Silly censure

The Welsh Tories made idiots of themselves on Wednesday with a censure motion on Alun Pugh. The whole debate was pretty pointless, and it seemed that the Presiding Officer wasn't too pleased with it either, as he limited most speeches to three minutes.

I spoke in the debate. I have not always been the biggest fan of our approach to the Arts in the National Assembly. However, the censure motion was ridiculous, and owed more to Tory leader Nick Bourne's desire to promote his Culture spokesperson Lisa Francis in the selection battle for the Mid and West Wales. The Tories have 3 seats there at present: as we are targetting to win back a seat in that region, the position of the third person is somewhat precarious. Bourne would like Lisa to be second on the Tory list instead of Glyn Davies.

I tried to make one or two serious points in my short speech (see over): but I am well aware that some of the criticism of Labour's Culture Minister has been based purely on snobbery, and I wasn't surprised that my comments on that received the most attention!

Leighton Andrews: I am happy to support
the Minister for Culture, Welsh Language
and Sport today, and I urge the Assembly to
reject the motion. It is completely over the
top to see a censure motion against this
Minister. I speak as someone who has not
always agreed with him on every issue to do
with arts policy—I do not think that that is a
state secret. However, at a time when we are
going through a review of arts policy, when
we have agreement on the terms of reference
for that review of arts and cultural policy, and
when we have an interim chair of the arts
council, who is leading the council through a
difficult period in its development, we should
seek to give support to that interim chair. It is
disappointing that I have not heard any words
of welcome or praise for the new interim
chair of the arts council from other parties in
the Chamber.

This debate, unfortunately, from the point of view
of the opposition, appears solely to be about
personalities. There are deep and legitimate
issues of public policy that neither we nor the
arts council have dealt with.

They relate to legitimate questions about the
relationship between arts organisations, the
Government, the arts council and the
committee in what is a small country, and I
do not think those issues have been worked
out or thought through intellectually, either
on a pre-2007 basis for the Assembly, or on a
post 2007 basis. I hope that the arts review
will do that. I have seen people talk in the
Chamber about the need for an arm’s-length
relationship and then place demands on the
Minister to fund this or that of their favourite
pet projects. That is not about having an
arm’s-length relationship, and it has confirmed
in my mind that the reality is that most
people have not really thought through the
complexities of those issues.

I return to one of the issues that has
disappointed me. We have not had any words
of welcome for the interim chair of the arts
council, who is taking on a significant
challenge. That is a great credit to him. He is
someone of substance in the cultural
community in Wales. There have also been
some rather snide attacks on the interim
chair, not in the Chamber, but outside,
because he does not speak Welsh, and that is
to be deplored. It is a shame that those
comments have not been deplored elsewhere.
There has been much snobbery and elitism in
this debate over the arts over the last few
months; there has been snobbery and elitism
in the arts community and some of it has
been directed at our Minister. It has been
directed at him, at the end of the day, because
some people do not believe that the son of a
Rhondda miner should be a Minister for
culture. That is what we have seen; we have
seen disgraceful, elitist attacks on the
Minister inside the Chamber and without.