I, of course, have personal experience of being sacked, and I can confirm it's not pleasant, but nobody who is in politics can actually complain with any justice about being sacked, because there's no justice about appointments in the first place. But the point in this particular instance was that the sacking was associated with the allegations that have been made against him.

There is another way in which the First Minister could have dealt with this, because Carl Sargeant, as a Minister of the Crown, was governed by the ministerial code of conduct as well, which says that:

'Ministers of the Crown are expected to behave in a principled way that upholds the highest standards of propriety.'

And Damian Green, the First Secretary of State, has been made the subject of allegations of sexual impropriety, and those are being investigated not by an internal party investigation, but by Sue Gray, who is the director general of the civil service propriety and ethics team. By contrast, the route that the First Minister chose was to send his special adviser to speak to the complainants. The solicitors now acting for Carl Sargeant's family say that to appoint a political activist in these circumstances, with no special expertise in undertaking a preliminary disciplinary investigation, actually prejudices the outcome of this process, and is actually as unfair to those who are making the allegations as to those who are subject to them. Because if there are uncertainties now about the credibility of any evidence that is caused by that, because, as the solicitors for Carl Sargeant's family have said, there's a real possibility that the evidence of witnesses is being manipulated and because numerous conversations with witnesses by the First Minister's office creates uncertainty about that credibility, it really undermines the whole process for everybody that's involved in it. So, would it not be better in future for these things to be examined independently of the political process itself?