Motion of No Confidence
We come straight to the first debate, which is on motion S1M-1448.
The Deputy Presiding Officers and I have looked at the request-to-speak lists. Even before the screen has displayed the electronic list, it is clear that more members want to speak in both debates than can be called in the time. We are therefore very tight for time, so I ask for strict adherence to the time allowed for speeches.
Before I move the motion in my name, I must say that SNP members regret that the Executive parties—both parties—refused the offer of SNP time tomorrow to debate the motion properly. It was their decision to interfere with the proper conduct of the important Scottish Qualifications Authority debate that lies ahead. It was their decision to cut the time for that debate. It was their decision to misrepresent that situation in the press and in the chamber.
Such decisions smack more of the bad old ways of South Lanarkshire than the new ways of the Scottish Parliament. Many of us regret that the bad old ways of South Lanarkshire are now also infecting Shetland.
This is the first no confidence motion to be debated in the Scottish Parliament. Contrary to the view that the First Minister expressed at the weekend that the debate was opportunistic, it is a debate that is governed by clear rules in our standing orders. The procedure exists for a clear purpose. No confidence debates can take place only if the motion attracts at least 25 signatures. As of this morning, the motion had attracted 32 signatures.
No confidence debates are designed to indicate that a minister has performed badly or behaved badly. They provide the mechanism by which the Parliament can say that in a way that should result in the minister being removed from office. No confidence debates are serious parliamentary occasions. They should be—and they are—used very sparingly.
However, the circumstances of the summer's disaster for Scotland's pupils, teachers and parents—the disaster of the failure of the SQA—are surely serious enough for us to consider whether there is an element of ministerial blame to be attached to what took place. If such blame is attached, surely the unprecedented events of the summer demand unprecedented ministerial and parliamentary responses.
The motion is narrowly drawn; it relates to the actions of one minister between specified dates. Some people would argue that the minister is culpable for much more than I shall indicate this morning, but I shall stick to the terms and dates in the motion.
The information on what took place between those dates comes from the evidence given to the Education, Culture and Sport Committee and the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee, which includes evidence from the internal documents of the Executive, which were given to the committee in a cumbersome process of disclosure.
I suspect that there is more information than we have now. I find it astonishing, for example, that in all those documents there was no mention of advice from Her Majesty's inspectors of schools to the minister or to his department. It beggars belief that there was no such advice; it should have been disclosed. However, we know from the documentation that on 26 June, Ron Tuck, the chief executive of the SQA, indicated in a telephone conversation with an official in Mr Galbraith's department that there were difficulties in delivering accurate and timely results.
On that day, Peter Peacock, Mr Galbraith's deputy minister, received advice—which he presumably asked for—about actions that could be taken with regard to those problems. That advice indicated that ministers could ask the SQA board to dismiss the chief executive. That would have allowed the appointment of a crisis manager.
Mr Galbraith was aware of difficulties at the SQA before 26 June. There had been press reports and he had received advice that indicated that all was not well. The confirmation from the SQA that a crisis was looming took place against an established background. Given the urgency of securing exam results, Mr Galbraith should have acted on 26 June.
Mr Galbraith will argue, or someone will argue for him, that that would have been an overreaction. But how is it an overreaction when, within six weeks, the chief executive had gone and a crisis manager had been installed? Ex post facto, those changes were made. Would those changes, which Mr Galbraith could have made at that moment, not at the very least have provided additional help in diminishing the scale of the crisis that was looming? However, Mr Galbraith chose not to act.
Between 26 June and 17 July there were regular—one might say frenetic—meetings between the Scottish Executive education department and the SQA. There was, in the words of the senior civil servant in Sam Galbraith's department, no longer a "normal relationship" between that body and the Executive.
It is clear that by 17 July Mr Galbraith's officials were apprising him of a situation that had not got any better. I will quote one of the pieces of advice. On 17 July, officials told the minister that the probability—I stress, the probability—
"of a failure of some part of the system appears to remain distressingly high".
They also told the minister that it was inevitable that some students would get inaccurate results. In an attempt to quantify what might be acceptable, they advised that up to 1,000 candidates with inaccurate results out of the total of 140,000 candidates should not prevent the exam results from going out on time.
On 25 July, Mr Galbraith met the chairman and chief executive of the SQA—who are both now out of post, unlike the minister. At that meeting they assured him—the words "assured" and "reassured" keep appearing in this saga—that the number of candidates likely to be affected would be no more than 7,000, although they knew at that moment that they were nowhere near that figure.
Seven thousand or 1,000? Do something and delay the results, or do nothing and let them go out? Mr Galbraith chose to do nothing. He allowed the SQA to proceed; he should not have done so. He should have told the SQA not to issue the results; he should have insisted upon it. He should have insisted on the checking and rechecking of the announcement details, so that at least schools, pupils and parents would be forewarned. He should have insisted on taking charge, but he did not. Instead, he said that it was all up to the SQA.
However, the minister did one thing at that meeting. He told his deputy minister, Mr Peacock—to whom he is now speaking—not to attend the SQA press conference launching the results. Mr Peacock had already said that he would be there—indeed, the SQA expected him to be there—but Mr Galbraith pulled him out. Why? Perhaps he did so because the scale of the failure was now so obvious; perhaps it was time to get ministers away from the scene of the crime as fast as possible.
