Chamber and committees

She said:

“I shared them with her last year and we have shared them with her again this year.”—[Official Report, 27 January 2022; c 91.]

Were those alternative proposals permissible within the funding package allowed by the Scottish Fiscal Commission? If that was not the case, how far outside the margin were they?

It has been a long session and I thank the cabinet secretary for her contributions. I now suspend the meeting until 12.05 pm to allow members, the cabinet secretary and her officials to have a break before we move on to our second agenda item. I remind people to wear face masks when moving around the room and the wider parliamentary campus.

I should probably have used the word “rebounding” rather than “booming”, but that was a quote from a message that I received yesterday from a constituent of mine who runs a business.

The next constituent—that is not right; it is just that I am always thinking about my constituents. The next member to ask a question is John Mason.

That appears to have exhausted questions from the committee members. I have a couple to finish with. One is a follow-up to your response to Douglas Lumsden, cabinet secretary. You said that if a complaint against a minister is dismissed at stage 1, which is initial contact and assessment, the minister concerned will not be informed. How will you deal with potentially malicious complaints against a minister?

In relation to the procedures for making a formal complaint, there is no time limit in relation to complaints of harassment, but there is a time limit of six months in relation to complaints of bullying; why is there a difference?

Electronic data storage has been a huge boon. When I left Glasgow city chambers in 1999, I was asked politely to take home the contents of six filing cabinets and mountains of other sundry possessions that were piled up. I do not think that I was popular when 13,000 constituency cases turned up in my garage subsequent to that. Therefore, I realise how important records management is. It is important to have adequate storage and ensure that records are kept robustly and confidentially.

It is clear that all parties that are involved in the process are expected to maintain confidentiality at all times, including when the process has concluded. The rights of staff are protected from detriment if they have made a qualifying disclosure known as whistleblowing. What constitutes a breach of confidentiality and what is considered to be whistleblowing?

Thank you, Daniel. That was the first question that I was going to ask as well, but the Deputy First Minister is absolutely right that the First Minister appoints ministers, so if a minister has broken that code and been seen to do so, or has been involved in issues such as we have already discussed, the likelihood of their being able to survive in post is zero, I would have thought. Let us move on.

Okay. I do not expect that this would transpire but if it did, in theory, no action would be taken against someone for doing that, so anyone could bring any case forward, and it would be hit or miss, so to speak.

I thank the Deputy First Minister and his officials, Lesley Fraser and Ian Mitchell, for their evidence. That concludes the public part of our meeting.