Plea to co-operate on Salmond inquiry

The Scottish Government has been urged to stop withholding documents about the unlawful investigation into claims of harassment by Alex Salmond.

Deputy First Minister John Swinney has refused to hand over documents about the government’ s investigation into the allegations to Holyrood’s committee on the Scottish Government handling of harassment complaints.

Mr Swinney has cited legal privilege for the failure to provide certain evidence, but committee conv ener Linda Fabiani has now written to him calling for the government to fulfil its “repeated commitments” to co-operate. The letter notes previous examples where the government has waived legal privilege and argues the investigation into how the government was defeated in court at the cost of more than £500,000 in legal fees awarded to Mr Salmond, were “exceptional circumstances”.

Ms Fabiani wrote: “Central to the committee’ s rem it is how the Scottish Government dealt with complaints against the former first minister and how it approached the judicial review of its handling of those complaints.

“The committee fails to see how it can conduct effective scrutiny when the Scottish Government is withholding all communications.”

Mr Swinney, in a letter dated 31 August, said that an unnamed individual had objected to government documents being released.