4. Will the First Minister make a statement on the implications for Wales of the UK Government's Brexit impact assessments following their release on Tuesday? 78

Llywydd, the UK Government's sectoral Brexit reports were sent to the Welsh Government late on Monday. They are now being studied to ascertain what, if any, new insights and implications they contain. We believe that these reports should be in the public domain, but that is a decision that only the UK Government can make. 

Cabinet Secretary, I'm sure that the Brexit impact assessments passed on to you were redacted or incomplete, just as they were for the Brexit select committee at Westminster. The UK Government are in contempt of Parliament, and are showing nothing but contempt for Wales. This is crucial information that needs to be revealed. We need those 58 sectors analysed fully, so that we can prepare Wales for any adverse impacts from leaving the single market or the customs union, and I hope that pressure can be put on them at both ends of the M4 for those assessments to be published in full.

Cabinet Secretary, have you been given sufficient information to conduct Wales-specific sectoral analyses? If not, what can you do as a Government to ensure that enough economic intelligence exists for Wales to be able to provide for Brexit? Can you publish your own economic forecasts for the different Brexit scenarios? And will you provide support to businesses and exporters ahead of, and following, the UK's withdrawal from the European Union?

Llywydd, the leader of Plaid Cymru is absolutely right that the documents sent to us were the heavily edited versions sent to the House of Commons select committee, despite a binding vote in the House of Commons to release the documents in full. Those documents are being studied in the Welsh Government, but I think we can already align ourselves with the conclusions of Michael Russell, from the Scottish Brexit committee, when he said in his letter to David Davis yesterday that whatever else they may contain, it is clear that these reports do not contain any actual impact analysis.

In the Welsh context, the Welsh Government has been able to conduct analysis of that sort. We published a set of annexes to the White Paper that we published jointly with Plaid Cymru in January that did set out the economic analysis that lay behind the conclusions we drew in that White Paper. Our 'Brexit and Fair Movement of People' document included extensive analysis from King's College London and from the university here in Cardiff in relation to migration and its impact sectorally here in Wales. We will publish, as I promised to the External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee last week, more detailed sectoral analysis, which is currently being undertaken for us by Cardiff University, and we hope to be able to put that into the public domain in January.

I'm surprised to hear the Cabinet Secretary criticise the UK Government for lack of openness and transparency in this respect, because researchers from my office on 13 October made a similar request to the Welsh Government—to the First Minister—to publish documents relating to the Welsh Government's understanding of the impact of Brexit upon Wales, and the response that we got was this:

'The negotiations on the UK's withdrawal from the EU are ongoing with no clear indication of what the resulting situation will be. The Welsh Government is exploring a range of potential outcomes and implications for Wales and the work is in constant development as negotiations progress and is therefore incomplete. I do not believe that releasing information at this stage would be in the wider public interest.' 

So, isn't the Cabinet Secretary's response to the leader of Plaid Cymru hypocrisy of a high order?

That's just nonsensical, Llywydd, as you can tell. I've already explained that the Welsh Government has put a series of analytical documents into the public domain when they are in the developed state they need to be in order to have a proper influence on the debate.

I was asked originally about documents that the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union had originally described as containing detailed impact assessments across 58 sectors. It then turned out, in his own words, that they were no such thing. But we deserve to be in a position where we can judge that for ourselves and the sooner that they are released in full into the public domain, the better able we will all be to do that.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary.