Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 23 March 2021
If Mr Swinney is going to make comments, I would be grateful if he could just listen to the next point.
I hope that the First Minister will reflect on the findings of James Hamilton, who said:
“Although I accept the First Minister’s statement that her motivation for agreeing to the meeting was personal and political, and she may have sought to underscore this by hosting it in her private home with no permanent civil servant present and no expenditure of public money, it could not in my opinion be characterised as a party meeting.”
That quote speaks volumes about the difference between party and Government, and about how we should operate.
In a further section in his report, James Hamilton raises concerns that the claim that one of the First Minister’s officials leaked the name of the complainer is credible. That must also ring alarm bells. There is then the vast sum of taxpayers’ money that was spent on a legal case that the First Minister knew was fundamentally flawed.
The whole issue has principally raised questions about the operations of the First Minister and the Scottish Government, but it has also raised questions about the effectiveness of Holyrood. To those ministers who, in recent weeks, have been trying to pretend that this Parliament is above reproach, I say, “No, it is not.”
I do not subscribe to the view that Holyrood is broken, but if it is to restore its reputation, it has a lot to think about in the next parliamentary session, led by the next Presiding Officer, whoever he or she might be. It needs to address the concerns about the in-built political bias of the committee system; the relationship between Government and other important bodies, including the Crown; the absence of parliamentary privilege; and the need for post-legislative scrutiny given the absence of a revising chamber. Therefore, we fully accept the committee’s recommendation that there should be
“a commission to review the relationship between the executive and the legislature and make recommendations for change.”
I return to my earlier remark that this is all about women who were failed by the Scottish Government. However, it is also about the failed workings of Government, the First Minister and her senior officials, and the weakened scrutiny of Parliament, which resulted from obfuscation, a lack of transparency and incomplete information provided by the Scottish Government.
I suggest that no one comes out of the situation well, but it is principally the First Minister who does not. Although she is cleared of breaking the ministerial code, she has been found guilty of so many other failings, which have undermined the integrity of the whole political process.
A person out there in the real world can see that staff have been bullied, evidence has been withheld, stories do not add up and women complainants have been badly let down. When the political history of 2021 comes to be written, people will rightly ask, “Why has no one resigned?”