Meeting of the Parliament 03 May 2023
Thank you, Presiding Officer.
I have said that we are dealing with that. Within days of his election as leader, the First Minister announced an urgent review of internal party governance and, as our amendment makes clear, this Government places a great importance on openness and transparency. We are fully committed to meeting the standards of open Government that our public rightly expects of us. I will give just a few examples of that: ministerial engagements and travel are published monthly; we also aim to proactively publish minutes of Government meetings on our website, so that people can see who their Government is meeting and what we are discussing, and understand how decisions are made. In addition, we are focused on making the necessary improvements in handling freedom of information requests, as set out in our published improvement plan, which was agreed with the Scottish Information Commissioner. At around 86 per cent, our performance on responding to requests within the set time is comparable with the wider public sector in Scotland, but it is important to note that we are now responding to significantly more requests for information—the number has risen by more than 50 per cent in the past three years. We also recently enhanced transparency to Parliament and the public on Scottish Government finances, including through the provision of more detailed outturn reporting and more detailed material to the Finance and Public Administration Committee, which all members of that committee have welcomed. In his closing statement here today, Mr Arthur will provide more detail on the steps that we have taken to improve engagement on budget.
I will come back to the issue of party membership. Much has been said, but it is not enough.