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Good afternoon. Meghan Gallacher has a point of order.
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I seek your guidance. Given the Scottish Government’s shoddy behaviour last week on the winter fuel payment announcement, it should have learned a lesson. Therefore, I suspect that I was not the only MSP who was angered to read in the Daily Record that the Scottish Government is set to make an embarrassing U-turn on the cuts to affordable housing in the budget statement today.
The article was published at 4.30 this morning. It appears to me that the news was leaked to the media before MSPs had the opportunity to listen to and scrutinise the Scottish Government’s proposals. The Daily Record must be the Scottish National Party’s favourite choice of paper this season; I find it almost suspicious that both leaks have been handed to the same paper. The SNP Government should not be using the press to try to claw back any shred of credibility that it lost when it brutally cut the vital winter fuel payment fund. If it believes that that is clever politics, it is clearly mistaken. It is disrespectful to the Presiding Officer, backbench SNP MSPs and Opposition members in the Parliament.
It is becoming commonplace for the SNP to believe that it is above any convention and the processes of the Parliament. Will the Presiding Officer therefore seek to investigate the matter, to ascertain how the information managed to find its way into the mainstream press before the ministerial statement on the Scottish budget this afternoon? What will the repercussions for the disrespectful behaviour be? Should the statement be rewritten to reflect what we already know and what has been available in the public domain for nearly nine hours?
I have not seen the statement and therefore cannot comment on what is and what is not in it, or on how that relates to what is in the press.
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