From 25 July until the date of the announcements, Mr Galbraith's civil servants were constantly in touch with the SQA and were reassured many more times. By 9 August, even the plans to let MSPs into the secret that there would be an awful lot of disappointed young people were abandoned, because the draft letter that Mr Galbraith planned to send each of us was scrapped.
We know what happened next. The unanimous report of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee paints a shocking picture. A telephone helpline had the wrong information; schools had no information; and young people were left distressed and depressed on what should have been a day of achievement.
However, at that moment, the minister sprang into action. He apologised from Stornoway, and apologised again when he got home. He then insisted on changes at the SQA and demanded corrections within days. He did things. Why could he do things such as instruct the SQA after the disaster happened but not do the same things before it happened? That is the key question.
Will the member give way?
No, I am sorry—I have a lot of material to get through.
If the minister could act after 9 August—which action culminated in the resignation of the chief executive—why did he not act before that date? Why did he not insist on management changes or on delaying publication of the results? Why did he not tell MSPs and the public what was about to happen?
There are three good reasons why Sam Galbraith should not be a minister today. First, as I have indicated, he failed to act at key times during the SQA crisis, which was an operational failure on his part. He failed what is called the Carrington test.
Secondly, there was a failure of policy in Sam Galbraith's department while he was minister. The policy of allowing the SQA to operate not just at arm's length, but at fingertip length failed, as did that of implementing higher still by his inspectors. He failed what is called the Howard test.
Sam Galbraith failed a third test. This week, Labour spin doctors and others have been saying, "Sam might have made mistakes, but he is no longer at education. There is no need for him to go now." In that case, let us apply the third test, which we shall call the Mandelson test. If Sam Galbraith had resigned on 13 August, not even this First Minister would have brought him back within two months. He would not be a minister today.
Sam Galbraith stayed—so he said—to sort things out and informed us that that was his duty. His sense of duty lasted two months and during that time, he did little to sort things out. His successor has shown some commendable energy and determination—and I do not often praise Jack McConnell. Sam Galbraith showed none.
No one wants a situation to get so bad that the only remedy is a motion of no confidence. However, in the light of the failures that I have pointed out, that is the only remedy left to the chamber. Sam Galbraith must go, and if he cannot see that fact, it is up to the chamber to point it out to him. I believe that the evidence supports my motion of no confidence and ask the chamber to support it as well.
I move,
That this Parliament has no confidence in Sam Galbraith in his role as a member of the Scottish Executive, by reason of his failure to act decisively on the matter of the Scottish Qualifications Authority between 26 June 2000 and 13 August 2000.
I support Mike Russell's motion. As members will be aware, we lodged our own motion of no confidence several months ago, and we believe that events have borne out that decision.
At the time, we said that we were lodging the motion not so much because of the minister's conduct in connection with the way in which the crisis came about. That would be for the committees to establish. However, we felt that the minister had to answer for his role in the handling of the crisis.
Some have said that the debate is a waste of parliamentary time and that because we cannot win it, it is futile. If the minister has been cleared of direct blame by the committees, why should we seek his resignation? Surely we have moved on. Mr Galbraith has certainly moved on. However, many pupils today still do not know the final outcome of their exams and will not know until after the new year.
Although ministers might move on, the problems remain—as does the responsibility for those problems. The minister cannot be reshuffled out of that responsibility. There is no statute of limitations on ministerial responsibility, nor should there be. What is the Parliament for if not to hold to account majority rule over the minority? What is it for if not to allow real debate on real issues that matter to real people? What is it for if not to give a voice to the tangible anger of the pupils, parents and teachers who have been let down by the Government?
I have consistently argued that Sam Galbraith was not directly to blame for the exams crisis that ruined the credibility of Scottish education this autumn. Indeed, as the former Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning can testify, I have defended the former Minister for Children and Education at public meetings and to the press. Having heard the evidence, I believe that he remains innocent of blame for the exams crisis.
However, I have also argued—and, having heard further evidence, believe more strongly than ever—that the minister's handling of the crisis was not only complacent, but negligent—if not reckless. Members might disagree with that, but we must consider the evidence in the unanimous committee report—and not the evidence on which the committee disagreed.
In written and oral evidence, Scottish Executive officials admitted that, on at least three occasions, relationships deteriorated between the Scottish Executive and the SQA. Although the collapse of such normal relationships raised doubts in the minds of ministers and officials, they told us that they were constantly being reassured that the problems were being resolved. Indeed, on a number of occasions, the Executive offered help, but it was turned down.
On 26 June, the then chief executive of the SQA, Ron Tuck, alerted ministers to the developing problems at the SQA. On the same day, presumably because of that phone call—and I would be interested to hear any evidence that contradicts that assertion—ministers received advice that they could call upon the SQA board to dismiss the chief executive if required. They did not act on that advice, because they obviously felt that such action was not required.
On 17 July, officials told ministers that the
"probability of a failure of some part of the system appears to remain distressingly high"
and that certificates with missing data would be issued to a substantial number of candidates. Officials advised that the issuing of certificates to more than 1,000 candidates might need to be delayed.
