Tory MS questions award of research contract to Welsh Government media adviser’s husband

Martin Shipton

Shadow Tory Education Minister Natasha Asghar has questioned why the Welsh Government paid a private company £130,000 to undertake education research instead of getting the work done in-house.

The contract was awarded to a firm based in Abergavenny called Miller Research UK, whose sole director Nick Miller is the husband of former BBC journalist Sarah Dickins, now chief communications adviser to the Welsh Government.

Welsh Government records in the public domain show that on March 13 2025 Miller was paid £81,136,46, with a further £24,970.31 paid less than two weeks later on March 25.

A further £24,467.39 was paid six days later on March 31, the final day of the financial year. In total the amount paid to Miller came to £130,574.16.

Ms Asghar said: “Why is the Welsh Government paying private firms to write reports on education when it already employs civil servants and analysts to do exactly that? Taxpayers will reasonably ask what they got for £130,000 that the government couldn’t do itself.

“Over £130,000 was paid to one company in a matter of weeks. The obvious question is: where are the reports? Will they be published so people can see what their money was spent on, or are we just expected to take it on trust?

“The sole director of the company awarded these contracts is the husband of a Welsh Government special adviser. That does not automatically mean wrongdoing, but it is an obvious potential conflict of interest and it has to be handled properly and transparently.

“The Welsh Government should now publish the full audit trail — the tender process, the scoring, declarations of interest, any recusals, who signed off the contracts, the value-for-money assessment, and the final outputs. If everything was done by the book, there should be no problem putting the paperwork out in the open.”

‘Transparency’

A spokesperson for the Welsh Government said: “The Special Advisers Register of Interests is published as part of our commitment to transparency and high standards. All special advisers have declared their interests, which are reviewed to ensure there are no conflicts between their government work and private interests.”

The Register states: “Special advisers are required to ensure that no conflict arises, or could be perceived to arise, between their public duties and their private interests, financial or otherwise. Interests must be declared to the Head of Cabinet Division as part of the appointment process. The personal information which special advisers disclose is treated in confidence. All special advisers have submitted a completed declaration of interests form, including nil returns in instances where there was no actual, potential or perceived conflict of interest. Where relevant to the role, and to help manage a perception of conflict or to explain how a conflict is being managed, interests will be published on an annual basis.”

An entry for Sarah Dickins states: “Partner is Director of Miller Research UK Ltd. Ms Dickins is recused from any involvement with matters relating to her partner’s business or its clients should they arise.”

Social research

Responding to Ms Asghar’s questions about the work undertaken by Miller, the Welsh Government said: “We undertake procurement for social research following public sector best practice, which takes into account value for money and declaring and mitigating any potential conflicts of interest. We carry out research in line with the Government Social Research code of practice. Depending on the size and nature of the work, this is either carried out in house or procured under contract, which is normal practice across UK Governments.”

The Welsh Government added: “While we cannot disclose commercially sensitive information, all spend above £25k is published on the Welsh Government website.

“In line with the Government Social Research Publication protocol research outputs are made publicly available promptly. We preannounce all research outputs on our website two weeks before publication. Publications take place no more than 12 weeks after the final agreed draft has been produced.”

In 2018 another company of which Mr Miller was the sole director at the time was discussed as part of a Welsh Affairs Committee inquiry into unsuccessful investments undertaken by S4C.

Five years before the Welsh language broadcaster had invested in Blurrt, which had developed what was described as a means to gain “a more sophisticated understanding of audience behaviours, and by the prospect of its data helping to shape future development of the platform”.

Tools

Blurrt, based in Cwmbran, launched tools in 2013 aimed at the TV industry that could “track, analyse and use dashboards to present some of the sentiment (positive and negative opinions) expressed on Twitter about TV programmes and other viewing”.

It was said to tap into “the way a huge number of Twitter users favour the character-limited social platform for talking about the TV show they are watching. This in turns gives Blurrt the chance to catalogue these sentiments and create powerful content and visuals that are useful to broadcasters and others in the TV industry.”

However, the idea did not work and the company ran up losses. S4C’s commercial arm had taken a 22% stake in the company, which was written off.

S4C Chair Huw Jones told the committee: “Looking at how things progressed I think too many different investments were made.

“There were too many investments made in areas which S4C did not have direct knowledge of but which came to the board, came to the commercial board apparently well backed up by the information provided by the proposers and by the commercial officers which S4C itself employed.

“I think, at the end of the day, in respect of some of these companies it would’ve been wiser if the investments had, if you like, been made dormant earlier.”

Blurrt’s final set of accounts filed with Companies House for the calendar year 2018 showed that the firm had a deficiency of just over £700.000.

Blurrt was dissolved in 2021 at a time when its on;y remaining director was Mr Miller. Between February 2014 and July 2015, when he was head of digital at S4C, Huw Marshall was a director of Blurrt. Mr Marshall later founded a short-lived weekly paper in Wales called The National.