Tory Welsh Assembly Member Darren Millar has revealed it was Carl Sargeant himself who asked for questions to be tabled about bullying in the Welsh Government back in 2014. Sargeant was a Cabinet member at the time and asked the Tory AM to help him tackle bullying coming from the First Minister’s office. Darren Millar didn’t name the ex-adviser responsible. Guido can reveal he was referring to Carwyn Jones’ former top special adviser Jo Kiernan, now at Welsh spin merchants Deryn.

There are allegations that Deryn put pressure on Sargeant before his death. It is said the firm had been participating in a whispering campaign against him for months because he would not give lobbyists access in Cardiff. Cathy Owens, head of Deryn and herself a former special adviser who was embroiled in an earlier bullying scandal, took to the BBC in the days before Carl’s death to allege sexual harassment from an unnamed politician. She pointedly did not rule out Sargeant from her unsupported allegations as part of a concerted campaign to try and humiliate and discredit him.

Deryn – which is never far from a Welsh government lobbying scandal – has something of a reputation as a Welsh Bell Pottinger. It is losing scandal-averse clients. Deryn has just been dropped by the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon developers…

See also: The Persistent Personal Undermining of Carl Sargeant – Leighton Andrews

Tomos Davies, a SpAd who advised the government on green energy, is in hot water after getting a job with the Cardiff lobbying firm Deryn less than a year after he left his government job. Spin merchants Deryn, a firm which has a hand in far too many Welsh government lobbying scandals, employed the former Special Adviser from the Wales Office.

Until recently Tomos Davies was advising UK Government Ministers on policy issues, including the proposal to a build tidal lagoon off the coast at Swansea. Plaid Cymru Assembly Member Neil McEvoy has complained to the Cabinet secretary, Jeremy Heywood, that he is in breach of the rules governing SpAd employment. Davies, he complains, jumped straight into lobbying work and failed to get Civil Service clearance to work for the firm.

McEvoy cites Davies’ ConservativeHome article praising tidal power as evidence of lobbying on behalf of one of Deryn’s clients in breach of the rules, especially as one of Deryn’s clients is trying to build a tidal lagoon off Swansea. In it Tomos claimed, without irony, that “the unit cost of power from the project can, at a manageably small scale, match that of Hinkley”. Hinkley’s energy costs are among the most expensive in the world. Guido thinks Tomos Davies might be left high and dry…