Cynical response from First Minister raises more questions about Government handling of Peterhead gas project 

We’re escalating our complaint against the Scottish Government for its mishandling of the application to build a new gas burning power station at Peterhead.  

You might remember we wrote to the First Minister in July alleging 28 breaches of the Ministerial Code. This code is a set of rules that is supposed to govern how Ministers behave, and, specifically in this case, to ensure that planning applications are handled fairly, and people can trust the process. 

Multiple breaches of the Ministerial Code

The breaches included:  

• Ministers meeting developers over 60 times whilst refusing to discuss it with groups like us who are concerned about it  
• Cabinet Secretary for Energy Michael Matheson giving a positive press statement about the project despite it being a live planning application 
• First Minister Humza Yousaf visiting the existing Peterhead gas plant and wearing SSE clothing in a company video praising their future plans  
• The Scottish Government not having records of meetings with developers.

Well, the First Minister has finally replied to say there is nothing for us to worry about. The Scottish Government has judged itself innocent!  

He says that we shouldn’t be concerned about the 61 meetings Ministers have had with fossil fuel developers SSE and Equinor, that then First Minister Humza Yousaf going to Peterhead and appearing in a promotional video for one of the developers SSE is totally above board, that Ministers can’t be held responsible for the briefings their staff write and the quote from a former Cabinet Secretary in a SSE press release about the project wasn’t actually about the project.  

It will not surprise you to hear that we are not convinced.  In fact, this cynical response created more questions than it answered. It contains inconsistencies, lots of weak excuses and fails to address the overall pattern of behaviour across the Scottish Government. 

We’ll take you through some of these in detail below.  

Ministers including the First Minister have prejudiced the decision-making process for a new fossil fuel power station  

John Swinney’s response fails to adequately address concerns over then First Minister Humza Yousaf’s visit to the existing Peterhead power station and the accompanying press release and tweet sent by the Scottish Government as part of this trip.  

Humza Yousaf also appeared in an SSE promotional video in SSE branded clothes and endorsed the Acorn carbon capture project which Swinney admits is ‘interdependent’ on the Peterhead gas project.   

A supportive quote by a First Minister, when given at the site of a proposed development and to the developers, would be interpreted by any reasonable person as supporting the project. By doing this First Minister Humza Yousaf has effectively given a very public promise to the developers that his government approves of their plans, and is undoubtedly putting pressure on his Ministers to approve the new gas project, in what is a clear breach of the Ministerial Code. 

John Swinney claimed Humza Yousaf was briefed that there was a live planning application that meant he could not comment on the project. We asked for this briefing on three separate occasions under Freedom of Information rules but it either does not exist, or is being deliberately withheld. 

However, what we did obtain through Freedom of Information requests was an email showing that Humza Yousaf’s special advisor told him the “focus of the visit was SSE proposals for CCS energy plan”. These emails about the trip were forwarded to Gillian Martin, the Energy Minister who was then responsible for making the decision, this is despite the Ministerial Code saying the First Minister shouldn’t act in a way which puts pressure on the Minister making the decision. 

Cabinet Secretary Matheson makes public statement in support of the gas burning project

This part of the complaint relates to then Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Michael Matheson, providing a supportive quote to developers SSE to use in a press release about the new power station. 

As you can see the First Minister claims that a quote “does not speak directly to the application”. Matheson’s quote states: “The innovative Peterhead CCGT Power Station is a fantastic example of how Scotland’s energy sector can make the transition to net zero.”   

Honestly, we cannot conceive of how John Swinney could make this claim.  This is clear backing for the new Peterhead gas project from a senior figure in the Scottish Government, backing that would again put pressure on the more junior Minister who must make the decision on whether to approve the plans. And a clear breach of the code.  

Civil servant briefings don’t influence Ministers, unless they do 

Documents released to us under FOI show that Ministers were repeatedly briefed by civil servants to offer support for the developers and/or the project.  

Bizarrely, the First Minister claims that “being in receipt of official briefing is a passive act on the part of Ministers… Ministers cannot act in breach of the Code if they themselves have not undertaken the action.”  

Are we being expected to believe that Ministers are not influenced by civil servant briefings, or that these briefings do not in fact represent the position of the Scottish Government on a given issue? 

There is no record of any Minister asking for changes to these briefings or thorough minutes of the meetings that refute the content of the briefings.  

Elsewhere in his response (included below), the FM claims the opposite: that in one instance because a briefing included a warning that there was a live planning application that this was evidence that the Ministerial Code was in fact being followed.  So, civil servant briefings are only meaningful or influential when, later on, the First Minister decides that they are. 

The Scottish Government has not properly recorded meetings with the developers 

We initially identified 16 occasions where the Lobbying Register shows that meetings took place between the developers and Scottish Ministers, but the Scottish Government’s records for these meetings are missing or not available. We can see from the lobbying register that three of these involve discussion of national energy policy but no records were held because they were erroneously reported as MSP constituency business. On a further two incidents the Scottish Government said no records were kept for unknown reasons.  

John Swinney has claimed that 12 of these meetings were party political or constituency business, effectively asking the Scottish public to believe that the Minister wasn’t a Minister whilst meeting with a private company.  The First Minister offered no evidence to support this claim.  

This ignores the substance of our complaint: that it is likely that official business was raised, that there is no evidence to prove it was not, and that the lack of record keeping by Ministers, irrespective of what capacity they later asserted they were acting under, undermines trust in the decision making process for the Peterhead power station planning application.  

We will hold our hands up and say that we got one meeting wrong in our original complaint. Neil Gray changed roles during a reporting period, so there was in fact a record of that meeting. However, that still leaves 15 missing meetings with no good explanation.  

The Scottish Government has met the fossil fuel developers over 60 times 

We produced evidence to show that Ministers had met with representatives from SSE and Equinor 61 times in the period analysed, compared to just 10 times with ourselves. And when we tried to bring up our concerns with the Peterhead plans we have repeatedly been told they won’t discuss it with us as it’s a live planning application. 

In his response, the First Minister really failed to engage with this accusation that by showing a general pattern of favour towards the developers and meeting repeatedly with them during the planning period whilst neglecting objectors, this constituted a clear breach of the Code. 

We are continuing to pursue this complaint because there is so much at stake with this decision. We have replied to the First Minister demanding a full formal investigation into the Scottish Government’s handling of this planning application. 

The expansion of Peterhead power station risks making Scotland’s biggest climate polluter even worse and risks locking home energy bills to the volatile cost of fossil fuels for the next 25 years or more.  

Peterhead will generate electricity by burning fossil gas that has been bought at the price set by the international market and is prone to shocks that increases prices like war or extreme weather. This is a terrible deal for Scottish households and the climate. The only beneficiaries will be fossil fuel companies – hence why they are lobbying so hard for this project.  

The First Minister needs to end this cosy relationship with these companies and listen to climate scientists, not corporate lobbyists.