BBC Wales is recycling an old attack on me as though it’s news. I may be on the picket-line when it goes up and I don’t know if they will use my full quote, so here it is:
There is a deliberate campaign to undermine me and others who have spoken up in support of Carl Sargeant. It is deeply malicious and yet more evidence of the bullying culture practised by certain people within the Welsh Government and their friends outside the Welsh Government over recent years. Carl was a target of this, and so were other Ministers, including some still serving in government. I warned two weeks ago that further attacks on me were being prepared. There has been a desperate trawl to find ways to undermine my reputation. People have told me that the individual coordinating the attacks on me and others has close links to Welsh Labour and the Welsh Government.The re-cycling of Councillor Lewis’s complaints from five years ago is laughable. I responded to Councillor Lewis’s complaints in a BBC television interview in August 2013 which is still available on the BBC website. I’m sorry if Councillor Lewis is still bitter that the governance of the WJEC was re-structured by Council Leaders in Wales, resulting in the appointment of a new Chair. I set out the full background to all this in my book, Ministering to Education, on pages 182-184. I reject Councillor Lewis’s account and I stand by my actions at the time which led to the creation of Qualifications Wales.As far as the FoI is concerned, I have nothing further to add to what has been said by the Welsh Government.