Tag Archives: accountability

• Murray to push for key figures to attend and Scottish Affairs committee to exert its full powers
• Scottish Government flounders over ferries again
• Parliament backs Scot Lib Dems for more generous community benefit from energy projects

Murray to push for key figures to attend and Scottish Affairs committee to exert its full powers

Following on from yesterday’s announcement that the UK Parliament’s Scottish Affairs Committee will launch inquiries into the dual role of the Lord Advocate, and into the financial regulation of political parties in Scotland, Liberal Democrat Scottish Affairs spokesperson and committee member Susan Murray MP has called for senior SNP and Scottish Government figures to give evidence as part of the inquiry and said that the committee must use its full powers to ensure key figures attend and key documentation is available for members to review.

Ms Murray said:

The Scottish Government has continually refused to display transparency around the Murrell scandal, it is now up to the Scottish Affairs Committee to gather the appropriate evidence to fully scrutinise what happened.

Senior SNP and Scottish Government figures involved must be summoned to give evidence as part of the inquiry in order to fully assess whether our systems of governance are working.

Just to give one example, was it appropriate for the Lord Advocate to tell the First Minister about the charges against his party’s former chief executive weeks before the public knew?

So far the Scottish Government have been as obstructive as can be so I want to see the Scottish Affairs Committee use its full powers to ensure key figures attend and key documentation is available for members to review.

It’s time for a thorough reassessment of the dual role of the Lord Advocate and into the financial regulation of political parties in Scotland. Given how much money was embezzled from under the noses of SNP members, I suspect many of them will quietly accept that this is long overdue.

Scottish Government flounders over ferries again

At First Minister’s Questions, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP has today urged John Swinney to finally extend ferries compensation to coastal towns, and challenged him on why Stephen Flynn, as Transport Secretary, didn’t know anything about a significant incident involving a CalMac vessel.

During the exchange, the First Minister did not acknowledge that his own government had this week voted for a Scottish Liberal Democrat amendment calling for the Islands Resilience Fund “to offer more funding, and sooner, to both island businesses and the coastal communities that have been consistently excluded from the scheme.”