, Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee
Scrutiny of Accounts - Welsh Government 2024-25: evidence session with Dr Andrew Goodall, Permanent Secretary - Welsh Government
Sioned Evans referred to the element relating to space. We don't have time to go into this issue in detail, but there was one element that I was interested in. Part of the strategy was offering space in Cathays Park to other bodies. Could you update us about…
, Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee
Scrutiny of Accounts - Welsh Government 2024-25: evidence session with Dr Andrew Goodall, Permanent Secretary - Welsh Government
Sorry, I hadn't heard the response there. Sorry.
, Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee
Scrutiny of Accounts - Welsh Government 2024-25: evidence session with Dr Andrew Goodall, Permanent Secretary - Welsh Government
And I'm sure that the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee would like to receive a copy of that report, but the report would be of interest to this committee as well, if it would be possible to see that.
, Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee
Scrutiny of Accounts - Welsh Government 2024-25: evidence session with Dr Andrew Goodall, Permanent Secretary - Welsh Government
You referred, Permanent Secretary, to the limitations that related to the cap in terms of numbers and in terms of external recruitment. One of the areas where there has been ongoing discussion in other committees about the impact of this on Welsh Government's…
, Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee
Scrutiny of Accounts - Welsh Government 2024-25: evidence session with Dr Andrew Goodall, Permanent Secretary - Welsh Government
Does anyone else want to respond to that?
, Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee
Scrutiny of Accounts - Welsh Government 2024-25: evidence session with Dr Andrew Goodall, Permanent Secretary - Welsh Government
In his report back in 2022, the auditor general noted some areas in terms of the workforce strategy to focus on. To what extent did this programme, the Welsh Government 2025 programme, follow those recommendations that were made?
, Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee
Scrutiny of Accounts - Welsh Government 2024-25: evidence session with Dr Andrew Goodall, Permanent Secretary - Welsh Government
Sioned, you referred to some things that hadn't worked as well as you'd hoped they would. Could you give us a little taste of some of those things that didn't work as well?
, Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee
Scrutiny of Accounts - Welsh Government 2024-25: evidence session with Dr Andrew Goodall, Permanent Secretary - Welsh Government
Thank you, Chair. Could we turn now, therefore, to workforce planning and, in particular, the Welsh Government 2025 programme? Could you tell us about the programme itself—has it delivered what you expected it to deliver? How do you measure its success, and…
, Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee
Scrutiny of Accounts - Welsh Government 2024-25: evidence session with Dr Andrew Goodall, Permanent Secretary - Welsh Government
Okay. Thank you very much.
, Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee
Scrutiny of Accounts - Welsh Government 2024-25: evidence session with Dr Andrew Goodall, Permanent Secretary - Welsh Government
And two other brief questions. There was a reference in the same statement to creating a national school of government, by the UK Government. How does that affect your intention as a Government to create a national school of government for Wales? Permanent…
, Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee
Scrutiny of Accounts - Welsh Government 2024-25: evidence session with Dr Andrew Goodall, Permanent Secretary - Welsh Government
Ministers in Westminster have decided to make these changes. Do the Welsh Ministers, within the discretion that you've just outlined to vary issues relating to performance management in Wales—? Is it the Welsh Ministers that determine how to use that…
, Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee
Scrutiny of Accounts - Welsh Government 2024-25: evidence session with Dr Andrew Goodall, Permanent Secretary - Welsh Government
Yes, thank you, Chair. I have three questions that are relevant to this issue in terms of the senior civil service. First of all, last month, the Westminster Government made a statement about a new evaluation framework for the senior civil service that will…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Evidence session with the Lady Chief Justice
Thank you very much.
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Evidence session with the Lady Chief Justice
I'm grateful for that. Just finally from me, I want to ask about the relationship with Welsh Tribunals. We've heard about one judiciary in Wales, but we have two sets of judiciary in Wales, one might say. But you appoint, do you not, the president of the…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Evidence session with the Lady Chief Justice
Do we have time, Chair? Just a couple of questions to conclude from me. In terms of the Welsh language, just a specific question: the Welsh Language Commissioner has recently raised concerns about a consultation by the committee for regulations and…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Evidence session with the Lady Chief Justice
Thank you.
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Evidence session with the Lady Chief Justice
Alun Davies, I'm sure, will come back to this question relating to the Welsh language in the system, but, finally from me, could you tell us broadly how the proposed criminal court reforms and sentencing changes by the UK Government could influence the…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Evidence session with the Lady Chief Justice
Just in terms of recruitment, are there challenges that are specific to Wales in terms of recruitment of judges—full-time judges and judges who are paid through fees—and to what extent is that movement towards—I'm not sure what the term is; I'm not sure if I…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Evidence session with the Lady Chief Justice
Just to stay on that point for a moment then, how has that decision across England and Wales in terms of that maximum number of sitting days affected Wales? Have there been cases where the courts in Wales have failed to sit due to Wales, to all intents and…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Evidence session with the Lady Chief Justice
Can we turn, therefore, to how we improve the situation? If you only had one of these in Wales next year—more sitting days, more judicial appointments or more administrative staff—which would you choose, and which do you think would be most effective?
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Evidence session with the Lady Chief Justice
But is there still a broader connection between that backlog and the number of ineffective trials?
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Evidence session with the Lady Chief Justice
Do we have any figures for the victims, for example, in terms of the effect of that backlog on the tendency to pull out of criminal cases? Also, you referred earlier to the record in Wales and how it is better in terms of ineffective cases—those that fail due…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Evidence session with the Lady Chief Justice
Although—according to the statistics that you've shared with us—the situation in some aspects is relatively better in Wales, would you accept that that backlog in general has been increasing in Wales, as it has been increasing in England also, and so it's…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Evidence session with the Lady Chief Justice
I know that you may not want to go into policy areas, but, of course, those of us in favour of devolution would use this as further evidence of the potential that devolving this would represent. Just in terms of drilling down into the statistics some more…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Evidence session with the Lady Chief Justice
It's very encouraging to hear about those aspects in which Wales is doing so well. Do you attribute those more positive outcomes, compared to England, to the characteristics that you mentioned earlier on—that, in Wales, due to its nature, information flows…
