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A senior Conservative politician has attacked his own party in Wales when figures reveal that support staffing costs are more than TWICE Labour’s, and the group’s Welsh leader has racked up the highest price of any MS (Member of the Senedd).
He told The Eye: “This is extraordinary. We are meant to be the party of financial prudence, yet this undercuts everything we say”.
Official statistics for 2023/24 show that the Welsh Conservatives (WC) are on £427,815.69 while the staffing cost of the Welsh Labour (WL) party is just £175,016.02.
The leader of the WC’s in the Welsh Parliament/Senedd (WP/S) (Andrew RT Davies), scores the highest in the table of individual staffing costs, at £127,603.97.
However these figures for the use of public money, appear to fly in the face of comments from Mr Davies, or those of his party, about costs being out of control.
For example, earlier this year he had claimed that £233,000 was wrongly spent to block the right wing outlet GB News.
But as WalesOnline (WO) put it bluntly: “It is…not true”.
This isn’t the first time that Mr Davies has made misleading comments on X, with the use of public money often at their heart.
Last year, for example, he claimed the Welsh Government (WG) were “dishing out £1,600 to anyone who wants to rock up and claim they are crossing the Channel illegally”.
Yet once again this was wrong and he was investigated by the Standards Commissioner (SC) because of it.
Mr Davies also repeated the incorrect claim that the 20mph limit introduced in Wales was a “blanket limit”.
Perhaps he will also demand a limit on public money being used to fund party staffing costs so that it isn’t wasted.
Except that his own party has the highest…
The memories of our Editor Phil Parry’s astonishing 41 year award-winning career in journalism (when humbug was always exposed), as he was gripped by the rare neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order the book now!
Regrettably publication of another book, however, was refused, because it was to have included names.
Tomorrow – as a disabled person, Phil, who spent 23 years with the BBC, and 41 years in journalism (when he was trained to use simple language, avoiding jargon), looks with concern at news that Tanni Grey-Thompson was forced to crawl off a train, and research today which shows that The Equality Act and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities are still not being implemented, years after they were announced.