On 25 July, at a meeting between Mr Galbraith and the SQA, the minister accepted that, even though the SQA's estimate was that as many as 7,000 candidates might have inaccurate or incomplete certificates, the decision on any postponement of the issuing of those certificates should rest with the SQA.
Time.
That is not in the brief that was sent to me.
Even with all the information, the minister left the SQA to determine when the issuing of certificates would go ahead, and pulled his deputy minister out of a press conference on the launch of a helpline. There was no communication strategy to deal with the issuing of incomplete certificates.
Although Sam Galbraith might not be directly responsible for the crisis, he had enough warning to intervene and take control of the situation before it reached meltdown. Sam Galbraith may be excused for the Hampden fiasco and may be forgiven for the embarrassing fact that Scottish Opera was bailed out with money that was meant for schools, but he will never be excused or forgiven for letting down Scotland's schoolchildren when he was needed most. I support the motion.
I begin, perhaps surprisingly, by paying tribute to Mike Russell and Brian Monteith. In the Education, Culture and Sport Committee, they played a significant and valuable role in helping us to come to terms with the catastrophe that we faced and the agony that was experienced by youngsters this summer. However, they have now spoiled that, as they are taking a self-serving approach to the matter and putting party political ends before proper discussion of an important topic.
The motion is misguided in two ways. First, it is a diversion from our serious business. Secondly, it seeks to blame a minister who is clearly not to blame—as Brian Monteith said—and who is no longer the Minister for Children and Education. It is a mean-spirited motion that is not worthy of Mike Russell, who is better than that. Today we are seeing the darker side of the debater of the year. All that the motion calls for is a wee bit of blood letting, by catching ministers out and finding fault—that is what it is being made to look like, and it is not a pretty sight.
Will Ian Jenkins give way?
No.
Brian Monteith and Mike Russell have cobbled together a flimsy list of incidents that they claim shows that ministers and civil servants hesitated to take action at key points from the end of June until the day on which the results were issued. That is dead right—they hesitated because the actions that have been suggested would have been stupid.
It has been suggested that Ron Tuck should have been sacked on 26 June. What on earth good would that have done anybody? How could that have prevented anything from happening that was going to happen? It has also been suggested that the release of the exam results might have been delayed. That was a judgment call. I accept that that decision could have been made; it would have been fine if it had been thought that, by delaying release for a week, the results would have been right, but there was no way in the world that everything was going to be right with the system. The crash had to happen so that we could see what the fallout would be; the problem could not be seen clearly until after the results had been issued.
Ministers were in a damnable situation—they were damned if they did and damned if they did not—and there but for the grace of God and the good sense of the Scottish electorate would go Mike Russell.
Will Ian Jenkins give way?
No.
As I hope to explain in the next debate, the seeds of the disaster were sown before the Scottish Parliament and its ministers got near the issue. The problems were to do with the design of higher still, its premature implementation and the excessive burden of data that the system involved. There is no way in the world that, from 26 June and the subsequent dates that Mike Russell mentioned, anything could have been done to avert the crisis. The issuing of results was not handled terribly well, but there is no way that altering the timing could have averted the crisis.
Will Ian Jenkins give way?
No.
If members of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee—and Mike Russell, on the radio today—are saying that we are not sure whether we can get things right next year, how in heaven's name can Sam Galbraith be criticised for not getting them right in six weeks or in the 10 days leading up to the issuing of results? Sam Galbraith was not responsible for the exams fiasco. Members will remember that, in a television programme on the problems with the exam results, I was asked whether I thought that he should resign. I said that we should clear up the issue first, after which the inspectorate, the higher still development unit and the minister should consider their positions.
Will Ian Jenkins give way?
No.
I do not deny the fact of ministerial responsibility. Following a catastrophe of this scale, at some point, probably about now, the minister would have to accept that he was accountable—that goes with the territory of the job—and would have to be seen to carry the responsibility. People must see that things cannot go on as before, as though nothing had happened. Politicians must and should be affected when things go wrong on such a scale.
In the sad circumstances surrounding Donald Dewar's death, Sam Galbraith has lost a post that he prized highly. He has lost it not because he was incompetent—as this mean-spirited motion suggests—and not because we have lost confidence in his ministerial ability, but because in an unfair world that has damaged the lives of many young people, their parents and their teachers, it would have seemed wrong to many of us if the minister with responsibility had stayed in post. Sam Galbraith was not to blame, but the Minister for Children and Education had to go.
Things could not stay the same and a necessary change has taken place. Following that change, my colleagues and I look forward with real confidence to working with both Jack McConnell and Sam Galbraith in their respective ministerial posts, which hold the key to the future of Scotland. Those posts carry great responsibilities and I know that the ministers will fulfil their duties with all the wisdom and experience at their disposal. It is time to move on. Therefore, I oppose the motion.
All members of this Parliament are proud of the way in which our committees operate. The committees are genuinely cross-party bodies that have demonstrated time and again that they will not hesitate to use their powers to hold ministers or the Executive to account.
As a member of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee, I have no doubt that all members of that committee tried extremely hard to approach our inquiry into this year's exam results in a genuinely cross-party manner. I echo Ian Jenkins's point—although many of my colleagues might find this hard to imagine—that Mr Russell and Ms Sturgeon played their part and contributed to that consensual approach; I pay tribute to their efforts.
