The elephant in the room
Simon Gibson, the chief executive of Sir Terry’s Wesley Clover International Corporation, told the Welsh Affairs Select Committee this week that his recent dealings with Assembly Government had been “fairly arduous” but he said this was not the fault of politicians, but of civil servants: “One thing that I do find extremely frustrating is we are burdened with a civil service in Cardiff that is shaped for Whitehall. “I don’t understand why a small, agile country like we are – or should be – in Wales is burdened with a civil service that’s monolithic in its rule structure... We’re somewhere between a small government and a local authority in terms of its critical mass – why don’t we have something that can move quickly?”