The nature of the use of the National Assembly debating chamber has fallen into sharp focus this week following the emergence into the public arena of a decision last summer not to allow the Senedd Chamber to be used as a filming location for the next Bond movie.
The non-filming led to a series of denials that the decision was anything to do with a string of decision makers. First the Welsh Government was at pains to point out it had nothing to do with the rejection, with Deputy Minister for Heritage Ken Skates going public on his disappointment. As the number one Bond fan in the Assembly – as witness this picture he put on Facebook – he was perhaps the most disappointed AM in Wales at the decision.
Then came the Assembly Commission, the cross party committee responsible for managing the Assembly estate, with its members declaring they had not made the decision either, and were keen to distance themselves from it.
Meanwhile the press office were maintaining that the decision had been taken because the Senedd chamber is "not a drama studio.” If the nature of many of the debates there are proof of anything, it is certainly not that the space lacks drama. Yet taking such a stance was seen as sanctimonious by an increasing number of critics, who pointed out that the debating chambers of both the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Irish Assembly had been used for similar purposes so why not Wales?
Even more unconvincingly, an Assembly spokesperson clarified: "The request by James Bond to use the Siambr was turned down and they were offered alternative locations on the estate which they subsequently declined." Many of us Assembly watchers wondered quite why the Members Tea Room or Committee Rooms C&D (with the partition up) hadn’t appealed to Sony.
One by one Assembly Members broke silence in their condemnation. Former presiding officer and Plaid Cymru AM Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas told Sunday Politics Wales: "I am devastated that the most iconic location in Wales is not being made available to the internationally most attractive film."
Finally, four days later, his successor Presiding Officer Dame Rosemary Butler AM fessed up. It was she, without consultation with other Commission members, who had vetoed the use. In explaining her motives she maintained the decision was a sound one because the Assembly sat so often in the Chamber – there would only have been twenty plus free weeks a year in which filming could have been done – and she also pointed to the record of the Assembly in previously facilitating such memorable productions as Welsh soap opera Caerdydd and Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year...
Surprising then, given the amount of controversy, that the Presiding Officer then determined that the topic was not of sufficient public interest to merit an Urgent Question on the floor of the Assembly. Clearly the chamber isn’t the cradle of transparency and democracy that some people pretend it is. And the “No drama…” policy continues.