Plenary, 19 Sep 2007

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Official Report 411KB pdf

---

Point of Order

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I ask you to consider the following. In the previous session, Fergus Ewing quoted the guidance on ministerial statements, which says that

"where the subject matter is of sufficient significance for a Ministerial statement to have been programmed into the business of the Parliament, the details of that statement should not be released to the media before the statement is made."

We are seeing a pattern of behaviour on the part of the Scottish National Party Government. Will you consider that? If it is in breach of the guidelines, I ask, as Fergus Ewing did, that the minister

"express regret and give us an assurance that such a breach will not recur in this session."—[Official Report, 11 September 2003; c 1665.]

Presiding Officer, if the minister does not do that this afternoon, will you give the matter some consideration and report back to the chamber at an appropriate time?

I thank the member for the point of order. I have not found any reason to believe that any guidance or guidelines have been broken in relation to today's statement. In general, I hope that members are aware—I have made this known in the past to the Minister for Parliamentary Business and others—that I take the subject very seriously. I monitor it on a regular basis, and I will continue to do so.

Further to that point of order, Presiding Officer. In the light of rulings that we have received from previous Presiding Officers, will you clarify how your current statement fits with the quotation from the guidance that I have just read out?

As I said before, I am satisfied that there has not been a breach with regard to this afternoon's statement.