Meeting of the Parliament 29 May 2024
We are debating a report from the Parliament’s Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. Its representation is made up of the three largest parties in the chamber and they have agreed a suspension that will seem lenient to the public, but it represents the most severe action ever taken against a member of the Parliament. Michael Matheson will be suspended for 27 days and his pay will be docked for 54 days. However, we must be honest—any other Scot would have been handed their P45 straight away. If someone was found to have falsely claimed £11,000 from their employer—in this case, the taxpayer—and it was then found that they had lied about it as part of a cover-up, they would have been sacked.
Let me be clear that this is not the harmless mistake that some have attempted to present it as. It was a deliberate and shameless attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the Parliament and the public. It is an open-and-shut case that has already been considered in great detail by the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body and the standards committee. The independent process exists for a reason, and it should be respected and upheld by members across the chamber. However, what we have seen from Scottish National Party members—specifically John Swinney, the First Minister—is an attempt to derail and undermine due process. That has been done for the sole purpose of protecting one of their own. I put on the record that the actions of John Swinney, the First Minister, towards my colleague Annie Wells would make Donald Trump blush. It is disgusting and disgraceful behaviour that demeans the office of First Minister. He has targeted members of an independent committee in the Parliament, and he is attempting to undermine due process with his bully boy tactics.
I have been looking at who has been in agreement with John Swinney during the process—and I do mean during the process, not now, as we have heard from the Deputy First Minister that she agrees with John Swinney. However, I can find nothing on the record to suggest that, at any point when the standards committee was considering the matter, Jackie Dunbar, Alasdair Allan or Ivan McKee—all SNP members—raised any concerns about Annie Wells being included. I then looked at Michael Matheson’s personal statement. He was asked to provide a personal statement to the committee. It runs to 10 pages and is 5,500 words long, but at no point is there any reference to his concern that Annie Wells was sitting on a committee to judge his fate.