NICOLA Sturgeon has failed to tell parliament whether she has ever used private or SNP email addresses to conduct government business.
The First Minister appeared taken aback when Tory MP Donald Cameron put the question to her at FMQs.
As opposition MSPs urged her to reply “Yes or No”, Ms Sturgeon said: “Rightly or wrongly, most of my conduct of Government business is on paper. I receive paper boxes, not email boxes, and I make handwritten notes. We will continue to respond to Freedom of Information requests about email correspondence on any particular issue.”
Her official spokesman later claimed Ms Sturgeon didn’t use her government email account, relying on her private office instead, and did no “substantive” government business using other email accounts.
Mr Cameron sits on the Holyrood committee probing Ms Sturgeon’s contacts with former First Minister Alex Salmond last year, while he was being investigated by her officials over alleged sexual misconduct in office.
He said Ms Sturgeon’s failure to answer a simple yes-no questions was simply not good enough.
He said: “Surely everyone can agree that using private emails to conduct government business is wrong. If it has happened, it only begs the question as to what the First Minister has to hide. The SNP Government already has a desperate record when it comes to transparency. I hope she will do the right thing and make her position clear over the coming days.”
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