The committee's report—all 80 or so pages and 56 recommendations—is testimony to that communal effort. It is as thorough and detailed an examination of what went wrong over the past year as could be wished for. It is hard hitting, damning in its condemnation of failure and far reaching in the range of measures that it recommends to put things right. Aside from the majority of its comments, which are directed at the SQA, the report does not hesitate to comment on all matters or actions that may have had a bearing on the difficulties that were experienced this year.
The report criticises the implementation of higher still and the manner in which the curriculum has become assessment driven, and it is especially scathing about the role of Her Majesty's inspectors of schools. No one could suggest that any member of the committee approached the task in hand with any objective other than to get at the truth. The committee did not try to shield anyone from blame—far from it. So why—in all those 80 or so pages and 56 recommendations—is there no condemnation of the former Minister for Children and Education? Why did the committee not blame the minister and call for his resignation? The answer is simple: there was no evidence to support such a call.
That is why this debate, which has been called for by the SNP, is all the more disappointing. The SNP members on the Education, Culture and Sport Committee worked with colleagues from all parties until we had to accept the logical and reasoned conclusions of our inquiry. Ultimately, the SNP members had made their minds up on one subject: they wanted Sam Galbraith's head and were not about to let a few facts get in the way of that objective.
Members may remember the behaviour of the former shadow education spokesperson, Ms Sturgeon, when the news began to break about the exam results. If I heard her calling for the minister's resignation once, I heard her call for it a dozen times, yet at that stage no one—let alone Ms Sturgeon—knew the full extent of the problems. Frankly, the SNP members were made to look foolish by their lack of responsibility. It is lucky for Ms Sturgeon that she has moved posts, otherwise we might be the ones calling for her resignation today.
Where is the evidence that the SNP could spot that was somehow missed by the rest of us lesser mortals? The SNP's argument is put in a minority view that is published at the end of our report. At first glance, it makes convincing reading. However, it depends on just that—a cursory glance. It relies on the fact that most people will not read the full report, let alone look at the so-called evidence. It is a model of self-justification. It is a disingenuous account, consisting of evidence that has been judiciously edited and quoted not liberally, but selectively. It is prejudice dressed up as reason; it is fiction dressed up as fact.
I will deal with a few of the assertions and inferences to demonstrate what I mean. Mr Russell mentioned several of them earlier, for example the advice to the Deputy Minister for Children and Education
"that the Executive could call on the Board to dismiss the Chief Executive."
That is a prime example of selective quotation. The full advice was not that the Executive could sack the chief executive. The minister was specifically advised that he should not do so.
Another example is the conclusion that the benchmark number of candidates above which the Executive might intervene
"should be ‘under 1000'".
The advice was that that was a possible target, but the minister was advised that the decision was not his to take, but the SQA's.
Mr Russell concludes that, in the application of what he calls the Carrington and Howard principles,
"a case for resignation could be made out."
Why take those examples when we had our own evidence? Ms Sturgeon called for evidence, particularly from Tom Mullen, her old lecturer. Would anyone like to hear what he said, given that Mr Russell did not quote him? Mr Mullen said:
"Whereas the Minister is obliged to give an account of anything that has gone wrong within the area of responsibility, it does not follow that the Minister is personally culpable for all errors of administration, far less obliged to resign when such errors occur."
The SNP has put together a list of points and suggested that they add up to a devastating critique of the Executive. Not only do they not add up; they stretch credulity to breaking point.
The Education, Culture and Sport Committee report looks at what went wrong. It does not shy away from apportioning blame, but that is not good enough for the SNP. I resent having to defend the minister. This inquiry was not about him; it was about pupils, parents and teachers. No one comes out of the exams debacle with much credit, but this morning's behaviour from the SNP is to be regretted as much as any. I urge members to reject the motion.
I call Nicola Sturgeon.
Thank you, Presiding Officer. [Members: "Resign!"] Thank you, everybody.
The decision to lodge the motion of no confidence was not taken lightly by Mike Russell or the SNP, and anyone—I hope that Ken Macintosh is listening carefully—who doubts that should remember that when the Conservatives lodged a similar motion in August, the SNP refused to support it. The reason was simple: although we in the SNP and, according to all the available evidence, a significant number of people in Scotland believed that at that time Sam Galbraith should have resigned as a matter of principle, we also recognised that, prior to the committee inquiries into the fiasco, there was no evidence of wrongdoing or inaction on his part to justify a motion of no confidence at that stage.
That is no longer the case. The Education, Culture and Sport Committee inquiry examined at great length the issue of ministerial responsibility. It is the conclusion of the SNP members of that committee that, given the information that Sam Galbraith had between 25 June and 9 August, he did not do everything that he could have done and should have done, even if that would not have prevented the disaster from happening. I say to Ian Jenkins that nobody is suggesting that anybody at that stage could have prevented what happened, but the minister could have taken action at the very least to minimise or manage better the disaster that ensued, thereby saving at least some pupils the misery that they suffered during the summer.
Mike Russell detailed forensically the evidence that supports that argument, which we must remember is only the evidence to which the committee had access. Had the committee been given full access to, for example, the advice given to ministers by HMI—which Sam Galbraith promised on 6 September, when he assured me in the chamber that there would be full disclosure from the Scottish Executive—the case against Sam Galbraith today would be even weightier.
