Labour’s given up on lobby briefings

It’s a worrying but perhaps not entirely surprising development now that Labour is solely in charge of the Welsh Government that it hasn’t given a weekly lobby briefing since the Assembly eventually returned to work after May’s elections unlike the three Opposition parties.

Maybe it’s the fact the new Minister’s still aren’t quite up to speed with their new portfolios and want to avoid awkward questions, who knows but according to BBC Wales Political Editor Betsan Powys the Government’s lobby briefings may disappear all together.

She writes ‘There was no government briefing (28th June). There hasn't been one since the election and rumour has it that it might never reappear. How the new Welsh government intends to communicate its policies with the lobby - and with you - is still a work in progress.’

To outsiders lobby briefings may seem unimportant but they remain the main way of Government’s and Opposition Parties gaining a wide platform and audience for their policies, political spin and rebuttals which generate the news stories, blog entries and tweets that are the life blood of politics. It also raises questions about why Labour is now choosing to ignore these opportunities given the low profile of Welsh politics among the electorate.

As for the ‘do it yourself’ idea of the Welsh Government bypassing the press to reach voters there’s a touch of the Pravda about it, the Welsh media have plenty of faults and some Welsh journalists are too willing to swallow the party line, but they still have a place and reach a far larger proportion of the Welsh population reporting Welsh news, including the goings on in Welsh politics which have a direct impact on people’s lives, something that is surely preferable to the unchallenged propaganda that the Labour Government would pump out daily.

But what really grates is at the same time as Welsh Assembly has the ability to make laws the need for scrutiny has never been greater, Labour feels able to withdraw from the weekly lobby briefings and media scrutiny of its Programme for Government safe in the knowledge that not only is there nothing anyone can do about it, but that it will make no difference to voters view of the Party come election time - Welsh democracy at its finest.Any source