2. What assessment has the Welsh Government made of the impact of leaving the EU on Wales in light of the analysis of three scenarios undertaken by the Department for Exiting the European Union, which was leaked on Monday? 123

Thank you, Llywydd. We have published analyses on the general impact of leaving the EU, and also in areas such as regional investment and migration. Our trade paper will be published soon, based on independent analysis. We haven’t seen the document by the Department for Exiting the European Union that was leaked unofficially. We’re calling on that department to publish its analysis.

I thank the Cabinet Secretary. He will be aware, at least, from the press coverage of this analysis, that it looks at three scenarios: staying in the single market to all intents or purposes, leaving under World Trade Organization rules, and a situation where there is some sort of free trade deal of the type that the Prime Minister has been talking about.

Now, the three scenarios look over a period of 15 years, and, in each of those, there is a decline and a reduction in growth over that period of 15 years, varying from 2 per cent under the single market to 8 per cent under WTO. Now, the impact on Wales is going to be very detrimental indeed because we are far more exposed to certain aspects of this, particularly under WTO rules, such as the red meat sector, manufacturing, vehicles and so on, Airbus—just as an example of what can happen here. So, can I ask the Cabinet Secretary what the Government is going to do now in order to get hold of this analysis?

I understand that Westminster today has agreed in one way or another to share this paper with Members of Parliament in a closed room. I don’t think that that’s good enough at all. We, here, need to see this analysis too. We represent the interests of Wales as much if not more than MPs from Wales. And the Welsh Government needs to see the analysis; I want the Welsh Government to ask specifically for that. Of course, as the Scottish Government, and the Mayor of London himself, have commissioned independent reports and assessments of the economic impact of exiting the European Union, why won’t you do that and publish that too?

Now, it is about time that we realised the true cost of exiting the European Union. Yes, a decision to leave the political union has been made, but leaving the customs union and the single market will cost the Welsh economy very dearly indeed. 

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Ann Jones) took the Chair.

Well, I completely agree with the Member that the information that is in the hands of the UK Government should be publicly available, should be made publicly available and easily available, not, as Anna Soubry, Conservative MP, said in the House of Commons today, in the farcical way that the UK Government now appears to be willing to make this information available to Members of the House of Commons in a locked room, whereas members of the public can read most of it on the internet any time they care to switch it on. She described it as a collective outbreak in the Government of a form of madness. And our call to the UK Government is absolutely that, where there is information that will help to allow people to make their own minds up about this very important issue, then there is an obligation on them—this is information that they have commissioned—to make that information available to others. As far as the Welsh Government is concerned, we routinely publish the information that we commission. In the joint paper that we published with Plaid Cymru a year ago, we included in that document an analysis by the chief economist and others of the state of information at that time. Within the next few days, we plan to publish the analysis carried out by Cardiff University of the impact of Brexit on major companies here in Wales, as we have already promised to different Assembly committees. As we get information, and as we publish documents, we always publish the independent analysis that we are using to draw the conclusions that we do, so that people who would wish to draw different conclusions have that information available to them to do so.   

Cabinet Secretary, the External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee held a very constructive and informative consultation event with a wide range of stakeholders here in Tŷ Hywel on Wales's future relationship with the EU. As a committee, we need to be fully aware of all future scenario planning and analysis to respond to stakeholders across the public, private and third  sectors, and they were fully represented on Monday. So, I'd also call on the UK Government to publish in full the leaked document on the impact of Britain leaving the EU, which predicts that economic growth would be lower under a range of potential scenarios. So, I'd like to thank the Cabinet Secretary for clarifying, in response to Simon Thomas, its own approach in terms of scenario planning and the papers that you've already published and that you are—forthcoming—publishing the trade paper and other papers, and agree, and I'm sure the Cabinet Secretary would agree, that it's vital that the Welsh Government and this Assembly is fully informed in scrutinising the UK Government's approach to Brexit. On Monday, our committee Members will visit Toyota in north Wales and Aston Martin in my constituency. Don't you agree it would be helpful to have this analysis to assist us in our visits? 

Well, I certainly do agree. Of course it would be helpful to the committee to have that information. As I understand it, from reading newspaper reports of the work that the UK Government has commissioned, it does include some element of regional analysis. So, that would be immensely helpful to the committee in knowing where the different scenarios encompassed in that work see the impact on Wales in particular of these three different routes to leaving the European Union. And it is sensible of the UK Government to scenario plan in this way, but to scenario plan in secret is no help to the rest of us, and providing the information in the way that Jane Hutt has suggested will be useful to committees here and to businesses and to ordinary citizens who want to understand what the potential impact of leaving the European Union might have in their own lives. 

You will know, as a Government Minister, that you have to have the freedom to ask your officials to do blue-sky planning, including all options, including some which you may be horrified by, so that the Government, in private, can decide what to prioritise, bring forward, propose and make public. An early draft of ongoing analysis in support of the UK Government's Brexit negotiations and preparations looked at different off-the-shelf arrangements currently existing as well as other external estimates. It did not set out or measure the details of desired outcomes, which the UK Government says is a new, deep and special partnership with the EU, or predict the conclusions of negotiations. It also contained many caveats and was hugely dependent on many assumptions where significantly more work was needed to make use of this analysis and draw out conclusions. In fact, this leaked analysis of just three scenarios was therefore incomplete and partial. As a Government Minister, therefore, how do you respond to the clear duty that Government Ministers have not to publish anything that could risk exposing negotiating positions until they have concluded what their negotiation positions are and have reached the stage where such information would not compromise them when around the table with other parties?

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.

I agree with the Cabinet Secretary that transparency is a good thing and that there's no reason why studies of this kind should not be published, because we can then draw our own conclusions, as he says. But would he agree with me that an attempt to predict what the world's going to look like in 15 years' time, especially when those predictions come from economists, is likely to be about as much value as a witch doctor examining the entrails of a chicken? If such a study had been conducted in 1990, nobody would have spotted the existence of Google, Amazon or Facebook. They are now three of the very largest companies in the world.

What we should do, perhaps, is look at the forecasting record of the people behind this. Treasury forecasters, immediately after the referendum, forecast that, in the following three months, the economy would contract by 1 per cent; in fact, it grew by 0.5 per cent. They also predicted that in the following four quarters, there would be negative growth. In fact, we've had growth in every single quarter since June 2016. They also predicted that, two years after the referendum, GDP would fall by -3 per cent to -6 per cent. In fact, in 2016, the economy grew by 1.9 per cent, and in 2017, it grew by 1.8 per cent. It also predicted that unemployment would rise by between 500,000 and 800,000. In fact, unemployment is now at a record low since the early 1970s. It also forecast that borrowing would rise by nearly £40 billion; in fact, Government borrowing has fallen by 12 per cent and is now the lowest since 2007. So, I would advise the Cabinet Secretary not to spend too much time in examining this particular piece of nonsense.

Of course, the further away we go in time from today, the more imprecise attempts of this sort to predict the future become. However, if this particular chicken had been suggesting that the UK economy would be growing by 8 per cent as a result of leaving the European Union, I'm sure the Member would have been a lot more kindly disposed towards it.

Thank you very much, Cabinet Secretary.