Dinners with steel boss ‘different’ says Sturgeon
DINNERS involving a Scottish Government cabinet secretary and steel billionaire Sanjeev Gupta are “very different” from the Greensill scandal, Nicola Sturgeon said.
The First Minister was pressed on meetings between Rural Affairs Secretary Fergus Ewing and Mr Gupta – an associate of Greensill Capital’s Lex Greensill.
Mr Ewing reportedly met Mr Gupta over a meal in June 2017, with the Sunday Mail newspaper stating Jay Hambro, chief investment officer of Mr Gupta’s GFG Alliance, was also present.
A series of inquiries have been commissioned to understand the role former prime minister David Cameron played in securing Whitehall access for Greensill.
Labour’s Monica Lennon has insisted “full transparency is needed from all Government ministers over relationships and
contact with Greensill Capital”.
She said that at meetings between Mr Ewing, Mr Gupta and others to discuss Government business, “no records were kept”.
But Sturgeon insisted dealings were “recorded in the usual way in the register of meetings”.
She said: “I understand the temptation to draw an analogy between the scandal we see developing around David Cameron, around the UK Government, and
the Scottish Government dealing with GFG.
“The two things are very different.
“We worked directly with GFG firstly to save the Dalziel steelworks – in 2015 there was virtually nobody employed there, today it employs more than 100 people – and secondly with that company to save the Lochaber aluminium smelter, more than 100 jobs have been protected there with more created as a result.”