Let's listen to Leighton Andrews's own words—and they weren't just off-the-cuff comments; they were written by him in a blog, so he knew what he was doing. He said:

'there had been deliberate personal undermining of Carl Sargeant from within the Welsh Labour Government over several years. I am not going to name names today'— but let's hope he'll do so in due course—

'But I made a complaint to the First Minister about one aspect of this, of which I had direct evidence, in the autumn of 2014. An informal investigation was undertaken.'

I noticed that the First Minister nodded in disagreement when Adam Price a moment ago asked whether there was a formal request for an investigation. Leighton Andrews says:

'I then asked for it to be made formal.'

So, Leighton Andrews has said there was a request for a formal investigation, and we certainly do need to tell which of the two accounts is correct. He went on to say that he was told that it would be made formal. He was never shown the outcome. There was no due process, he said. 

And it's not just a former finance Minister in the First Minister's own Government who said that. Of course, there was his former special adviser as well, Steve Jones, who made similar comments, which I won't repeat, because it would be otiose.

The seven principles of public life attached to the ministerial code say that

'Holders of public office are accountable to the public for their decisions and actions and must submit themselves to the scrutiny necessary to ensure this.'

And where better to scrutinise the actions or inactions of the First Minister than here in the elected National Assembly of Wales? To appoint someone from outside to examine the facts, no-one can disagree with. I'm not opposed to an independent adjudicator or investigator at all. I don't see these two options as in any way contradictory; they are complimentary. We should have both. But it is we who are elected and in this place who have the right to ask the questions, and to continue to ask the questions until we get the answers. We don't know whether the investigative process that the Government has chosen is going to be in public. We don't know whether the right questions will be asked. We should be the ones to determine that. We don't know what the terms of reference of this investigation are going to be. They should proceed in tandem. And I believe that this National Assembly would be failing in its duty if it doesn't succeed in achieving what it is here to do, which is to scrutinise the actions of the Government.

Now, I appreciate there are political difficulties for Labour AMs. It's the First Minister who is under scrutiny, but not just the First Minister, because it goes much wider than that. It's the actions of special advisers, possibly other Ministers, according to Leighton Andrews at any rate. He went on to say that the atmosphere on the fifth floor in 2011-16, a much longer period, was toxic:

'minor bullying, mind-games, power-games, favouritism, inconsistency of treatment to different ministers, deliberate personal undermining on occasion.'

And he said also that Carl Sargeant was unquestionably the target of some of this behaviour. Now, what has happened to Carl Sargeant, of course, could not have been foreseen, and I don't hold the First Minister responsible for that. But the consequences of his inactions over the years may well have had that unforeseen outcome. We owe it not, therefore, only to the public outside, but especially to Carl Sargeant and his family to have a full and open scrutiny of the facts behind this affair.

I notice the silence from the Labour benches today. They are not just members of the Labour Party; they are members of the National Assembly, and it's simply not good enough to be Carwyn's terracotta army there, mute and immobile and silent in the face of what clearly has the possibility to be exposed as a major public scandal.

And so, I just ask the First Minister to look himself in the mirror and to come back with the answer to the question: does he really think that the public outside are going to be convinced that the kind of inquiry that he wants—self-appointed, by someone who he has chosen, with a procedure that we don't get the chance to question, questions that need to be put that we will be prevented from putting—whether that is likely to be regarded as a credible form of investigation, and whether it’s likely to get to the answers that everybody wants to elicit. I believe that there would be a resounding ‘no’ to that in the outside world, and that the First Minister would be doing a massive disservice to the public at large, and to the whole people of Wales, by trying to force through this amendment to this motion today.