BBC Scotland’s flagship morning radio show has issued its second correction linked to the SNP in two weeks.
The broadcaster’s corrections and clarifications page was updated on Friday to include a Good Morning Scotland report where it was claimed that First Minister Humza Yousaf had U-turned on a manifesto commitment.
The BBC wrote: “In a Good Morning Scotland interview, and in a tweet trailing the interview, we said that the First Minister was U-turning on a manifesto commitment to provide free school meals to all of Scotland’s schoolchildren.
“We should have made clear that this commitment was in relation to all of Scotland’s primary school children only, not those at secondary schools, where the SNP’s manifesto had pledged only to run a pilot scheme for free breakfasts.
“We apologise for the error.”
The Good Morning Scotland programme in question was broadcast on May 4. It came after Yousaf suggested that the universal approach to free school meals may be scaled back amid cost pressures on the Government.
“I’ve got a 14-year-old now. Should people be paying for her free school meals when I earn a First Minister’s salary?” he told the Daily Record.
“I don’t think that’s the right way to use that money. A better way is to target those that need it absolutely the most.”
The correction follows another which the BBC issued around Good Morning Scotland on June 12, about a broadcast on May 23.
The corporation had reported on Margaret Ferrier, the MP facing a recall petition in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, without making clear that she no longer represented the SNP.
The SNP’s 2021 Holyrood manifesto said that children in primary 1-3 already benefitted from free school meals, but pledged to roll this out further so that all primary pupils and all students in special schools received the provision year-round.
It also said there would be a pilot of free school breakfasts in secondary schools, with possible expansion depending on how that scheme ran.
