Yahoo Finance What did we learn from Nicola Sturgeon on Wednesday?
When did Nicola Sturgeon first know of complaints against Alex Salmond?
Sturgeon refuted Salmond’s claim that she was first told about the allegations at a meeting on 29 March at Holyrood with his former chief of staff Geoff Aberdein.
Sturgeon said that while Aberdein had indicated Salmond wanted to speak to her about a “harassment-type incident”, this was “in general terms”, and that what she remembered most were his concerns for the mental state of the former first minister.
She says she accepts that people find it “hard to believe” that she initially forgot about that meeting. “But it was reading the permanent secretary’s letter, that he showed me on 2 April, that gave me the knowledge and the detail behind that knowledge.”
“Reading that letter is a moment in my life I will never forget,” she told the committee. She said Salmond went on the tell her his version of what happened with one of the complainers, which he said he had apologised for at the time.
“What he described constituted, in my view, deeply inappropriate behaviour on his part – perhaps another reason why that moment is embedded so strongly in my mind”.
Sturgeon later said that she believed this meeting, and one in July, was “in a personal/party space”, rather than it being government business, and that she had been warned by Aberdein that Salmond was considering resigning from the SNP. Salmond has denied this.
She said that she did not discuss this with her husband, SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, because she “wanted to speak to [Salmond] before I set hares running with anyone else” in a confidential setting. Murrell previously told the inquiry he believed that the meeting was Scottish government business.
Pressed on why she didn’t notify the civil service about the meeting – which Salmond and committee members suggest is a breach of the ministerial code – Sturgeon said: “In terms of notification under the ministerial code, it was not down to my classification of whether it was party or government. I agreed to the meeting on party/personal grounds, clearly what he came to discuss with me was a government investigation. What I decided to do then was based on my view that by telling people in the government that I know would potentially compromise the independence and confidentiality.”
Related: Timeline: what we know so far about Sturgeon and the Salmond inquiry
Did Sturgeon offer to intervene in the original harassment inquiry on Salmond’s behalf?
Evidence from Salmond’s lawyer Duncan Hamilton, released on Tuesday evening, stated that he had heard Sturgeon assure Salmond at that meeting that she would intervene in the inquiry on his behalf, telling him: “If it comes to it, I will”.
But Sturgeon told MSPs: “I believe I did make it clear that I would not intervene. I also know I was trying to let a longstanding friend and colleague down gently and maybe I did it too gently and he left with an impression I did not intend to give.”
She said: “I had no intention of intervening and crucially I did not intervene.”
Sturgeon added that, during the meeting, her head was “spinning”. She said: “I was experiencing a maelstrom of emotions. I had been told something pretty shocking by Alex Salmond.” She went on to suggest that her refusal to intervene was “at the root” of Salmond’s anger towards her.
Did Sturgeon’s official leak the name of a complainer to Salmond’s camp?
Sturgeon said she believed there was an “alternative explanation” to this claim by Geoff Aberdein that he was given the name of a complainer by a senior government official, which Duncan Hamilton and former party strategist Kevin Pringle have confirmed he told them about.
She said that Aberdein and the official were willing to give private evidence to the committee, and had spoken to James Hamilton, a former director of public prosecutions in Ireland who is investigating her alleged breaches of the ministerial code.
Asked who could corroborate her official’s denial, she reiterated that she was not a party to this conversation, nor were Hamilton or Pringle at the meeting themselves. She added that Salmond knew the identity of the two complainers, because he had apologised to one of them previously and had identified the other by going through the Scottish government’s Flickr account.
Did Sturgeon address the allegations of a SNP conspiracy against Salmond?
Nicola Sturgeon said she had seen “nothing that comes within a million miles” of Salmond’s central assertion that there was a “malicious plan” among those close to Sturgeon to destroy his reputation.
Referring to text messages sent by a senior party figure – which Salmond has described as “shocking” and which the inquiry will have sight of later on Wednesday – she said they showed “people who were upset, at times angry, and cooperating with police inquiries.”
Why did she keep talking to him about the case, by phone and in person, after she knew about the allegations?
Asked this directly, Sturgeon responded: “I was dealing with a situation that involved somebody who was the former first minister facing a government investigation, the former leader of my party where this has had huge implication for my party and somebody that was a really close friend of mine, that I cared about. And all of these things led me to make these decisions and try to balance them overall in a way that I thought was appropriate.”
She admitted she had asked herself “why did I do that?” about meeting him at her home a second time on 14 July, adding: “I still had this worry that it might be about to erupt and I was still concerned about him. I still felt a loyalty to him.”
Did she go against legal advice to abandon the case against Salmond?
Asked about Salmond’s allegation that the government was considering the sisting, or pausing, of the judicial review so that the criminal case could run its course, Sturgeon said: “The idea that we were gaming the timing of the judicial review to allow a police investigation to overtake it is absurd and bizarre and just completely without foundation.”
Sturgeon also insisted that she was acting in accordance with the views of the law officers. Asked about advice in early December that Salmond was “more likely than not to succeed” and that “the least worst option would be to concede the petition”, she said the Lord Advocate was still clear it should be heard. She says this changed later in the month when further information emerged about the extent of the contact between the investigating officer and the complainers.
