Death by 1,000 cuts
Secret files. Leaked messages. A criminal investigation. Court threats...and vicious party battles triggered by the Holyrood inquiry into Alex Salmond A criminal investigation. Court threats...and by the Holyrood inquiry into Alex Salmond
IT was billed as a forensic investigation of one of the biggest scandals in Scottish political history. But before it even got under way, the probe into the Scottish Government’s botched handling of sexual harassment complaints against Alex Salmond appeared to hit the quicksand of obfuscation.
MSPs were denied the vital paperwork they needed to assess what had gone so badly wrong – and witnesses attempted to dodge tough questions.
Yet, despite mounting legal obstacles, the inquiry has succeeded in shining a piercing light into the inner workings of what is a deeply secretive government machine.
Inevitably, its work has been overshadowed by the Covid-19 pandemic – but it has opened up tribal fault-lines within the SNP, led to claims of cover-ups at the highest levels, and sparked a police probe into leaked legal documents.
Some of the greatest drama has taken place offstage, as a party once renowned for ‘message discipline’ is plunged into civil war.
The inquiry’s revelations are on a par with some of the biggest Westminster controversies – and the ramifications of its discoveries could prove devastating for the SNP hierarchy.
At the heart of the saga is a relationship between two of the leading politicians of their age: a master tactician and his protégée.
When Nicola Sturgeon took over as First Minister in 2014, it was at least superficially a seamless transition – a pain-free ‘coronation’.
But as Mr Salmond refused to fade quietly from view – even fronting a Kremlin-backed TV chat show – their friendship became strained.
Soon the froideur between them evolved into barely concealed mutual animosity, spilling over into a schism that would drive a wedge through the entire Nationalist movement.
It is against the backdrop of this continuing psychodrama that the Scottish parliament’s inquiry into how sexual harassment complaints against Mr Salmond were dealt with when he was in office is being played out.
MSPs have formed a special committee which began taking evidence just over a month ago. New rules were drafted in the wake of the disclosures about disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein to enable examination of complaints involving former ministers – leading to allegations against Mr Salmond from two women.
THE ex-SNP leader took the Government to court over the way the complaints were handled, forcing ministers into a humiliating apology.
The Government admitted its investigation into his alleged misconduct had been ‘unfair’ – landing taxpayers with a £500,000 bill.
Just over a fortnight after he learned he had won the judicial review in 2019, Mr Salmond was arrested and charged over a series of alleged sex crimes including attempted rape – and cleared after a sensational trial in March this year.
His lawyer, Gordon Jackson QC, argued in secret pre-trial hearings that the claims against Mr Salmond were in effect cooked up to smear him as a form of reprisal over the judicial review – something which Miss Sturgeon has strongly denied.
The Government’s evidence against Mr Salmond had been handed to detectives, who took nearly 400 statements in the course of a wide-ranging investigation known as Operation Diem.
The stage was set at Holyrood for a no-holds-barred public inquisition that would uncover secrets ministers and their officials had hoped to keep buried. According to his allies, Mr Salmond is now ‘gunning for’ senior civil servants and those in Miss Sturgeon’s coterie of advisers who he believes conspired against him.
He is said to regard the inquiry as a score-settling forum, and is even vowing to go to court to get permission to release the documents that the Government will not provide (as long as taxpayers pick up the bill).
In coming weeks, the key players, including Mr Salmond, Miss Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell – chief executive of the SNP – will give evidence.
But in the wings, cracks in the edifice of internal party discipline are widening by the day, as the Salmond and Sturgeon camps go to war – using the inquiry as their battleground.
Perhaps most extraordinary of all, however, the Salmond hearings have afforded us a rare glimpse into the domestic circumstances of Scotland’s ‘first couple’.
Mr Murrell has said in written evidence that his wife did not tell him about the harassment probe involving Mr Salmond – despite a meeting with the former First Minister being held in their home.
By his account, the couple observe a kind of omertà over certain elements of their work.
