THE EMPLOYMENT QC

A fatal flaw right at the beginning

A former employment judge said the Scottish Government should have realised its investigation into Alex Salmond was flawed before it reached court.

Douglas Fairley QC, who specialises in employment work, said ensuring the investigating officer had no prior involvement with the complainants is “the standard of fairness which represents best practice”.

He said: “It is somewhat surprising that it took the Scottish Government so long to realise that it had a problem in that regard – the more so when one looks back at the robustness of its earlier statements in the media about how vigorously it would defend its position.

“Those pronouncements might be thought to suggest that a full audit of the process had already been undertaken after Mr Salmond brought his case to court, and the process followed by the Scottish Government had been found to be flawless. That was clearly not the case.

“So, either there was no such audit, and the pronouncements were simply litigation posturing, or the audit was defective.”

HR EXPERT