Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Thursday, May 1, 2014

Official Report 878KB pdf

Point of Order

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. At First Minister’s questions today, the First Minister, in answer to questions from Johann Lamont, said:

“None of the Opposition parties in this Parliament have expressed any concern in public, that I can find”.

He added:

“I think that it is reasonable to find out whether the Labour Party in this Parliament has any similar record of action or concern.”

That is wrong. Those statements are incorrect, and the First Minister needs to correct the Official Report this afternoon. On 30 July 2013, I lodged motion S4M-07362, which condemned the anti-gay legislation that was passed under Vladimir Putin. The motion talked about putting

“pressure on President Putin and Russia’s leaders to overturn the country’s anti-gay laws”.

That motion received support from Scottish National Party members of the Scottish Parliament. On 6 February, I lodged motion S4M-08982, which condemned the openly homophobic attacks against gay men in Russia, as revealed in the Channel 4 “Hunted” programme. That motion received cross-party support.

On 13 February, my colleague Drew Smith wrote to the Minister for External Affairs and International Development regarding the Sochi Olympics and raised concerns regarding the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Russia.

The First Minister said that Labour members have not raised human rights violations in Russia and have expressed no concerns about the Putin regime. He was wrong. As laid out in the guidance on the correction of inaccuracies of information provided in parliamentary proceedings,

“Members (including ministers) have a personal responsibility to be accurate and truthful in their contributions during Parliamentary proceedings.”

Under paragraph 5 of that guidance, the First Minister is under an obligation to correct the record. The First Minister needs to take this opportunity to apologise for giving the very wrong impression that my party has not spoken out in the Parliament about Vladimir Putin and his regime, which the First Minister is so keen to praise.

I thank the member for providing advance notice of the point that she has just made. These are matters of debate. I have said repeatedly that the Presiding Officers are not responsible for the veracity of the contributions that are made by any member in the chamber.