Chamber and committees

You are clear that you want Prestwick to stay as an airport, but its business model at the moment relies a lot on freight and military flights. Do you expect someone to retain that current business model, or would you accept interest from someone who said, “We don’t want to do it that way—we’ve got other ideas”?

To ask the Scottish Government how it plans to take forward the recommendations in the Transport Scotland report, “‘There’s an app for that!’—Women’s Safety on Public Transport in Scotland”. (S6O-03513)

I am pleased to hear that the cabinet secretary has spoken to British Transport Police. However, I am sure that she agrees that women should not have to rely on apps to ensure their safety on public transport. Given that, what progress is the Scottish Government making with regard to the changes that were identified in its own report in March last year, such as on transparent bus stops, improved network coverage and visible staffing—guards on trains, for example, which was backed by my friends in the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers?

None of us can say that we have gone through life without making any mistakes. None of us can say that we have not told the odd porky now and again. We are all human, and none of us is perfect. We occasionally get things wrong. The test is how people react when that happens. We all live by sets of rules and, as elected representatives, we have rules that we are expected to, and must, abide by. We must accept that, if we break those rules, there can and should be consequences.

I do not know Michael Matheson. I have never had a conversation with him, and I do not have a view on what he is like as a person. However, I do know that he committed a serious error that involved a huge bill to the public purse, that he then tried to wriggle out of it and that he stumped up only when he was bang to rights. I can also say that there is an arrogance about his response to the inquiry into his behaviour and the suggested punishment that I find distasteful. I was astonished by the First Minister’s comments last week, but at least common sense has prevailed in the chamber.

I read the reports from the corporate body and the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. The job of the first was to establish whether Mr Matheson, who asked it to investigate, had breached the rules under which we operate as MSPs, and its findings were crystal clear—Mr Matheson was guilty and had not met the standards of behaviour that people expect us to hold to.

It was not the corporate body’s job to decide what should happen to Mr Matheson, if anything. That was the job of the committee, and that was its only job. It was not its job to reinvestigate, as it made clear in its report. We know what it suggested, and we have just voted on it. A 27-day suspension and 54 days without pay is a record, but the offence is extremely serious. We have just voted on that. Bizarrely, the SNP abstained, and I was disappointed in Kate Forbes’s comments, but we must move on.

I briefly turn to the explanation that Mr Matheson provided, which was that his sons watched two football matches on their own device, that they used his iPad as a wi-fi hotspot to do so and that he knew nothing about it until much later. A football fan, such as Mr Matheson, would surely have known that his sons were going to watch an old firm game and would surely have discussed what they watched afterwards. In fact, it would be natural for him to have watched the game with them. Most people would think that a father and his sons might discuss how they were going to watch key football games before they even went on holiday.

If Mr Matheson worked for a private employer and did what he did, he would be out on his ear. He is lucky that he does not. He is also lucky that he does not sit in the United Kingdom Parliament because if he did—election aside—he could have faced a recall process that would no doubt have seen the end of his political career. However, he faces no such process here, because we have none. That is why he should resign.

That legislative deficit needs to be fixed, which is why I am introducing a member’s bill that, if supported, will do just that. It will also tackle the very important issue that Willie Rennie raised about what we do with regional members. I have a solution for Mr Rennie. I hope that the bill will be published before the summer recess. I had planned to say that I hoped that the legislation would never be used—I do hope that—but, as I said, we are all human, and humans make mistakes, so there will be other Michael Mathesons. There will be Scottish Parliament equivalents of Margaret Ferrier and Peter Bone. Some time in the future, if Parliament votes to have a recall process, it will be used.

I will outline the details of my proposals in the next few weeks. My bill is intended to protect the Parliament’s integrity, and I hope that those who say that they value that will support it. The public will expect nothing less.

I agree with Patrick Harvie on that, and I am desisting from following that approach. I urge Mr Harvie to discuss my proposals when he sees them.

The timescale is that the bill would have to be done and dusted by November?

That is useful.

The Scottish Government still likes to keep pace with European regulations, so I wanted to ask about one that I have been following for a while now, which is regulation EU 2023/1804 on the deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure. I am not expecting you to be all over the detail of that, but it is now in place and it does a number of things. You have already been asked about EV charging. By the end of December 2025, there should be one recharging pool at least every 60 kilometres, or 37 miles, on the main road network in the EU.

The regulation also does a number of other things—I am sure that you can look it up afterwards—such as in relation to hydrogen infrastructure for road vehicles, liquefied methane for road transport, electricity supply in ports, electricity for aircraft, railway infrastructure to include hydrogen and battery power, and easy payment for EV charging.

As I say, I am not expecting you to know all this. I do not expect you to have the regulation in front of you, but do you have the ambition to mirror that regulation here in Scotland?

It is a regulation.

I am with you, convener. I think that we can accept the principle, but it is not really good enough for the minister to come with an amendment that she does not know the cost of. First, she said that she did not know the cost of it, and then she said that it was zero cost. It is a bit confusing. Every bill has a financial memorandum, so you need to know the cost of things. I think that you need to know the cost of the amendment. That is pretty basic stuff when we come to legislating. I imagine that the committee will probably vote for the amendment if it comes to a vote, but process-wise, that is not the way it should be done.

If any other member had lodged an uncosted amendment, the minister would be criticising them—rightly so—for bringing forward uncosted amendments. She would probably have said, “I cannot support the amendment at this stage because we do not know the cost.” I will throw that back at the minister. She has come here with something that is uncosted, and then, when a piece of paper was passed to her by an official, she suddenly says that there is no cost. Which is it, and where is the evidence?

I, too, have been listening very carefully to what you have been saying, convener, and it must strike a chord with probably every single member here. I have already mentioned litter picking during the course of stage 2. I am sure that most of us will have picked litter, and I recall how, when I was doing so in a wooded area next to the East Kilbride expressway, which is a dual carriageway, I saw litter everywhere. It had to have been thrown from vehicles. Of course, some of it had not been—there were sofas deep in the woods, for example—but a lot of it must have been from vehicles and it was inaccessible to the council. You have said, convener, that somebody has got to come and clear the rubbish up; sometimes that somebody is just a volunteer, not the council, and sometimes the litter, particularly bottles, can be left for years, unless somebody comes along and picks it up.

I do not have a vote on this, but if I had, I would be strongly supporting the amendments for the reasons outlined.