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Nicola Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell, has been accused of contradicting his evidence in a parliamentary inquiry into his meetings with Alex Salmond to discuss allegations of sexual harassment.
Murrell, executive director of the Scottish National Party, said in a Holyrood special investigation that his wife had met Salmond at their home on Scottish government business and not as leader of the SNP.
Jackie Baillie, deputy head of Scottish Labor, said her testimony on Tuesday “directly contradicted” Sturgeon’s written evidence to the committee, where she said she had met Salmond as the leader of the SNP. Murrell, who has been married to Sturgeon since 2010, responded, “I don’t accept that.”
The opposition MSPs and Salmond believe their evidence reinforces serious doubts about whether Sturgeon violated the ministerial code, which could be a resignation matter, because he may have misled parliament.
Sturgeon told Holyrood in late 2018 that he had met Salmond as the leader of the party. She is already being investigated by Ireland’s former director of public prosecution, James Hamilton, as to whether she interfered with the government’s investigation, a claim she has repeatedly denied.
Sturgeon admitted to meeting Salmond at his home in Glasgow on April 2, where they discussed a decision by senior officials to launch a formal internal investigation into sexual harassment complaints against him, dating back to his time as prime minister.
Last month, the committee heard from John Somers, Sturgeon’s top private secretary, that if it had been an official meeting in her role as prime minister, it would have been in her ministerial journal and on record. But it wasn’t like that, he said.
Sturgeon admitted that he spoke to Salmond about the investigation twice before alerting Lesley Evans, Scotland’s top official, to those contacts in June 2018, the day before the couple met again.
It also emerged that Sturgeon did not tell parliament that he had met Salmond’s former chief of staff, Geoff Aberdein, at his prime minister’s office four days before seeing Salmond at his home.
In written evidence to the committee, Sturgeon said the meeting, which was also not included in his ministerial journal, “covered the suggestion that the matter could be related to allegations of a sexual nature.” Sturgeon said he agreed to meet with Aberdein because he was concerned Salmond might resign from the party.
Asked by Alex Cole Hamilton, an MSP Lib Dem, why Murrell was not told about the meeting given Salmond’s resignation would be a “bombshell” involving a man he worked closely with for decades, Murrell claimed he did not ask what the meetings were about and was not told by his wife.
Murrell said Sturgeon was immensely busy and they did not discuss her duties as prime minister. “When she says she can’t talk about something, that’s it,” Murrell told the committee.
Murrell first told the committee that he was not home during the meeting, but admitted under questioning that he came home while he was in and found three people in his living room, with Sturgeon and Salmond in another room.
It has already been established that the other three were Liz Lloyd, Sturgeon, Aberdein chief of staff, and Duncan Hamilton QC, Salmond’s close friend and legal advisor. Murrell told Wightman that he greeted him and went upstairs to take a shower, and did not pressure his wife about why they were there.
Murrell also told the committee that he knew Salmond could be facing investigations in London involving the Crown Prosecution Service around the time Salmond first appeared in Edinburgh Sheriff’s Court on 14 counts of alleged assault and violation of public order. . Salmond was later acquitted of all charges.
None of those charges involved alleged crimes in London, and the Met’s police investigation did not become public until early 2020. The Met later announced that it would not take any action on those claims.
