David Maddox: Telling the truth

When Alex Fergusson the Presiding Officer launched his truth inquiry on Thursday, the opposition parties already had their dossiers ready to send out on alleged SNP ministerial lies.
One of them was claims in the main that Linda Fabiani had contacted the Foreign Office after the Mumbai massacre to ask if the Scottish Government could help. Labour correctly said that no such contact had been made, but this has greatly miffed the SNP because it was apparently not through a lack of effort on Ms Fabiani's part.
As one frustrated Nationalist spindoctor put it to me: "Lord Malloch-Brown (foreign office minister) actually refused to take the call from Linda Fabiani about Mumbai!"