A cross-party committee today found Nicola Sturgeon did mislead Parliament as it delivered a damning assessment of the handling of the Alex Salmond row.
The Holyrood committee criticised the First Minister saying regardless of her denials, she seemed to have given Mr Salmond the impression she would intervene in his case.
The MSPs said witnesses supported Mr Salmond’s account of a meeting she initially ‘failed to recollect’ in March 2018, and they swiped it was ‘hard to believe’ she had ‘no knowledge of any concerns about inappropriate behaviour on the part of Mr Salmond prior to November 2017’.
‘If she did have such knowledge, then she should have acted upon it,’ the report said. ‘If she did have such knowledge, then she has misled the committee.’
The committee also delivered a bruising assessment of the Scottish government’s ‘unacceptable’ obstruction of access to crucial material including legal advice.
The conclusions emerged as the Tories vowed to push ahead with a confidence vote tonight – saying Ms Sturgeon must quit.
But the findings are in contrast to the verdict of a separate report yesterday, when James Hamilton QC cleared Ms Sturgeon of breaking the ministerial code – despite concluding her account was ‘incomplete’.
The committee split down party lines, with the four SNP members objecting to key findings, but crucially the nationalists’ usual allies the Greens choosing to side with the opposition.
In one key paragraph, the report brands part of Ms Sturgeon’s evidence about a meeting with Mr Salmond on April 2, 2018 ‘an inaccurate account of what happened’. He says that the First Minister suggested she was ready to step in over the handling of complaints against him.
‘Taking account of the competing versions of events, the Committee believes that she did in fact leave Mr Salmond with the impression that she would, if necessary, intervene,’ the MSPs concluded.
‘This was corroborated by (Mr Salmond’s lawyer) Duncan Hamilton who was also at the meeting. Her written evidence is therefore an inaccurate account of what happened, and she has misled the Committee on this matter.
‘This is a potential breach of the Ministerial Code under the terms of section 1.3 (c).’
The Holyrood inquiry was looking more broadly than Mr Hamilton into how the Scottish government bungled the handling of harassment complaints against Mr Salmond – which resulted in him being awarded more than £500,000. He was later cleared by a trial.
Nicola Sturgeon (left) has already dismissed the committee’s inquiry into the Alex Salmond (right) inquiry as ‘partisan’
The MSPs decided unanimously that Mr Hamilton would make a decision on whether the ministerial code had been broken.
However, as well as giving a damning assessment of the Scottish government’s handing of complaints, it also took aim specifically at Ms Sturgeon.
By a majority, the committee said: ‘The Committee finds it hard to believe that the First Minister had no knowledge of any concerns about inappropriate behaviour on the part of Mr Salmond prior to November 2017.
‘If she did have such knowledge, then she should have acted upon it. If she did have such knowledge, then she has misled the Committee.’
In another passage that was agreed by SNP members, the report said: ‘The Committee’s scrutiny has been significantly impacted by the delays in the provision of information from the Scottish Government and by its constant refusal to release legal advice.
‘The Committee has been frustrated by the impression that on occasion it has not been given all of the relevant information simply because it has not struck upon all the right questions to ask to lead to the release of a particular additional detail…
‘This is an unacceptable position for a parliamentary committee to find itself in when trying to scrutinise the Scottish Government, particularly when both the First Minister and the Permanent Secretary stated there would be full co-operation with the inquiry.’
The report said MSPs were ‘concerned’ Ms Sturgeon did not disclose details of her meeting with Alex Salmond at her home to the Scottish Government’s most senior civil servant, Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans, until June 6 – more than two months after it took place.
The report said: ‘Given the sensitivities of the matter and the fact that it related to internal government complaints handling, the committee believes that it was inappropriate for the First Minister to continue to meet and have discussions with the former first minister on this topic.
‘She should have made the Permanent Secretary aware of her state of knowledge of the complaints and the facts of the meetings at the earliest opportunity after April 2, at which point she should have confirmed that she would cease to have any further contact with Mr Salmond on that subject.’
The committee said it looked at why the Scottish Government was forced to concede Mr Salmond’s judicial review ‘in such an embarrassing and costly manner’.
It criticised the ‘drip feeding of information’, with the report stating: ‘It is clear that at the start of the judicial review process those within the Scottish Government managing the judicial review and their counsel did not possess a complete picture of events relating to the handling of the complaints against the former First Minister.’
Documents which were central to the Scottish Government conceding the judicial review were only identified on December 18 2018.
The report said the ‘main issues leading to the concession of the judicial review at such a late stage’ were the Government’s ‘failure to recognise in the first place that the prior involvement of the investigating officer was an issue’.
The report also noted the ‘delays and mistakes in identifying and submitting documents’.