The SNP chief said his wife told him she could not reveal details of the discussion she had with her predecessor. He insisted he was only made aware of the complaints in August 2018 when they became public.
Mr Murrell’s evidence states: ‘Nicola told me she couldn’t discuss the details.
‘The nature of Nicola’s job means that when she tells me she can’t discuss something, I don’t press it.’
But Mr Murrell now faces questions over messages that he is alleged to have sent supporting a criminal probe into Mr Salmond.
A leaked document passed to Nationalist MP Kenny MacAskill appears to show two messages sent by Mr Murrell to an SNP employee.
The messages were allegedly sent the day after Mr Salmond appeared at Edinburgh Sheriff Court in January 2019.
They refer to a Metropolitan
Police probe into allegations against Mr Salmond – which was later dropped.
According to the Daily Record, the first message stated: ‘Totally agree folk should be asking the police questions… report now with the PF [procurator fiscal] on charges which leaves police twiddling their thumbs.
‘So good time to be pressurising them. Would be good to know Met [Metropolitan Police] looking at events in
London.’ The second allegedly stated: ‘TBH [to be honest] the more fronts he is having to firefight on the better for all complainers. So CPS [Crown Prosecution Service]
action would be a good thing.’
The SNP has not commented on the messages.
Former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars has said Mr Murrell’s position is growing ‘more untenable’ by the day, while ex-Justice Secretary Mr MacAskill has called for Mr Murrell to be suspended.
Meanwhile, in yet another twist in this increasingly dark soap opera, police are investigating how the WhatsApp messages came to be leaked.
How successful that exercise will be is open to debate.
But Mr MacAskill has said that he has no idea of the culprit’s identity.
Then there’s the explosive question of how much Miss Sturgeon knew about the
‘A good time to be pressurising them’
claims surrounding her former mentor, and when she found out. MSPs have heard Miss Sturgeon was alerted to ‘concerns’ raised about Mr Salmond’s behaviour months before he faced the official investigation into harassment allegations.
GIVING evidence to the inquiry, Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans said she personally warned the First Minister of an alleged ‘incident’ at Edinburgh Airport involving Mr Salmond in November 2017.
She said Mr Salmond had contacted Scottish Government staff about it after he learned Sky News was investigating concerns raised about his behaviour by airport personnel. Mr Salmond has denied the
Edinburgh Airport allegations. It has also emerged Miss Sturgeon failed to declare a secret meeting with a senior aide to Mr Salmond weeks after he was hit with two sexual harassment complaints.
In August, before the Salmond probe began, the Scottish Government revealed Miss Sturgeon met her predecessor’s former chief of staff on March 29, 2018, at Holyrood, four days before she says she was aware of the allegations.
The First Minister now faces an investigation into whether she breached the Ministerial Code.
The resolution of that process, and the Holyrood inquiry, could have far-reaching consequences.
In the committee room where the Salmond probe is taking place, MSPs have been pitted against a succession of Sir Humphrey-ish mandarins. But away from these proceedings, lawyers are the highly-paid combatants in a series of behind-the-scenes skirmishes.
These revolve around documents that MSPs have demanded to see, which have been either withheld or redacted by the Government (while others have been ‘irretrievably deleted’).
In a bid to bypass a government block on the release of the documents, Mr Salmond has offered to go to court.
But the Crown Office has warned he could face prosecution if he makes public restricted evidence deemed inadmissible at his trial.
Mr Salmond’s lawyers say that without this material he can’t be expected to make a statement to the inquiry.
In another bizarre development, the Scottish Government has said that it will go to court to see if it can release more documents to MSPs. Deputy First Minister John Swinney revealed ministers intend to ‘initiate legal proceedings to seek a ruling’. An exasperated committee source told The Times: ‘It seems that the Scottish Government, in all its guises, is trying to stop the committee getting information.’
