Bid to publish report on Sargeant sacking fails
POLITICIANS have failed to get a report about an alleged leak about a ministerial reshuffle released.
Opposition groups in the Assembly tried to force the Welsh Government to release a report from their chief civil servant.
But the motion, by the Conservative group, failed with 26 votes for, 29 against and one abstention.
The report, by Dame Shan Morgan, found there was no unauthorised release of information from the Welsh Government before the reshuffle in which Carl Sargeant lost his job, days before he allegedly took his own life, but her report has not been published.
The Welsh Conservatives put forward a motion using a little-used section of law to see the report, accepting some details would be redacted.
On Monday evening, the Welsh Government said they would take legal action if the debate took place.
However, both Mark Drakeford AM, the Cabinet Secretary for
Finance and Local Government, and Jeremy Miles AM, the Counsel General, said yesterday that the letter was only ever intended to postpone the debate until they clarify the legal position.
Tory leader Andrew RT Davies told the chamber that he accepted the report should be released in a redacted form to protect the “security and safety” of anyone who gave evidence as part of it.
But he said this was a “unique set of circumstances” and “vitally important” AMs can scrutinise the report.
In response, Labour AM Mr Miles said that while there was an “obvious difference of opinion” between Assembly and Government lawyers, the Government wanted it resolved “preferably without recourse to the courts”.
He said: “Section 37 is complex area and what the Welsh Government is seeking is clarity. That would have been preferable in our view before the debate took place today.”
Mr Miles said there is a “long-standing practice of non-disclosure of leak investigation reports”.
He said if leak reports did have to be disclosed, it could stop people cooperating with future leak reports if they felt their details could be made public.
“In absence of the scope of S37 we may need to ask a court to interpret the law for us. This is the basis on which the First Minister wrote to the Presiding Officer this week,” he said.
Mr Miles says he wants a protocol or other mechanism about S37 to be drawn up and shared a proposal with the Assembly Commission yesterday afternoon and he hoped that can be agreed.
Mr Davies said the Government issuing a legal letter to the Assembly