Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:41 pm on 30 January 2018.
No-one's asking for names, First Minister, and there are plenty of processes that you can point to where people's identity is protected. I did point to Twitter, but I point you to social media as well. I've given you the examples here. That's the language from professional people that was being used around the time of the Cabinet reshuffle, and they were using it two or three days prior to the reshuffle. I would hope that you can be exonerated and that some of the horrendous allegations that are levelled at the Government and at you can be discounted, because ultimately we know what tragedy followed from it. But it is difficult for me, other Members and interested parties to have confidence in reports that we are prevented from seeing.
Now, I hear what you said twice to me today. I have three questions. There must be a way of allowing information to come forward that is redacted and that can give confidence that the opinions that have been formed around some of the allegations can be discounted by this report. Not having sight of this report makes it very difficult to argue that case. I would argue for you to sit down with the Permanent Secretary to come up with a formula that will allow us to have sight of as much of the report as possible, preventing any disclosure of names or identities of people, so that we can have that confidence, because the evidence—and I can pull out many other examples—points to information that was already in the public domain before Ministers and Cabinet Secretaries came in to have that discussion with you. That's a fact.