It’s a legal tug-of-war that may take months to resolve. Yet, while it has faced legal barriers at almost every turn, the inquiry has driven
some extremely senior civil servants out from the shelter of their secretive worlds to face the harsh glare of external scrutiny.
The central question that dominated the early days of the inquiry concerned the working practices of those who were on Mr Salmond’s staff at the time.
His trial had heard that women were not allowed to be left alone with him after an alleged sexual assault on a Scottish Government official – of which he was cleared.
A woman claimed Mr Salmond sexually assaulted her on two occasions – once in Glasgow and once at Bute House in Edinburgh.
Mr Salmond said he had ‘no knowledge’ of claims that measures had been put in place to stop him being alone with women at certain times at Bute House.
On the first day of the inquiry, Mrs Evans said she could not comment on claims made that female civil servants were not permitted to be alone with the former First Minister. And those
MSPs who continued to ask questions were then told that the matter went beyond the committee’s remit.
AMID a political row, Mrs Evans was brought back for a fresh appearance. Pressed again on whether women had been forbidden from working alone with Mr Salmond, Mrs Evans said: ‘No, I’m not aware of those changes.
‘I wouldn’t necessarily be aware of those changes unless I was particularly close to that office. That is not to say those changes don’t take place.’
For her part, Miss Sturgeon is in rare agreement with her old mentor: like him, she has maintained that she has no knowledge of any such policy. Mrs Evans took centre stage at the inquiry after Mr Salmond’s lawyer alleged in hearings ahead of his trial that she had declared ‘war’ on the former First Minister.
She admitted she had sent a text message to a colleague after Mr Salmond’s judicial review triumph which read: ‘We may have lost the battle but we will win the war.’
Under questioning at the committee, Mrs Evans insisted her text had been ‘misinterpreted’.
Other top civil servants have claimed they knew of rumours about Mr Salmond – but not enough to take action.
Senior Scottish Government official James Hynd told MSPs ‘things were said’ about the former First Minister’s conduct – but that no action was taken as it was mainly ‘scuttlebutt and rumours’.
MSPs have also unearthed disturbing allegations about Mr Salmond’s conduct while he was in office – and the behaviour of other ministers.
Civil servants said they had warned a decade ago that they
were operating under a ‘culture of fear’.
The FDA union, which represents managers and professionals in public service, said that ever since the ‘inception’ of the Scottish parliament, it had dealt with both ‘informal and formal complaints’ brought against ministers.
But FDA Scotland’s general secretary Dave Penman highlighted particular issues within the Scottish Government in 2010, when Mr Salmond was serving as First Minister.
He said ‘the culture within the ex-First Minister’s office and other ministerial offices in relation to bullying behaviour became a concern’.
And Mr Penman added: ‘Some civil servants expressed to us that they were operating in a culture of fear... they did not trust SG [Scottish Government] to handle complaints effectively or to ensure confidentiality.’
Mr Salmond has declined to comment on the claims.
Former Permanent Secretary Sir Peter Housden said he was ‘well aware’ of concerns among Scottish Government staff about Mr Salmond, although he never witnessed concerning behaviour. He claimed Mr Salmond displayed ‘bullying and intimidatory behaviour’ while First Minister.
And Sir Peter said that he was forced to act over SNP ministers whose behaviour was a ‘cause for concern’.
There was an ‘expectation’ that issues involving senior politicians would be dealt with ‘informally’, he said.
Reflecting on how effective those measures had been, Sir Peter concluded: ‘My honest answer would be, in the short term, sometimes.’
Asked about whether he had passed on details of any concerns to his successor, Mrs Evans, Sir Peter replied: ‘We had no known egregious acts or formal complaints or indications of sexual misconduct so, as far as we knew, we had no bodies buried.’
Any bodies that were hidden may well be exhumed in the weeks ahead – if MSPs can succeed in breaking down the walls of secrecy that surround the Sturgeon regime.
And it could yet become the casualty of a brutal power struggle that has sent shockwaves through government – and left a once-united party in complete disarray.