Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 04 November 2020
Jackie Baillie said that she would not rehearse the business of the committee and the substance of the inquiry. Some members have raised elements of the substance of the inquiry, and I want to make it clear to the Parliament at the outset of my closing remarks that I will not reflect on any of the issues of substance that the inquiry is concerned with. It would be inappropriate for me to do so, as there is a committee process under way, and that is properly the business of the committee.
I want to address the issue of the nature of the documentation that the Government is providing to the committee, which Jackie Baillie and Margaret Mitchell touched on, because I do not think that either of their characterisations was in any way fair, appropriate or representative of the issues that the Government must be mindful of in the way in which we present information to the committee.
Understandably and quite appropriately, the committee itself has established stringent rules about how information must be presented, to ensure that it complies with the various legal obligations and requirements that are on the committee and on the Government, and which have been applied in many circumstances by decisions of a number of courts. For that reason, I think that it is unfair to criticise the redaction of documents by the Government when the Government is simply acting to ensure that we do not breach the law in relation to the content of that material. I think that the Parliament should accept that the Government is going to significant lengths to ensure that we comply with the series of legal requirements under which we are operating.