Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:45 pm on 31 January 2018.
I have no objection whatsoever to UK Ministers commissioning analysis that looks at a range of scenarios, whichever of those scenarios they think might be useful. It is a sensible thing for them to do. But I'm afraid that Mr Isherwood was reading out yesterday's circular from central office and not today's, because today, the UK Government has agreed to make all of this public. So, I'm afraid that all the things that he was worried about, which UK Government Ministers were worried about yesterday, have evaporated today in the House of Commons.
If Governments have anxieties that documents that they put into the public domain contain information that might be damaging to the public interest, then they are, of course, able to redact parts of the information that would have that impact. It is not an excuse for failing to make available to the public information that allows a proper public debate of the most important issue that we will face during the lifetime of this Assembly and beyond to be conducted on the basis of the widest possible analysis and information.