Nicola Sturgeon’s closest aides were on the cusp of being questioned under oath when the Scottish Government threw in the towel in the Alex Salmond case, it has emerged.
The First Minister’s chief of staff Liz Lloyd and principal private secretary John Somers had been due to give evidence in a closed court on Monday.
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond at war over £500k legal case
The pair were to have been questioned about a tranche of previously secret government documents which had been opened at the insistence of Mr Salmond’s legal team.
The documents revealed the extent of contacts between Judith MacKinnon, the investigating officer who examined the misconduct complaints against Mr Salmond, and his accusers.
The Scottish Government was ordered to surrender the evidence to an independent QC in December after initially withholding the content.
As part of this commission for documents process, it is understood Leslie Evans, the permanent secretary, was questioned under oath at the Court of Session in private.
With Ms Lloyd, the First Minister’s closest political adviser, and Mr Somers also due to be questioned, the Scottish Government contacted Mr Salmond’s legal team last Thursday.
A source said the government asked if the pair were still wanted in court, and when Ms Salmond’s side they were, the government promptly abandoned its defence and the case collapsed.
The person that the timeline was highly instructive.
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon backs Permanent Secretary in Alex Salmond case
The incident shows how close Mr Salmond’s case had come to his successor’s office, potentially shedding a new light on her government’s eleventh-hour climbdown.
Mr Salmond referred to the process obliquely outside court, when he criticised the government for its “lack of candour” in the judicial review.
He linked the government’s “total surrender” to the commission for documents “which met between Christmas and New Year, where civil servants under oath had to produce hundreds of documents that the government had refused before that to provide to the court”.
Ms Lloyd, known as a tough operator at Holyrood, was head of media at the SNP for five years after the party took power in 2007, before becoming Mr Salmond’s special adviser in 2012.
She has been Ms Sturgeon’s chief of staff for four years.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel