Scottish committee members find Nicola Sturgeon misled parliament

A majority of members of the committee investigating the Scottish government’s handling of complaints against Alex Salmond have concluded that first minister Nicola Sturgeon misled parliament in her account of a meeting with him.

They also found that it was “hard to believe” she had not known of concerns about his behaviour earlier than she has acknowledged.

The long-awaited Scottish parliamentary inquiry concluded that Sturgeon should not have continued to meet Salmond, her predecessor, after learning that her government was investigating complaints of sexual harassment against him.

The committee identified “fundamental errors” in how the complaints were investigated, which were compounded by its later defence of them under challenge from Salmond.

“There are undoubtedly some extremely serious findings in our report and it was clear to the committee that there were serious flaws made in the government’s application of its own process,” committee chair Linda Fabiani said.

In January 2019, the Scottish government was forced to concede in court that its investigation into harassment complaints against Salmond by two civil servants had been unlawful because it was “procedurally unfair” and “tainted by apparent bias”.

At a criminal trial last year, the former first minister was acquitted of all 13 sexual offence charges against him.

The committee’s 187-page report is largely concerned with the development of the procedure under which Salmond was investigated and why it collapsed under his court challenge. But its most politically sensitive sections are “observations” on whether Sturgeon broke the Scottish ministerial code.

By a majority vote along party lines, members concluded that Sturgeon had misled the committee when she said she had made clear to Salmond at a April 2, 2018 meeting that would intervene in the investigation. This inaccurate account was a “potential breach” of the code, they said.

But the committee agreed unanimously that a separate inquiry by James Hamilton, Sturgeon’s independent adviser on the ministerial code, was the “most appropriate place” to assess whether it had been breached. Hamilton on Monday cleared the first minister of any such breach, a conclusion likely to help Sturgeon weather criticism on this point.