Official Report 382KB pdf
Before we begin the next item of business, I would like to say that the proceedings against Peter Murrell remain active until he has been sentenced. The sub judice rule is engaged, but the Presiding Officer has exercised his discretion to allow the motion and the related amendments to be debated. In their contributions, members should specifically avoid commenting on the matter of sentencing. The sub judice rules will also apply to other cases, and members should be mindful of them.
The next item of business is a debate on motion S7M-00294, in the name of Anas Sarwar, on an inquiry to restore public trust in Scottish politics. I invite members who wish to speak in the debate to press their request-to-speak button now.
15:18
The choice before us in this debate is simple. Do we believe in honesty, openness, transparency and the rule of law? Is this a Parliament that believes that its job is to hold the Government and—no matter how uncomfortable or inconvenient it is—the institutions in this country to account? Alternatively, do members believe that their job is simply to use this Parliament to protect the very culture that enabled Peter Murrell to commit his crimes?
The answer to this monumental scandal is not to continue the culture of secrecy and cover-up but to confront it. The answer is to shed light, ask questions and to meaningfully learn lessons. I say to the Scottish National Party that, if it has nothing to hide, it has nothing to fear.
Let me say clearly from the outset that the responsibility for Peter Murrell’s crimes lies with Peter Murrell, but the issues that are raised by his crimes go beyond Peter Murrell himself. Operation branchform goes to the heart of the culture of the political establishment in Scotland. These are serious issues that require a serious response, which is why it is beyond doubt that there must be a parliamentary inquiry.
There has been some deliberate misinformation from the Scottish National Party, all in the hope that it can blag its way through this and that the story will move on—it will not. The inquiry is not intended to repeat operation branchform, and its role would not be to establish criminality, which is rightly the police’s job. However, there are other issues, processes, judgments, implications and lessons that are not a matter for the police but the job of this Parliament.
To respond directly to the SNP amendment, I say that it is simply an attempt to muddy the waters. The inquiry is not about “rival political parties” inquiring into another party’s internal workings. The SNP can own the shame of the embezzlement of £400,000 of its own hard-working supporters’ money, but there are legitimate questions to be asked about a culture that goes beyond how a party internally operates and that affects how our Government and country are run.
Let me quote the former SNP MP, Joanna Cherry. [Interruption.] Some SNP members are laughing at one of their former colleagues, who was bullied and intimidated out of her job. Joanna Cherry wrote:
“Peter Murrell was not a criminal mastermind he just took advantage of a system devoid of adequate checks & balances and a culture where scrutiny and questioning were demonised. That culture has infected the Scottish government, our Parliament & our civic life. It needs to change.”
Members might disagree with the latter point, but the issues merit investigation and answers.
This is the greatest political scandal since devolution. It was a police investigation involving Scotland’s governing party, so the public understandably have questions and there must be answers. Given such high levels of disaffection with politics, this inquiry is about restoring trust in our institutions and in our politics.
I ask this quite sincerely: does Mr Sarwar genuinely believe what he just said—that this is the greatest political scandal in the history of devolution—when one of his formerly close colleagues, Colin Smyth, is yet to be prosecuted for what he allegedly did in this place? Does he genuinely believe that this is a greater scandal than that?
I remind members that criminal cases remain active and that the sub judice rule is engaged.
I say gently to Mr Greer that that is a shocking case that relates to individual behaviour, but today we are talking about a systematic culture of cover-up and secrecy, and the embezzlement of £400,000 of the SNP’s own supporters’ money. Mr Greer wants to act as a human shield for John Swinney and the SNP—it is for him to answer those questions—but this scandal has implications and lessons for the Scottish Government, for ministers, for Police Scotland, for the Lord Advocate, for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, for the Electoral Commission, for the Scottish Legal Aid Board, for His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and for those who administer Short money on behalf of taxpayers.
There are questions for the Lord Advocate—yes, she might have recused herself, but the controversy that was caused by her sharing information with the SNP leadership about charges against Murrell nearly a year before they were made public deserves answers. There are already questions about the Lord Advocate’s dual role.
There are questions for the Crown Office. Why did it take so long to bring charges against Murrell? After years of investigation, why was the case conveniently not disposed of until merely weeks after the Scottish election? What were the terms and details of any plea deal and why?
There are questions for the chief constable on how operation branchform was conducted—the staffing, the cost, the length, the timescale and the force’s dealings with the Crown. As we have seen from repeated leaks and briefings to the media, issues and disputes arose between the force and the Crown Office. What were those issues and why?
There are questions for the Electoral Commission about its powers, roles, responsibilities and sanctioning powers.
There are questions for the Scottish Legal Aid Board. Why was a man who earned a very large salary, owned his own home, owned property in Portugal, clearly has personal resources and now claims that he can immediately pay back the full amount that he embezzled, able to receive legal aid paid for by taxpayers when so many others in this country are denied it?
Those are questions about a culture of secrecy and cover-up that too often spills over into how senior people in Government—and the Government itself—operate. We all know what happened: there was bullying and intimidation; a treasurer was forced to resign for trying to do the right thing; and three members of the SNP’s finance and audit committee quit due to obstruction. Those are all valid questions that must be answered.
There are also questions for those who administer public money: HMRC and those who are responsible for Short money. Last week, John Swinney confirmed to the Parliament that VAT was illegally reclaimed from HMRC using the false receipts. What was the extent of the VAT fraud? How was that money used? Was illegal money spent on election campaigns? Was Short money claimed and used in an illegal way?
What about the ring-fenced £600,000 of donations from SNP members for the supposed purpose of a referendum campaign? We now know that that money was spent by the SNP on other things. Why have there been lies and misinformation? What are the implications and the lessons?
There are undoubtedly questions for Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney, but there are also questions for those who held other positions of responsibility and have been rewarded for their loyalty with ministerial office. Let me give just two examples. Kirsten Oswald, who has been accused of blocking scrutiny of SNP finances and clamping down on whistleblowers, is now a minister; and Shirley-Anne Somerville, a former deputy chief executive to Peter Murrell, is now a cabinet secretary. Why are they being shielded from scrutiny? Again, I say that, if there is nothing to hide, there is nothing to fear, so the SNP should back an inquiry.
[Made a request to intervene.]
If I get the time back, I will happily take an intervention.
You can, Mr Sarwar.
I wonder whether Anas Sarwar applies the same principle—if people have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear—to our argument that, if there is to be an independent process, it needs to apply to all political parties, so that it can look into, for example, his old friend Peter Mandelson’s murky financial ties to the super-rich and criminals around the world and the way in which many United Kingdom Labour ministers expressed their thanks to him for his help in their ascension to ministerial office.
I have sympathy for the argument that Patrick Harvie has made, and I have sympathy with the Green amendment. There should be greater transparency on party financing and donations, including on the £5 million gift that was given to Nigel Farage. However, the problem with the Green amendment is that it makes two very deliberate mistakes. First, it acts as cover for an SNP in trouble—the Greens believe that they are there to protect the SNP. Secondly, it raises a constitutional issue, because it talks about moving powers from Parliament to Parliament. However, I think that there are legitimate issues that Ross Greer and Patrick Harvie would want to investigate.
The measure of a functioning democracy is that even the governing party can be held to account. That is what is at the heart of this matter. The inquiry would be about strengthening our democracy, restoring public trust in our politics, holding those in power and our institutions to account and learning lessons.
I call on all those who care about standards in public life, who care about learning lessons from the biggest scandal in Scottish politics and who care about repairing the trust that is being so terribly damaged by this whole affair to back the motion. How SNP members vote on the motion will show whether the culture that enabled Peter Murrell to commit his crimes has changed or whether it persists to this day. If SNP members have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear, so they should back the motion in my name.
I move,
That the Parliament agrees to conduct an inquiry into the implications and lessons to be learned following the conclusion of Operation Branchform and the embezzlement conviction of Peter Murrell.
15:28
In the interests of transparency, I place on the record that my wife is presently employed by the Scottish National Party and has been since April 2023.
I begin by stating emphatically and clearly that what Peter Murrell did represents a serious breach of trust. His guilty plea makes that beyond dispute. Over more than a decade, he used his position of privilege to embezzle more than £400,000 from the Scottish National Party—my party—and from the many dedicated members and activists who placed their faith in him: people whom I and other SNP politicians know and have campaigned alongside for many years. That is a matter of settled record that has, quite understandably, shone a spotlight on the relationship between the public and elected representatives. We all recognise that it has led to some people calling into question a sense of trust in our political system.
For that very reason, it is my belief that the Parliament must be disciplined in its response—a response that must not be about protecting any single party and must not be about promoting any other; rather, it must be about protecting the integrity of the Parliament itself.
Let us be very clear about what is actually being proposed. We are being asked to agree to conduct an inquiry, presumably through the convening of a parliamentary committee comprised of elected representatives of competing political parties, to scrutinise the internal financial operations of one of those competing parties. Every single member who would sit on such a committee has a direct material interest in the outcome of its findings. Their parties contest the same seats. They seek support from the same electorate. They fight the same elections. Therefore, it is surely reasonable to question whether any inquiry and any committee constituted under those conditions could be independent or, at the very least, could be held to be independent.
I believe that there is an obvious conflict of interest in parties investigating each other in this way. When conflict of interest is baked into the very structure of a proposed parliamentary inquiry, no amount of procedural formality can remove that partiality or, at the very least, the perception that such an inquiry would fail to meet the test of impartiality.
I assert that what the minister has said is outrageous. He has called into question the very idea of why we have parliamentary committees and parliamentary inquiries. If the SNP is the victim in all of this, which the First Minister and others have claimed, why on earth would a minister for parliamentary business not entrust the Parliament with the vital work of learning the lessons from what has happened?
I am not convinced that that intervention was particularly worth hearing. We presumably all accept the objective fact that the issue in question is the former chief executive of the Scottish National Party embezzling money from the Scottish National Party.
You should be in favour of an inquiry.
If the member is suggesting that it is not the Scottish National Party that is the victim in this case, I do not know who he thinks the victim is.
This picks up on a point that has just been made.
Will the minister give way?
Will he give way?
Not at the moment.
I believe that the Parliament has a proud and good record of constructive committee work. It is not always easy or straightforward. It is well known that I was back on the back benches for a short while during the previous session, and I was on a parliamentary committee. I found it rewarding, collaborative and collegiate work. Parliament is capable of doing that. The question is whether, on this particular subject, it would be perceived to be possible, and I do not think that a perception of an impartial process could be achieved. I do not think that any of us would wish the record of the Parliament to be tarnished by inviting members to blur the lines when they have a stake in the verdict.
Will the minister give way?
Can I check, Presiding Officer: if I give way, will I get the time back?
Yes. The Presiding Officer has agreed that that should be the case for all debates if you take an intervention.
I appreciate the minister giving way. Would he not recognise that there is a question of public money paid in Short money to the SNP? There are questions of public policy that must be addressed, where it is not just the SNP that is the victim, as the minister asserts.
Any of those questions will be dealt with by the Electoral Commission. That issue has already been raised in Parliament. The question was asked of the First Minister, and he responded clearly. This is a party political matter.
It was about HMRC.
I think that the question was about Short money, Ms Baillie, and it would be a matter for the Electoral Commission.
Will the minister give way?
I will give way one more time, to Mr Cole-Hamilton.
The minister suggests that it would be inappropriate for a committee of inquiry to investigate the issue, but we have the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, which regularly investigates matters and is entrusted to do so in an impartial way. I do not see any disparity with that.
Does the minister recognise that there are still questions for Government ministers to answer? At the time when it was seized, the camper van was explained away by a senior SNP source as a legitimate campaign room. We still do not know who told them to say that, or why.
Government ministers are, quite correctly, accountable for their Government ministerial responsibilities, and they will be held to account by the Parliament. That speaks to the very point that I am striving to make.
In relation to the point about the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, it is the role of that committee to ensure that we adhere to the standards that are expected of us as members of the Scottish Parliament. Today, this Parliament is trying to veer into the territory of the internal governance of an individual political party. That would be a bad precedent to set.
Will the minister give way?
I will give way one more time, to Mr Johnson.
Does Jamie Hepburn not recognise that that is a fundamental misinterpretation of the Nolan principles? Openness and transparency relate to all aspects of the life of an individual in public office, not just the narrow aspects that relate to their ministerial responsibilities. His interpretation is a misinterpretation, is it not?
Of course I recognise that those principles stretch across all areas of public life. I question the appropriateness of a parliamentary committee inquiring into the activities and internal affairs of a political party. [Interruption.]
I can hear—and I have heard several times—members saying, “That’s not what we are seeking to do.” That is precisely what they are seeking to achieve through this debate and through the motion. Let us not pretend otherwise. We are not daft—we know that that is what they are trying to do.
We should be seeking to have a strong Parliament that uses its powers to hold the Scottish Government to account in relation to its governing activities. That is what serves the people of Scotland well. The suggested inquiry would divert and waste those powers on the internal governance of rival parties.
