Diolch, Llywydd. This is a short debate whose outcome may cast a long shadow. Now, ostensibly, it's about the publication of a particular report—a particular set of circumstances—which, of course, has a personal tragedy at its heart. However, its significance also goes far wider than that. I should say, at the outset, I don't have any unrealistic expectations that publication of this report will answer all of the questions surrounding this case, or even this aspect of this case. Leak inquiries tend, by their very nature, to be inconclusive. As I think Sir Humphrey Appleby told Jim Hacker in Yes Minister, the task of a professionally-conducted internal inquiry is to unearth a great mass of no evidence. Now, despite that—. Lee Waters is right, of course. Governments never like to—. They like to announce leak inquiries, they don't like to publish the report, because the content is almost always more interesting than the conclusions. If Margaret Thatcher, instead of summarising the leak inquiry at the heart of the Westland affair at the despatch box in the House of Commons, had published the report by the Cabinet Secretary, then I dare say Geoffrey Howe would have been Prime Minister by 6 o'clock, as she had predicted to colleagues. Now, there are some exceptions. Damian Green—the report by the Metropolitan Police Service about the leak inquiry in 2009, I believe. The Alistair Carmichael leak inquiry in 2015—didn't get the full report from the Government, but there was actually a very, very detailed summary, which set out the process and methodology that had been used.

Now, I accept that this will be a redacted report by definition, but, even then, it will be almost, by definition, possible to glean at least more information than we currently have from the two sparse paragraphs we had from the Permanent Secretary. Now, the arguments, I think, in favour of publication are more fundamental. They're about the principles of open government, they're about parliamentary accountability, and they touch upon the dark chapter, I think, in Welsh politics that we currently find ourselves going through.

On the value of transparency, it was Louis Brandeis—the only socialist ever to be appointed to the Supreme Court, a Harvard law graduate, but let's not hold that against him—who famously said:

'Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.'

If there are legitimate doubts about an important matter of public discourse and debate, the best way of dispelling those doubts is to publish, and the surest way of sustaining them is to refuse. Now, the Government has advanced the argument that there will always be a category of information that, by its nature, cannot be released, and in general terms that is true, of course, but it's also true that on major matters that have become the subject of national debate the primary interests of openness and accountability should always ultimately win out over the Executive's desire for secrecy. And, occasionally, Parliaments have to remind Governments, as Ralph Nader first argued, that:

'Information is the currency of democracy. It's denial must always be suspect.'

Now, the right to call for persons and papers is enshrined right at the heart of the parliamentary tradition. In our case, it's written into statute rather than Erskine May, but it's the same principle that was evoked by the official opposition at Westminster in moving a motion of return last November that forced the UK Government to publish its Brexit impact studies, and the Government acceded to that when the motion was won. It would be unthinkable at Westminster for the law officers of the British Government to march up to the Speaker's office, as the Counsel General did to our Presiding Officer, to issue a threat of legal proceedings. For that reason alone, I would argue we must pass this motion as a symbol of our defiant refusal to be bullied into submission by an overweening Executive. 

Now the final reason why this motion must surely pass is to heal the wounds that currently run deep in the Welsh body politic. These are dark times. Hamilton refers to the charge of a toxic atmosphere in Welsh Government. Wherever you are on that particular accusation, we are certainly in a dark place, in a dark phase. A noxious cocktail is corroding trust within and by the public in the institutions of our democracy, whether it's the honesty or the probity of Government, the impartiality of the civil service, or the ability of this Parliament to hold the Executive to account—these questions are swirling in people's minds. 

It's important to acknowledge, I think, and it's important to be fair about this, that the Hamilton inquiry does indeed exonerate the First Minister on those questions that he had addressed to Mr Hamilton. However, I think it's also fair to say the report does not paint an exactly happy picture of the culture of Government, and I would say the first step in moving forward is a new culture of frankness, painful and sometimes inconvenient that honesty may sometimes prove.