STURGEON STILL FACES HER DAY OF RECKONING
First Minister admits failings at marathon inquiry session – as confidence vote AND ruling over ministerial code breach loom
NICOLA Sturgeon has admitted that ‘serious mistakes’ were made by her Government in its handling of complaints against Alex Salmond,
amid growing calls for her to resign.
The First Minister’s career remained on the line last night after she failed to answer a series of critical questions over her involvement in the affair.
Her allies insisted she had ‘dismantled’ the claims and ‘conspiracy theories’ made by Mr Salmond and
opposition parties when she gave evidence before MSPs yesterday. But she still faces a vote of no confidence in her leadership, with critics insisting she said nothing to change their view that she had misled the Scottish parliament over what she knew and when.
During an eight-hour appearance in front of the Holyrood inquiry into the Government’s botched handling of complaints against Mr Salmond, Miss Sturgeon admitted the investigation had ‘failed’ two women.
She also apologised to taxpayers for landing them with a bill of more than £500,000, after the Court of Session branded the probe ‘tainted by apparent bias’.
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross claimed Miss Sturgeon ‘dodged and evaded almost every difficult question’.
He said: ‘The First Minister vividly remembers the details she believes exonerate her then forgets anything that damages her.
‘The litany of lies and failures is too much for any First Minister to survive.’
Miss Sturgeon’s evidence came the day after an advocate and an ex-SNP spin doctor provided evidence corroborating many of Mr Salmond’s claims that she had repeatedly broken the ministerial code and misled parliament.
Miss Sturgeon said: ‘I have never claimed to be infallible. I have searched my soul on all of this many, many times over. It may very well be that I didn’t get everything right.
‘But in one of the most invidious political and personal situations I have ever faced, I believe I acted properly and appropriately.’
Miss Sturgeon defended her decision not to disclose a meeting she had with Mr Salmond in her home on April 2, 2018, when complaints were discussed, as she did not wish to ‘compromise the independence or the confidentiality of the process that was under way’.
She said she had become worried about Mr Salmond’s ‘state of mind’ during talks four days earlier with his former chief of staff, Geoff Aberdein, which she believed put the meeting ‘firmly in the personal and party space’.
But she also claimed she has forgotten key aspects of her discussion with Mr Aberdein, despite confirming she was informed of a ‘harassment-type’ issue at their meeting.
She added: ‘I didn’t remember this meeting and my recollection of [it] is still not as vivid as I would like it to be.’
Lib Dem MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton asked: ‘This massive and devastating fear and belief you had that your mentor of 30 years was about to quit your party was from a meeting you claim to have forgotten about? Do you realise how unlikely that sounds?’
Miss Sturgeon said: ‘I do, actually... but it happens to be the case that that wasn’t the big, significant meeting.’
Pressed on her failure to disclose the meeting as government business, she said: ‘I hope there’s not that many people, certainly in politics, that find themselves in the position of having to deal with serious complaints like this against somebody that was so close to you.
‘Did I deal with all this perfectly? Did I deal with it in a clinical kind of way that, with hindsight, everybody can get absolutely? Maybe not. I dealt with it the best I could.’
Asked to explain why it took her more than two months to inform the Permanent Secretary about her contact with Mr Salmond and discussion about the probe, she said: ‘Any conversation that started with me saying, “Alex Salmond has told me about this”, even unintentionally, does that make the people doing the investigation think there is a particular thing I’m trying to bring about?
‘The second reason is... notifying meetings in that way involves publication. If a meeting had appeared in my diary, “Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond”, people would have wanted to know what that was about.
‘So there would have also been a risk to the confidentiality.’
Miss Sturgeon added: ‘I agreed to the meeting on party/personal grounds. Clearly what he came to discuss was a government investigation. What I decided to do then, though, wasn’t, “I’ve got to say this was a party meeting not a government [one] so I don’t have to notify it”.
‘My view [was] that by telling people in government I knew would potentially compromise the independence and the confidentiality.’
The Tories said they will still consider pushing for a vote of no confidence in Miss Sturgeon and
‘You realise how unlikely it sounds?’
Deputy First Minister John Swinney, depending on the detail of legal advice promised to the committee last night.
A spokesman for Miss Sturgeon said: ‘The First Minister dismantled all of the claims made against her. The opposition failed to substantiate any of the allegations and absurd conspiracy theories levelled at her.’