Last week, the Parliament agreed a committee structure that will be at the heart of legislative scrutiny and of holding the Government to account. Yesterday, we collectively determined who will convene those committees for this parliamentary session. The results of those elections were announced earlier today; I congratulate those, across all parties, who were elected to hold those offices. As parliamentarians, whether we are in government or otherwise, we should all desire strong and fair processes that enable those of us who are privileged to be elected to this place to contribute to effective governance.
In Scotland, we are lucky to have independent institutions whose explicit purpose is to investigate criminal conduct, gather evidence, assess that evidence against the standard of law and bring prosecutions when the public interest demands it; Police Scotland and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service exist for precisely those purposes. We have institutions that sit independently of political interference and direction, to deliberate and determine the outcome of such matters; the courts serve that role. None of those institutions are beholden to any Government, party or political agenda. That independence is not a bureaucratic nicety—it is the cornerstone of the rule of law. Their independence is as sure a defining characteristic of being part of a free, pluralistic democracy as this freely elected Parliament is.
Will the minister take an intervention?
I will give way one more time.
I thank the minister for giving way. He has been generous with interventions.
I get that the minister will not want questions to be asked about the internal workings of the SNP. However, does he accept that it is the legitimate role of this Parliament to ask questions on the internal workings of the police service, the Lord Advocate, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, the Electoral Commission, the Scottish Legal Aid Board, HMRC and those who administer Short money and public money? Does he accept that those are legitimate areas for this Parliament to question?
There is a range of means by which any parliamentarian can do that.
He is blocking the means.
It is inescapable that the type of inquiry that Mr Sarwar seeks to establish would go into the internal workings of an individual political party. That would not be a good precedent to set.
Any reasonable assessment would conclude that operation Branchform has been extensive, thorough and conducted by what the chief constable herself described as a team of “very skilled” individuals. It resulted in a charge, a prosecution and a verdict in court. The criminal justice process has done what it was designed to do.
If there are further investigative threads still to be pulled, it follows that those threads should be pursued by the bodies with the powers, expertise and, crucially, independence to pursue them properly. This Parliament cannot—and no committee of elected politicians can—replicate those powers or that independence. We could not compel disclosure under the same legal frameworks or assess evidence with the same impartiality. Crucially—and it is important that we remind ourselves of the fact in the context of what may be said as part of today’s debate—we cannot act without the risk of contaminating, complicating or prejudicing the very proceedings that either the independent authorities are concluding or that they may yet have cause to pursue.
The people of Scotland who elected us to this Parliament did not send us here to spend our parliamentary time conducting political post-mortems on the internal governance of rival parties. They sent us here to govern and to address—with urgency, competence and purpose—the pressures that are bearing down on their daily lives.
Across Scotland today, families are making impossible choices at the supermarket checkout and the kitchen table. Energy bills, food prices and housing costs are not abstractions. They are the lived reality of hundreds of thousands of our constituents, and they demand our sustained attention.
On 7 May, the people of Scotland elected a Parliament in the expectation that those would be the types of issues that we would focus on. On 7 May, they chose a Scottish Government that intends to do that and to work for them—a Government that, day in, day out, is always on Scotland’s side.
That brings me on to the part of my amendment that focuses on the need for us, collectively, to use our time to address matters that will improve the lives of the people of Scotland, by tackling the cost of living challenges that they face, improving the public services that they use and taking action to save the climate that we all rely on.
This Government is firmly focused on what matters most to the people of Scotland. Just yesterday, we brought forward a debate on the need to grow our economy as part of the process of creating a more resilient, more prosperous and fairer Scotland for all. As the First Minister has set out, as part of the process of bringing about a fairer Scotland, it will be the defining mission of this Government to support families with the cost of living and to eradicate child poverty. Our policies are already helping to keep an estimated 100,000 children out of relative poverty this year, but we are determined to do more and to deliver truly ambitious change to reduce the cost of living. That includes expanding all-year-round childcare to all children from nine months of age to the end of primary school—[Interruption.]
I hear Stephen Kerr saying from the sidelines, as he always does, “Stick to the motion.” I am speaking to my amendment. Let me remind Mr Kerr of what my amendment says. It
“urges elected representatives to use their parliamentary time to address matters that will improve the lives of the people of Scotland, including tackling the cost of living crisis, improving public services such as this NHS and taking climate action.”
That is what I am speaking to right now.
I remind Mr Kerr and other members of our ambition to expand all-year-round childcare to all children from nine months to the end of primary school—the Government brought that issue to the chamber for debate on 27 May.
We have other plans to reduce the cost of living. We intend to introduce a £2 nationwide cap on bus fares and to increase the Scottish child payment to £40. We will be happy to bring those matters back to the chamber to be subject to scrutiny, just as we brought the issue of the first homes fund to the chamber. The statement on that fund, which was delivered on 27 May, set out that it will open by the end of June and will provide first-time buyers with a £10,000 contribution towards a deposit on their first home. In its first phase, the fund is expected to support 2,000 households in the first 100 days of this Government and 50,000 over the course of this session of Parliament.
Just last week, the Scottish Government brought a debate to the chamber to set out the progress that we have made in improving our national health service and to deliberate on how we can collectively respond to the challenges that remain. Waiting lists in Scotland continue to fall. New out-patient waits of more than a year have decreased for 11 consecutive months, and in-patient and day-case waits have reduced for 15 months in a row. Our plan is delivering for the people of Scotland.
Let those be the types of issues that we bring to the chamber to discuss, to question and to debate. This Government is delivering what we promised and what we meant when we said in the election that we would continue to deliver for the people of Scotland.
There is much more to be done, and the Parliament has a role in doing that work. Every hour of committee time, every hour of research resource and every hour of attention that is diverted into a parliamentary process that is structurally conflicted is an hour not spent on that work.
However, the subject of accountability for serious financial wrongdoing is not one that I wish to shy away from. Accountability, transparency and trust in public and political life matter—
Not to you.
It is precisely because those things matter—they matter very much to me, Ms Baillie—that it matters that accountability has a proper home.
In this instance, transparency has been best served by independent authorities that have the legal compulsion powers to extract it. The trust of the Scottish public, which every member presumably wishes to restore, will not be rebuilt by politicians using the machinery of Parliament to fight battles that belong in court or looking at matters of internal party governance.
I will close by speaking directly to the values that underlie this debate. No one in this chamber should be in any doubt that Scotland is not alone in experiencing falling levels of trust. Around the world, trust in Governments, institutions and, indeed, democracy itself is in retreat. However, trust in Government, in elected officials and in the democratic institution that we all stood for a little over a month ago is important.
When our institutions behave with integrity, when the police investigate without fear or favour, when the Crown Office acts on evidence, when the courts consider matters free from external influence and when this Parliament focuses its energy on the people’s priorities, that is when trust is earned.
I do not pretend that trust has not been damaged in recent weeks, months and years, but let none of us pretend—this speaks to the points that were made by Mr Harvie and Mr Greer—that the blame for that can be laid at any single door. Also, let none of us pretend that the damage is not real and that it does not deserve a real response. However, the real response is not to conduct an exercise in what, in my view, would inevitably become—whatever its formal terms of reference—a partisan political exercise; it is to ensure that our independent institutions are properly respected, properly insulated from political pressure and properly trusted to complete their work.
Let the law do its work, let this Parliament do ours and let us ensure that this Parliament returns to doing what it does best: legislating, scrutinising Government and making the case for a Scotland that works better for the people who live here. I urge Parliament to support the amendment in my name.
I move amendment S7M-00294.1, to leave out from “agrees” to end and insert:
“considers the notion of representatives of political parties using a parliamentary committee to inquire into the internal operations of rival political parties to constitute a conflict of interest; believes that it is vital that independent authorities, including Police Scotland and the Crown Office, are free from political interference to fully and properly investigate and prosecute any and all criminal conduct, and urges elected representatives to use their parliamentary time to address matters that will improve the lives of the people of Scotland including, tackling the cost of living crisis, improving public services such as this NHS and taking climate action.”
15:46
I am glad that the Labour Party has secured a debate on restoring public trust in Scottish politics, because, quite clearly, the public have very little trust in our political institutions. However, that did not begin and does not end with Peter Murrell’s crimes against the SNP. We have already talked this afternoon about the case of Peter Mandelson and the allegations against Colin Smyth. Anas Sarwar has already talked about the arc of history of this Parliament, and we could go back further and talk about Mike Watson, a member of this Parliament who was convicted of criminal offences. We could also talk about the mysterious disappearance of Foysol Choudhury—the purging of Foysol Choudhury, as some members have suggested.
If we want to talk about the damage that has been done to our politics in a UK context, we could mention Labour Together, an institution with strong links to the Prime Minister that was caught spying on journalists and did not declare substantial amounts of money that it had received in donations. We could also look to the Conservative Party, which for at least a decade was awash with Russian money that linked right back to Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, or we could talk about Nigel Farage and his £5 million donation from a cryptocurrency billionaire. [Interruption.]
Members, let us hear the speech.
Of course, the current Prime Minister was almost immediately mired in scandal because of the clothes and gifts that he received from Lord Alli.
Two things can be true here. The SNP was the victim of a crime, but its internal governance processes and culture also failed. The crime was a matter for the police and the prosecution service, which have done their job; the SNP’s internal governance arrangements are for it. If I was a member of the SNP, I would demand a root-and-branch review.
Will the member give way?
Not quite yet, Mr Johnson.
However, I am not a member of the SNP, and it is no more my job to tell the SNP how to run that party than it would be for any member in this place to tell me how to run the Scottish Green Party.
We could have spent this afternoon talking about many different issues. The Labour Party’s proposal is the result of one thing: it is the response of sore losers who cannot deal with the fact that, for 20 years, they have failed to put a positive vision about this country to the people and have got the response that they deserved over and over again.
We could have spent this afternoon talking about the NHS, an issue that I know is close to the heart of Anas Sarwar. We could have spent it talking about the problems in our social care system or—bearing in mind the greenhouse gas emissions statement yesterday—about the Government’s failure to get a grip on the climate emergency, but we are not doing any of that.
We can reflect on the few weeks that we have been in this place since the election. I am not one who is going to spend the next five years giving the Reform Party any credit whatsoever, but it is notable that the two parties that have used First Minister’s question time to ask about and challenge the Government on matters of public policy are the Greens and Reform—the two parties that gained seats at the election. As for the parties that have played silly games at First Minister’s question time for the past few weeks—Labour and the Conservatives—well, we all know what result the public gave them last month.
Anas Sarwar and, indeed, a further number of our unionist colleagues like to regularly challenge the Scottish Government and all of us who believe in the cause of independence to focus on the day job and get on with that. Do they really think that the public believe that this topic is the day job of this Parliament? Of course they do not. On Mr Sarwar’s specific criticism that an element of the Green amendment plays constitutional politics, I believe that the regulation of political parties and the laws that govern them should be the day job of this Parliament. Political parties have to register separately to run in Scotland. It is only logical that this Parliament, which has responsibility for elections and the franchise, should also have responsibility for that area of electoral law.
However, there is an obvious conflict of interest in having an inquiry along the lines of what the Labour Party has put forward, and I suggest that it is very much a case of throwing stones from inside glass houses. I was asked about that in the media this morning, and I used examples from other areas of public life. If one old firm team was accused of wrongdoing, we would not appoint the other one—or any club in Scotland—to an inquiry into that. We would appoint the governing institutions. In the case of political parties, the governing institutions include the Electoral Commission. There are serious questions about whether the Electoral Commission has the powers that it needs in order to act. There are also serious questions about whether it has the culture that it needs to oversee political parties in this place.
The Green proposal focuses on restoring public trust in this institution. Most importantly, the Greens have proposed an independent review, along the lines of that proposed in recent weeks by Professor James Mitchell, Transparency International and others. The review that we have proposed would apply to all political parties, not just one, to remove the element of conflict of interest.
Mr Sarwar, rightly, puts the challenge to the SNP, but I put it to him and to all parties in this place that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. The Greens have nothing to hide or fear about an independent review of political party financial arrangements; neither has the Labour Party, I hope. We believe that an independent review that looks at all political parties and the governing arrangements, rules and regulations that apply to all of us is the appropriate way forward. We would like such a review to look into issues such as the influence that is wielded by wealthy donors and dark-money organisations—those who do not declare their own funding before giving to political parties and working with them. According to a poll that was published, I believe, only this morning or yesterday, 83 per cent of the public across the UK believe that wealthy individuals wield influence over political parties through the money that they direct towards them. We will restore trust in politics by addressing such issues, which the public believes are seriously undermining our democracy.
There are serious risks to our democracy, whether in Scotland or UK wide. Foreign interference is a serious risk, and donations to political parties are one way in which foreign interference has wormed its way into our system. The Rycroft review made that clear. The previous UK Conservative Government would not act on it—because, I suggest, of the Russian money that I referenced. To its credit, the current UK Labour Government is entertaining proposals to deal with the issue. [Interruption.] Mr Sarwar is missing the limited praise that I am giving the UK Government, because of his conversation with other members. The UK Labour Government seems to be willing to get a grip on some of the issues, and I give it credit for that.
