Minister defends Transport Scotland gaffe MSP

A Scottish Government minister has defended a transport committee member who asked if Transport Scotland was a registered charity.

The government body is 20 years old and is accountable to parliament. At a meeting of the transport committee this week, SNP MSP Collette Stevenson asked its director of rail delivery, Graeme Cook, if the organsation is a “registered charity”.

Cook told her it is a “non-departmental government body”, saying: “Transport Scotland is an agency so all of the Transport Scotland staff are already part of the civil service.

“Transport Scotland is the same legal entity as the Scottish Government.”

Appearing on BBC Scotland today, energy minister Stephen Gethins was asked if it is reasonable to expect a transport committee member to know how the agency works.

Gethins said he had not seen the meeting, but said Stevenson is a “great colleague”. He told the broadcaster: "You might expect politicians to talk about something they have not seen when they were not in the room or involved in it, but I am not one of them."

However, comparing performance in the Scottish Parliament to that in Westminster, where he was previously an MP, Gethins said: “"At Westminster, where they get paid a whole lot more than they do in the Scottish Parliament, they could sometimes do with upping their game and that's something I saw daily.

“But Collette is a great colleague and I wasn't sitting on the committee.”

Now in her second term, Stevenson represents East Kilbride and also sits on the equality, human rights and civil justice committee.