Secrecy row over ‘private’ emails

NICOLA Sturgeon is embroiled in a growing secrecy row after admitting she uses a private email account to conduct Government business.

The First Minister yesterday said civil servants sometimes contact her on an unofficial party address.

A memo, obtained by The Times, instructed recipients to direct routine correspondence to her private secretary, with urgent messages to go to the party account.

Miss Sturgeon is now facing calls to ‘come clean’ over her use of email and publish all Government business directed through the SNP address.

It comes weeks after she failed to tell MSPs whether she used a private or party email address to conduct Government business. Later, a spokesman claimed that she used written letters and notes rather than emails.

It has prompted concern that ministers and senior officials at Westminster and Holyrood could be using private email accounts to avoid scrutiny by getting around freedom of information legislation.

Conservative MSP Donald Cameron said: ‘I have written to the First Minister asking her to answer this simple question, does she use her private email account? The only way to clear this mess up is for her to publish the emails from this account.

‘Anything less will be seen by Scots as highly suspicious. What does the First Minister have to hide?’

Miss Sturgeon was asked about the issue on the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland. She said: ‘The story, as I understand it, is that my private office, if they need to get something to me urgently out of hours, will send an email. But that is coming from a Government email. It is in the system. It will be routine stuff like my diary for the next day.’