I accept what the Cabinet Secretary said about the nature of risk. Indeed, the First Minister said earlier on in questions that not all investments, however careful you are, are going to succeed, and it would be unreasonable to be too critical when they fail for reasons that are beyond our control. The deputy secretary said in evidence to the Public Accounts Committee that the Government’s role here is effectively as a lender of last resort, and he said:

‘Financing things that the private sector won’t finance implies taking risks that the private sector won’t take, which implies things are going to fail.’

So, you start out from a position where you have to be hyper critical.

But what we’re dealing with here is a case where the due-diligence advice that was received by the Government’s own advisers was not accepted, and I don’t think the Cabinet Secretary answered Russell George in this respect earlier on. What the due-diligence review said was that the business plan in 2013 was ‘weak and inconsistent’, and the inherent risks of the start-up remained. The replacement of Coilcolor as a major shareholder, and the loss of their guarantee, left the risks identified essentially as unmitigated. And the proposal invited the Welsh Government taking on a significant landlord risk in addition. So, the project was identified as high risk in the initial assessment, and then there was a revised assessment, which actually increased the level of risk rather than mitigated it. So, what we really need to know here, to put this in the context of the Government policy on using taxpayers’ money for these purposes, is why that due-diligence report, which, on the face of it, seems to have red lights flashing and alarm bells ringing in a big way, was not accepted. What was it that the advice given to the Minister contained that overrode all those apparently very obvious warnings?