Scotland's first minister Alex Salmond was accused in the Lords today of "lying to parliament and other transgressions".
Labour former Scottish minister Lord Foulkes of Cumnock drew gasps of surprise from peers when he levelled the charge at question time.
But when pressed over what the "transgressions" might be said only: "I'll tell you later."
His intervention came during a question on the application of the ministerial code at Westminster.
Lord Foulkes said: "The ministerial code in Scotland is so narrow and so lax that the first minister gets away regularly with lying to Parliament and other transgressions..."
As peers pressed him on what this might be, he said, to laughter from all sides: "I'll tell you later," but added: "Seriously, do we have any reserve powers to look at the ministerial code in Scotland and tighten it up?"
Cabinet Office spokesman Lord Wallace of Saltaire said he was not "sighted" on this particular question.
He added: "But I look forward to the enjoyable evening in which you tell me about some of the transgressions that you feel have happened in the Scottish Executive."
An SNP spokesman said later: "It reflects extremely badly on the Westminster system that an unelected Labour peer should allow his obsession with opposing independence to degenerate into saying things in the House of Lords that are utterly untrue and without foundation.
"Perhaps Lord Foulkes had too long a lunch.
"On six occasions Mr Salmond has referred complaints by opposition politicians to independent scrutiny under the ministerial code - and on all six occasions he has been entirely vindicated."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article