Motion of No Confidence

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 23 March 2021.

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Photo of Elizabeth Smith Elizabeth Smith Conservative

Tomorrow, every seat in the Parliament becomes vacant again. All business in the chamber comes to an end, after which we await the verdict of the voters on 6 May, which is just six weeks away. As the First Minister said, that is as it should be. I hope that the newly elected members on 6 May will learn some important lessons about what this whole sorry saga has meant for Scottish politics. I also hope that every single politician, irrespective of his or her political views or seniority, will learn those lessons, starting with the fact that the serious flaws in the Scottish Government’s handling of the complaints process utterly failed the female complainants in this case.

That is not all, however. The fallout from both James Hamilton’s report and the report of the parliamentary committee that investigated the Scottish Government’s handling of the complaints process is significant and certain to have long-term ramifications. The First Minister has been cleared of breaking the ministerial code, but she has not been cleared of showing a serious lack of judgment, of presiding over a dysfunctional Government and, crucially, of misleading the committee, most especially when it comes to her account of when she first heard about the concerns of Alex Salmond.

Neither should we ignore the fact that James Hamilton makes it clear that he was frustrated by the fact that legal constraints prevented him from publishing all the relevant details without redaction, so that the necessary evidence could be examined in the appropriate context—[Interruption.]