The Assembly’s eye-watering staffing costs proves there is a Magic Money Tree - for some

The problem is twenty years of one party rule. We desperately need a change of government in the Bay.

Is all this proven? Where is the evidence?

A thoroughly constructive critique on all counts. An agenda for the recently appointed Chief Executive?

Thanks Geraint. I'm not going to single people out. This has been a collective crime against public finances, and needs a collective solution.

To be honest £10 million does seem a relatively small sum to me, to be getting all that worked up about. Im all for scrutiny regarding who does what, but don't pennypinch, for the sake of some masochistic feel good factor. Im much more interested in how much is spent in the Welsh office and the rest of the carry over Welsh civil service and who does what and why. More scrutiny and more investigative journalism into the rule brittania civil servants who are there to simply deliver dictats from London. When making cost comparisons compare to Whitehall, but on delivery go for your life and compare to Scotland.

Oh please Syr Daran, please support the next phase of devolution. Please support it as you [keep in civil - Ed] as your business expands. I'm with Keith, out with the old guard. I'm sick to death of these disingenuous attention-seekers

The subset of civil servants I had the displeasure of interacting with (other than 1 super star) over broadband problems were a cracture of what broken in subsets of the public sector. They really could not give a ****. Beyond indifferent. A solid case for a clear out and starting again, maybe the direction was set by their minister Julie James. Hard to tell from the outside. I am sure there are great civil servants in the Welsh Government doing great work, but other than 1 chap, the 10 or so I have encountered were not fit to flip burgers. When, as a member of the public, your only interaction with the Welsh civil servants has been one where they are at best ineffective and indifferent and at worst obstructive and clueless, you unconciously assume the whole organisation is a waste of space that does not have any grasp of peoples lives outside the Cardiff Bay bubble.

In my experience those Welsh Government staff that I have come into contact with over the last five years are extremely busy, hard working and enthusiastic people. What is galling here is that Welsh Government funded bodies like Natural Resources Wales have seem there staffing levels fall quite drastically with a widespread loss of expertise so that their ability to be effective, to advise and to be impartial has been significantly reduced. This in turn puts our natural resources in peril which, let's face it, are one of Wales's main USP's.

A true reflection, having worked at the assembly, i know fukk well that it is staffed by over paid and under utilised staff in many departments who are more oncerned about their teabreaks and paygrades than the process of devolution. People were promoted beyond their capacity andgiven huge wages without any clear idea of what their departments were supposed to do. Money was spent on some japanes artist who made a mural for a bus, were ther not any welsh ones good enough? Laptops and equipment were thrown at one to do so called outreach work and were not used at all as that kind of work didnot then comply with external working guidelines . i was absolutely appalled by the complete lack of financial responsibility, seems things have not improved then

Sorry gents, I'll focus on the 10 million I choose to focus on. If you have something meaningful or researched to say on Welsh Government spending, by all means do so. I don't buy the argument that £10m is irrelevant.

Excellent assessment. Remember we still have the political structures which were in place pre devolution. What happenned to local authority reform? We seem to be incapable of rationalisation and making hard decisions. Which other country in the World has per capita more politicians and public servants than Wales? How can the solution be further expansion.

Northern Ireland?!

I don't think anyone is questioning his 'right' - they're saying that government costs a great deal, that we're over-governed, that we're by and large expensively governed, and that focusing on one part of the picture to the exclusion of the other - related - parts might be worthwhile but will only ever be partial unless it's all seen in toto. Objections to the generally self-regarding tone of the article aside, it seems to me yet another crack at an easy target, i.e. a relatively transparent, politically hamstrung democratic institution, that always gets the flak while the House of Lords, Westminster, the Welsh office etc. go unscrutinised. I don't object to the man's right to say it, or to the point he raises. I also don't know him, and wasn't aware of the role he played in the referenda, and I don't care. But the rhetoric is rather rather self-aggrandizing , and if I had a pound for every person who told me they'd played a key role in the referenda I'd be able to pay for the assembly staffing costs myself.. Any question of how many AMs there are is secondary to an increase in powers and a corresponding decrease in Westminster and Wales Office powers. People in the Cardiff Bay bubble accusing other inhabitants of said bubble of being in a bubble is a pointless circle. I'm all for articles on this subject - so let's see Daran or someone else on the Welsh Office, on the cost of Westminster too.

the £44k average will include about 20% for Employers NI, and employer Pension contributions, so nearer £35k average, but I agree its a lot of staff, and if Scotland really only has the same number then its s shocker. Perhaps the Scots hide them better? Or maybe our aelodau seneddol yn dwpach ac angen lawer iawn mwy o gymorth!

I'm less familiar with the inner working of the Assembly than Daran (aren't we all?), but his description of committee support sounds as if this is a bloated version of the model used in local government. Any attempts to cut back on staff will be met by the kind of outrage that politicians are very bad at withstanding - job losses rarely being vote winners. However, one carrot that might help motivate members would be a modest increase in their research staff, to partially offset the larger losses in committee (and other commission) staff? This would have the twin advantages of cutting costs while also chipping away at the power of (nominally) "apolitical" civil servants, which fosters the groupthink that stymies innovation within the assembly.

For all your protests I wonder what your aim is? If I do you a disservice I apologise. Rachel Banner needs to consider what the assembly does for us. Bellow are some of the things i could find that devolution has given wales so far with limited powers. .free prescriptions for all · Nine new hospitals and huge investment in new hospital equipment . · New Kidney Transplant Unit, PET scanner and Women’s Unit at UHW. · New Cardiff and Vale Breast Centre. · No smoking in public places. · Biggest investment in school buildings ever. · Thousands more teachers and teaching assistants. · The Foundation Phase – new education system for 3-7-year-olds. · Free breakfast schemes in over 1000 schools – 56 in Cardiff. · UK’s first Children’s Commissioner. · Free nursery places for all 3 and 4-year-olds. · Thousands more modern apprenticeships. · Funding for eco-schools. · Reduction in use of plastic bags. · More Blue Flag beaches. · Investment in renewable energy and recycling. · Grants for insulation and new boilers. · Free bus passes for the over-60s and the disabled – 64,111 in Cardiff. · World’s first Older People’s Commissioner. · Free swimming for school children and older people. · ProAct and ReAct schemes to combat global recession and keep people in work. · Free entry to national museums and galleries. · Wales for Africa scheme. · 1305 additional affordable homes in Cardiff. · £7 million extra to mend potholes and buy road salt -- £677,000 in Cardiff. · Welsh students protected from the tuition fees hike facing students in England · Free school breakfasts kept – the English government want to scrap them · Educational Maintenance Allowance kept for young people in Wales– scrapped in England, · NHS kept market-free. · Welsh Jobs Fund promised to create 4,000 jobs for young people– Tory-led coalition scrapped .Future Jobs Fund. · 500 more Police Community Support Officers promised . The value of exports from Wales more than doubled between 1999 and 2013" doubled since the set up of the assembly. Cost is relevant but I don't want to go back to the good old pre assembly days

It's perfectly proper to ask questions about this spending, but a few points are worth making - 1. The Assembly's accounts are scrutinised by the Wales Audit Office and are made public every year. 2. Comparisons with the Scottish Parliament are not especially helpful, because unlike its Scottish cousin, the Assembly is a bilingual institution. Inevitably, this must mean some additional staff. 3. There does not appear to be any evidence to back up the assertion that Assembly Members are unhappy with the costsf. If they are, surely they are best placed to do something about it. They cannot expect to be taken seriously on this if they willingly vote through the budget increases.