Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Thursday, September 17, 2015

Official Report 860KB pdf

Point of Order

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. Motion S4M-14272, in the name of Fergus Ewing, asks Parliament to welcome a specific point in the updated “2020 Routemap for Renewable Energy in Scotland”, namely that it

“records a significant increase in the generation of electricity from renewable sources”.

The nature of the debate was agreed by Parliament last Wednesday and the parliamentary clerks asked for indications of debate speakers last Thursday. The minister lodged the motion on Tuesday, and it referred to that specific point in the report. However, the Scottish Government did not make the report public until this morning. Although it was circulated to members last night, that happened only at 10 to 6, well after the deadline for lodging amendments. At the very least, that shows a lack of courtesy to members by the minister, which is regrettable but also somewhat surprising, not least given the broad welcome that the report has received.

Presiding Officer, in order to allow business in the Parliament to take place in a courteous manner, will you ask the Scottish Government to make sure that, in future, it gets organised and publishes any document that it is going to quote selected parts of in a motion in time, so that amendments can be lodged?

Fergus Ewing wants to respond to the point of order.

To respond to that point, I accept that I would have preferred the document to be published earlier. As soon as it was brought to my attention that it had not been published, steps were taken to rectify that. As Mr McArthur said, the document was communicated to all members of the Scottish Parliament last night, but that was later than it should have been, for which I apologise.

I hope, however, that the information that is contained in the document is relatively straightforward and familiar territory for all the members who are involved in the debate.

As I have to rule on that matter, I point out that, as Mr McArthur will know, that was not a point of order and timing is a matter for the Government. However, I welcome the minister’s apology on this occasion and I hope that the same thing will not happen again. Many thanks, minister.