Meeting of the Parliament 08 June 2023
Let us look at Mr Brown’s shocking attempt to dodge scrutiny. The committee’s draft report concluded:
“The lack of co-operation we experienced from the former Cabinet Secretary for Investment, Infrastructure, and Cities is also a matter of serious concern.”
Mr Beattie’s response was to argue that, again, we should hit the delete key.
Richard Leonard proposed additional wording to reflect that CMAL’s negotiating position was “almost certainly” weakened by the public announcement on the preferred bidder, as CMAL itself said to the committee. The conclusion that we reached in the draft report was reasonable. It read:
“The Committee is not convinced that such a public announcement was necessary or indeed appropriate for this project, especially at that time, given the considerable work and negotiation that was required before CMAL could take a decision to award the formal contract. We believe that this almost certainly weakened CMAL’s negotiating position with FMEL”.
Mr Beattie’s response, again, was to try to hit the delete key.
SNP members did not stop there in their attempts to whitewash the report on behalf of their ministers. The draft report stated:
“It also remains unclear why the First Minister led on the preferred bidder announcement and why the First Minister’s press release and associated social media communications did not reflect that there were ‘significant negotiations to be concluded’.”
Again, SNP members disagreed, voting in vain to remove the passage.
They were similarly obstructive when it came to following the money. On the use of the £10 million loan to FMEL, the report’s conclusion was clear. It read:
“The Committee considers that transparency over the use of public money is essential. This example falls well short of the standards of transparency we would expect.”
Is it not strange that a member of the Public Audit Committee—one who was also, at that stage, the treasurer of the SNP—would take issue with such a conclusion? Perhaps now we know why there was such an absence of financial control that the SNP was able to sneak a motorhome on to its books without, apparently, the knowledge of its own treasurer.
When it came to the meeting between the First Minister and Jim McColl—a meeting of which the recollections of the two protagonists differ significantly—there was, again, an SNP attempt to neuter the committee. The report says:
“record and note keeping of these meetings was weak and fell well short of the standards of transparency and accountability we would expect. It is particularly concerning that there does not appear to be a full record of the meeting held between the former director of FMEL and the First Minister in May 2017. A permanent civil servant should have attended and produced a record of that meeting in line with established protocols in the Scottish Ministerial Code.”
Yet again, Willie Coffey and Colin Beattie sought to play down criticism of the Scottish Government by seeking to remove elements of that clear account of the evidence session.