Meeting of the Parliament 10 June 2026 [Draft]
There are two things there. First, the public can be confident that the crime that has been perpetrated has been fully investigated and prosecuted and there is now a plea. I do not think that any of us is suggesting that there is a lack of confidence in that process—I certainly hope not, as that would take us into a bad place.
The other point, which is fundamental, is that the issue comes down to internal matters. If there were challenges in the Scottish Liberal Democrats, and doubtless, there have been such challenges—I see Mr Rennie nodding, so we will discuss those later, perhaps—I would not expect Parliament to be breenging into that territory. I would recognise that that would be a matter for the Scottish Liberal Democrats to determine.
That is what the SNP has done with its processes. SNP members, who above all should be concerned about the issue, can be assured that improvements have been made.
I turn to the notion of transparency, which I consider to be important. It is vital, but only if it is paired with impartiality. As I and others have stated, the obvious conflict of interest of parties investigating each other cannot be mitigated with any degree of procedural formality. That goes back to the point that I made at the outset. Even if we exercised our very best efforts to achieve impartiality, I do not think that it would be perceived as such, and it would not be possible to get away from the unavoidable structural reality of party politics.
To return to my amendment, I made the point in my opening remarks that the people of Scotland collectively elected this Parliament to govern in their interests. As part of that, they chose a Scottish Government that seeks to work for them. Scotland has not chosen a Government that spends its time second-guessing the assessments that are made on matters by independent authorities. This debate seems to have been a bit of a return to some of the mud slinging that we saw from the Labour Party and the Conservatives during the previous parliamentary session, which carried on into the election. There is certainly no sense of arrogance to this point, but I gently remind folk that we went through that election after all those years of mud slinging, and the SNP is back on the Government benches, while Labour and the Conservatives are here in much reduced numbers. Mr Findlay made the point that it was arrogant for me to point that out, but it is a matter of fact. He bemoaned the fact that the SNP has dominated Scottish politics for 20 years.
All I was pointing out—