Nicola Sturgeon news: Scottish leader says she feels ‘very let down’ by Salmond and he should say sorry
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Your support makes all the difference.Nicola Sturgeon has said many people feel “very let down” by Alex Salmond, including herself, and has called on the former first minister to apologise for his behaviour.
Asked by Murdo Fraser MSP if she owed the Scottish people an apology for having previously told them they should trust Mr Salmond, Ms Sturgeon said she “trusted him” and refused to “apologise for the behaviour of somebody else”.
The first minister also rubbished Mr Salmond’s claim that a plot was hatched to remove him from public life, describing the suggestion as “absurd” to the Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints.
Mr Salmond has previously alleged that Scotland’s first minister made a “malicious and concerted” attempt to rid him of a political future through the government’s investigation into sexual harassment claims made against him.
Mr Salmond, who was acquitted of 13 charges in criminal court, won a judicial review which found the government’s investigation was “tainted by apparent bias”.
However, Ms Sturgeon, whose political future is at stake, strongly denies the “plot” allegations, saying there is not “a shred of evidence” to support them.
Two sections down, two to go
As the BBC’s Nick Eardley notes, there are four sections to the committee’s investigation.
After the first four hours of today’s hearing, only two of these have been covered.
Sturgeon denies Salmond’s version of events
Tory MSP Murdo Fraser asked Nicola Sturgeon whether the government conceded the judicial review only after its junior and senior counsel threatened to resign, something which Alex Salmond has alleged.
In response, the first minister said: “That’s not my understanding.”
Before this, she said: “The charge that has been made against me is that I wilfully allowed a judicial review to proceed against the legal advice, therefore I broke the ministerial code.
“With respect, as you now know, I was acting in accordance with the views of the law officers, not against.”
She later added that the government would not have leant on the counsel to proceed in an “unstateable” case and that it had chosen to concede of its own volition.
Mr Salmond was awarded £512,000 towards his legal fees after winning the review.
Hearing to resume at 2pm
The committee hearing has stopped for lunch.
Proceedings will start up again at 2pm.
First minister questions timeline of lawyers’ advice
Nicola Sturgeon has hit out at the suggestion that lawyers told the government before 11 December that it would lose a court case brought by Alex Salmond.
Tory MSP Murdo Fraser said that legal advise, published on Tuesday night, showed this information was shared by 6 December “if not before”.
“You were risking public funds in continuing with the action,” he added.
Ms Sturgeon replied: “I think every time a government defends a legal action it is risking public funds, because there is never a guarantee you are going to be successful.”
“My understanding is that much of what went really wrong in the case, catastrophically wrong... was in that later stage of December, when it became clear, I believe not intentionally, that there was information and material that had not hitherto been disclosed.”
“Up until as late as December 11 it was the opinion of law officers we had a stateable case with credible arguments,” she added.
It would have been ‘deeply inappropriate’ to intervene on behalf of Salmond, says Sturgeon
Scotland’s first minister has reiterated that it would have been “deeply inappropriate” for her to intervene on behalf of her former friend Alex Salmond.
Nicola Sturgeon said she was excluded from the investigation as part of the procedure and that it would have been an abuse of her power to influence things in favour of Mr Salmond.
He was facing claims of “serious sexual misconduct,” she reminded the inquiry.
The first minister added that it was not her decision not to go to arbitration in the case.
Sturgeon says she never wanted to face this situation
Nicola Sturgeon has told MSPs: “I never wanted to face a situation where a man I revered - had revered - since I was 20, probably younger than that, was facing serious allegations of sexual misconduct.
“My conduct in all of this is rightly under scrutiny, I have no complaint about that.
“But I think it would have been deeply wrong for me to have intervened in any way, on behalf of Alex Salmond, to try to engineer the outcome he wanted.”
First minister asked why no one in government has resigned
Scottish Labour MSP Jackie Baillie has asked the first minister why no one in government has resigned over the botched handling of the Salmond investigation.
Nicola Sturgeon responded by saying that the situation was horrendous for everyone and by admitting that “people got things wrong”.
‘Profound’ concern about effects of botched investigation, Sturgeon admits
Nicola Sturgeon has said she has “profound” concerns about the effects of the botched government investigation into alleged sexual misconduct by Alex Salmond.
Scotland’s first minister admitted that women could well be less confident to come forward with similar complaints as a result.
She told the committee: “I have a profound concern about what it means for the confidence women in Scotland have in coming forward, and the Government’s actions are part of that. I don’t deny that.
“I think all of us - every single one of us, after this is all over, has to think about how we repair some of that and build a culture again in Scotland where women do feel confident to come forward.”
MSP expresses frustration at government ‘delays’
Labour MSP Jackie Baillie has expressed deep frustration at the delay in gaining access to the Scottish government’s legal advice.
“I don’t think I have felt quite so frustrated in my 22 years of being on parliamentary committees as with this one,” Ms Baillie said.
The MSP said it had taken “two votes in parliament and a motion of no confidence in John Swinney [the deputy first minister]” before the committee gained sight of it at 6pm last night.
Publishing government legal advice is ‘really complex’, says first minister
There are “really complex legal issues” about providing government legal advice to committees, Nicola Sturgeon has said.
Addressing the committee’s frustations about its delayed publication, she said: “Sitting here right now I am glad you have got the legal advice so that I can talk about it openly today.
“But I have a concern about getting into a situation where government legal advice is routinely asked for and published, because I think that will undermine the basis on which governments properly inform their decisions.”
The first minister added that Mr Salmond also held this view when he was in charge of government.
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