David Maddox: The strange case of the Scottish Inter Faith Council money

Before I finally sign off for the day, it is possibly worth relating one episode that happened in Holyrood today, which vexed many of our elected representatives.
No less than five points of order were made about an answer Alex Salmond, the First Minister, made to Lib Dem leader Tavish Scott in First Minister's questions last week.
The issue was over the funding for the Scottish Inter Faith Council. Mr Scott asked why it had not received any funding and why staff had been notified of redundancy.
Mr Salmond stood up and, without even looking at his notes, said it had been resolved, the SIFC would get its money and no staff would lose their jobs. This completely wrong-footed Mr Scott and made him look rather foolish, much to the mirth of Salmond and his faithful followers.
But it emerged quickly that it was not poor research from the Lib Dems that had led to this apparent gaffe. An e-mail went to SIFC staff just before FMQs saying they would have to renegotiate and the author of that e-mail, SIFC convener Major Alan Dixon (Salvation Army), sent another e-mail to Mr Scott the evening after FMQs saying it had not been resolved.
It seems that the final agreement was made yesterday, but the SNP maintain that it was really done and dusted by Justice Minister Fergus Ewing before Christmas.
Today Mr Ewing made a "point of order" stating that point and later correspondence from Mjr Dixon from January 6 before FMQs on January 8 confirming this was passed around.
Counter points of order were made by Mr Scott, his predecessor as Lib Dem leader, Nicol Stephen, and Labour's Richard Baker. All said that as the matter was only resolved yesterday it was clear, in their view, that Mr Salmond had misled parliament.
The Presiding Officer, Alex Fergusson, gave his stock answer that ministerial answers were not his responsbility but was part of the ministerial code which is policed by Mr Salmond.
Mr Fergusson said he would reflect on the issue and possibly make a statement after voting if there was anything to add. He did not, so we can assume there wasn't, even though Independent MSP Margo MacDonald in a fifth point of order earlier had suggested he was responsible for maintaining standards in parliament.
It has built up some momentum for parliamentary rules to be changed to try to force ministers to apologise if they mislead MSPs in the chamber.
But as one final addendum to the whole sage, the SNP spin doctors have let slip that the real problem was that SIFC was asking for £360,000 next year, triple its previous grant of £120,000.

From all this the following conclusions have been made by various observers:

1. Mr Salmond should not have hidden behind a junior minister today and made a statement himself.

2. Either Mjr Dixon is very confused or he was trying to be clever by playing one party off another to get an awful lot more money.

3. Mr Scott has been made to look a fool even if he was possibly misled.

4. It is not entirely clear if the misleading was done by Mjr Dixon or Mr Salmond or if there was any intentional misleading at all.

5. Parliamentary rules do need to be changed to make ministers more accountable for what they say and give the Presiding Officer, even if he is reluctant, a stronger policing role.

6. Alex Salmond cannot be expected to police himself or other ministers through the ministerial code and an independent body or commissioner may be required.

7. When all is said and done SIFC have enough money to continue and nobody will lose their jobs, which has to be the bottom line in all this.