf Of ES&[email protected]

Annwyl Mr Clubb,

Thanks for your enquiry. There is a number of different folders where the emails under consideration could be stored. Some folders are related to projects, others are not. Would you please be so good as to describe explicitly the information you seek, for example a particular email on a particular aspect of a particular project. It would help if you could be as accurate as possible in your description, focusing on the information you believe us to hold, so that we can search for it.  

A particular email on a particular aspect of a particular project?!

Having failed to get the correspondence we sought (which is the subject of an ongoing complaint lodged with the Information Commissioner), we submitted a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority. However, the ASA determined that because the Welsh Government was not 'selling' a product at the exhibitions, it could not investigate. 

In the meantime we complained directly to the Welsh Government using its internal complaints procedure. However, bizarrely, the adjudicating officer is none other than the Minister whose conduct (including civil servants under her control) was the subject of our complaint. Unsurprisingly she found no cause to investigate. 

So we submitted a complaint to the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales. Our main grounds of complaint were:

• That the government had failed to properly and thoroughly investigate our complaint
• That the complaints procedure is flawed in allowing the subject of the complaint to also be the investigating/determining officer

The PSOW found that they couldn't investigate because the basis of the complaint - contested statistics - was not in remit, and that the authority for determining a breach of a Code of Conduct (in this case the Civil Service Code of Conduct) is the authority which employs those officers. 

We then asked the Statistics Authority to determine whether or not the Welsh Government's treatment of figures used in the exercise was valid. However despite being sympathetic to our concerns, they highlighted that they can only challenge "official statistics" that conform to tight statistical guidelines. The figures used by the Welsh Government definitively do not fall into that category. They did, however, write to the Head of Profession (Statistics) at Welsh Government, reminding them of the code of practice for statistics. 

We raised concerns over the expenditure of nearly £300,000 - given that the information used was false - with the Wales Audit Office. And not just the £300k, but the potential for wasting a further £2.3 billion, especially if public opinion was swayed as a result of incorrect information. While thanking us for raising the issue, and saying they'd keep an eye on the developing situation, they stated that policy decisions of public authorities are not in remit. 

Eluned Parrot also raised the issue on the floor of the Senedd. She questioned whether or not the information provided in the exhibition was a "true, fair and accurate representation of the facts around the M4 relief road". The Minister's response was that "There are people who say that it is not... but I am assured by my officials that it is". 

This is not some abstract discussion about statistics. It's a fundamentally important point about truth, transparency and natural justice.  And at the end of it all lies the real possibility of a 6-lane highway being ploughed through five SSSIs and acres of greenfield rich in nature. 

As far as we can tell, we have tried every single avenue for redress. Regrettably, the conclusion we draw is that the Welsh Government can lie with impunity because it is impossible to hold them to account.