Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)

Meeting date: Wednesday, May 11, 2022

Official Report 1131KB pdf

Point of Order

Business motion S6M-04345 was for next week’s business. Presiding Officer, you will have been made aware of the events during the Conservatives’ first party business debate this afternoon, when the Minister for Transport revealed that the Scottish Government had published a document that supposedly fills in the blanks relating to the ferry contract fiasco. Ms Gilruth said that that is the document that Audit Scotland was unable to find.

The email does not answer Audit Scotland’s question why advice was ignored, but it does something else. Despite the First Minister’s desperate attempts to pin everything on her former colleague Derek Mackay, the publication implicates Deputy First Minister John Swinney. We now know that John Swinney had a direct hand in the matter.

I request that you call an emergency meeting of the Parliamentary Bureau after decision time tonight, with a view to adding a ministerial statement from the Deputy First Minister tomorrow, to explain his role in the matter. Parliament deserves answers.

I thank Stephen Kerr for his point of order. Members will be aware of the on-going scrutiny of the matter in other aspects of parliamentary business.

Under rule 13.2, requests for urgent statements are not a matter for the bureau. Mr Kerr would be required to request that the Government make a statement and the Government would then ask that I allow time for such a statement to be made. The issue can, of course, be discussed once more at the bureau next week.