Transparency in our politics is important. I have mentioned the role of the Electoral Commission. Members across the Parliament will appreciate why the Greens in particular are frustrated with the Electoral Commission over its failure to act on issues that are undermining the legitimacy of our politics.
In closing, I go back to what James Mitchell proposed. I am not claiming that he endorses the Green proposals but, clearly, what we have proposed is closer to his calls than anything else that has been offered today. He said:
“we need to make sure that what is done results in improved outcomes, enhances transparency and improves internal party governance … not an opportunity for grandstanding, obfuscation and hyper-partisanship.”
The Greens do not want a review for its own sake. The 2025 social attitudes survey showed that less than half the Scottish public trust the Scottish Government, and that far fewer trust the UK Government. That lack of trust is easy to exploit. We see that in the other major story in Scotland this week. That is more relevant to us all than the situation inside the SNP.
The Greens do not want to waste public money on a hyperpartisan parliamentary inquiry with no clear objective other than bashing the Scottish Government. I urge members to support instead the Green proposal. We can produce something positive from the mess. In and of itself, the proposal will not restore trust in politics, but it takes an important step towards doing so. This afternoon, we can do something for the public, not just advance our party interests. I urge members to support the Green proposal.
I move amendment S7M-00294.2, to leave out from “agrees” to end and insert:
“believes there is a need to restore public trust in politics following multiple recent financial scandals, including those uncovered by Operation Branchform; further believes that an independent review into party political finances would go some way towards restoring this trust; believes that, to avoid this becoming a nakedly partisan process, it should be independently led rather than conducted by parliamentary committee, and that its remit must apply to the funding of all political parties; recognises wider concerns about the role of money in politics, including the scale of donations by extremely wealthy individuals, and the influence of organisations that refuse to disclose their funding sources, and calls for the devolution of power over the regulation of political parties and their funding to allow for the implementation of any recommendations of the independent review that would require legislative change.”
15:54
I begin by praising Police Scotland and the National Crime Agency, which delivered justice in the face of inappropriate political meddling.
I remember when the Scottish National Party chief executive attacked Police Scotland. Peter Murrell’s successor described its inquiry as a “wild goose chase” and a “grotesque circus”, even offering a £5 bet that no charges would be brought. Well, charges were brought and Peter Murrell admitted his guilt and is behind bars, awaiting sentencing. However, this debate is not about one high-profile criminal; it is about public trust in Scottish politics, which has been dominated by one party for decades.
As a journalist, I investigated organised crime—organisations that are ruthless towards their rivals and even more ruthless with their own people when they step out of line. There is secrecy, dishonesty, intimidation, intolerance and power in the hands of one small group—toe the line or else. There are clear parallels with the culture of the SNP.
The member bemoans the fact that the SNP has dominated political life for the past 20 years. Will he reflect on the fact that that is because we have won five Scottish Parliament elections in a row? His party has lost every single Scottish Parliament election that has ever been contested.
Arrogance, too—unbelievable.
SNP members might not like that characterisation and the comparison with organised crime, but they should listen to senior people on their own side who dared to ask questions, such as the former MP Joanna Cherry or former treasurer Douglas Chapman.
“Nothing to see here,” they were warned by Nicola Sturgeon, and “Everything is fine,” they were assured by John Swinney, but everything was not fine—far from it. For at least 12 years, Peter Murrell was stealing from under their noses; more than 1,000 items were bought with stolen money: jewellery, watches, homeware, toiletries, electronics and Montblanc pens that cost hundreds of pounds, just like the pens that Nicola Sturgeon flaunted right here when she was First Minister. Who on earth spends three grand on a salt and pepper set made out of crystal?
Then of course there is the 125-grand camper van that Nicola Sturgeon says she did not see. It is 24 feet long, 10 feet high and weighs 3.5 tonnes, but Nicola Sturgeon did not see it, just as she and John Swinney did not see anything remotely suspicious year after year after year.
Peter Murrell stole at least £400,000 to bankroll his and his wife’s luxury lifestyle. In a plea deal, £60,000-worth of goods were wiped from Murrell’s charge sheet—a plea deal crucially timed for just after the Scottish election. Did Peter Murrell discuss that with Nicola Sturgeon when they met at Easter time? Did the police agree with the Crown Office to prosecute just one person? Those are some of the many questions for an inquiry. Here is another: did Peter Murrell steal taxpayers’ money? We still do not know the answer to that.
During this extraordinary SNP scandal, journalists also suffered bully-boy tactics. Hannah Rodger, John Ferguson, Georgia Edkins and others were lied to and smeared. They were told that they were wrong when they were right. Their professional reputations were maliciously denigrated.
We saw the same tactics during the Alex Salmond scandal. The SNP used every dirty trick to destroy the man who delivered it an independence referendum. It continues to attack him as he lies in his grave.
What of the young victims whose party protected the predatory sex offender Jordan Linden?
This week, allegations have resurfaced about a businessman handing Peter Murrell £50,000 to secure a safe Westminster seat for a relative. Now the SNP has been found guilty of contempt of court relating to the Alex Salmond case.
The sleaze keeps rising, and the stench gets worse, yet John Swinney sticks his head in the sand. His response to all this, as we heard from Jamie Hepburn there, is to hide behind the election result. He reckons that that gives him a free pass: telling the truth does not matter, attacking the police and journalists does not matter and silencing whistleblowers and crime victims does not matter. He preaches transparency, candour and respect, yet he practises secrecy, dishonesty and disrespect. He pontificates about misinformation while his party runs a breathtaking campaign of misinformation about renewable energy. They reckon they will get away with it, because they always do.
The Green amendment seeks to help the SNP by muddying the waters and diverting attention. Ross Greer is running to the rescue of John Swinney, who he calls his work dad—the same Mr Greer who thanked Peter Murrell for giving him a hefty pay rise, then deleted the tweet.
The SNP’s rank of taxpayer-funded advisers will tell it to brazen it out, but public trust in Scottish politics is in freefall. Just weeks ago, one in two Scots did not exercise their right to vote. Today, we have a collective duty to do the right thing and back a proper inquiry, because if MSPs refuse to do so, Scotland’s MPs surely must.
I move amendment S7M-00294.3, to insert at end:
“; believes that public trust is undermined when legitimate questions go unanswered; notes the conviction of Peter Murrell following Operation Branchform; believes that scrutiny is essential to democratic accountability, and calls for any independent inquiry to establish what lessons must be learned from this scandal and what reforms are required to restore public confidence in Scottish politics.”
I call Amanda Bland, who is making their first contribution.
16:01
Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I very much look forward to working with you and all my colleagues in the Parliament; I wish you all the best of health. May we all serve Scotland with integrity, compassion, justice and wisdom. To the constituents whom I represent in Central Scotland and Lothians West—I will serve you well.
I deliver my first speech with a sense of irony, because, as I arrive in the Parliament and am given my portfolio as justice spokesperson for Reform UK Scotland, the biggest political scandal in Scottish history unravels and the former chief executive of the SNP, Peter Murrell, pleads guilty to embezzling £400,000 from SNP funds. You could not make it up.
I take my duties as a regional MSP and justice spokesperson seriously. Many people know me as a primary teacher, but, before teaching, I was a police officer. I specialised in child protection and worked on incredibly complex, disturbing and serious cases in which children were abused and neglected, and, sadly, some died at the hands of their abusers. I have a deep respect for the public sector workers who serve us with grace and dignity and who sacrifice themselves and their families to serve their communities. I thank them for their service.
However, we must acknowledge that the very services that are designed to protect the most vulnerable sometimes fail to do so. The recent publication of the learning review into the family C case outlines a deeply disturbing case of systematic child abuse in a family unit that took place in Glasgow. The experiences described in the report reflect the very worst outcome when systems that are designed to protect the most vulnerable fail to function as they should. Key strategies for improvement for the Scottish Government to consider have been highlighted in the report, and I look forward to working with the Government on delivering those improvements.
I reflect on the tragic deaths of the children Victoria Climbié, who died on 25 February 2000, and Peter Connelly, known as baby P, who succumbed to his injuries on 3 August 2007. Those young, innocent lives were lost to abuse, which led to serious case reviews in England and lessons to be learned. After the death of baby Peter, I, along with other multi-agency professionals, delivered high-level training, based on the recommendations in the Lord Laming report, to front-line professionals, in order to prevent anything like those cases from ever happening again. Yet, child abuse continues and organisations that are designed to protect do not deliver, and here we are again.
In Scotland, we have key pieces of legislation, guidance and frameworks for protecting our children: the Children (Scotland) Act 1995, the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007, the “National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland 2021” and the getting it right for every child—GIRFEC—guidance, to name but a few. My point, as justice spokesperson for Reform UK Scotland, is that we have the legislation, guidelines and frameworks in place to protect our children; however, the systematic abuse of children and young people continues in our communities. We must do better.
Domestic abuse and child abuse are often intrinsically linked. As an MSP, I have visited amazing domestic abuse charities. Many charities provide services to victims of crime, which are a lifeline for them. Statutory agencies depend on those charities as part of the wider referral systems to keep victims safe, and individuals rely on the ability to self-refer to try to protect themselves. However, those charities, despite having huge waiting lists, are left to seek funding each year through a variety of means, not knowing from one year to the next whether they can keep their doors open. One manager said to me:
“On Christmas eve, we didn’t know if we would have to shut our doors for good. Our funding streams are unpredictable and fragile.”
We need to do better.
Criminals do not work in isolation; they are in our communities, workplaces and homes—they are among us. Criminals rely on individuals failing to act; on failing systems and smokescreens; on whistleblowers being silenced; and on coercion and control of others.
As a police officer, my job was to shine a torch in some very dark corners. My job was to hear hard-to-hear information and not to turn away but, rather, to act, investigate, arrest, interview and charge, and to work towards a successful conviction.
As a teacher, my job was to educate and nurture young minds, to care for and be part of a wider community and to raise children in a safe, happy and secure environment. All those skills I bring to the table. As an MSP, I will be shining a torch in dark corners. I will not turn away when the darkness disturbs me. I will not be deterred. I will not be silenced. I will work with others who work with me. I will challenge and question the Government. I will remain resilient, because people rely on those who are in positions of authority to do better. We must, we can and we will do better.
16:08
I pay tribute to Amanda Bland for her first contribution in the chamber—I will listen closely to her future contributions as we progress through this session of Parliament.
I am a bleeding-heart liberal. I believe that the matter that we are debating today is a personal tragedy, and I understand the pain that many people feel. I understand that Nicola Sturgeon is hurting deeply with the breakdown of her marriage. I understand that it is a personal tragedy for party members in the SNP who worked really hard to raise a lot of money for a cause that they deeply believe in. I understand all of that. In fact, it is a personal tragedy for Peter Murrell, as well—he is in prison now; we do not know what is going to happen next. It is a personal tragedy for all those people and, in the circumstances, we need to think of those personal tragedies.
However, that is not what today’s debate is about. It is about professional failure—it is professional failure, over a large number of years—and the professional failure of Nicola Sturgeon, as leader of the SNP and the First Minister of the country. As SNP leader, she had fiduciary duties—I know, because I was leader of my party for 10 years and I took those duties incredibly seriously. Irrespective of the personal tragedy, therefore, this is first and foremost a professional issue.
Following all this, we cannot allow the matter to be swept under the carpet. What we are seeing from the SNP is an attempt to dampen it down, make it go away, ignore it and move on. In my advice surgeries over the weekend, this was the first and only thing that people wanted to talk about. This has cut through. People understand that the matter is serious, and they understand that it is incredibly impactful on Scottish politics.
The SNP should take this seriously, because, as well as affecting the body politic, first and foremost, it is affecting the SNP. There have been a number of failings, including the lack of curiosity that we have heard about repeatedly, as well as—this is more central to the operation of Government—the inability to listen. The inability to listen transfers across into how this country is governed. There was an inability to listen to people who protested, who raised the alarm and who raised concerns. We see that concerns were raised well before any police inquiry and that they were raised by people who were senior and respected members of the SNP. However, those people were dismissed and ignored. Frank Ross, who is the former provost of Edinburgh, Allison Graham, Cynthia Guthrie and a former competitor of mine, Douglas Chapman, who was the member of Parliament for Dunfermline and West Fife and who was the party treasurer—all of them resigned. All of them raised the alarm.
We understand that the issue at the beginning was about whether the £600,000 was spent on independence or elsewhere, but all those people at the centre of it wanted to see the books. They were denied the opportunity to do their duties and to carry out their functions. If that is how they were treated by the First Minister of the country, that is surely a matter for the Parliament to inquire about. That is surely our responsibility, because it has massive ramifications.
In recent days, Douglas Chapman has not said—
Will the member take an intervention?
Yes, I will take an intervention.
I thank the member for giving way. In 2005, the Lib Dems accepted £2.4 million from Michael Brown. That money turned out to be stolen money that he had obtained through fraud. The Lib Dems refused to repay that money, because they said that they accepted it in good faith. Why does the member stand here and demand an inquiry, given that the SNP was a victim of fraud, while the Lib Dems were beneficiaries of fraud and refused to help the victims?
