Meeting of the Parliament 03 May 2023
My goodness—I gave Douglas Ross the opportunity to build himself up into a frenzy, and that was a bit of a damp squib from him. That comes from the party of Boris Johnson and all the nonsense that is going on in Westminster.
Douglas Ross has refused to publish his party’s membership numbers. He says that he has nothing to hide, yet he continues to hide it. In an interview with ITV Border, his defence was that the party publishes its membership figures only during a leadership election. Given Douglas Ross’s performance today and in recent weeks, I do not think that we will wait too long for those figures to be published.
I move amendment S6M-08764.2, to leave out from “believes” to end and insert:
“agrees that good governance and transparency are matters of the utmost importance; believes that democracy is best served when all political parties are transparent on their party membership and sources of income; recognises the improvements made to the transparency and openness of the Scottish budget process as a result of cooperation between the Scottish Government and parliamentary committees; welcomes the upcoming review of the Chief Executive Pay Framework and encourages all parties to clearly lay out their position on public sector pay policy ahead of the annual budget process; calls on all political parties represented in the Scottish Parliament to refuse and return any donations from unincorporated associations that do not publish their sources of funding in full; believes that all political parties should refuse to nominate their donors for any form of honour bestowed by the Crown, including membership of the House of Lords; recognises that the only parties represented in the Scottish Parliament to have published up-to-date membership numbers are the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Green Party, and calls on the leaders of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, Scottish Labour Party and Scottish Liberal Democrats, in the interests of democracy and transparency, to publish their membership numbers as a matter of urgency.”
14:58Motions, questions or amendments mentioned by their reference code.