Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: Thursday, March 18, 2010
Official Report
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Points of Order
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. Has the First Minister requested an opportunity to correct the erroneous statement that he made in the chamber this morning regarding my conduct and that of my colleague Bill Aitken as conveners of the Equal Opportunities Committee and the Justice Committee respectively? It is the first—
Mrs Mitchell, I am sorry to stop you, but I made the point this morning that that is not a legitimate point of order. I stick to that ruling and, unless you have a genuine point of order, I ask you to stop.
I believe that there is a genuine point of order at the end of this, Presiding Officer.
The first duty of any convener of a committee of this Parliament is to ensure that the committee’s business is conducted efficiently and effectively, and that witnesses are treated with courtesy. That being the case, as soon as it was established that the industrial action would go ahead on 9 March, it was necessary to assess the potential implications of that on committee business that was scheduled for that day.
I duly did that as convener of the Equal Opportunities Committee and established that it would be possible for the committee meeting to go ahead with a clerking team, albeit not with the regular staff, and that a number of witnesses were due to attend the meeting on 9 March and would be seriously inconvenienced if it turned out that the meeting was not quorate. Although I would have been happy to proceed with the committee meeting, it became clear from discussions with committee members that, should a committee meeting be held on 9 March, it would not be quorate. In light of that, a meeting was held this week.
It is fundamentally important that the business of the Parliament is not disrupted by those who were elected to serve. I trust that, in view of the information that I have provided to the Parliament, the First Minister will retract his comments regarding me and my colleague Bill Aitken and that he now accepts that there was not a whit of difference between my stance on the matter and Annabel Goldie’s in ensuring that the conduct of committee business that is affected by future similar action is not frustrated by the non-attendance of committee members.
Just what I will do with Mr FitzPatrick: move to the next item of business.
You seem to have made a point, but it is certainly not a point of order, Mrs Mitchell.
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. What action will the Presiding Officer take to deal with the increasing number of clearly bogus points of order? [Laughter.]