User:PinkPanda272/Inquiry into the Scottish Government's handling of harassment complaints

Former First Minister Alex Salmond and his successor Nicola Sturgeon at the launch of the National Conversation in 2007.

The inquiry into the Scottish Government's handling of harassment complaints is a public inquiry set up by the Scottish Parliament to investigate the actions of the Scottish Government in dealing with complaints about Alex Salmond, former First Minister of Scotland. The inquiry is being led by a nine-member committee of the Scottish Parliament, and is being held concurrently with a seperate investigation by Irish barrister James Hamilton. The inquiry was established after a judicial review initiated by Salmond found that the Scottish Government breached its own guidelines when it was investigating allegations of sexual harrassment by Salmond, which resulted in the government paying legal fees of over £500,000.

Background

Main article: HM Advocate v Salmond

In August 2018, the Daily Record reported that Alex Salmond had been referred by the Government to Police Scotland over allegations that he sexually assaulted two civil servants at his official residence, Bute House, in December 2013 when he was First Minister. Salmond resigned his membership of the SNP, and took the Government to court over the fairness of its internal complaints procedure. The Scottish Government intended to defend its position, but later conceded that the investigation was unlawful, due to the fact that the Government's investigating officer had had previous contact with the complainants. After the hearing at the Court of Session, Salmond argued that permenant secretary to the Scottish Government Leslie Evans was responsible for the botched investigation, and called for her resignation.

On 24 January 2019, Salmond was arrested and charged with two counts of attempted rape, nine of sexual assault, two of indecent assault, and one of breach of the peace. He denied all of the charges, and entered a plea of not guilty at the High Court in Edinburgh on 21 November 2019. Salmond was aquitted of all charges after a trial in March 2020, with the 13-member jury finding him not guilty of 12 charges, and not proven of one charge. The remaining allegation was dropped by prosecutors during the trial.

On 23 March 2020, Salmond was cleared of all charges. A jury found him not guilty of 12 charges, one charge was dropped by prosecutors earlier in the trial while one charge was found not proven.

Hamilton Inquiry

In January 2019, Sturgeon referred herself to an independent ministerial ethics body, admitting that she held a secret meeting and phone call with Salmond about the government's allegations against him. She informed Evans of these meetings two months later, rather than reporting them immediately as stated in the ministerial code. Sturgeon argued that the meetings were party political matters, and thus not covered by the code, which regulates ministers' actions in government. Two senior lawyers were asked to conduct the inquiry, Dame Elish Angiolini, a former solicter general for Scotland and lord advocate, and James Hamilton, a former director of public prosecutions in the Republic of Ireland. Angiolini later ruled herself out of the investigation as she was in charge of a wider review into police complaints at the time, meaning the investigation is being led solely by Hamilton. His investigations are due to culminate in a report into whether Sturgeon broke the code by misleading parliament or improperly interfering in the government's botched internal inquiry.

Parliamentary Committee

On 15 January 2019 the Scottish Parliament agreed to hold its own inquiry into the matter. The Scottish Parliament set up the Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints to investigate how the government breached its own guidelines in its original investigation into the harassment claims against Salmond, and then lost a judicial review into their actions and had to pay over £500,000 to Salmond for legal expenses. A political row developed over what evidence to this committee Salmond could present.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon initially told parliament that she had first heard of the complaints against Salmond when he told her of them on 2 April 2018. However, 18 months later, she revised her account, saying she had forgotten about an earlier meeting on 29 March 2018, in which Salmond's former chief of staff Geoff Aberdein told her about the complaints. The 29 March meeting was not recorded; meetings on government business are meant to be recorded, but Sturgeon has said this is because it was an SNP meeting.

Sturgeon's husband and the chief executive of the SNP Peter Murrell was called to the inquiry to give evidence on 8 December 2020. Opposition parties criticised Sturgeon on disparity and contradictions between the narratives of Murrell and herself.

Giving evidence in person in February 2021, Salmond claimed that senior figures in the Scottish Government and the SNP plotted to remove him from public life and to send him to prison. In his evidence to the committee, Salmond said there was "no doubt" that Sturgeon had broken the ministerial code in not revealing the 29 March meeting sooner and in not recording what was really a meeting about government business. Sturgeon denies any wrongdoing and disputes Salmond's allegations.

Documents and emails published on 2 March 2021 showed that two people supported Salmond's assertion that the meeting was convened as a government, not party, matter. The publication also backed up Salmond's allegation that the identity of one of his accusers had been passed to his former chief of staff, contradicting Sturgeon's statement that "to the very best of my knowledge I do not think that happened". They also confirmed that the government had pursued the legal case against Salmond after being advised by lawyers that it was likely to fail.