Sturgeon: Grady in the wrong
NICOLA Sturgeon has given an “absolute assurance” the SNP will “reflect” on its internal processes after MP Patrick Grady was found to have made an “unwanted sexual advance” towards a teenage staffer.
He is facing a two-day suspension from the Commons and from his party after an independent investigation found he had breached Parliament’s sexual misconduct policy.
Sturgeon said: “I think, like all organisations in these situations, we need to reflect on any view from a complainant that the process that was undertaken, rather than helping to resolve an issue, perhaps made the experience more difficult.
“That’s what the complainer in this case has said and rather than being defensive or saying, ‘We don’t agree with all the details of that’, I think it’s right for the SNP to reflect on how we make sure in future our processes are what people would expect them to be.”
She added: “One of the things that is so important here is that when people suffer this kind of behaviour… that the process they go through should not make the experience or the trauma that they have suffered worse.
“If any complainer feels that is the case then, whatever organisation that has been at stake here, they have to reflect on that and I give an absolute assurance that the SNP will.”
On the punishment levelled at the MP, Sturgeon said it was the result of a “recommendation from an independent House of Commons standards process that all parties have agreed to respect and accept”.
She added: “It’s very clear that Patrick is in the wrong and was in the wrong and behaved in a way that he should not have behaved,”
The First Minister also ruled out a further party probe following Grady’s two- day suspension.