ANAS Sarwar challenged Humza Yousaf on transparency at First Minister's Questions after his party uncovered emails allegedly showing he took up a huge chunk of civil service time to "spare his blushes" over incorrect information he gave on renewables.
The Scottish Government was accused of a lack of transparency over the country's renewable offshore power potential earlier this month.
It used a letter to a Holyrood committee to downgrade Scotland's projected share of Europe's offshore energy capacity.
For years, ministers said Scotland had 25% of that capacity but new figures suggest it is around 9%.
At FMQs, Sarwar took Yousaf to task after discovering civil servants had spent a month going back and forth on the matter as he "rejected their advice".
This came after the SNP and Tories engaged in a row over the Michael Matheson iPad data bill debacle.
Sarwar told the chamber: "In the short time Humza Yousaf has been First Minister, the record of this Parliament has had to be corrected three times because of wrong information he has told this chamber.
"Once was in response to the Covid inquiry and deleted WhatsApp messages, and another was a response to me in this chamber when the First Minister gave an inaccurate answer about Scotland’s renewables, but instead of immediately correcting the record, he took up hours of civil service time to try and spare his blushes.
"We know this because Scottish Labour has the full unredacted emails between the First Minister and officials.
"They show that when civil servants pointed out he was wrong, he rejcted their advice. Instead, his advisers had civil servants spend a month trying to cover up with a new line including manufacturing statistics to fit his answers."
Yousaf said it was incumbent upon any minister to correct the record if an inaccurate statement has been made.
He added: "What I won't apologise for though is the fact we have an incredible renewables potential here in Scotland, a potential we will invest in and we will unleash that full potential for the workforce going forwards.
"While we will talk up Scotland's energy potential, we know Anas Sarwar is only interested in talking it down."
Prior to Sarwar's questioning, Yousaf called out “hypocrisy” from Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross over his criticism of Matheson’s iPad expenses.
Yousaf raised the fact that in 2021, Ross failed to declare his £21,000 Holyrood salary to Westminster authorities – and also failed to declare income from 26 football games he ran the line at. In total more than £28,000 of income was not declared to the Parliament.
The FM read out an apologetic interview to STV – then revealed the quotes were from Ross at the time.
“'This was a big mistake by me for something I’m deeply sorry, I know how badly I’ve performed here and how much I’ve let people down. And for that I’m very sorry’,” the SNP leader quoted.
“Forgive me, this was a quote from Douglas Ross when he failed to declare £28k of income.
“Now, the point here is we didn’t call for Douglas Ross to quit. We accepted, of course, the point that he had made an honest mistake. And the hypocrisy here … is that Douglas Ross says it’s fine for him to make an honest mistake but not fine for Michael Matheson to make an honest mistake."
Matheson admitted last week in an emotional statement to MSPs his teenage sons had used his parliamentary iPad as a hotspot to watch football during a holiday in January, incurring costs of more than £7000 in one day as a result of an out of date Sim card.
But the Health Secretary has faced serious questions given he told the press just days before that statement that no one else had used his iPad, when he knew his children had.
Matheson has said he will “fully co-operate” with a probe into the matter by the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body that was confirmed on Thursday morning.
There was also a shots fired between Yousaf and his SNP colleague Fergus Ewing during FMQs over the Scottish Government's heat pump targets.
The Conservative MSP Edward Mountain asked whether the Scottish Government’s plans to require off-gas households to replace fossil fuel boilers with heat pumps by 2025 was still going ahead.
Yousaf said his government remained committed to phasing out the installation of new or replacement fossil fuel boilers as outlined in the 2021 Heat and Building Strategy, adding that if they were to meet climate change targets the use of fossil fuel boilers would have to end.
Ewing launched a furious tirade against heat pumps and the Scottish Greens, asking the FM if he would ditch the Greens' "pie-in-the-sky" policy.
Yousaf said the cheers of agreement coming from the Tories should signal to Ewing that his opinion was not “the most sensible”.
He added: "I do not believe that we can simply put our head in the sand and ignore the scale of the climate crisis that we are facing."
