Meeting of the Parliament 07 December 2022
I am looking at the position that we are in. It appears that the Tories’ plan for the last week is to shut the Parliament a week early and create a Tory MSP Christmas holiday. They want to do that instead of dealing with the hard issues that the Parliament has to deal with. I do not think for one minute that the people of Scotland would appreciate this nonsense from the Conservative Party.
On the issue at hand, there is much talk from the Tories about the Government trying to railroad the bill through. The reality is that, as the Presiding Officer will be aware, an extra week was given between stages 2 and 3 after one of the business managers asked for that. I said that we would work to do that. Not only that, but, this week, there was a request from the Labour Party, because of the debate on the issue, to extend the time for an extra hour, and I quite happily agreed to that with members. Therefore, when members have made reasonable requests, I have been able to work with colleagues to make them happen.
The serious point here is the abuse by the Tory party in its attempts to close the Parliament a week early before Christmas.