First Minister’s Questions: Independence sidelined by day-to-day issues

Instead, almost the entire half-hour session focussed unusually on the day-to-day responsibilities of the Scottish Government.

In a marked diversion from her pointedly personal attacks on Alex Salmond, Johann Lamont chose instead to go on Scotland’s child protection system.

The First Minister, she noted, had in 2009 declared that Scotland’s child protection system was the “best in Europe” if not the world. And yet, she noted, while inspection reports in Renfrewshire had been declaring the local system as excellent, children had still been facing abuse at the hands of their parents and guardians.

“The First Minister needs to explain what appears to be a counsel of despair,” she said, after he insisted that no system in the world could offer a 100 per cent guarantee of protection. She argued that, in order to investigate continuing failures there should be a full public inquiry.

Mr Salmond chose not to say yes or no to that request. Instead, he sought to make more of a philosophical point about the responsibility for the abuse of children.

“The responsibility for wrong doing ... at the end of the day lies with the perpetrators. The idea that individual social workers are perhaps responsible for the actions of others, I don’t think is the way Scotland should look at these areas.” There would, he added, be “no complacency” in the system.

Ruth Davidson returned to the theme of the Leveson Inquiry, insisting that Mr Salmond was holding the Scottish Parliament in “contempt” by not telling MSPs whether or not he had been hacked.

Mr Salmond declined to do so again - perhaps with half an eye on the arts of news management, that particularly juicy bit of news will be left until he appears before Leveson next month.

But with Ms Davidson failing to rouse much of a row, the session only turned half-rowdy on the subject of alcohol minimum pricing. Mr Salmond accused Labour of opposing the measure solely because it was an SNP policy.

Labour’s Jackie Baillie insisted that it would support the plans if he agreed to “claw back” any excess profits that supermarkets are due to make from more costly booze.

The only intervention on the constitution and the Eurozone came from the Independent MSP Margo MacDonald, making a welcome return to the Chamber. With Mr Salmond having just got back from Norway, had he had time to examine the idea of joining the European Free Trade Area, rather than the EU?

Ms MacDonald has put forward a strong case for arguing that, after independence, the SNP should back this looser arrangement with the continent as a way of avoiding an increasingly federal European Union.

Mr Salmond avoided the question altogether. Watch this space?