Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:51 pm on 17 April 2018.
Well, I'm sure the First Minister is also aware of subsection (6) of section 37, which says that, if the Assembly does pass a motion requiring the production of a document, a direction may be issued by the First Minister or the Government to direct the person at which that requirement is pointed not to comply with it. That, of course, would place the Government in a very embarrassing position, but it would protect against the legal consequences, which the First Minister was adumbrating earlier on. It would seem a very perverse outcome again, in relation to what he said about how this would breach commercial confidentiality, potentially, and the wider implications of what this is supposed to risk, if anything that the First Minister was dealing with would be gaggable or could be prevented from publication, but anything that any other Minister does is perfectly open to scrutiny, whether it would be in a court of law, in the court of public opinion or in this democratic Assembly, which represents the whole of the Welsh people.