THE past week in the Assembly has seen Welsh Labour ministers and Plaid Cymru members compete to condemn Mr Bruce Robertson, head of Trago Mills, a company which recently invested £65 million to open a large retail unit at Merthyr Tydfil which employs 350 local people.

Mr Robertson suggested, in a letter to the Welsh language commissioner, that too much use of bilingual signage might be “visual clutter”.

He explained that Trago Mills’ policy would be to make welcome, departmental, directional, welfare and safety signage bilingual in Welsh and English “but beyond that we have no plans to cascade its use a great deal further at present”.

This caused outrage in the Cardiff Bay Assembly bubble.

The minister for Welsh language let us know that she was “very concerned” and “disappointed”, while the counsel general said Trago Mills in Merthyr was “grotesque”.

Simon Thomas, AM for Plaid Cymru, said “If this is the price we have to pay for investment then it’s worth us retaining our respect and telling these investors where to go”.

But how did Bruce Robertson’s letter and his views come to public attention?

It seems they were leaked from the Welsh language commissioner’s office to a Welsh language pressure group, so he and Trago Mills could be pilloried in public.

Did the Welsh language commissioner or Welsh government approve this?

If not, what is being done to identify and discipline whoever leaked this confidential correspondence?

I have yet to receive an answer.

Also, considering the reaction to the Trago Mills incident, what advice will Welsh Government provide to future investors so that they perceive Wales as an attractive location for business and not a maze of Welsh language sensitivities?

As an AM for south east Wales I receive a variety of correspondence about use of Welsh language policy, some supportive, some not.

Several constituents have used the phrase ‘visual clutter’.

If I forwarded their correspondence to the Welsh language commissioner or Welsh ministers, to query policy before responding, can I rely on them to keep that correspondence confidential?

Or will they or their offices selectively leak it, to forward their own political agenda and attack those who don’t support it?