All through this saga, we have heard time and again that the minister was unable to act, yet what the Education, Culture and Sport Committee heard about the relationship between the Scottish Executive and the SQA immediately before the disaster, and since, gives the lie to that assertion. Even the minister's senior official admitted during the inquiry that the question was not whether the minister could act, but whether there was anything that the minister could have done. Mike Russell has given at least two examples of actions that the minister could have taken, but failed to take, to minimise what happened over the summer. It is that evidence that justifies the motion.
Some action has already been taken to restore confidence in the Scottish education system, although, as the SQA admitted yesterday, that will be a lengthy process. However, there is something else in which confidence must be restored—the notion that politicians, when found wanting in their obligations, should take responsibility, and that the buck stops with those who are ultimately responsible. In the minds of Labour members and the Liberal Democrats, that may be an old-fashioned notion, but it is one that the Scottish people hold dear. It is faith in that basic principle of democratic accountability that will be restored in the chamber today if the motion is agreed to. I support the motion in the name of Mike Russell.
It will not come as a surprise to anybody that I am not supporting the motion lodged by the SNP. I, too, am a member of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee; I came to the inquiry as a new member of the committee with an open mind. People who know my history in the Labour party will know that I am not afraid to criticise my colleagues if I feel that it is appropriate.
The committee took evidence from people whose lives were affected by the fiasco. We heard from children and young people about what had happened to them. We heard from members of the teaching profession. We heard from people in the Scottish Executive. We heard from the ministers. All that evidence highlighted a number of serious difficulties within the SQA and a number of things that had to be put right. As has been mentioned this morning, however, the logical train of that evidence did not lead us to believe that calling for the minister's resignation would make a difference in solving the problems. Mike Russell has suggested that the minister could have taken other action. I await to be told what specific action could have been taken that would have made a difference. Nicola Sturgeon made the same point as Mike Russell.
Will the member give way?
No, I am going to finish this point.
I have the information that the member asks for.
I got the information in the committee when I challenged Mike Russell to tell me what could have been done differently. His answer was that a crisis manager could have been appointed. I am not sure that a crisis manager could, by that stage, have made a difference.
The SNP has also talked about the responsibility of politicians. I was brought up to believe that responsibility means not walking away from problems. It means staying in the situation to work through and solve the problems. It is to Sam Galbraith's credit that he did not walk away. He took decisions and he took action, and he took the flak from all sides while he was doing it.
As I said, I have yet to hear from Mike Russell what specific action could have been taken. Between the dates that he mentioned, many thousands of young people were waiting for their results. Mike Russell seems to suggest that one of the decisions that the minister could have taken was to delay the delivery of those results. My view, like that of the committee, which was based on the evidence that we heard, was that Sam Galbraith took the best decision that he could have taken on the basis of the information that was presented to him.
I stress my disappointment that the motion was lodged at all. As others have said, the inquiry showed the workings of the Parliament and the committees at their best. We were able, for the most part, to put aside the party political views that we might have brought with us. We attempted to work on a cross-party basis. It is a matter of regret to me that we were not able to see that through and to reach a unanimous conclusion in the way that the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee did. It is also a matter of regret that SNP members seem to have gone into the inquiry with one notion in mind: to come out of it calling for the resignation of a minister rather than putting the interests of Scotland's children and young people first.
From day one, the Liberal Democrat position on the SQA disaster has been clear. We said that we would wait until the committee's report was published before making judgments. I put it to Nicola Sturgeon that it is an important principle that someone is innocent until proven guilty. That is the principle on which the Liberal Democrats have worked. That has been in stark contrast to the Opposition. Monteith and Sturgeon ran around like headless chickens day after day, shouting, "Resign, resign! The minister must go!"
Will the member give way?
I do not recall Mr Russell giving way during his speech.
I must point out that Mr Rumbles called for the minister's resignation at that time as well.
Order. Mr Russell, you know perfectly well that, if the member is not giving way, you cannot keep shouting.
We have had four inquiries into the matter, none of which has found a shred of evidence that ministers were negligent. That is a fact and we should be discussing facts today, not invented reasons why ministers were culpable. There is no smoking gun and there were no bullets, as was evident from Mike Russell's speech.
The report of the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee, of which I am a member, says:
"the Committee finds that there is no evidence that Ministers, or their officials neglected their monitoring role. Given that the real problems were not being communicated by SQA staff to the Board, it is difficult to argue that Ministers should have been aware of, or responded to, these specific problems."
That is not only my opinion; it is the opinion of Fergus Ewing, Alex Neil, Margo MacDonald, Annabel Goldie and Nick Johnston. Do Mr Monteith and Mr Russell disagree with their colleagues?
Will the member give way?
The member has mentioned my name. Will he give way?
I am sorry; I have already given way once.
What the motion tells us about the approach of the SNP and the Tories to the SQA disaster is that they are not interested in identifying the problems or coming up with solutions and they are not interested in the future of our children, some of whom have started the 2001 higher still exam diet. They are interested only in scoring cheap political points to cover up their embarrassment at the fact that the committee has found no evidence to support their repeated calls for Sam Galbraith to go.