It concluded: ‘The committee considers that the major flaw in the conduct of this judicial review was the significant failure to identify all the relevant documents at the outset of the judicial review in August 2018.
‘It is inexplicable that these were not identified by October 2018 when the issue of prior contact was identified as a concern by counsel.
‘The process for recovering of documents was fundamentally flawed and contributed to the awarding of the maximum expenses to the petitioner.’
In a slap on the wrists yesterday, Mr Hamilton said it was ‘regrettable’ that Ms Sturgeon had provided an ‘incomplete narrative of events’ to the Scottish Parliament about when she knew of complaints against Mr Salmond.
But he said it was down to a ‘genuine failure of recollection’ and ‘not deliberate’.
‘I am of the opinion that the First Minister did not breach the provisions of the Ministerial Code in respect of any of these matters,’ his report concluded.
A jubilant Ms Sturgeon said she welcomed the ‘comprehensive, evidence-based and unequivocal’ finding. ‘I sought at every stage in this issue to act with integrity and in the public interest.
‘Prior to its publication, opposition politicians stressed the importance of respecting and accepting the outcome of Mr Hamilton’s independent inquiry, and I committed wholeheartedly to doing so.
‘Now that he has reported, it is incumbent on them to do likewise.
‘Now that this investigation is complete and its conclusions public, I will continue to devote all of my time and energy to leading Scotland, to helping the country through the pandemic, and to ensuring that as we rebuild from the hardships of the last 12 months, we do everything we can to protect jobs, support our health service and rebuild our communities for the better.’
Ms Sturgeon referred herself to the ministerial watchdog in January 2019 and asked Mr Hamilton – a former Director of Public Prosecutions in Ireland – to carry out a probe into her conduct after admitting she had met her predecessor to discuss claims of sexual harassment.
The Scottish Tories are vowing to hold a vote of no confidence in Ms Sturgeon later, amid growing evidence that the bitter SNP civil war has inflicted massive damage on its drive to split up the UK. However, it is set to fail after the Greens declared they will back her.
She accused the Scottish Conservatives plan to hold a vote of no confidence in her as a ‘stunt’.
‘I’m confident that vote will express confidence in me,’ Ms Sturgeon said.
‘Remember that the Tories said they would have a confidence vote in me before I uttered a single word of evidence before the parliamentary inquiry.
‘They have decided on this issue a long time ago this is a political stunt being brought forward by the Tories tomorrow.’
Ms Sturgeon insisted the QC’s report showed she was determined to ‘not intervene in the process’ of complaints at the request of Alex Salmond.
But Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross said yesterday that Ms Sturgeon was not ‘free and clear’.
‘The First Minister has been given a pass because it has been judged her ‘failure of recollection’ was ‘not deliberate,’ he said.
‘I respect Mr Hamilton and his judgement but we cannot agree with that assessment. Nicola Sturgeon did not suddenly turn forgetful.
Leaks from the Committee on the Scottish Government’s Handling of Harassment Complaints had already suggesting it has concluded it is ‘hard to believe’ Ms Sturgeon did not know of concerns about her predecessor’s behaviour before November 2017, as she has said.
The findings come more than two years after it was first established.
The cross-party inquiry was set up after a successful judicial review by Mr Salmond resulted in the Scottish Government’s investigation being ruled unlawful and ‘tainted by apparent bias’ in 2019.
When the leaks of the committee’s findings emerged Ms Sturgeon, who spent eight hours being questioned by MSPs on the matter earlier this month, accused some members of having made their minds up before she had ‘uttered a single word of evidence’.
She dismissed the ‘very partisan leak’ as being ‘not that surprising’.
However Ms Sturgeon should survive if the Tories do push ahead and bring a vote of no confidence in her to Holyrood.
That is because the Scottish Greens have already said they will not support such a motion, claiming the Conservatives have shown ‘no interest in establishing the truth’ by lodging the motion before the report was published.
Speaking yesterday after Mr Hamilton’s report was published, Ms Sturgeon said: ‘I look forward, if that’s the right expression, to the committee report being published tomorrow and we will look at that in great detail.
‘But I cannot escape the conclusion that there are some members of that committee, because their public utterances show this, that decided before a single word of evidence had been taken that I was guilty of something and nothing was going to remove them from that view.’
A motion of no confidence, tabled by the Scottish Conservatives, is due to be debated and voted upon on Tuesday afternoon.
Ms Sturgeon added: ‘I’m confident that vote will express confidence in me.
‘Remember that the Tories said they would have a confidence vote in me before I uttered a single word of evidence before the parliamentary inquiry.
‘They have decided on this issue a long time ago this is a political stunt being brought forward by the Tories tomorrow.’
Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross insisted it was ‘up to the Scottish Parliament to decide if the First Minister has been misleading’