NICOLA Sturgeon’s claim to have met Alex Salmond in her capacity as SNP leader, rather than as First Minister, while he has being investigated by her officials has been dismissed by independent adviser James Hamilton

Ms Sturgeon told MSPs on 10 January 2019 that she had met Mr Salmond in her Glasgow home on April 2, 2018 in her "capacity" as SNP leader.

It meant no official records were kept of the meeting, at which Mr Salmond laid out details of a Scottish Government sexual misconduct probe into his past behaviour.

Referring to meeting her predecessor while he was under investigation, Ms Sturgeon told parliament: “Like other party leaders here, I have responsibilities as leader of my party and I took part in meetings in that capacity.” 

In her written evidence to the Holyrood inquiry into the Salmond affair, she also said she had spoken to Mr Salmond in her “party/personal capacity”, not in her Government role.

Mr Hamilton was unimpressed by this version of events, but did not censure Ms Sturgeon.

He said: “Although I accept the First Minister’s statement that her motivation for agreeing to the meeting was personal and political, and she may have sought to underscore this by hosting it in her private home with no permanent civil servant present and no expenditure of public money, it could not in my opinion be characterised as a party meeting. 

“Members of political parties do not ordinarily attend party meetings accompanied by their lawyers, and when the First Minister’s husband, who is chairman of the SNP, arrived home, he did not join the meeting. 

“In fairness the First Minister did not seek to make any case to me that this was a party meeting."

The question of whether the meetings were a Government or party matter was a long running bone of contention in the Salmond, with Mr Salmond claiming she lied to parliament by calling them party business when in fact she knew he wanted to discuss the Government probe.

She said she thought he might be about to resign and wanted her party to be ready for that.

Ms Sturgeon's husband, SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, also gave controversial evidence about the meetings, saying they had been Government-related, despite Ms Sturgeon calling them party affairs.

MSPs recalled him to give evidence about why Ms Sturgeon wouldn't have told her party's chief executive about a major issue for the party. 

 The First Minister was yesterday asked if she was now clear if the April 2 meeting was a party or a Government meeting. 

She said: “I’ve set this out in eight hours of evidence to the parliamentary inquiry. 

“I think one of the things that I take responsibility for was allowing that party, Government distinction to take on more significance than it had. 

“I agreed to meet him on the basis of party and personal considerations.

“Clearly, he then came to me to talk about a Government inquiry. 

“But as I set out to the committee, and as I have set out in other ways, the reasons I didn’t then report under the ministerial code was not to do with that distinction, it was to do - and James Hamilton agrees with this - it was because, for me to report those meetings, would have compromised the independence and the confidentiality of the process.”