Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Tuesday, November 1, 2022

Official Report 1006KB pdf

Point of Order

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I seek your guidance on the procedures surrounding the correcting of the Official Report. On 29 September, the First Minister told the Parliament:

“Under this Government, we have a position where our net energy consumption is already provided by renewable energy sources.”—[Official Report, 29 September 2022; c 16.]

That is, of course, not true. Indeed, on that day, Liam Kerr raised a point of order at the end of First Minister’s question time to ask whether the record would be corrected.

Outside this chamber, the statistics have been misrepresented before. On 1 November 2021, the First Minister said:

“We’ve virtually decarbonised our electricity supply. Just short of 100 per cent of all the electricity we use is from renewable sources”.

On 7 September this year, John Swinney said:

“we’ve now got 100% self-sufficiency in our electricity requirements from renewables”.

In the same week, Ian Blackford said:

“Almost 100% of our entire electricity production comes from renewables.”

I, of course, realise that those further examples are not matters that are within the Presiding Officer’s purview, but I believe that it is of relevance that there is a pattern of misrepresenting the statistic. That statistic is at the very heart of the issue of Scotland’s energy security and is, therefore, of relevance to the energy bills of millions of people in these uncertain times.

The ministerial code clearly says:

“It is of paramount importance that ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Ministers who knowingly mislead the Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the First Minister”.

Point 5 of the guidance on the correction of inaccuracies of information provided in parliamentary proceedings states:

“If a member realises after an item of business has ended that a significant error has been made—for example, one which may affect the conclusions which listeners would draw from the debate”,

which I believe matters here,

“—the member may ask to make a statement during the next available plenary session”.

That is in addition to the steps outlined in point 9, which include writing

“to the Presiding Officer and ... the member who drew attention to the need for correction.”

I therefore ask about two points. First, on what date was the correction made by the First Minister to the Official Report? Secondly, was the opportunity to provide a statement to Parliament regarding that correction requested by the First Minister?

I thank Mr Cole-Hamilton for his points. As the member knows, if any member realises that they have provided incorrect information in the chamber, they can request a correction to be added to the Official Report. I understand that that, indeed, has happened in the instant case.

The guidance also sets out the steps that should be taken to make other members aware when a correction has been made. It is the responsibility of the member making the correction to ensure that such steps are taken.

On another point that the member raised, I am not aware of whether there has been any request to make any statement and, in broad brush, I would say that the adequacy or otherwise of parliamentary rules and procedure is not a matter for the chair but rather is, of course, a matter for the Parliament as a whole.