By hijacking the committee debate in the chamber on the SQA, the SNP has wasted our time instead of allowing us to use the full morning to engage in constructive debate on how to resolve the serious and difficult problems that the SQA faces. We should be debating the most important issue and finding ways of ensuring that every child who sits an exam next year gets a result at the end of that school year. The Parliament should condemn the SNP and the Tories for bringing this silly motion before us.
It is interesting to hear George Lyon say that the committee report for which he was partly responsible cleared the minister of blame. We should remember that the role of the minister was not part of the remit of that report. Although it is true that the minister did not fail to monitor what was happening at the SQA, that fact only strengthens the Opposition parties' argument that the minister knew about and understood what was happening. The report of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee also shows that the minister did not know the full scale of the impending disaster. He could not know, because the SQA and its board did not know. However, we argue that what he knew at the time was enough to act on. The report that Mr Lyon quotes in the minister's defence serves only to help to prosecute the minister.
We were told today that the situation is a matter of regret. It is a matter of regret that the Education, Culture and Sport Committee could find unanimity on issues such as HMI, the SQA, the SQA board and the design of higher still, but not on the role of the Scottish Executive and the credibility of the Executive on its flagship policy, on which issue the committee split down party lines, as can be seen in the report. For that reason, the committee failed; it could not cross that bridge of political credibility. The report is strong—I think that it is the best report to have come out of the Parliament so far—but, because the committee split on party lines, it fails on the issue of political blame. I regret that.
The evidence is there for all to see. We have argued not that the minister caused the crisis—a red herring that keeps occurring—but that, on the basis of the information that was available him, he pulled back from having his deputy at the SQA press conference, walked away from the crisis and went on holiday. He and the Executive had serious doubts about the SQA, yet they still let the SQA deal with the crisis.
As I have said, there was no communication strategy and no understanding of how to deal with the situation. As Ian Jenkins said—and if the minister has friends like Ian Jenkins, he does not need enemies—of course Sam Galbraith had to give up the education portfolio. However, if he had to give up that portfolio, why should he not also give up the environment portfolio? How can anyone have faith in him as the Minister for Environment, Sport and Culture when they would not have had faith in him if he had remained as the minister with responsibility for education?
We might not win the vote today—as usual, whether we do will be down to the consciences of the Liberal Democrats, if they have not left them at home—but we can be confident that we will win the argument. The evidence in the report is damning. There is no doubt in my mind that the minister handled the crisis badly and that he exacerbated the crisis by his handling of it. He stands condemned by the evidence in the part of the report on which the committee was unanimous. I support the motion and think that it is time for the minister to accept his responsibility and resign.
The Executive parties have contended that this debate should never have happened—I am sure that the First Minister will repeat that. That raises the question of what the point of parliamentary democracy is, if not to allow the Opposition to hold the Executive to account for its actions and to hold ministers responsible for their decisions and for the powers that they have.
The familiar political debate about power and responsibility lies at the heart of this debate. The Education (Scotland) Act 1996 gave the Secretary of State for Scotland then, and gives the Scottish Executive's ministers now, the power to
"give SQA directions of a general or specific character with regard to the discharge of its functions and it shall be the duty of SQA to comply with such directions."
On 6 September, the then Minister for Children and Education, Mr Galbraith, told Parliament:
"as will now be clear to everyone, I have absolutely no powers to instruct the SQA to do anything."—[Official Report, 6 September 2000; Vol 8, c 30.]
That statement from Mr Galbraith flatly contradicts the word of the law. If that was the attitude that prevailed in his dialogue with civil servants and informed the way in which he made decisions on the issues, it is no wonder that he dodged his responsibilities at that time. Despite telling Parliament that he had absolutely no powers, he still felt that he had the power to preside over the removal of the chief executive of the SQA, among other things.
The minister was getting round to taking action, but only when the stable door had been open for ages and the horse had well and truly bolted and was out over the hills. That is the truth about the Galbraith tenure at the Scottish Executive education department. The minister contended partly that he was staying on to sort out the problem, but he left office two and a half months after he said that, having made no major announcements to the SQA.
After that, a series of actions were taken by Mr McConnell—the new Minister for Education, Europe and External Affairs. Allow me to go through them. On 3 November, Mr McConnell announced:
"I have accepted the resignation of David Miller . . . I have appointed John Ward as interim chairman . . . I am instructing the SQA to provide me immediately with a formal compliance statement on how they intend to put the recommendations into practice . . . I will set up an early warning system . . . I will insist that the SQA . . . report to me in writing at monthly intervals . . . I will report to Parliament regularly on the progress made by the review group and on the reports made to me by SQA."
[Members: "Hear, hear."] Yes—exactly. Those are very good measures and we give them a warm welcome. But what was Mr Galbraith doing during all that time? Absolutely nothing.
Is John Swinney arguing that ministers should have acted without waiting for committees to report with facts about what needed to be done?
Unless I am mistaken, that announcement by Mr McConnell on 3 November preceded the publication of both parliamentary committees' reports. I am sorry, but George Lyon is—not for the first time today—completely misinformed and totally wrong about the whole fiasco.
The welcome actions that Mr McConnell took could quite conceivably have been taken by a minister who was determined to sort out the problem, but not by a minister who stayed in office and did absolutely nothing about it.
