Data scandal: Sturgeon ‘was kept in dark by her own party’

NICOLA Sturgeon was kept in the dark about the SNP’s links to controversial data firm Cambridge Analytica.

The First Minister learned only this week that consultants for her party met senior representatives of the company when it was disclosed at Westminster.

She was not told by her party’s HQ – headed by her husband, Peter Murrell – despite stating last month that allegations of other parties’ involvement were ‘concerning’.

Opponents say it is a ‘monumental breakdown in communication’.

At First Minister’s Questions yesterday, Miss Sturgeon said that consultants met Cambridge Analytica (CA) in February 2016, in the run-up to the Holyrood election. She refused to reveal their identity, saying she did not want a ‘witchhunt’ and insisted they had done nothing wrong.

Afterwards, her spokesman said she first became aware of the meeting when Brittany Kaiser, a former Cambridge executive, revealed details during a Commons committee meeting on Tuesday.

A Scottish Conservatives spokesman said: ‘There’s clearly been a monumental breakdown in communication in the Sturgeon household over this most crucial of matters. Even while Nicola Sturgeon was leading with her chin on this issue, no one in the party told her about their own contact with the group.’

Yesterday, Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson said no representative of her party or consultant for it had ever met CA and demanded details of the SNP meeting and who the consultant was.

Miss Sturgeon admitted a meeting took place in February 2016 but said: ‘I am not going to name somebody who was working on behalf of the SNP and who has done nothing wrong in order that a witch-hunt can be carried out.’

Miss Davidson said: ‘Transparency SNP-style is to fling out allegations at opponents, fail to set out your own record, deny you know anything about it and, when caught out, give half-answers.’

Afterwards, Miss Sturgeon’s official spokesman said: ‘She became aware of [the CA meeting] when it became public.’

He added: ‘It would be a different level of concern if we had been employing them but we weren’t, we haven’t and that was it. There was one external arms-length meeting.’

At Holyrood yesterday, Miss Sturgeon said: ‘Cambridge Analytica tried to sell us [the SNP] its services in the early part of 2016. Back then, before any of the concerns we are talking about now had come to light, the SNP decided it was not a company we wanted to work with.’

‘Breakdown in communication’