Plenary, 11 Jan 2006
Meeting date: Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Official Report
452KB pdf
Point of Order
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I want to make a point of order of which I have given you and the Minister for Justice advance notice. I seek your advice on whether it would be better for me to pursue a course of action under rule 9.2.5 of the members' code of conduct, under rule 1.1(c) of the ministerial code, or through some other means in relation to the following matter.
On 23 March 2005, I asked the Minister for Justice question S2W-15561. I asked her
"what the original estimated costs were"
for the replacement criminal history system database. The minister replied that
"a separate budget was not defined."
At the time of receiving that answer, I therefore believed that it was not possible to answer my question and that the information that I sought on the original estimated costs was not available.
However, as the result of a freedom of information request that I made to the Scottish Criminal Record Office, I received the document that I have with me, which was produced in 2002 by the Scottish Police Information Strategy. It is entitled "SCRO Systems Replacement Project—Business Case" and it sets out the business case for the replacement criminal history system database project. Point 2 of the document lays out the initial costs estimated for the business analysis stage; point 3 talks about the initial hardware costs and the maintenance costs; and point 4 states the following:
"Table 2 illustrates the estimated costs for the new project."
The rest of the document gives all the estimated costs for the project, and they are laid out in that table.
The document clearly lays out the estimated costs for the project and is the direct and unambiguously clear answer to the question that I asked the Minister for Justice. Given that I asked for the estimated costs and that the document clearly provides the estimated costs for the project, why did the Minister for Justice fail to provide that information and, instead, provide an answer that I believe is misleading? Why was it necessary for me to use the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to obtain the information? Does the Minister for Justice take full responsibility for the answers that she publishes? If so, will she apologise to me and to Parliament for failing to answer my question properly, and will she explain why that occurred?
Presiding Officer, I seek your guidance on what course of action I should take in order that I can obtain satisfactory answers to those questions.
I thank you, Mr Maxwell, for your advance notice of your point of order. Your point is now firmly on the record. You will understand, though, that while questions are a matter for me, answers to questions are the responsibility of the Scottish Executive. Any issues concerning the accuracy of the information supplied become, therefore, a matter for the ministerial code. You should raise your question directly with the First Minister.