The exams issue is serious, because it is at the heart of Mr Galbraith's continuing responsibilities. Section 9 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1996 says that Scottish ministers can
"give SQA directions of a general of specific character with regard to the discharge of its functions".
The Environment Act 1995 set up the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. The Minister for Environment, Sport and Culture—Mr Galbraith—is now responsible for that agency. Section 40 of that act states:
"The appropriate Minister may give a new Agency directions of a general or specific character with respect to the carrying out of any of its functions."
According to the Galbraith maxim, section 9 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1996 allows ministers to do absolutely nothing but to think, "I have no powers to intervene." Heaven help us when we come to the Environment Act 1995. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency—which is responsible to the Minister for Environment, Sport and Culture—has the power, or rather
"a duty, on request, to advise planning authorities . . . regarding potential flooding".
For heaven's sake, as I leave Perthshire in the morning in a deluge of rain, with the rivers overflowing, am I to depend on Mr Galbraith doing something about that? Furthermore,
"SEPA has the lead responsibility to control discharges (to land, air and water) from the larger and more complex ‘prescribed' . . . Integrated Pollution Control (IPC) authorisations".
Most worryingly, SEPA has the duty to
"register the keeping and use of radioactive substances and authorise the disposal of radioactive waste."
So—there we have it. Using the Galbraith approach to the exercise of his powers in relation to the environment, he will take the same attitude: that, just as he had nothing to do with the SQA, he has nothing to do with SEPA. We will be left in a position where the Minister for Environment, Sport and Culture is unable to perform his duties and functions, because he will exercise the same approach to SEPA as he did to the SQA.
Mr Swinney seems to be displaying the King Canute school of nationalism. Is he suggesting seriously that any minister of any political persuasion could stop the water rising when it rains?
I am making a serious point to the Executive. If Sam Galbraith brings the same approach to his new ministerial responsibility and SEPA that he brought to the education authorities and the Scottish Qualifications Authority, which was to say that he had no powers under the Education (Scotland) Act 1996 to intervene—the same wording is used in the Environment Act 1995 with regard to ministers' powers in relation to SEPA—we will have serious problems with the management and welfare of our environment.
We have to deal with a new problem concerning the Scottish Qualifications Authority. The First Minister got himself into that problem on Sunday, when he said:
"I want to say that it will never happen again because of the actions that we have taken."
Yesterday, the SQA chairman said:
"Henry has his views . . . how he based that comment you would have to ask him."
On Sunday, it sounded like blood and thunder from the First Minister; by Tuesday it was thud and blunder.
This debate comes down to a critical issue: what is the point of ministers? We have ministers who have power in law, but who do not exercise that power and who do not accept their responsibilities. This debate is necessary because we, as Opposition parties, must hold the Executive to account.
In a most remarkable statement, Ian Jenkins said that Sam Galbraith was not responsible, but that the education minister had to go. Does not that illustrate why this debate is necessary, why Mr Galbraith was unfit for office as the then Minister for Children and Education, why he is unfit for office as Minister for Environment, Sport and Culture and why he should resign now?
Just to ease John Swinney's dilemma, let me repeat for the chamber and for the country that the chaos that occurred in the summer must never happen again. I will put it on record: it will not happen again.
If there is one thing that this country could do with, it is a bit of honesty. Does anyone think that we could approach August of next year, anticipating the same chaos that we had this year? The answer to that is, simply, no Two days ago in Inverness, nearly 300 people attended a question-and-answer session. The loudest applause came when I said that, for our children, for our parents and for the credibility of the examination system, such chaos will not happen again. I do not mind being repeatedly quoted on that.
If John Swinney was careful enough to read the comments that are being made by people such as John Ward, he would find that they say that there is no reason why young people should not get their examination results on time at the end of this academic year.
This morning's debate is on a motion of no confidence in one of my ministers. In the four months since this year's exam results came out, we have all spent a lot of time asking the question, "How could this possibly have happened?" The Executive commissioned the consultants Deloitte & Touche to investigate that. Their report was published some six weeks ago. The Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee has investigated the governance of the SQA in some detail, and the Education, Culture and Sport Committee conducted an extensive inquiry into this year's exam results. The SQA has conducted its own internal review.
The evidence that has been taken in all those reviews must represent hundreds of hours spent looking back over what happened in the run-up to the issuing of this year's exam results. We have spent another hour looking back on it this morning. The consensus is that we heard no insights and no new facts—I believe that we have simply wasted an hour this morning.
It is striking that after all that time, and with the benefit of hindsight, we are still hearing that decisive action should have been taken, but we are still unclear about what that action should have been. The reports that have been produced all acknowledge that the SQA is in very deep trouble. Sam Galbraith recognised that months ago. The actions that he took between 26 June and 13 August were aimed at providing the SQA with the support that it needed to deliver its promise to the young people of this country. That promise—accurate results on time, on 10 August—was not delivered, but I still believe that Sam Galbraith acted with the best interests of young people at heart.
What did Sam Galbraith do between 26 June and 13 August? Both through his officials and in direct contact with the chairman and with the chief executive of the SQA, he sought to understand properly the scale of the problem. The lack of vital management information in the SQA has been highlighted by all the inquiry reports as a major factor in this year's exam results problems. It was also a major factor in preventing the Scottish Executive from having an accurate understanding of the situation.
