Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:50 pm on 16 July 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:50, 16 July 2019

Llywydd, in answer to the Member's first question, I gave an assurance on the floor of this Assembly that we would publish that report, and that report is now available for scrutiny. As far as the leak inquiry report is concerned, it's not for me to know the answers to the questions that the Member has posed. This was an inquiry not conducted by Ministers, it was conducted in the way that leak inquiry reports are meant to be conducted, and the Cabinet Office has endorsed the way in which that inquiry was carried out. It's not for me to interfere in any way at all in the way that that inquiry was carried out. It's not for me to know who, where, when, why and what; that would be to interfere with the independence of the inquiry process.

On the floor of this Assembly, before Easter, there were requests made to me to publish the leak inquiry report. I thought very hard about those requests, because leak inquiry reports, by convention, are never published. They're never published by his Government in Westminster, for example, but, having given very careful consideration to it, I decided that this was a unique set of circumstances, and the publication of the report was therefore merited. I very deliberately, Llywydd, did not read the leak inquiry report before it was published last week, because I didn't want my decision on publication to be anything to do with its content. I wanted simply to make the decision on the merits of the argument that there was a public interest in it being published. That report has now been published in the way that I promised, and I've got nothing further to add to it.