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The Leader of Carmarthenshire County Council, Kevin Madge (Lab), has written to his fellow councillors to explain the sudden U-turn over his promise to set aside time to discuss the pensions and libel indemnity scandal at next week's meeting of the full council.

In addition to allotting time to discuss what the Wales Audit Office considers to be unlawful payments to the chief executive, Kev had been hoping to provide councillors with what he calls a "full report" on the matter.

They won't be getting that either, although in all likelihood the "full report" would have been a very one-sided document explaining why the council was right to protect the chief executive from the tax man in his old age, and why the taxpayer should foot the bill for Mr James's legal adventures.

Instead of rolling over and agreeing that the council was right all the way along, the auditors have presented the council's top brass with what are known as "consideration reports", and the WAO has asked for a response by 22 November.

The consideration reports will effectively be advance copies of the public interest reports which the WAO has been threatening to publish, setting out its own findings.

There are two consideration reports, and it is reasonable to assume that one covers the pensions contributions payments (an identical document has almost certainly landed in Haverfordwest), while the other covers Carmarthenshire's unique libel indemnity arrangements.

The WAO has warned that under no circumstances should the council publish or disclose the contents of the two reports.

Although the debate scheduled for next week and the council's own report would not have constituted publication or disclosure of the WAO reports, the arrival of the documents in the post from Cardiff has given the senior officers a no doubt very welcome excuse to scrap the debate and allow councillors to concentrate on enjoying a corporate Powerpoint show from BT instead.

The one enduring mystery in all of this is why Kev promised a debate in the first place, as it has been known for some time that the WAO was likely to go ahead with its public interest reports procedure.

An agenda item to "receive" the minutes of the Audit Committee meeting at which the WAO's findings were first aired should give councillors their first chance to raise the scandals in the council chamber, although without the benefit of having seen any of the various reports, and with the council executive pleading the fifth amendment, they will be as much in the dark as the rest of us.