Chamber and committees

I take Bob Doris’s point. Although I share many of the concerns about the process, I voted for the SPPA Committee’s proposal for the sanction, precisely because that is what is on the table. The one thing that everybody seems to agree on is that Michael Matheson’s behaviour fell far short of the standards that are expected of MSPs and should be sanctioned. Indeed, it has now been given a severe sanction.

I repeat the comparison that I made in my opening speech in relation to the second debate’s motion. As far as I can recall, the only member who has ever been subject to a vote of Parliament calling for their resignation is someone who was sentenced to 12 months in prison after conviction for multiple acts of domestic violence. Am I wrong? Is my memory failing me on this? Has that happened in any other case, or is anyone seriously suggesting that what Michael Matheson did is anywhere near as grave a crime as that? I do not think so.

The one line that will stick in my mind from this debate more than any other is the one in which Douglas Ross made reference to Donald Trump before then accusing somebody else of bully-boy behaviour. All of us recognise that one of Donald Trump’s standard tactics is to accuse an enemy of his own worst traits.

I voted for the sanction against Michael Matheson because I care about the reputation of this Parliament. Michael Matheson’s actions damaged it, and approving a sanction is a necessary step in attempting to restore the Parliament’s reputation. However, after the debate that we have just had, I am very worried about the period that we are going to be moving into, because I think that most people can recall that, at the tail end of the previous session of the Scottish Parliament, which was a period of minority government, members of the Conservative Party in particular gleefully leapt on every opportunity to drag the name and the reputation of this Parliament down to their own level. I fear that they are about to do the same again, which is what they have done in today’s debate.

We have seen shallow partisanship throughout all this. I am sorry to say that we have seen a lack of judgment from SNP members, too, who should have fairly expressed the reasonable and valid concerns that they have, which I share, about the process that has taken place and then should have clearly backed the sanctions against Michael Matheson. If they did not believe that the sanction was appropriate, they should have proposed an alternative and voted for a sanction that they genuinely believed was so, even if that meant losing a vote.

I will come on to relevant points.

I do not think that the motion adds anything by trying to treat Michael Matheson’s case in a way that is comparable to that in which Bill Walker’s was treated. I do not think that that is appropriate or what the Parliament should vote for.

The motion adds nothing, but Jackie Baillie’s amendment adds something with serious substance, and it deserves to be discussed. There is a legitimate argument in favour of a recall process, and I am open to—and my party and I support—that principle. Let us have a debate about it. A system that works and is not susceptible to political partisanship could be found. However, it is inappropriate to try to retrofit that on to an individual case in this way. I would support an independent process, but not the version of a process where politicians decide.

In session 5, I was a member of the SPPA Committee that considered some of those issues. I supported the idea of a recall process or something comparable to a person’s losing their job for gross misconduct. However, that must be for the most extreme cases, it must be done in a way that is impartial rather than being subject to political decision making and it must carry cross-party support. In her speech, Jackie Baillie acknowledged the political motivations, including electioneering, in some of the debate. In a debate such as today’s, I cannot support simply deciding to copy the Westminster system—even Paul O’Kane’s speech demonstrated that that system itself is susceptible to political motivations.

Everyone will offer their own version of what we should do. If Graham Simpson wants to introduce his bill, he will do so and we should debate it. If he wants it to be debated in a fair, balanced and reasonable way, I urge him, seriously, not to go back to his previous habit of proposing it in a way that personalises the issue with the name of a political opponent. We all know that we could pick names from any political party and find a way to personalise the issue in that way. I hope that he will resist that temptation.

I am glad that Graham Simpson is going to desist from that approach. That would be helpful.

I am pleased that the Parliament has voted in favour of asking the SPCB to conduct an independent review of the process. I hope that it will heed the words of Gillian Mackay earlier today in recognising that harm to people is the most serious form of offence that an MSP can commit and that it should be the one that is subject to the most serious sanction. I say that not only in relation to the example of sexual harassment that I gave earlier. Jackie Baillie mentioned the case of Margaret Ferrier, whose actions directly put other people’s lives at risk. Harm to people is surely a more serious form of offence for any MSP and should be treated more seriously.

I hope that what comes from the independent review is an impartial system that is not susceptible to politically motivated decision making. It needs consistency and decisions that are made on the basis of evidence and with the right of appeal, because those kinds of things would be available to people in what has been regularly called “the real world” in this debate. We should have those principles in any system of standards and sanctions in this Parliament.

Good morning. A few of you have talked about this already, but it seems to me that we are using the term “commissioner” to mean very different things. There are those that carry out significant functions on an on-going basis; it is clear that the Scottish Information Commissioner, for example, needs to be a public body with serious resources, and most people would think it inappropriate for that to be part of Government. In other areas, however, what a commissioner does might be a piece of policy work that would happen within Government anyway, and it is all about carrying that out separately, perhaps beyond the Scottish Government, and bringing in the wider public sector.

As Jackson Carlaw has described on a couple of occasions, there is the slightly more amorphous space of advocacy, in which a call for a commissioner lands in much the same way as calls for other kinds of interventions to elevate the status of an issue. That seems an entirely legitimate thing for people to advocate for; indeed, it is consistent with the notion that we had 25 years ago that this would be a Parliament that shares power with the people, whether through citizens assemblies, which have been tried a few times, or the older idea of a civic forum, which was not brilliant but was abolished instead of being improved. There are various ways for that sort of thing to happen, and the creation of commissioners is a legitimate way of filling that space.

However, if the worry is that commissioners are proliferating and costing too much, I wonder whether, instead of closing them down, we should give them their space, but in a lighter-touch way. It would be like the difference between, say, an ambassador and an honorary consul. At the moment, the corporate body gives committees resources to appoint committee advisers on particular issues. Is there not space for something with a bit more status?

Such a person could be the Parliament’s adviser on a particular issue, who could perform some of the advocacy role and help to bring in marginalised voices, without the need for a public body in its own right. They would undertake that role and have a degree of status with Parliament directly. That would avoid the need to create a big range of new public bodies that need constant resourcing. The corporate body might even decide to cap the amount of money that was provided in each session of Parliament for appointing such people, and we could start each new session with a clean slate. Would that be one way of giving legitimate space to the very reasonable argument for a connection with civic society and a role for advocacy, but without all the baggage?

I have no relevant interests to declare.

Thank you. That was easy.

The minister is well aware that the new build heat standard did not cover emergency and back-up systems, and that the building standards regime already includes flexibility, such as derogations if new housing developments have to be put in an area where they cannot be connected to the electricity grid and therefore cannot use clean heating systems. Is it not clear from the current situation that all we need is a little bit of lobbying from vested interests and a little bit of misinformation and the SNP will start unravelling even modest measures—[Interruption.]

—that have been put in place for good reasons?

Given that the cabinet secretary, who previously signed off the measure, was unwilling earlier today to commit to a timetable for introducing the heat in buildings bill to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, how much confidence can anyone have that the Scottish Government remains committed to that challenging agenda?

The First Minister is right that addressing the climate emergency can be good for the economy. If we get it right, it will protect people from high energy bills, too. However, he knows that the members of his party who have spent years lobbying against climate action and for the oil and gas industry are still doing so, and, after the events of recent weeks, they are emboldened. Does he have the courage that has been so clearly lacking in the past to face them down, refuse their demands and commit to the radical acceleration of climate action that is so clearly needed, such as action to cut road traffic, action to decarbonise heat and other actions that are necessary if Scotland is to make up for so much lost ground over so many years?