This is why the SNP is in more serious trouble than we thought. Its first reaction to any criticism of its internal affairs is to throw the muck around and blame everybody else. [Interruption.] We addressed that issue at the time. I am getting irritated now, because the SNP needs to understand that this is about the integrity of politics in Scotland as a whole—right here, right now. This is what people in Scotland are talking about, and the SNP is deaf to that.
If the SNP will not listen to me, it should listen to Douglas Chapman, because he is a strong supporter of independence. I do not know whether he continues to be a member of the SNP—I would not blame him if he was not. He said recently that
“senior people in the SNP failed to support the wishes of the SNP membership”,
and he pointed directly to John Swinney. He looked back over all that time and recognised that the leaders of his party, who are the leaders of this country, failed in their responsibilities.
For all those reasons, we should have an inquiry. Actually, I think that an inquiry is in the SNP’s interests, because it needs to cleanse before it can progress. We all know that; we have all made mistakes as political parties, but we can progress only if we acknowledge, clean up, inquire and have the sunlight running right into our party. That is the only way to move forward.
It is in the SNP’s own interest to have an inquiry. I know that the SNP does not like that, because it believes that we will stitch it up. I understand that. However, the SNP is not even attempting to do anything else. It just wants to shut this down, but it cannot afford to shut it down.
I deeply regret that Ross Greer’s approach to this is the same as Alan Brown’s approach—
Mr Rennie, you need to conclude.
I am going to conclude. The approach is to spread the blame around. Let us just reflect for a moment. This is what the public expect—if they believe that the Parliament will sweep the matter under the carpet, their faith in Scottish politics will diminish further. For goodness’ sake, let us listen to what people are saying.
We move to the open debate.
16:15
A month ago, the people of Aberdeen Central put their trust in me to deliver for them. Labour told Aberdonians that the election was a two-horse race. While I talked about policies designed to improve folk’s lives, the Labour candidate spent the campaign talking about the SNP and talking our city down. In the end, I won that election by 7,000 votes. Shortly after that result was announced, Anas Sarwar, who was humiliated, was forced to concede the election. His leadership led Labour to its worst-ever Holyrood result while the SNP won by a landslide.
The old Confucian maxim teaches us that there are 1,000 lessons to learn in defeat, but I regret to inform the chamber that private schoolboy Anas Sarwar has failed to learn just one. Because here we are again, with Labour choosing to ignore the priorities of the people and to play petty party politics—and, this time, it wants to do so at huge expense to the taxpayer. It is a strategy that is fundamentally built on snobbish arrogance. It failed miserably during the election campaign, and it will fail miserably again today.
Let us remind ourselves of the facts. Police detectives who have decades of experience—the cream of the crop—forensically investigated the issue for more than three and a half years. Their thorough and extensive investigation cost the taxpayer more than £2 million, but now Anas and co want to run it all back, cosplay as Columbo and charge taxpayers millions for the luxury.
I knew that Anas Sarwar thought highly of himself, but even I am shocked that, after such a heavy defeat, his ego seems to be inflating faster than a hot-air balloon. MSPs are not above the law, nor are we police detectives. Our function is to improve the lives of Scots, and Parliament’s function is to hold the Government to account. That is the job that I want to get on with, and we should let the police get on with their job and let the Scottish court system get on with its job, too.
Frankly, this smug stunt from the election losers—
Will the member give way?
It is very cute that Stephen Kerr is jumping to the rescue of his better together colleagues. However, I want to make progress with my speech, thank you very much.
This stunt gives me the opportunity to explore a catalogue of scandals from within the Labour Party that have rocked public confidence, and to outline how I believe that Labour may seek to restore the trust that it has lost. They say that you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. Peter Mandelson was known as the “Prince of Darkness” to most, but to Anas Sarwar he was known affectionately as an “old friend”. The biggest global political scandal of recent memory has led to Anas’s chum continuing to be under police investigation for misconduct in public office. We know that Mandelson failed vetting but was pushed through anyway.
Shockingly, though, Labour’s disdain for proper process is not unique to that incident. Matthew Doyle was a widely known friend of Sean Morton, a convicted paedophile, yet Doyle’s appointment to the Lords and into a plum job for life was pushed through anyway—anything goes, it seems, for Keir Starmer’s former head of press. We know, too, that links to Morton extended their tentacles into this very chamber and resulted in another huge scandal for those on the benches to my right. Those events eroded trust in politics, yet Labour still will not come clean about the facts.
Members may be wondering who on earth in their right mind would donate to a Labour Party that is up to its neck in such sickening scandal. Well, I am nothing if not prepared: more than £100,000 in donations has flowed into the accounts of Scottish Labour politicians from a shadowy think tank that was found guilty of 20 breaches of electoral law. Worse still, it spent tens of thousands of pounds hunting down and spying on journalists. I will happily give way to any Labour member right now who can tell the chamber that not a single penny of that tainted Labour Together cash was used during their election campaign. The silence is deafening.
[Made a request to intervene.]
I thank Russell Findlay for jumping up—I am sure that Anas Sarwar will buy him a pint later for trying to come to the aid of his better together chum.
I will make progress with my speech. What is in it for the donors? In the case of a convicted sex offender who donated thousands of pounds to Anas Sarwar’s leadership campaign, it was access to party events. In the case of Lord Alli, who donated more than half a million quid for designer gear, VIP tickets for new Labour Swifties and swanky penthouse flats, it was an access-all-areas pass to the protected corridors of 10 Downing Street.
For the Sarwar family, who funded the Scottish Labour Party to the tune of almost £300,000, its reward has been watching their son—the humble multimillionaire dentist—win a single constituency election in 2010. Of course, he lost three other elections in quick succession—in 2015, in 2021, and in 2026, to our very own Zen Ghani.
I appreciate that I am new to the chamber, but I cannot recall any Labour member calling for an inquiry into any of those revelations.
Could the member wind up, please?
In closing, Presiding Officer, I say that whoever steps up as Labour’s next leader when Anas Sarwar inevitably steps down and shoots off to the House of Lords would be wise to follow my lead and that of every SNP back bencher who is rolling up their sleeves, standing up for their constituents’ priorities and holding the Scottish Government to account. That is our duty as MSPs and, importantly, it is the function of this Parliament. Multimillion-pound show trials certainly are not.
Members must keep to the time that they have been allowed, particularly if they have not taken interventions. [Interruption.] Could the members on the Conservative benches please allow the Presiding Officer to be heard? I call Daniel Johnson.
16:22
These are serious matters and there are serious questions. Willie Rennie was absolutely right. I offer this advice to the previous speaker: ad hominem attacks and whataboutery expose the weakness of the SNP’s arguments, if that is all that they can speak to.
We have to ask ourselves two simple questions. Do we know all the facts with regard to these events, and is there public interest in having those facts? We do not have all the facts. What is more, there is a clear public interest because, despite Jamie Hepburn’s attempts to suggest otherwise, the conduct of political parties—especially the party of government—has a direct bearing on how public power is exercised in this country. That is why it is important.
This would be of public interest regardless of what organisation it was about. If there was embezzlement of any size or scale in any organisation, questions would be asked in Parliament.
We have a separation of duties through legal entities, because that is a suitable thing to do so that we can organise ourselves. As a consequence of that, we have requirements to disclose and provide information, whether we are running a company, a charity or, indeed, an arm’s-length body. There has been a clear failure of oversight in that regard. In addition, there are questions of conflicts of interest, because—let us be clear—the chief executive and the party leader were married.
Political parties are not just private entities or associations; they have wider public duties and roles. We are all here because we were selected by political parties. Political parties fundraise, develop policies and co-ordinate political activity, and therefore their conduct has a bearing on the public more widely. Clearly, there has been a breakdown in this particular party in this circumstance, which is why the resignations occurred of individuals who, until that point, had been elected representatives and loyal members of their party.
I turn to some of the specific points that have been made. On the points about the prior investigations, let us be clear that, yes, the police did sterling work—they are dedicated and professional—but they are investigating to a different threshold and scope from that of the wider public interest. The criminal threshold is much higher than the broader threshold that we need to look at, and the scope of the criminal law is very different from that of the wider public interest.
Let us also be clear that the issue is about the actions of people holding public office, and some of the most powerful offices in the land. Actions and conduct that occur in one space are not discrete from those in another. It is not good enough to say that it was with regard to people’s party responsibilities that information was withheld, statements were misrepresented or the truth was not forthcoming. We expect people who hold public office to act with integrity and transparency in all their affairs. The reality is that there are serious questions about whether things were misstated and misrepresented while people were in public office. Events occurred, but there were denials that there was anything to see just a matter of weeks before police investigations were launched.
Members do not have to take my word for it. Roger Mullin, one of the key people concerned, who subsequently resigned, said that Nicola Sturgeon’s statement to the SNP national executive committee was “ridiculous”. He went on:
“she was the accountable officer and ultimately responsible. But she turned her face against allowing any proper scrutiny. The way in which she behaved throughout the period was entirely inappropriate from a governance point of view.”
That was Roger Mullin, a former MP and member of the SNP NEC, making very serious allegations, which I think raise wider questions.
Ultimately, we have wider questions about the separation of power and the exercise of power. The timeline with regard to the court proceedings and the information provided by the Lord Advocate to the Government are serious issues that cannot be investigated or properly examined, in the way that we need to in order to satisfy ourselves and the public, through criminal investigations or investigations by the Electoral Commission or any of the other bodies that have been wheeled out.
Above all else, we need to consider the Nolan principles, which I invoked earlier, of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. Are we all confident that, in the events that occurred, those principles were upheld by people who held Government office? If not, we need an inquiry.
16:27
The irony—the absolute irony—of Labour lodging this motion on public trust. Two years ago, people in Scotland voted Labour. They voted for the promise of change, and what did they get? More of the same—only worse, actually. That is what erodes public trust. Promising to protect the vulnerable but then cutting winter fuel allowance and disability payments—that is what erodes public trust. Promising to end sleaze and then taking freebies, clothes, tickets and travel, left, right and centre—
Will the member take an intervention?
I am delighted to take an intervention.
Does the member not consider that stealing at least £400,000 of money donated by her party’s members and by others for an independence referendum is a gross breach of public trust?
The member tries to distract from the fact that her Government immediately took clothes, travel and tickets, left, right and centre. Labour promised to make society fairer, but then it failed to tax billionaires and instead created a tax on jobs.
That is not true.
It is true.
That is what erodes trust. Telling people that you are going to create growth and prosperity but having no plan to do it and failing to use any of the—
That sounds like the SNP.
Sorry—I thought that the member was making an intervention, but it is just heckling. I will make a note of that.
If members wish to make interventions, they know how to do so. Mr Kerr, could you press your button when you want to make an intervention? It helps with broadcasting.
I call Mr Kerr.
Is Kate Campbell giving way?
I was not sure whether the member was just heckling or seeking to make an intervention. He never showed up on the screen, so I assumed that it was not an intervention. I will continue if that is the case.
No, that is not how it works. Will Kate Campbell give way?
I will give way.
You do not have to press a button and appear on the screen.
Yes, you do.
You do not have to press a button, for goodness’ sake—you just intervene. [Interruption.] My intervention on Kate Campbell is simply this: is she claiming that the Labour Party has a monopoly on broken election promises? Has she examined the SNP’s record in relation to election promises? Has she considered that broken trust might have a lot to do with the fact that the party that Kate Campbell represents has governed in Scotland for the past 19 years?
The SNP’s record has been very clearly demonstrated by the fact that we won 58 seats in the recent election. The nearest party—[Interruption.]
Deputy Presiding Officer, they do not stop talking.
This is a Parliament.
There should be no interruptions while the member has the floor.
I can honestly say that the behaviour in this chamber is astonishing. I came from a council, and I thought that it was rowdy in council chambers. In this chamber, we are making decisions about people’s lives and I find this behaviour embarrassing.
It is called debating!
It is not debating. Debating means allowing people to speak. I will make progress.
Telling people that you will create growth and prosperity but having no plan to do so, and failing to use any of the levers at your disposal to improve our economy or reduce the cost of living and refusing to devolve those powers to a Scottish Government that stands ready and willing to use them—that is what erodes public trust. Most of us have spent the past year or so speaking to voters, and what have they told us? They are worried about the cost of living crisis and about the impact of global events on their lives. They absolutely hate to see politicians who seem more interested in slinging mud than making the lives of ordinary people better, and they want politicians who take those concerns seriously.
The SNP won the election, which we had no business winning after 19 years in government, and we won it by a landslide because we presented plans to make people’s lives better. We showed people that we care about the same things as they do. What happened to Labour and the Tories in that election? They were absolutely decimated.
Will the member take an intervention?
No, I will make progress.
Those parties did not listen or come up with plans to make lives better. They thought that they could just bandy around words like “secretive” and “dishonesty” and that that would somehow damage the SNP. We can see how that went for them.
Will the member take an intervention?
No, I will make progress.
