Scottish Police Authority

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 25 January 2018.

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The First Minister:

We are getting a clear picture that, in the unlikely event that Ruth Davidson was First Minister, the chief constable would have come back to work that day without any relevant questions being asked. That is not the kind of governance that the people of Scotland expect and deserve.

On the issue of what Parliament knows, there is nothing that Ruth Davidson has brought to Parliament today that is different from what she brought to it last week. The reason for that is that there was nothing in what we heard this morning that changes what was already known. The justice secretary came to Parliament, gave a full statement and answered questions from across the chamber about exactly what had happened, and nothing that we have heard since then has changed the facts that the justice secretary put to Parliament. We also had a debate in the chamber yesterday, brought by the Tories, on which they lost the vote because they had not made the argument that they are trying to make.

The point is that the justice secretary, discharging his responsibilities, asked legitimate questions. If those who say that he should not have asked those legitimate questions really take that position, they have to explain to the Scottish people why they think that it would have been right for the chief constable to return to work without any consultation with the organisation that is carrying out an investigation, without the acting chief constable even being told about it and without any concern for the welfare of other officers. That may be Ruth Davidson’s position; it is not my position, which is that the justice secretary acted entirely appropriately.