Salmond inquiry members questioned under oath

Currently, according to figures released to The Herald under Freedom of Information, 729 of those complaints are still “open”.

They relate to nine separate investigations.

It is understood some of the complaints being investigated relate to briefings given by members of the committee to the media about details of the committee that were not in the public domain. 

It is thought the Commissioner expects to resolve those relatively soon.

However, his big investigation is into the leaking of the committee’s findings.

In March last year, just days before the publication, Sky News obtained some of the key detail of the final report.

They were able to report that by five votes to four, MSPs on the committee had decided Nicola Sturgeon’s evidence was “an inaccurate account of what happened and she has misled the committee on this matter”.

At the time, the First Minister said the leaks were “partisan,” and suggested it was a member of the opposition who had shared the findings.

Linda Fabiani, the SNP MSP who chaired the committee, said they were “selective” and “party political”.

It is understood that in the last two months the Commissioner has now interviewed all members under oath. Some of the interviews have lasted hours.

He has also asked MSPs to hand over emails, WhatsApp messages and texts for specific dates to specific journalists and outlets in a bid to try and find the leak.

The other members of the committee were the SNP's Alasdair Allan, Maureen Watt, and Stuart Macmillan, the then Green MSP Andy Wightman, Tories Murdo Fraser and Margaret Mitchell, Labour’s Jackie Baillie and Alex Cole-Hamilton of the Lib Dems.

However, the parliament has said that Presiding Officer Alison Johnstone, has not been included in the interviews.

The former Green MSP was a member of the committee but effectively stood down in December 2020 for health reasons, where she was replaced by Mr Wightman.

Some members of the committee had hundreds of complaints against them.

The MSP’s Code of Conduct requires that all drafts of committee reports are kept confidential.

The committee was set up after former First Minister Alex Salmond had the government's investigation into complaints against set aside in a judicial review, leaving taxpayers with a £512,000 bill for his costs.

After a draft of some of the report was leaked to the media, Mr Allan, Ms Watt and Mr Macmillan attacked the rest of the committee, saying: “For the opposition, this was never about the truth. It was never about the evidence and, shamefully, it was never about the women.

“All of these are being sacrificed for political ends. This is the politics of desperation.”

However, earlier this year, Mr Wightman suggested it was the SNP who had leaked the report. 

He tweeted: “The SNP playbook is often to manage the release of information, to discredit unhelpful narratives and to mount personal attacks on those they disagree with. 

“Opposition MSPs had no interest in leaking the Committee’s findings in advance. This would merely serve to undermine the impact of the report’s publication. 

“The vicious smears and lies spun by the SNP comms machine plus the timings of documents I circulated leads me to the conclusion that it was an SNP member of the Committee who leaked these findings to the SNP media in order to spend the next 4 days trashing the Committee. 

“In the coming months we will learn more I hope about what exactly went on.”

At the time, an SNP spokesperson said: "No SNP member on the committee leaked anything from the inquiry - to suggest this to be the case is ludicrous and without a shred of foundation."

Ms Fabiani said she was not responsible for the leak. She told The Herald: “If Mr Wightman has any evidence he should provide it to the appropriate authorities.”