Assembly commission budget to increase by £2.3 million

AMs have approved a £2.3 million increase in the budget for the body which runs the Welsh assembly.

The Assembly Commission, a cross-party group of senior AMs, will have a budget of £56.1 million in 2018-19.

Tory AM Suzy Davies told AMs that "good government can only be delivered when it is improved, scrutinised and held to account by an effective parliament".

But Finance Committee chair Simon Thomas said any increase was "hard to justify".

The increase was agreed without a vote in the Senedd because no members objected.

In that debate, which took place on Wednesday, concern was raised over the budget when other services were facing a squeeze on spending.

Labour AM Mike Hedges said that "the commission of this assembly cannot be immune from the austerity that the rest of the public sector in Wales is facing".

Suzy Davies, who is a member of the commission and responsible for budget matters, responded that "efficiencies have been made, initially in staffing, and certainly in contracts over the previous years".

She added that "legislation takes as much effort and work for three million people as it would for 30 million people. And it needs as much scrutiny, whether there are 44 of us or over 100 of us."

Mr Thomas's finance committee had been critical of the budget in a report released earlier this year.

He told AMs that the committee "firmly believes that, for the remaining years of this assembly, the commission's budget should not be in excess of any changes to the Welsh block grant".

But he said the committee had "stopped short of recommending changes to the requested increase for the next financial year".

The assembly also recently came in for criticism over how it spent £1.9m in refurbishing of part of the ground floor of the assembly office block, Ty Hywel.

Vikki Howells, Labour AM for Cynon Valley, said it had made her feel "uncomfortable".