Just to ensure that everyone knows how catastrophically it has failed to learn the lessons of that defeat, Labour has, for its very first debate—its first opportunity to bring something to this chamber and to set out its priorities—lodged this motion. There is nothing in it about the party’s vision for a better Scotland or how to improve the lives of the people it represents; it is just an opportunity to throw rocks at the SNP because we won the election and Labour lost it. It is so utterly depressing. Labour might think that it is clever to drag out lengthy debates on Peter Murrell, because it thinks that it will somehow harm the SNP, but it has failed to understand that it does not diminish the SNP. Our members and supporters understand that the SNP was the victim of this crime. This debate diminishes Labour. Sadly, as a consequence of the personal attacks, the grasping at straws and insinuation, it also diminishes our politics. It is off-putting to ordinary people and makes politicians seem out of touch.
Will the member give way?
The member is winding up.
That is the main cause of the loss of trust in politics, which we should all care about, because a loss of trust causes a loss of participation, and, if the people do not participate, democracy will fail. There might be those—particularly on the populist right—who want that outcome. However, I cannot believe that there are not decent members on the Labour benches who are not cringing inside at Anas Sarwar’s and Jackie Baillie’s approach. It is unfathomable that, to date, there has been no leadership challenge in their party, because this is so embarrassing for Labour. It lost the election badly because, in place of having policies, Labour just has a visceral hatred of the SNP. That approach was roundly rejected at the ballot box.
We should be focusing on how we make Scotland work for everyone. [Interruption.]
Could the member be heard, please? There must be no interruptions.
Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer.
We should be focusing on how we make Scotland work for everyone. Opposition MSPs and SNP back benchers actually have the same job. We all need to roll up our sleeves, get stuck in and work across parties. Yes, we should all challenge the Scottish Government, but we should do so robustly and constructively to improve legislation, to ensure that ministers have considered the impact of their plans and to flag any outcomes that we might be worried about by making representations on behalf of the communities that we represent. Government ministers must listen to our concerns, reflect on them and take them in good faith. When we disagree with one another, we should challenge one another, but we should do so on the substance of a debate, on a point of principle or on a policy that we think the other person is getting wrong. This use of negative language and vague terms to insinuate some sort of blame or wrongdoing is, frankly, just grim, and it is not restoring anything.
Can the member wind up, please?
I will do.
In its briefing, openDemocracy sets out some helpful steps that we can take to restore trust. It asks us to include honesty, explain the reasons behind decisions, be respectful and put the public interest first. Democracy matters. Trust matters. I hope that we can spend the next five years restoring that trust by getting policies right. However, sadly, I do not think that this debate will contribute to that.
16:36
Well, what an extraordinary contribution that was. Kate Campbell got one thing right—only one—when she said that the SNP had no right to win after 19 years in government. She got that right.
I did not think that I would be thanking Anas Sarwar any time soon, but I thank him for bringing this debate to the chamber. It is absolutely right that we should be discussing this, but all that we have heard from SNP members so far is deflection and lashing out. They have not addressed the problem.
The details and the scale of the Murrell embezzlement are shocking. This whole affair is a scandal, and it cuts right to the heart of public trust in politics. People have a right to think that they can trust politicians and political parties. When SNP supporters donated money in good faith, they should have expected that it would be handled properly, but it was not.
We know what Peter Murrell has been convicted of, but the question before this Parliament is not about the criminal case. The real question is, how on earth was this allowed to happen? How could someone so central to the running of the governing party abuse that position over such a long period? Where were the checks? Where was the scrutiny? Where was the accountability?
Let us be frank: this affair did not emerge from nowhere. For years, there were concerns about transparency and about finances. There were concerns about money that had been raised for one purpose being used for another, and there were questions about how that money was being handled.
Instead of openness, we have had defensiveness. Instead of answers, there was evasion. Instead of proper accountability, there was the instinct—which we always see from the SNP—to circle the wagons and hope that the questions would go away. However, the questions have not gone away; they have only grown louder. Who knew what and when? Why were warning signs not acted on sooner? Why were legitimate concerns brushed aside? What does it say about the culture at the top of the SNP that such a serious breach of trust could occur under the noses of its leaders for so long?
When the party of government is engulfed in a scandal of this scale, it drags down confidence in politics as a whole. It tells the public that those who demand trust from others are not always willing to submit themselves to the same standard. That is corrosive to democracy itself.
No, this cannot be brushed aside with the claim that the courts have done their job, so everyone else should just move on. Criminal liability is one thing; political accountability is another. This Parliament has a duty to ask the questions that the public are asking. How did this happen? What failures made it possible? What reforms are now needed to ensure that it can never happen again?
There are questions for the Electoral Commission, the Crown Office, the police and the Lord Advocate. If the SNP has nothing to hide, it should welcome that scrutiny. If the party is serious about restoring trust, it should stop blocking, it should stop deflecting and it should start answering. The Murrell affair is not just about one man’s criminal conduct; it is about a system that failed, a culture that closed ranks and a public who deserve far better from those who seek to govern.
Nicola Sturgeon has not been charged with anything in relation to the scandal, but we have to ask—and this could be a question for an inquiry—what she actually meant when she told members of her party’s NEC that they should “be very careful” when questioning the finances and that there was nothing to see, although there was?
In the previous session, I introduced a bill that would have given us a system of recall. It fell because the SNP voted against it. Giving voters the ability to remove errant MSPs would have gone some way towards restoring trust in politics. The First Minister has made some encouraging noises about recall in the past couple of weeks when I have asked him about it, as did Alex Cole-Hamilton. We need the Government to get behind that, because we cannot do it without the Government and we need to get recall on to the statute book. At the end of the day, we must do something to restore trust in politics. The Government needs to have a rethink and should back the motion.
16:41
This is my first speech since I was re-elected by my constituents in Clydebank, Milngavie and Bearsden north. I am extremely humbled to have again received the trust of the electorate. It is a trust placed in me that I have never taken for granted and never will, and I thank them for sending me back to our national Parliament to represent them. I work hard in recognition of that trust, motivated especially by the fact that I represent the constituency where I was born and raised and still live.
Deputy Presiding Officer, I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your election to the role, and I wish you well in it.
Turning now to the debate, I will say something that I do not think I have ever said before—I think that the Labour Party is correct. Yes, we should debate public trust in Scottish politics and in politics in general. We need to, because we are kidding ourselves if we do not accept that trust in politicians is at a very low level. It is absolutely correct that we address that in debate and in our actions as politicians.
To do that justice, we need the widest possible discussion, not one framed in the narrow partisan terms that are being presented to us today by the Labour Party. As someone recently said,
“This is above party politics—it’s a matter of trust and integrity in public life.”
Unfortunately, that was Mr Sarwar. I can only say that that was just a soundbite, which did not really mean much. Instead of the approach that is needed to achieve any meaningful discourse, we have a motion that is steeped in political opportunism and dripping with hypocrisy.
I actually agree with the substance of what the member is saying in relation to rebuilding trust. I think, however, that she misheard the opening speech and misreads the motion. The questions that need to be asked and answered are not on the SNP’s internal governance, which of course is a matter for the SNP. Surely, however, the member accepts that there are legitimate questions to be asked of the Lord Advocate, Police Scotland, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, the Electoral Commission, the Scottish Legal Aid Board, HMRC and those who administer public funds. Surely she can accept that they are legitimate questions and that it is the Parliament’s job to ask them.
When the member gets his own party scrutiny in order, I will probably take him seriously but, at the moment, I do not. It is the same tired attacks and opportunism that resulted in Labour’s disastrous election result. The commentator Gerry Hassan has said that Labour’s vote share is
“the lowest in the party’s history”.
Even Paul Hutcheon has said that Labour is “fighting for survival”. It is absolutely desperate. Labour’s result gives us a clue as to who is contributing most to the factors that have led to the diminution in trust from the electorate. Trust has been on the wane under Labour for some time.
Will the member take an intervention?
No—I will make some progress.
The loss of trust goes all the way back to the mishandling of the financial crash, when the payment of bankers’ bonuses was more important than the ability of many to pay their household bills. It was exacerbated further by the Westminster expenses scandal, when some of Labour’s own went to prison and others were allowed to pay back what they had wrongly claimed—including thousands of pounds that were paid back by the current Labour Secretary of State for Scotland, Douglas Alexander.
Since he arrived on the scene, the only thing that Mr Sarwar has excelled at is the erosion of trust from the electorate. Just a few days ago, Ipsos polling revealed that trust in Mr Sarwar has plummeted, with only the Tory and Reform leaders at even lower levels of favourability. John Swinney was the only leader with a positive rating.
Nothing in the debate—
Will the member give way?
I am going to make progress. I will not take an intervention—I have already taken one and I am mindful that I have a lot to say.
The member making the speech must be given the floor.
Nothing in the debate today acknowledges or explains why there is a lack of trust in the integrity of Mr Sarwar and the Labour Party. As has already been said, is he one of the least trusted leaders in Scotland because of cosying up to Peter Mandelson—who was the best friend of Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted paedophile—at a time when everyone knew that Peter Mandelson had maintained contact with Epstein? We will not forget the big smiles in the picture of Sarwar and Mandelson and the quotation that
“It was great to catch up with my old friend”.
Scottish Labour appeared to maintain its murky relationship with Mandelson more widely than that—Douglas Alexander apparently credited him for getting Douglas Alexander back into Parliament and then had undeclared meetings at his behest. There are suggestions that Mandelson was allowed to hand pick Scottish Labour Westminster election candidates.
Or is the lack of trust due to the shady influence of Labour Together on the Scottish Labour Party, with Scottish candidates taking thousands of pounds in cash from it? Only one Scottish Labour MP signed the early day motion that called for an independent inquiry into Labour Together and, as far as I am aware, not one Labour MP has handed any money back. As the party’s Scottish leader, will Mr Sarwar instruct his MPs to hand the money back, and will he back the calls for an independent investigation? Will he open the books to reveal how much cash Scottish Labour took from Labour Together? On that point, I am sympathetic to the Greens’ amendment.
As one of my constituents said,
“I don’t trust a single word Sarwar and the Labour Party say.”
It will be no surprise when I reveal that my constituent is one of the women against state pension inequality—the WASPI women—who were promised compensation, then betrayed. We do not forget, either, that Labour campaign leaflet with the fabricated quotation that Mr Sarwar could not explain and which he had to apologise for.
All those things are likely to have caused the lack of trust that the electorate showed in Labour. In particular, they show the spectacular lack of awareness—[Interruption.]
The member must be heard. There must not be interruptions.
—and the arrogant denial in the motion. [Interruption.] I am sorry—I am being heckled by Mr Sarwar.
I condemn Peter Murrell for what he did. It is right that he is in prison. The police investigation did its job and a criminal has been convicted. More generally, I am up for meaningful consideration of how we try to resolve and restore trust in politics. However, anyone who is being honest knows that that is not what the Labour motion is about.
16:48
Robin McAlpine, the well-known Scottish writer, campaigner and supporter of independence, said, when addressing the SNP response to the Murrell criminal case, that
“The biggest mistake you are making is misunderstanding the nature of this scandal for the public.”
I believe that he is right. He said:
“They are sick of powerful people abusing their power. They are in a cost of living crisis and the list of luxury purchases”
that Peter Murrell stole
“is nauseating. They think you’re all at it (unfairly) and that you all have each other’s backs so justice is never done”.
The SNP does not see what is going on. That is the point that McAlpine was making. Willie Rennie made that point, too: that SNP members do not see that this is not only hurting Scottish politics but hurting their party. I have just heard that, apparently, what has happened does not diminish the SNP—I will come to that.
Let us talk of victims. There has not been much mention of the ordinary people who believe in the cause of independence and gave their own hard-earned cash—they have an interest, too.
The SNP has been in power for 20 years—that is a success—and it is going to have been in power for 25 years, which has never happened, but surely that means that there is a much greater responsibility on it to lead the way in tackling the cynicism against all of us from an electorate where almost half did not vote in the recent election. There is public distrust of all politicians. The Government has a big responsibility in that regard, which it does not seem to be waking up to.
There has not been a bigger scandal in Scottish politics in recent times. As Anas Sarwar said, people still have questions about how it was ever allowed to happen. We have seen no evidence that lessons have been learned. The SNP position has remained the same throughout: “This is our business. Keep out.” Coincidentally, that is exactly what those who questioned the accounts were told.
The SNP is opposed to a parliamentary inquiry. I have listened to some of the points that have been made about the reasons for that, but my problem is that SNP members have not made any serious suggestions about how a wider look could be taken at the questions that need to be asked.
I am genuinely trying to treat the issue with the seriousness that it deserves. We have proposed a way forward that would be independent. My question to those who are still seeking a parliamentary process is how on earth, realistically, they would expect that to avoid the naked partisanship that we saw during the inquiry into the Alex Salmond allegations in session 5, in which evidence that was given by witnesses off the record, to protect their privacy, was leaked by members of the Parliament.
I think that there are members of all parties who would take an honourable position on such a committee, but that is just my personal view.
I turn to the matter of why there are wider questions to be asked. Every newspaper, broadcaster and social media outlet is talking about the issue. It will not go away, and the fact that it will not go away is being further fuelled by the Government’s refusal to consider any scrutiny of how the situation was allowed to arise in the first place.
There can be no denying the public interest in the course of events that was reported in 2021, which involved the governing party. Therefore, it is in the public interest, and the SNP’s interests, to do more to show that those questions can be answered.
