SORRY SEEMS TO BE THE HARDEST WORD

It is fundamentally a story of the SNP’s reluctance to tell the truth when called out for exaggerated claims about Scotland's renewables.

But it also reveals civil servants devoting significant time and resource to coming up with lines for a First Minister who does not want to be straightforwardly honest with the Scottish Parliament.

The story began on 22nd June 2023, when Humza Yousaf made the following statement at FMQs:^{1https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/official-report/search-what-was-said-in-parliament/meeting-of-parliament-22-06-2023?meeting=15386&iob=131243#orscontributions_M4941E408P744C2505991}

“Of course the GB energy company would be based in Scotland because we have the majority of the renewables and the natural resources here in Scotland.”

This wasn’t true, and Liam Kerr MSP raised the matter in a point of order at the conclusion of FMQs.

It wasn’t until 29th August 2023 that Humza Yousaf wrote to Liam Kerr (plus Anas Sarwar, who the original remark was directed at, and various officials of the Scottish Parliament), to note and explain a correction he had made to the Official Report.

This is that letter:

The highlighted sentence is important. According to the First Minister, he had always intended to say “per capita”.

But These Islands has internal Scottish Government correspondence, received in a Freedom of Information response, which tells a very different story.

22nd June 2023: Civil servants immediately confirm the First Minsiter's error and the true statistic

Immediately after the conclusion of FMQs on 22nd June 2023, an email conversation began amongst officials. They were discussing how to respond to Liam Kerr’s point of order, which was made just before 1pm.

By 2:33pm they had dug out the correct figures, which confirmed that Humza Yousaf’s statement was false:

Scotland in fact has around a quarter of the UK’s renewables capacity.

That should have been the end of the matter. Humza Yousaf could have promptly corrected the Official Report and written to Liam Kerr to acknowledge his mistake.

But as far as we can tell from the email chains released in the FOI response (they are heavily redacted), the First Minister’s staff never even contemplated simply correcting the record with the truth.

And notice the email subject line of those first messages: "Line To Take". Right from the very outset, everyone involved in the conversation knew that it had nothing to do with finding out what Humza Yousaf "had intended to say". That would have been easy - someone could just have asked him.

Instead, there was an extraordinary month-long process of scrabbling around to find a creative way for him to save face.

23rd June - 30th June: Civil Servants discuss the problem and formulate a "plan"

Their first idea is to include pipeline capacity.

But it doesn’t work: it fails to show Scotland having a majority of the UK’s capacity.

These Islands’ first FOI request then becomes part of the conversation (a second request uncovered the emails you are now reading.)

Again, rather than simply admitting the truth - that the Scottish Government has no such information because it isn’t true - they set about hatching a “plan”.

There are pages and pages (27 in total) of heavily redacted emails over which this plan takes shape…

3rd July 2023: A new idea - the "per capita" line

On 3rd July 2023, someone came up with the idea of using per capita figures. This should have been a non-starter, since having the majority of the per-capita capacity is nonsensical. It’s mathematically meaningless (you can have a higher per capita figure, but you can't have the majority of a per capita figure).

10th July 2023: What's the story?

On 10th July 2023, more than two weeks after the FMQs at which Humza Yousaf made the false statement, Scottish Government officials ask whether there is “any news” on how the First Minister intends to make a correction.

10th -18th July: Getting the story straight

Which prompts another flurry of emails. They are too heavily redacted to follow exactly what is being said.

But it would be surprising if someone didn’t point out that you can’t have the majority of the per capita capacity.

20th - 21st July: The decision

But they obviously decided, nonsensical as it may be, that it was the only way for Humza Yousaf to save face. Because a decision was made to go with the “majority of the renewables per capita” line.

21st July 2023 - The correction

And on 21st July 2023, a month after the FMQs at which he made the original remark, Humza Yousaf finally remembers what it was he originally intended to say.

Remarkably, the OCEA (Office of the Chief Economic Adviser) signs off on the "majority of the renewables per capita" line.

So Scottish Government civil servants knew almost immediately what the correct figures were. But they then spent weeks concocting a plan with the sole purpose of allowing the First Minister to save face. This is not how a theoretically apolitical civil service should be spending its time.

The Scottish Government has misrepresented statistics before.^{2https://www.these-islands.co.uk/publications/i384/wrong_with_the_wind.aspx}  But potentially much more serious in this instance is the First Minister misleading the Scottish Parliament. Humza Yousaf has serious questions to answer about why his letters to MSPs and the Presiding Officer did not tell the truth.