Live blog: First Minister's Questions - XL Bully ban and Post Office Horizon scandal
Good morning, and welcome to The Scotsman's FMQs live blog, where our expert politics team will be bringing you every cut and thrust from today's debate in Holyrood.
Labour briefing
Scottish Labour's post-FMQs briefing:
Anas SarwarWe know Ministers and the Crown were made aware of concerns around unsafe prosecutions in 2013.
Disturbing accounts from the public inquiry have revealed Post Office employees going door to door in Scotland to threaten and extort money from sub-Postmasters.
In behaviour reminiscent of the mob, these stories show that the Post Office behaved like a private police force and showed little regard for the law in Scotland.
Sub-postmasters were pressured into accepting accusations of false accounting and forced to hand over thousands of pounds that day or face imprisonment.
If any other organisation had behaved like this in Scotland we would expect to see criminal investigations into their conduct.
Too often in this country when there is an injustice, the first instinct of institutions and of Government is to protect themselves.
Whether it’s the sub-postmasters taking on the Post Office, the Hillsborough scandal, the C-diff scandal at the Vale of Leven or victims of infections at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital.
It shouldn’t take victims disclosing the most harrowing moments of their lives to shame both of Scotland’s Governments into action.
Government is meant to be on the peoples’ side, but tragically when victims come looking for justice all they get are more barriers put in their way - and the silence, denial and cover up compounds the injustice and amplifies their pain.
Ministers – be they UK or Scottish – always say we must learn the lessons and it can’t be allowed to happen again. But it does.
The priority for Government should be truth and justice for victims, rather than protecting institutions and individual reputations.
Yousaf criticised for committee no-show
A senior SNP MP has criticised First Minister Humza Yousaf for refusing to appear in front of a key Westminster committee.
Pete Wishart MP, who is chair of Westminster’s Scottish affairs committee, said it was “disappointing” Mr Yousaf had not accepted an invitation to appear before the committee.
The committee had asked the First Minister to give evidence on his priorities and on the committee’s ongoing inquiry into intergovernmental relations.
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