Although it is the case that an individual has now been convicted of a serious criminal offence and found responsible for the crime, the issue goes beyond that. That is where the Green amendment misses the point. I do not understand why the SNP’s appeal for donations for an independence referendum was not included in the COPFS investigation. Furthermore, it does not sit comfortably with me that it has been announced in the press today that Murrell said that he was interested in talking about a plea of guilt in March. I know the court system quite well, and I am not comfortable with the fact that it took until the second or third week in May for that plea to be discussed and negotiated and for an outcome to be reached. I have questions about that.
Jamie Hepburn is right to say that we need to be careful about questioning the independence of the Crown and the police. I totally accept that point. However, it should not be the case that we, as politicians, are never prepared to challenge when we do not feel comfortable about things that we see.
I ask members to forget that it is me or the Labour Party telling them this. I am telling them that people on the streets of Scotland and—behind closed doors—police officers are asking the same questions. It may be the case that nothing corrupt or wrong went on, but until there is an inquiry that allows such wider questions to be asked, I am afraid that, for the SNP, the issue will simply not go away. So, if you will not support our motion on the setting up of a parliamentary inquiry, give something to the general public—never mind the Labour Party—so that they can be satisfied that the questions to which I have referred can be legitimately asked.
I remind all members that they must speak through the chair.
16:54
We know that the public has always had a healthy mistrust of politicians and we know that trust is hard to gain and, once lost, is even harder to win back. We have gained that knowledge through our experience of the Westminster expenses scandal, of UK state cover-ups such as the Hillsborough disaster and the Post Office Horizon scandal, and of the failure of both Labour and Tories to abide by the ombudsman’s recommendation of compensation for the WASPI women. Those are fundamental miscarriages of justice that completely undermined public confidence in and perception of institutions, and such things become a plague on all our houses.
That said, it is obvious to me that the aim of today’s debate is not about restoring trust in Scottish politics. The concept of political parties holding an inquiry into only the SNP is clearly partisan. At least the amendment from the Greens calls for an inquiry to be independent and to cover the finances of all parties. That would involve looking at the funding of Labour Together, which Democracy for Sale found had received £730,000 in undeclared donations. Its funding was not transparent. It was an organisation that paid private investigators to dig dirt on reporters who highlighted the flow of money to Starmer’s Labour Party.
Will the member give way?
We also need to consider the outrageous donations to Reform UK from the crypto billionaires and Farage’s undeclared £5 million gift from Christopher Harborne. What was Farage’s response when asked about his non-declaration? He claimed that his phone was hacked by Russia—there was no contrition, just an attempt to muddy the water with a spurious hacking claim that experts would have cast doubt on. Harborne has donated £15 million to Reform while living abroad. So far this year, Reform has gained £9 million from those billionaires, and it tries to tell us that it is the party to protect the working classes. These are the same type of people who funded the Brexit campaign’s lies and Cambridge Analytica with dark money. If anything ever undermined public trust, it was the Brexit promises of £350 million a week for the NHS.
Of course, the Tories were funded by Russian oligarchs. If Russell Findlay wants to come in now, I will take his intervention.
I was going to ask whether the member had anything to say about the journalists in Scotland who were denigrated, attacked and told they were lying by members of his party when they were doing their hard and tenacious work to get the truth about the Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell scandal.
I genuinely do not know what the guy is talking about—
Mr Brown—
—but, obviously, people should not be denigrated. I agree that there should be no smearing à la what I was talking about in relation to Labour Together and the fact that it attempted to shut down journalists by paying private investigators. I agree with that premise.
Mr Brown, please sit down for a moment.
This issue has arisen with a number of members. I ask every member to refer to other members by their full name, please.
The reality is that there has been a police investigation into the embezzlement of funds from the SNP. A parliamentary inquiry is not going to add any more to that and would be a waste of money. It would not even satisfy the Opposition. At the moment, we have an ongoing independent public inquiry into issues around hospitals, but, instead of letting that take its course and hopefully get proper answers for the grieving families, Anas Sarwar continues to demand answers in the chamber instead of waiting for the conclusion of that public inquiry. It is always the politics first.
So that we are clear, is the member saying that Anas Sarwar has been wrong to come to this chamber and represent families whose children died in a hospital that, it is pretty well accepted, was opened before it was safe? Is he wrong to do that on behalf of his constituents in Glasgow?
The member did not listen to a word that I said. I said that, hopefully, a public inquiry will get proper answers for the grieving families. That is what I want to happen. What I am saying is that there is no point in demanding answers in the chamber before the public inquiry is concluded. The public inquiry is there to get the answers.
Again, that shows the hypocrisy in this place around the embezzlement case, which is really frustrating. It is the SNP members who are the victims of the actions of a man who abused the trust that was put in him. Admittedly, that situation demonstrated the pitfalls of allowing too much power to be given and faith to be put in one individual. However, clearly, that situation has been discovered, and there are now procedures in place for greater control of SNP finances.
The fact that auditors signed off the accounts illustrates the scale of deceit. However, this was an individual within the SNP, not an elected official accountable to the public.
The notion that plea and sentencing taking place after the election somehow altered the outcome of that election is truly pathetic. It is head-in-the-sand stuff about how bad the election was for Labour and the Tories. From chapping the doors, I can assure them that enough people knew all about camper vans, so the idea that the election was influenced to our benefit is beyond parody. Labour, whose vote share and number of seats has decreased in every election since 1999, cannot even look inwards to see its own failings. The fact is that, at Westminster, it promised change but delivered more austerity. The fact is that, on day 1, Lord Ali had bought access to number 10. Labour members ignore the fact that the party’s anti-corruption minister had to resign due to allegations of corruption.
Will the member take an intervention?
The member is winding up.
I have taken a couple of interventions, Presiding Officer.
Exactly. You have time in hand. I was saying to the member that you do not have time to take interventions, but you have time to wind up because you have additional time.
Labour’s homelessness minister had to resign for trying to falsely evict tenants. Its housing minister and Deputy Prime Minister resigned for not paying the full amount of a property tax. A Cabinet Office minister resigned because of Labour Together. Starmer has appointed 122 life peers in just two years, which is the same as the number appointed by May and Johnson combined. It is as though cash for honours had never gone away.
That is the party that thought that Mandelson was suitable to be UK ambassador to the US, despite his dodgy history and links to Epstein. Labour tried to block a parliamentary inquiry into that public appointment—a public appointment that, clearly, railroaded vetting and security procedures.
I have had one email on the suggested inquiry. Overnight, I have had 150 emails about the mandate of the independence parties. Maybe the Opposition should realise that the constitutional question is a matter of trust for voters and cannot be continually ignored by Westminster.
As per my opening remarks, trust is hard won. We can regain it only by being successful and showing leadership in public office. After 19 years, the SNP has again been given the trust of the people to form the Government. That is a reflection of past achievements. We need to go forwards and deliver on our promises. The opening weeks of the session show to me the desire for us to get on with the day job of growing the economy, continuing to bring down NHS waiting lists, delivering on infrastructure projects and always putting first the people and interests of Scotland.
17:02
Just over a month ago, the SNP won the election—who would have thought it?—and we walked alongside other parties into this chamber, fresh and ready to go. We had all spent months knocking on doors and listening to the trials, tribulations, dreams and hopes of voters. I was hopeful. I thought that there was a great opportunity. When I listened to the first speeches and early contributions to debate of many members, across the parties, I was really encouraged. We had an opportunity to work together and co-operate on things that would make a real difference to our constituents. I am still ready to do that.
Even Anas Sarwar, Labour’s current leader, spoke about focusing on what really mattered: the NHS, schools, childcare and tackling the cost of living crisis, to name a few. He seemed passionate about what people actually care about and the need to show them that the Parliament is capable of rising above party politics to deal with real issues—which I and the Scottish Government are happy to work together to tackle.
However, as they say, a week in politics is a long time, and it has taken only a couple of weeks for many members to show their true colours. Here we are today, not debating how we can work together to help people but instead creating the same old division, sowing doubt and scoring political points rather than scoring for Scotland. The people of Scotland elected us not to spend our time engaging in petty party politics but to represent them, listen to them and improve their lives. Sadly, some members seem incapable of resisting the temptation to debase the Parliament in pursuit of a political headline. They should hang their heads.
Let us be clear about the facts. Operation Branchform has already taken place. Police Scotland spent more than five years and more than £2 million of public money investigating these matters. It was not a superficial investigation.
Will the member take an intervention?
No.
It was a thorough, detailed, independent criminal investigation that ran its course, secured a conviction and ensured that justice was served. To imply now that there has somehow not been a proper investigation is disgraceful. That message is coming across. It is a slight on those who carried out that investigation and on the institutions that have already done their job.
We should be concerned about the repercussions of these solely politically driven actions and worry about the effect that the approach has on devolution. We should be worried about the willingness of many members to undermine devolution and the powers of the Parliament. An increasing number of calls for Westminster committees to interfere directly on matters that are fundamentally Scottish should concern every member of the Parliament, regardless of their party affiliation. It certainly concerns the residents that I represent.
The Scottish Affairs Committee has carried out a number of principled and worthwhile inquiries dealing with Scotland’s renewable energy sector, economic development and welfare issues. Those were serious inquiries into matters of public policy, and they are what parliamentary committees should be doing. However, the proposal that we are debating is something entirely different. This is not a serious attempt to improve governance—it is a farce.
I am genuinely concerned that some members seem perfectly willing to take a wrecking ball to the principles of devolution if they think that it might provide a short-term political advantage. That is wrong, and it is wrong regardless of which party is being targeted. All of us who care about the Parliament should resist it with all our strength, because once we establish the principle that parliamentary committees can be used to pursue political opponents, that principle will not simply disappear when it becomes inconvenient—it will be used again and again.
If members are genuinely interested in restoring trust in politics, by all means let us have a conversation about that. Let us talk about transparency, accountability and standards, but let us do it honestly and fairly, without exception or selective outrage. However, that is not what the motion is about. it is not about restoring trust or improving politics, helping a single family struggling with the cost of living, reducing a single waiting list, building a single home or creating a single job. The motion is about politics—pure and simple.
The good folk of Scotland can see that. They sent us here to help improve their lives, not indulge our grievances. For those reasons, I urge members from across the chamber to reject this nakedly shameless and shameful slop.
17:08
Like Willie Rennie, I recognise the brutality in all this and the pain that is so evident for those on the SNP benches. Relationships have been severed and careers lie in tatters.
Let me offer a word about our motivation. We are as far as it is possible to be from a Scottish Parliament election. There is no political capital to be gained, but we are a representative democracy, and this issue is everywhere. Questions about it are everywhere—in supermarkets, taxis and bus queues. I cannot believe that SNP back benchers, when they go back to their constituencies, are not receiving those questions, at volume.
Will Alex Cole-Hamilton take an intervention?
I am afraid that I do not have time. I might take one later, but I need to make progress.
We should welcome an inquiry, because it will have lessons for us all. This matter is not going away. The response of the SNP, which we have heard much of today, is only making matters worse. It is fuelling further legitimate questions that the court proceedings can no longer answer. The multimillion-pound police investigation—which Jack Middleton reminded us of, in a speech that, frankly, was beneath him—was unable to answer such questions. It is fuelling questions such as why, in the week when it was seized, the camper van was explained away by a senior SNP source as a legitimate campaign room for a Covid election. Why did another SNP spokesperson explain away the loan of £107,000 that Peter Murrell gave to the SNP in June 2021 as a personal contribution to help with cash flow just months after his partner at the time—his wife—Nicola Sturgeon, was captured on camera saying that the SNP’s finances had never been in better shape? Nobody has ever answered those questions. Who told them to say those things? For me, those statements represent the trigger point in relation to why a parliamentary inquiry is necessary. Those senior SNP sources could well be Government special advisers on the public payroll, and, if they were told to say those things, who told them and why, and what other Government resources were used in a cover-up?
The central point of the SNP amendment is that no committee of this Parliament should conduct or investigate the internal workings of another political party, because that would represent a clear conflict of interests. However, the SNP was not encumbered by concerns about that conflict of interests in 2008, when the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, chaired by Keith Brown, an SNP member, investigated the internal finances of the Labour Party as they pertained to Wendy Alexander’s leadership election, which caused her resignation. She accepted the verdict and outcome of that inquiry and resigned accordingly.
While we are on the subject of amendments, I say to the Greens that, in the past hour—
On that point, does Alex Cole-Hamilton accept that the matters that the standards committee looked into at that time pertained to what we are required to register as elected members of the Scottish Parliament? That is the difference.
The fundamental substance of that inquiry went into the internal workings and finances of the Labour Party, so there is nothing different about the two propositions.
On the subject of amendments, I say to members that, in the past hour, Professor James Mitchell has taken to social media to say that he does not agree with the Green Party amendment and regards it as a serious attempt to evade the considerable questions that the SNP still has to answer.
Willie Rennie is right: sunlight is always the best disinfectant, and there will be lessons for us all in such an inquiry about the role and training of the people who deliver the governance of our political parties. Most of those people are volunteers and do that work in good faith but do not necessarily understand the ledger book from back to front or how political parties’ funding is collected, how it is corralled, how it is spent and how it is accounted for.