Without verifiable figures on missing assessment data, Sam Galbraith had only the information that was given by the SQA management team to rely on. We know now that that information seriously underestimated the scale of the problem. Although ministers and officials were very worried about the reliability of the information that they received, they continued to act to achieve the best possible outcome. Sam Galbraith had his officials working closely with the SQA to attempt to identify and resolve all the problems. The Executive wrote to local authorities to ask for their help in identifying a contact point for each school during the summer vacation, to allow the SQA to continue to pursue assessment data queries.
The Education, Culture and Sport Committee's report acknowledges the hard work that was done by SQA staff to obtain and input missing data. Without the efforts of that experienced group of staff—who were working at full capacity—and the time that was given up by school and college staff during the summer, even more young people would have been affected.
Sam Galbraith also had his officials working with the SQA on contingency planning, in case there were still problems with some results by the time of publication. Key aspects of that contingency plan, such as ensuring that schools and colleges had all the information that was necessary to answer queries from worried candidates, were not delivered by the SQA. If the SQA had delivered on that contingency plan, the large number of candidates who were unaffected by the problems would have been quickly reassured and more attention would have been paid immediately to getting the final correct results for those who were affected.
Does the First Minister still believe in the principle of ministerial accountability? Does he agree with Sam Galbraith, who said in a Scottish Television news broadcast in August that the buck stops with the minister? Why is it that, immediately after that, the chief executive and later the chairman of the SQA resigned, yet Sam Galbraith stayed in post?
I value the committees—one reason why we set up the Parliament was to treat their integrity seriously. With the greatest respect to Phil Gallie's question, the two committee reports did not say that Sam Galbraith should have resigned. We had two independent reports, which also concluded that that was not the issue that was at stake.
At the end of the day, this is about ministerial responsibility. I am putting my head on the block—I am promising the people of Scotland that such a fiasco and chaos will not happen again. That is what we mean by taking the matter seriously and giving ministerial responsibility a high priority.
When it became obvious that the SQA would not deliver a fully accurate set of results on publication day, Sam Galbraith ordered a full independent inquiry. He did so before we discovered that the SQA had failed to post thousands of certificates on time, before any of us understood that the number of candidates who were affected was much higher than the SQA had stated, and before candidates were given incorrect results by the SQA's telephone helpline. There was a cascade of mistake after mistake.
The facts began to come to light in the days immediately after the results were published. At that stage, the Executive moved quickly to protect the position of candidates who were affected. Discussions with the Committee of Scottish Higher Education Principals ensured that conditional offers of university places were held open until final results were determined. Let us put on record what the universities and colleges did at that time. If they had not done what they did, many young people in Scotland would have lost opportunities.
The First Minister says that ministers were alerted only as the matter came to light. Is not he aware that it came to light in the public domain, in The Sunday Times and the Daily Mail on the Tuesday prior to the issue of certificates? Those news reports showed that the number of students and pupils who would not receive complete or correct certificates was escalating. Therefore, was it the case that the crisis came to light before the issue of certificates and that, having commissioned reports, ministers still took no action to deal with the crisis that was unfolding before their eyes?
I do not accept what Brian Monteith says. The debate often obscures the fact that the Minister for Children and Education and a host of officials were dealing with the matter. The crisis involved the catastrophic problems of an organisation that was in meltdown. At the end of the day, when all the reports are properly debated, as they will be later, that is the point that will emerge.
The First Minister is talking about a series of operational failures. Surely he will accept that the minister who is responsible for the delivery of exam results—the operation—should have a responsibility under any theory to resign if those operations go wrong.
If Mike Russell had been listening, he would know that I am outlining what the Minister for Children and Education did when he was faced with the problems that arose. I will now say briefly what he did not do. Some people have suggested that Sam Galbraith should have taken over the running of the SQA completely. Taking management out of the hands of the SQA would have been a huge risk. Some people have said that we should have ordered the SQA to delay the publication of the results. That option was discussed but, in the circumstances, it could clearly not proceed.
There was much discussion about the extent of ministers' legal powers over the SQA and how those powers might have been used to change the outcome. To worry about what is meant by
"directions of a general or specific character"
or about what form the prior consultation with the SQA would take is simply to miss the point. What direction could Sam Galbraith have given the SQA at that stage?
Later, we will consider the results of the two inquiries. I hate to finish on a discordant note, because I think that the mood in the chamber is that this has been a wasted hour. I want to trace the genesis of the debate. It lies in what Nicola Sturgeon said on 25 August. She said that through the Education, Culture and Sport Committee's inquiry, the minister's role and culpability would be plain for all to see and that after that inquiry there would be only one possible outcome—Sam Galbraith's removal from office.
Will the First Minister give way?
No.
It is a pity that, although two committees of the Parliament examined the matter in depth and there were two independent inquiries, all that work seems to have been ignored. The facts do not justify the assertions in the motion. That is bad enough, but what is worse is that the committees are being treated with more than a hint of contempt by the SNP, because those committees' findings are not being recognised.
I hope sincerely that in discussing this issue we will look forward rather than backward. Let the Parliament unite around one issue: no child, young person or adult who will sit examinations next year should face the chaos that we faced this year. We should be dedicated to ensuring that that does not happen again. I urge all colleagues to reject the motion.
That concludes the debate on the motion of no confidence.