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Alex Salmond has asked an independent investigator to expand his investigation into whether Nicola Sturgeon violated the ministerial code.
The former prime minister said James Hamilton should be able to examine allegations that Sturgeon misled Parliament amid a dispute over a meeting he had in connection with the allegations against Salmond.
A Holyrood committee is investigating how the Sturgeon government handled allegations of sexual misconduct against Salmond in 2018 when he was prime minister.
Salmond requested a judicial review and it was agreed that the government’s investigation had been illegal and was tainted with apparent bias.
The failed investigation cost public finances more than £ 500,000 and destroyed the long-standing friendship between Salmond and Sturgeon.
Separately, Hamilton, who is the Independent Counsel on the Ministerial Code, is analyzing the issues raised by the meetings that Sturgeon and Salmond had when the misconduct investigation was ongoing.
The Prime Minister’s judgment has been challenged and she has faced calls to reveal exactly what was discussed.
She has also been criticized for not initially disclosing a meeting she had with former Salmond chief of staff, Geoff Aberdein.
Part of Hamilton’s mandate includes determining whether there is evidence that Sturgeon attempted to use the information discussed during those meetings to “influence the conduct of the investigation.”
In a sign of growing tensions between Salmond and Sturgeon, the former prime minister has questioned the mandate:
“The mandate given to her investigation by the Deputy Prime Minister puts surprising emphasis on whether she interfered with the Scottish government investigation. One might even suspect that this mandate was created as a straw man to tear down. “
“There is no general impediment for ministers to intervene in a civil service process that I am aware of and, in fact, there are occasions when the code requires ministers to intervene to correct civil service behavior.”
Salmond also asked for the mandate to be extended: “What I want to know is whether matters that, on the contrary, are specified in the ministerial code, as the main responsibility not to mislead Parliament (contrary to 1.3 (c) of the code ), such as the failure to act on the basis of legal advice suggesting that the government ran the risk of behaving illegally (contrary to 2.30 of the code), and as the ministerial failure to ensure that public officials provide truthful information to parliament ( contrary to 1.3 (e) of the code) will it have at least the same status in its deliberations or is it confined to the political mandate assigned to it? “
He added: “If your consultation has been limited by Ministers, please tell me if you have the authority to expand that mandate unilaterally. If not, will you seek the authority of those in the Scottish government who set the mandate to expand it to these and other areas? “
Salmond also disclosed that he is representing himself directly in connection with the independent advisor’s investigation:
“I am a private individual and I simply cannot afford to hire more legal representation as my lawyers are completely busy dealing with the Scottish Parliamentary Inquiry.
“Scottish government officials have already spent large sums of public funds on legal representation in this process. They have also informed me that other witnesses depend on their political party to finance their legal representation ”.
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