Trust in politics is at an all-time low—of that there is no doubt—and I am not sure that the tone of this afternoon’s debate has helped that reality in any way whatsoever, but it needed to happen. We needed to expose the genuine questions that are still extant in the public domain and in the body politic, because there is no criminal trial and there is no further recourse for answers outside a parliamentary inquiry. We needed it to happen, because, when questions go unanswered, we risk losing the dressing room of public opinion. Our constituents, the people who send us to this place, are beginning to turn away, and that is why the Liberal Democrats will support the Labour motion at decision time.
17:13
SNP members all got the memo, or perhaps they received their speeches by email—I do not know—but there was a remarkable similarity in the tone and content of their speeches, with Jack Middleton setting a low. It was generous of Alex Cole-Hamilton to suggest that Jack Middleton’s speech might be beneath him, because we do not yet know what level Jack Middleton operates at. However, he will discover that, although robust debate on substance, policy and issues is absolutely warranted in a Parliament, personal abuse and insults directed at individual members—[Interruption.]
George Adam can laugh all that he likes, but the problem with SNP members is that, whenever anyone challenges them on anything, they consider it a personal affront and attack. They are so thin-skinned, but what Jack Middleton—[Interruption.]
George, the one thing that you cannot accuse me of is being thin-skinned.
Again, I am going to—
But—
Mr Kerr—Mr Kerr!
I remind Mr Kerr, who is an experienced parliamentarian, that he must speak through the chair. I also remind all members that they must use the full names of other members. The same thing has happened a number of times today, and I repeat that the full names of other members must be used.
I say to George Adam that he, of all people, should know that, of all the things that he might accuse me as being, I am not thin-skinned, but what we heard from Jack Middleton and others was an orchestrated, spad-organised attack on the character of a particular member of the Parliament.
It is not about riding to the rescue of anybody. I do not think that I need to rescue the individual concerned—I am sure that he is more than capable of looking after himself—but I do ride to the rescue of the reputation of the Parliament, the nature of the debates that we have in this place and the standards to which we should subscribe.
To be frank, beyond the issue of the memo, or shared speech, that was put among the SNP MSPs for this afternoon’s debate, I would say that they would rate nil points—nil points!—on self-awareness. On self-awareness, ladies and gentlemen—nil points. They talk about other parties. Where have they been living for the past 20 years?
Will the member take an intervention?
I am happy to give way to Kate Campbell, who quite rightly pointed out what a disgrace it is that they are sitting where they sit. Carry on.
I thank the member for taking an intervention. He mentions self-awareness. In many of the conversations that we have had on doorsteps, people have said that their concerns about politicians are that they are very un-self-aware; that they come to the chamber and just shout at other people; and that they do not seem to be concerned about their constituents’ worries—rather, they are just concerned about heckling other members. Would he recognise any of that behaviour in himself?
I was not elected to serve in the reading room of a library. We were elected to a Parliament that should have robust debate. The member needs to realise that that is what Parliament is all about.
I say again to SNP members that, on self-awareness, they rate nil points. Pauline McNeill was right: we have heard time and again from the SNP today, “We can do what we like because we’ve won elections and we are the masters.”
Well, that is a poor tone, because with the privilege of service in the Parliament, and the greater privilege of serving as Scotland’s Government, there are obligations. There are honourable obligations, because “honourable” is a word. I know that we ruled out the word “honourable” earlier—I think it was Stephen Gethins who used that word, and he was corrected by the Presiding Officer. However, I say to the Minister for Parliamentary Business that to ascribe to any of us less-than-honourable motives as we conduct parliamentary business or sit on committees is beneath the ministerial office that he holds.
The SNP needs to know that the public are not fools. That is the first thing that we should recognise in this debate. The public can handle bad news. They can handle disappointment and difficult choices. What they cannot tolerate indefinitely is a suspicion that they are not being told the whole truth. That, in my view, is why trust in Scottish politics has fallen so far.
Will the member take an intervention?
I am tempted to take an intervention from my fellow clansman—[Laughter.] Carry on.
I thank Stephen Kerr. It is just to agree that the public are not fools, which is why they elected the SNP back to the Parliament as the Government to focus on the cost of living, on tackling the issues in the NHS and on performing for the people in driving up economic growth.
The member has just made my point for me. I have just finished highlighting the very fact that, while members can stand up and say, “Well, we won the election; we can do what we like—and, by the way, we know all about what the priorities of the people of Scotland are”, there are 129 MSPs in the Parliament, and we represent all strands of view and opinion. Members on the SNP side of the chamber may have the privilege of forming the Government. Our job as members of this Parliament, regardless of party, is to hold the governing party, and ministers, to account.
The problem in Scottish politics is not that the people of Scotland have suddenly become cynical about politics but that too many people have concluded that politics in Scotland has become less transparent, less accountable, less willing to answer legitimate questions and more secretive. That is why there needs to be an inquiry on the issue. That is why Professor James Mitchell is correct. This is a serious political scandal—perhaps the biggest of the devolution era—which is undermining the confidence of the people of Scotland in politics. When they are not treating us all with disdain, they are laughing about the state of our politics, as exemplified by the conduct of the SNP in Government and how the SNP has governed its own party affairs. The people ask themselves how they can trust a party with more than £60 billion of public expenditure when it cannot account for £600,000 of its own members’ money and when it has just had someone convicted of serious fraud of £400,000.
I need to conclude, so let me simply say this: imagine a Government in which ministers were recently found in contempt of court because of their secrecy. Imagine if that was a Labour Government or a Conservative Government. No, this is an SNP Government. Action was brought to the Court of Session, no less, by the Scottish Information Commissioner. Just think about that. The Government that was responsible for freedom of information legislation was found guilty by Scotland’s highest court because it failed in its obligations under that legislation. That goes directly to the issue of trust.
The people join the dots—the scandal of what is happening in our maternity services, as highlighted on the front page of The Herald; the scandals at Historic Environment Scotland; and the scandal of how whistleblowers are treated in Scotland’s public services—
The member must wind up.
All those issues are connected—
The member must bring his remarks to a close.
—and they are connected with a lack of fundamental honesty in our politics, as exemplified—
I will have to cut the microphone if the member does not conclude.
—by the conduct of these ministers.
17:22
I beg your pardon, Presiding Officer. I was just discovering how much some speeches improve when I remove my hearing aids.
Sadly, today, we have very much seen the debate that I expected. There has been some opportunistic partisanship dressed up as principled concern, and there has been a touch too much defensiveness on the other side, too. We should all recognise Peter Murrell’s crimes as his crimes, committed against the SNP, which has been betrayed both professionally and personally in a deplorable way. The party will feel pain about that, and it has a right to feel angry about it. That is very different from the view of Anas Sarwar, who stated in his opening speech that the SNP should own the shame of those crimes. I wonder whether he thinks that the victim owns the shame of any other type of crime. I thought that we all condemned that attitude.
SNP members have a right to feel anger, not shame, at the crimes committed against them, and they have a right to know that their party has put its finances and its governance on a sound footing; however, that is ultimately a matter for them. Throughout the reporting and debating of the scandal, there have been regular insinuations that the Scottish Government is implicated or that Peter Murrell embezzled money from the Government. If anyone has evidence of that, they should present it. If not, the innuendo is beneath contempt. Although Labour presents the debate as being about restoring public trust in politics, to encourage or even hint at such misleading insinuations can only further undermine trust.
Peter Murrell’s crimes have been investigated thoroughly. That investigation examined others in the SNP and the party itself, and the result was the establishment of his guilt, and no basis was found to bring charges against others. However, some of the response today amounts to a demand for an investigation into the victim of a crime. Is there more that should be looked at? Were there further crimes that have not yet been prosecuted? That is for the police, the prosecutors and the courts to consider, if there is evidence. Has there been a breach of party political rules and regulations? That is for the Electoral Commission to investigate—again, if there is evidence.
What is the case for a parliamentary inquiry? Mr Sarwar answers that it is the criminal justice process itself that should be investigated. If the justice committee of this Parliament wants to do that, it does not need the permission of the Parliament to do so, but it would need a clear basis for doing so. It does not hold parliamentary inquiries into every criminal prosecution, or even into every very high-profile criminal prosecution. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Mr Sarwar wants this one to be subject to a parliamentary inquiry explicitly because a rival political party is involved.
Mr Harvie says that committees in this Parliament could investigate certain prosecutions. To clarify, if a motion came to the justice committee, would his party support such an investigation by the justice committee?
I think that Anas Sarwar would be horrified if a former or a current leader of a political party told its members how they should vote on a committee decision. [Interruption.] That is for committees to decide, and I am not going to instruct any—[Interruption.] Look at him laughing. Look at Mr Sarwar laughing at that suggestion that we should respect the independence of our committees. If Mr Sarwar will stop heckling, I will continue.
The Greens agree that the wider question of trust is legitimate. Indeed, it is more than legitimate; it is urgent, and it requires a political response. The Greens say that, beyond the criminal justice response to Murrell’s crimes, which is the job of the courts, a further response is needed. However, that response must avoid the naked partisanship that has characterised too much of this debate.
If we are serious about it, a pantomime performance is not what is needed. If we want to restore trust across our political spectrum, we all need to face scrutiny and not only demand it from others. My party is willing to face it and others should, too.
The damage to public trust relates to the crimes exposed by operation Branchform, but it relates not only to those crimes. There is also the decades-long influence of Peter Mandelson despite his murky ties to the super-rich such as Epstein; the influence of Russian oligarchs and kleptocrats and the flow of their money into UK politics; the series of huge bungs from the crypto spivs towards Nigel Farage and the rest of the far right; the political influence of the dark money junk tanks peddling propaganda for fossil fuel corporations and other big business; and the routine acceptance of high-priced gifts by serving ministers, from clothes to gig tickets. Those are the kind of freebies that most hard-working people never see, and they are funded not as a perk of the job but by companies and vested interests that all want something in exchange.
The list of issues that have undermined trust in politics is a long one, and for anyone to pretend that only one political party is at fault would be deeply dishonest. It is also not only a domestic problem. This week, we have witnessed the chilling result of the abuse of power by a super-rich owner of social media, Elon Musk, who uses that power to foment racism and violence on our streets. His actions represent a wrecking ball through public trust, yet we allow him to carry on doing business, pumping toxic propaganda into our society and telling people that they cannot trust Government or political parties or even their own neighbours. The overwhelming majority of the public believe that money buys influence in politics; what is worse is that they are clearly right.
The response should begin with a review, but it must be independently led and it must look at these issues across all parties and organisations seeking to buy political influence. That review must also lead to action—the kind of action that UK authorities have, so far, chosen not to take. If this Parliament is sincere in wanting to do what it takes to restore public trust, we need the power to do it as well. The Green amendment is the only option in front of us today that confirms the need for action but ensures that it will be independent instead of partisan. More to the point, it is the only option that says that we need the power to act on the conclusions afterwards. The option in Mr Hepburn’s amendment, of taking no action, should be rejected, but so should the option of holding an inquiry without having the power to do anything about it. That is why I urge the chamber to vote for the Green amendment when we vote today.
17:29
I support this debate and back calls for a full parliamentary inquiry into the shocking embezzlement of party funds by Peter Murrell.
The Scottish people deserve the truth. For years, the SNP has presented itself as a slick, professional political machine. In reality, it has operated more like a closed, unaccountable political syndicate where members’ money disappeared, senior figures allegedly broke the law and the party put its own survival above basic democratic standards.
The SNP has exerted more energy in protecting its reputation than in helping the public to understand what happened to the hundreds of thousands of pounds that vanished from its coffers.
Will the member give way?
Forgive me, but I wish to make progress.
Ah, come on!
No, no, minister. The member does not have to take interventions.
Instead of full transparency, we have had silence, deflection and obstruction. The First Minister likes to lecture others about integrity, yet he still refuses to put country before party. If he truly believes in restoring public trust, he must stop hiding behind lawyers and finally come clean.
This Government has spent years and millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money fighting women in the courts to defend the discredited ideology that men can be women. It has dragged For Women Scotland through the legal system, appealed rulings and wasted public resources, throwing women’s rights under the camper van, defending the indefensible. [Interruption.]
The member must be heard.
Yet, when it comes to holding one of its own to account for embezzling party funds, the urgency mysteriously disappears.
Meanwhile, Scottish Labour, which called this debate, might want to reflect on its party’s sleazy history. After all, its hero, Lord Mandelson, was twice forced to resign from Tony Blair’s Cabinet—first over an undeclared loan from a colleague and again over allegations of interfering in a passport application for wealthy donors. Just last year, Mandelson was sacked as His Majesty’s ambassador to the US. He later resigned from the Labour Party and the House of Lords amid fresh revelations about his close and continuing ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including allegations of passing sensitive Government information and receiving substantial payments.
