Salmond inquiry: Civil servant says investigating complaints ‘right thing to do’

Scotland’s prime civil servant has apologised for the Scottish authorities’s dealing with of harassment complaints in opposition to Alex Salmond.

However Leslie Evans insisted that investigating the allegations in opposition to the previous first minister was the suitable thing to do.

Ms Evans is the primary witness to seem earlier than a Scottish Parliament inquiry.

The inquiry centres on the federal government’s investigation into two complaints from workers about Mr Salmond’s behaviour.

The allegations date again to when he was in workplace as first minister of Scotland.

Mr Salmond efficiently took the federal government to courtroom over its investigation of the harassment complaints, and known as for Ms Evans to give up after he was awarded £500,000 bills by the Court docket of Session.

• How will Holyrood’s Alex Salmond inquiry work?
• Who’s Leslie Evans?

The courtroom dominated that the investigation had been illegal, “procedurally unfair” and “tainted with obvious bias” as a result of the investigating officer assigned to the case had had prior contact with the complainers.

Ms Evans – the Scottish authorities’s everlasting secretary – has been strongly backed by her boss, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who is predicted to give proof to the committee within the coming weeks.

The civil servant informed the inquiry: “When complaints had been raised it could have been unconscionable, and a failure in our obligation of care, not to examine these complaints.

“It was accepted at judicial evaluation that one a part of our process ought to have been utilized in another way.

“I apologise unreservedly to all involved for this procedural failure.”

The Scottish Parliament inquiry into the collapse of the federal government case was placed on maintain for over a 12 months after prison costs had been introduced in opposition to Mr Salmond – which culminated in him being cleared of 13 costs of sexual assault on the Excessive Court docket in Edinburgh in March.

The committee of MSPs, led by Deputy Presiding Officer Linda Fabiani, is inspecting the event of the federal government’s harassment complaints process, the applying of that process to the case of Mr Salmond, and the judicial evaluation case.

Ms Fabiani has repeatedly clashed with the everlasting secretary over documentation and written proof being equipped by the federal government.

She has spoken of her “frustration and disappointment on the very restricted quantity of knowledge the Scottish authorities has chosen to disclose” concerning the judicial evaluation.

The committee has pledged not to re-investigate any complaints, however members will research the “tradition” of presidency beneath each Mr Salmond and Ms Sturgeon – which has already led to civil service unions voicing issues about “bullying behaviour” inside each administrations.

Mr Salmond’s defence within the prison trial claimed he was the sufferer of a political conspiracy – one thing Ms Sturgeon has dismissed as “a heap of nonsense”.

• Alex Salmond trial: What’s the political fallout?

Ms Sturgeon has insisted that the complaints dealing with process she ordered to be drawn up within the wake of the Me Too motion remained “fully sturdy” regardless of the “deeply regrettable” failure within the case of her predecessor.

She has ordered an inner evaluation of “the precise utility of this one factor of the process”, and has additionally triggered an impartial evaluation to determine whether or not she broke the ministerial code in her dealings with Mr Salmond.