Hansard

The Presiding Officer (Ken Macintosh) NPA

As members will be aware, at this point in the proceedings, I am required under the standing orders to decide whether any provision of the Pre-release Access...

Gordon Lindhurst (Lothian) (Con) Con

Presiding Officer, “They say we’re young and we don’t know”— or at least they did five years ago. They could be forgiven for feeling that we are all now t...

Neil Findlay (Lothian) (Lab) Lab

Will the member take an intervention?

Gordon Lindhurst Con

Not at this stage. Two hundred years ago, a politician wrote the 21-volume “Statistical Account of Scotland”, an undertaking said to have required the labou...

The Cabinet Secretary for Finance (Kate Forbes) SNP

In the midst of the biggest economic crisis since the second world war, is it not somewhat worrying that the biggest and most pressing issue that the economy...

Gordon Lindhurst Con

That is the same repeated, and, frankly, boring point that has been made previously in these debates. It is worrying that the Scottish Government considers i...

Daniel Johnson (Edinburgh Southern) (Lab) Lab

On the cabinet secretary’s point, does the member agree that at this time of crisis and emergency, we need facts and figures and that this is about the timin...

Gordon Lindhurst Con

Yes, I agree with the member and I will come on to that point. Let me elaborate on what the bill will do. The first strand would end pre-release access for ...

The Presiding Officer NPA

Ivan McKee will open for the Government. 15:11

The Minister for Trade, Innovation and Public Finance (Ivan McKee) SNP

If we go by some of the debates that we have had on the budget over the past while, it would be fair to say that eight out of 10 Tory MSPs do not understand ...

Daniel Johnson Lab

Will the minister not concede that the bill is not about the time that is taken to prepare statistics? It is purely about their release and who has access to...

Ivan McKee SNP

The member is correct that the issue is not about the time that is taken to prepare the statistics, but it is, as I said, about the time that is taken to und...

Maurice Golden (West Scotland) (Con) Con

When last we debated the bill, I pointed out that statistics are not just numbers on a page, but a public asset that is used to inform policy. It is therefor...

Ivan McKee SNP

I do not know how good the member is with numbers, but how long does he think that it would take him to understand a set of numbers and be able to pass sensi...

Maurice Golden Con

A lot quicker than it would take the minister. The bill does not question the integrity of Scottish Government statistics. It simply seeks to address valid ...

Daniel Johnson (Edinburgh Southern) (Lab) Lab

Before I get to the important substance of the debate, I commend the committee for introducing a committee bill, which is an underused mechanism in the Parli...

Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP) SNP

Let me start by picking up on a few things that have already been said. Daniel Johnson talked about data. Data becomes information only when it has been anal...

Daniel Johnson Lab

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. Can you clarify whether all members are under an obligation to speak the truth in the chamber and that misleading Par...

The Presiding Officer NPA

That point is true: every member has an obligation to speak the truth. I am not entirely sure that Mr Stevenson was not speaking the truth. He was giving a p...

Gordon Lindhurst Con

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I hope that my time is not yet up, in the chamber or elsewhere. World statistics day was last November, and the tagline was ...

The Presiding Officer NPA

That concludes the debate on stage 3 of the Pre-release Access to Official Statistics (Scotland) Bill.