Sleaze is not unique to one side of the chamber, but only one party is pretending that it does not exist. The public are sick of it—sick of the cronyism, sick of the cover-ups and sick of politicians who treat public office as a protection racket for their own interests. That is why this Parliament must launch a full, independent parliamentary inquiry with the power to call witnesses and examine all relevant documents. No more self-serving internal reviews and no more hiding—the First Minister must choose: Scotland or the SNP; country or party. The time for secrecy is over. Let the inquiry begin.
17:33
I say to Amanda Lindsay that I might take more seriously the notion that my party operated like a syndicate if her party was not one that had been formed as a private limited company that is owned by one individual. Let us just remember where we are all starting from. [Interruption.] I am happy to give way if the member really wants me to.
The only thing that I would say in response to that is that the SNP lecturing Reform on sleaze is like Lord Mandelson selling ethics lessons. No one is buying it.
That was a wonderful pre-prepared line delivered tremendously well, Ms Lindsay. We look forward to much more of that.
The past few weeks have been uncomfortable, difficult and very distressing for many of us—I will not pretend otherwise. No one would believe me if I did. However, I do not think that any of us should pretend that this debate has been anything other than a particularly unedifying spectacle.
The notion of an inquiry that is authorised by Parliament into one party’s finances has now been debated, and it is now for Parliament to decide on that. I hope that Stephen Kerr is not too disappointed, but I will revert back to all the reasons that I laid out in my opening remarks. For the various reasons that I laid out, I urge Parliament to reject the proposition of a parliamentary inquiry, as set out in Mr Sarwar’s motion. I know that Mr Kerr—there are a lot of Kerrs here, so I should refer to them by their first names. Mr Stephen Kerr suggested that it was beneath me to question the motivation for lodging the motion that we are debating today. I merely say that I feel obliged to point out that my cynicism is born out of bitter experience.
I do not think that any of us should pretend that people out there are stupid. People out there will understand perfectly well why the Labour Party lodged the motion, and they will understand perfectly well why Reform UK, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats support it. Those parties want to make political capital. Let us not pretend that it is about anything other than that.
I genuinely believe that it would set a very bad precedent if Parliament established a parliamentary inquiry into the internal workings and finances of an individual political party. That would be a poor decision, and I think that, collectively, we would come to regret it. Colm Merrick was right to set out that, inevitably, we would all seek to return to that process whenever an individual party faced some form of difficulty.
However, today’s debate has demonstrated something important. It has demonstrated that, across the chamber, there is agreement that a serious breach of trust took place. That was a breach by one individual—the former chief executive of my party—of the trust of the members who placed faith in him. However, agreement on the seriousness of that and those events does not justify what is proposed in the motion. We should not establish that a parliamentary committee that is comprised of elected representatives of competing political parties is the right mechanism by which to scrutinise the internal financial operations of one of the parties.
Will the minister give way?
I will give way one more time.
The minister does not want to accept questions coming from other parts of the chamber. Does he accept that questions are also coming from people who served his party, both in the NEC and in Parliaments? Those people are saying that blocks and obstructions were put in the way of them asking relevant questions, and that that goes to the heart of governance. There are questions about the statements made by people holding public office in this Parliament relating to those things. Does he accept that those questions are important and need to be examined and answered?
That brings me to a point that I was going to make later, because it picks up on a point that Willie Rennie made—I see that Mr Rennie is now paying attention to me. He made the point that my party does not want to do anything in response to some of the issues that have arisen out of this situation. I see that Mr Rennie is nodding away, but I am afraid that that is fundamentally not the case.
I will not go into the full detail, because that would take us into the territory of internal processes, but this gets to the heart of the issue. Where such issues happen, it is of course incumbent on the organisation that has been impacted to learn lessons, which is precisely what we have done. There has been a governance review in the Scottish National Party, and processes have been improved. That has been communicated by our national treasurer directly to every constituency and branch treasurer, and by our party leader to every member of the Scottish National Party.
Will the minister give way?
I do not think that Mr Rennie is one of those SNP members, but maybe he wants to apply to join—we might let him come on board.
I will give way one more time, to Mr Rennie.
That is a very generous offer, but I will have to decline.
The minister is talking about the SNP investigating itself. How does that improve the confidence of the public in the Government party in this country?
There are two things there. First, the public can be confident that the crime that has been perpetrated has been fully investigated and prosecuted and there is now a plea. I do not think that any of us is suggesting that there is a lack of confidence in that process—I certainly hope not, as that would take us into a bad place.
The other point, which is fundamental, is that the issue comes down to internal matters. If there were challenges in the Scottish Liberal Democrats, and doubtless, there have been such challenges—I see Mr Rennie nodding, so we will discuss those later, perhaps—I would not expect Parliament to be breenging into that territory. I would recognise that that would be a matter for the Scottish Liberal Democrats to determine.
That is what the SNP has done with its processes. SNP members, who above all should be concerned about the issue, can be assured that improvements have been made.
I turn to the notion of transparency, which I consider to be important. It is vital, but only if it is paired with impartiality. As I and others have stated, the obvious conflict of interest of parties investigating each other cannot be mitigated with any degree of procedural formality. That goes back to the point that I made at the outset. Even if we exercised our very best efforts to achieve impartiality, I do not think that it would be perceived as such, and it would not be possible to get away from the unavoidable structural reality of party politics.
To return to my amendment, I made the point in my opening remarks that the people of Scotland collectively elected this Parliament to govern in their interests. As part of that, they chose a Scottish Government that seeks to work for them. Scotland has not chosen a Government that spends its time second-guessing the assessments that are made on matters by independent authorities. This debate seems to have been a bit of a return to some of the mud slinging that we saw from the Labour Party and the Conservatives during the previous parliamentary session, which carried on into the election. There is certainly no sense of arrogance to this point, but I gently remind folk that we went through that election after all those years of mud slinging, and the SNP is back on the Government benches, while Labour and the Conservatives are here in much reduced numbers. Mr Findlay made the point that it was arrogant for me to point that out, but it is a matter of fact. He bemoaned the fact that the SNP has dominated Scottish politics for 20 years.
All I was pointing out—
That is your mindset.
It is not a mindset but a matter of fact—
It was the mindset that Murrell had.
Please speak through the chair.
: —that the SNP has won five elections in a row. It has earned the trust of the people for five elections in a row. It is just a matter of fact—there is no arrogance about it; it is just a reality.
I think that it is important that we—
Will the member give way?
I will give way to Mr Findlay.
I remember how sleazy, arrogant and entitled Labour became when it dominated Scottish politics. Does the minister see that at all in his party?
No, I do not, so let us move on.
The point that I was going to make was one that I made earlier: it is important that, as an institution, we focus on matters that are of primary interest and of paramount importance to the people of Scotland. Instead of raising issues like this, we brought a debate on childcare and delivered a statement on our first homes fund on 27 May. Last week, we brought a debate on the future of the national health service, and yesterday, we had a debate on the Scottish economy. It is why we have a business motion before us that says that—if members agree—next Tuesday we will have a statement on urban regeneration and a debate on supporting the third sector and, on Wednesday, a debate on affordable bus fares and three statements, including one on the provisional outturn and one on child poverty. Those are the things that the people of Scotland expect us to focus on.
I urge Parliament to support the amendment in my name.
17:43
The key and absolute qualification for any First Minister of Scotland is that
“that individual must be able to command the trust of the Parliament and the public.”—[Official Report, 28 November 2001; c 4118.]
Those are not my words but those of John Swinney and, on that point, we are in complete agreement.
However, we have just come out of an election in which only half of Scots voted. I say this to SNP members who say that this debate is simply a distraction and that we should get on with delivery: we need trust and transparency as foundations in this Parliament in order to do exactly that.
Trust in politics feels like it is at an all-time low, but the revelations over the past few weeks mean that that trust has been further undermined. The story of Peter Murrell embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP is, frankly, one of the biggest scandals of the devolution era. SNP speakers’ repeated attempts at deflection today have been embarrassing, because winning an election is not justification for covering up stealing £400,000.
This story is fundamentally about power and trust, and it has implications for all of us in this Parliament. Willie Rennie is right: there might well be personal tragedies in all of this, but this is about professional failure. People believe that this is corruption at the highest level. If this was just a crime conducted by the most senior officer of the SNP—the governing party in Scotland—that would be bad enough, but, at the time, this was the husband of the former First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and the childhood friend of the current First Minister, John Swinney, who appointed him to his role. In that context, it is simply not credible for John Swinney to say, “There is nothing to see here. Trust me.”
The First Minister says that, because there has been a police investigation, there is no need for a parliamentary inquiry. Let me reassure John Swinney that I have nothing but admiration for the police and have no intention of marking their homework, but the police themselves are not happy. Wider questions arise from this, and I will set them out shortly. Contrary to what John Swinney seems to think, I am clear that it is not for me or this Parliament to consider the internal financial operation of the SNP. It is a matter for the SNP itself.
I gently suggest to the First Minister that there is much merit in Alex Neil’s suggestion of asking an independent KC to examine the governance arrangements, both then and now, so that he can satisfy himself that robust arrangements are in place. The First Minister’s so-called governance review was pretty thin.
Interestingly, Robin McAlpine noted yesterday that the problem in the SNP was not about rules and procedures but about democracy and culture.
I find it interesting that, although Ms Baillie said that it is not for others to take an interest in the SNP’s internal affairs, she is now talking extensively about the appointment of a KC and the thin nature of our internal governance review. It seems that she is taking an interest. Does that not speak to the very point that that is exactly what an inquiry would do, which is why we should not agree to one?
The minister misunderstands and is clearly not listening. The people of Scotland are interested in those wider questions, but that is not what I am suggesting the inquiry should do. I have been very clear on that point.
Let me go back to what Robin McAlpine had to say about democracy and culture. There was a culture that bullied and intimidated those who raised legitimate questions, a culture of denial and deflection, and a culture of secrecy and cover-up. The shame, the dishonesty and the cover-up speak for themselves. Although I do not believe that the Scottish Greens support such a culture, in coming to the SNP’s aid they are giving it cover. The claim that this is about internal politics is fundamentally wrong. This is about honesty, trust and integrity. This is about ministers knowingly making public statements that are wrong or, at the very least, incompetent.
Many questions—from members of the public, SNP members, police officers and those in the legal profession who have contacted me— remain unanswered. Why did it take more than four years, at a cost of £2.7 million, for the police to investigate? Why did it take so long for the Crown Office to decide to prosecute? Pauline McNeill is right: if Murrell indicated that he would plead guilty on 3 March, why was the case postponed until after the election? Why was Murrell granted legal aid when he part owned a villa in Portugal—an asset that was not frozen and that he sold after his application was granted? Why is legal aid not recoverable in Scotland?
Did the SNP unwittingly make fraudulent VAT claims on Murrell’s purchases? How much was claimed? The Electoral Commission gave the SNP a policy development grant worth, on average, £175,000 a year—more than £2.4 million over the period of Murrell’s crimes. The House of Commons gave the SNP more than £8 million in Short money over the same period. In 2020, in response to concerns from SNP members that donations for a referendum campaign had been spent on other matters, the SNP treasurer, Colin Beattie, said that
“donations are woven through the overall income figures each year.”
If donations were not ring fenced, what reassurance can the SNP give that public money was not also woven through the accounts and consequently spent by Murrell? There is, apparently, just one bank account.
I also have questions for the Electoral Commission. Its role is to oversee and monitor the operation of political parties. Does it have enough powers? What enforcement action can it take? Were complaints made to the Electoral Commission about the SNP’s finances at the time, and how were they taken forward?
The Greens’ amendment is arguably not needed if the Electoral Commission has responsibility for overseeing all political parties. I gently point out to them—as Alex Cole-Hamilton did earlier—that Professor James Mitchell has indicated:
“I do NOT support the Green amendment. It is an attempt to evade the very serious issues that require focus on SNP financial mismanagement.”
That is a direct quote.
As Joanna Cherry, the former SNP MP and KC, said:
“The fact that public money may have been stolen makes the requirement for a parliamentary or other independent inquiry all the more necessary.”
None of those questions is about the internal workings of the SNP.
I know that colleagues in the Scottish Affairs Committee are considering whether to launch their own inquiry. My preference is that the inquiry is done by this Parliament. However, if that is voted down today, then a joint inquiry or a Westminster-led inquiry is an option that is likely to be taken forward by others.
By rejecting scrutiny, the SNP is putting party before country. We have seen this before. Last week, the Court of Session found ministers to be in contempt of court for their refusal to respond to a freedom of information request regarding the Salmond files. Stephen Kerr referenced that in his speech.
In the past decade we have seen the appalling way in which relatives who lost loved ones at the Queen Elizabeth university hospital have been treated and in which the staff who whistleblew have been bullied and silenced. It is this culture of secrecy and cover-up that has infected the Government and some of our public institutions.
Restoring trust starts with transparency and accountability. It starts with a parliamentary inquiry—and it is not an inquiry about the internal machinations of the SNP. We have better things to do.
I say to SNP members that sunlight is the best disinfectant. If the First Minister and other senior SNP politicians claim that they have nothing to hide, what is there to fear? Let the sunlight in and vote for a parliamentary inquiry.
That concludes the debate on an inquiry to restore public trust in Scottish politics.
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