Janet:

Will the Commission explain how the money allocated to promoting awareness and understanding of the work of the National Assembly for Wales in the 2019-20 budget is being allocated?

Llywydd:

Engaging with all the people of Wales and championing the Assembly is one of the Commission’s strategic priorities. Promoting awareness and understanding of the work of the National Assembly is part of that. There are a couple of ways we allocate money to these priorities—through the regular budget and through the project fund. Regular funding includes support for the Youth Parliament, the Senedd shop, school visits, marketing and publicity, and that all adds up to £311,000. There are three relevant projects in the project fund for 2019-20, with a total amount of £520,000.

Janet:

Diolch, Llywydd. According to the 2019-20 budget, the priority projects for this financial year, of course, are based on the organisational priorities, including the provision of increasing engagement with the people of Wales and using our resources wisely. Having considered the budget, I note that £311,000 was allocated to promoting awareness and understanding of work. Similarly, around the same amount is budgeted for the next financial year and was also spent in 2018-19. So, that's around £1 million dedicated, technically, to promoting awareness and understanding. It is quite a significant amount, so, really, what I'm asking, Llywydd, is how is the Assembly Commission ensuring that this spend is subjected to fairly robust scrutiny and that there is a wise use of resources that is delivering on raising awareness of the work of the National Assembly for Wales and, indeed, its Members in constituencies and across the regions of Wales? 

Llywydd:

Well, the Assembly Commission's budget is voted on by this Assembly, by all Members here present, and is scrutinised as part of the annual budget scrutiny within the Finance Committee, and I think the commissioner, Suzy Davies, has recently been in front of the Finance Committee being scrutinised on our budget proposals for the next year. We look, at all times, to do our work as effectively as possible. We welcome comments that Members have on how we can improve that and to do that as part of the scrutiny processes and in questions here. And I'm forever looking at ways where we can improve how we do our information sharing and work with the people of Wales in all parts of Wales. I seek to do that in as radical and as effective a way as possible, always being aware, of course, that we need to spend wisely.