Hansard

Three weeks ago, Parliament resolved that the Scottish Government should hand over to the Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints all the legal advice that it received in relation to the judicial review taken against it by the former First Minister Alex Salmond. That was a clear majority vote of the Parliament, and it is deeply disappointing that, three weeks later, that advice has still not been forthcoming.

It is a matter of regret that we are again having to spend parliamentary time asking the Scottish Government to meet its obligations to the Parliament and to the committee. The Government’s failure to comply with the will of Parliament is deeply disrespectful to the institution and it flies in the face of numerous demands that Scottish National Party ministers have made in the past that the will of Parliament be respected.

The background to the situation is the on-going inquiry into the Government’s handling of harassment complaints against the former First Minister Alex Salmond. We should never forget that at the heart of this matter are a number of women who made complaints in relation to the behaviour of the former First Minister, and who have never seen a resolution to those complaints. By continually refusing to co-operate with the committee and meet the committee’s reasonable requests for information, the Scottish Government can only be adding to the stress and discomfort that those individuals feel. They have a right to know what went wrong, as indeed does the committee, members of the Scottish Parliament and the broader public.

We are dealing with a situation where more than £500,000 of taxpayers’ money was paid out in legal costs to the former First Minister, and that sum takes no account of the in-house costs and external costs incurred by the Scottish Government itself. Remarkably, we still do not have a functioning complaints process at the heart of the Scottish Government that is compliant with the law, nearly two years on from the concession of the judicial review.

Last week the Lord Advocate, James Wolffe, appeared at the committee to answer questions in relation to the conduct of the judicial review. He was asked a series of questions by various members of the committee in relation to the Government’s legal position on the judicial review and the legal advice that it took. He refused to answer those questions, not once, not twice, but on 27 separate occasions, in each case citing the law officer convention that ministers do not confirm the involvement or non-involvement of law officers in any particular matter. That is 27 separate occasions on which members of the committee from different political parties felt that there were relevant issues that needed to be explored, but the Lord Advocate refused to answer the questions.

That puts in context the line in the Government amendment that talks about the Lord Advocate’s co-operation with the committee—there are 27 ways in which to refute that statement. That is not transparent government and it is not the way to get to the bottom of what has gone wrong here.

What we do know is that when the judicial review case was conceded by the Scottish Government, the award of expenses paid to Mr Salmond, from taxpayers’ money, was at the highest level possible, which is payable only when, in the words of Lord Hodge, a defence has been conducted “incompetently or unreasonably”.

It is, in my view, therefore perfectly reasonable to ask the question: what went so badly wrong with the Scottish Government’s defence that it could be classified as either unreasonable or incompetent? However, we cannot get to the bottom of that key question until we see the legal advice.

Three weeks ago, Mr Swinney said that the Scottish Government would reflect on the vote in Parliament and consider what could be produced. Three weeks later, we are no further forward, and time is running out.

For months, the committee has been asking for this legal advice. The committee hopes to conclude taking oral evidence by Christmas, effectively giving us four weeks of parliamentary time from now. It will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to meet that deadline unless the legal advice is forthcoming. It is hard, therefore, to avoid the conclusion that the Government is cynically running down the clock on the inquiry, hoping that time will overtake us and we will not be able to do the job that Parliament expects us to do.

We should remember that this committee was established back in February 2019. The Government has had ample time to deal with the provision of evidence and should not be scurrying around at the last minute trying to make excuses about why vital documentation should not now be made available. Further, it is not just the Opposition parties saying that. Three weeks ago, the Scottish National Party MSP Alex Neil said this:

“The Government is going to have to release this legal advice. In my view the founding principles of the Parliament are openness, transparency and accountability. In this instance, the logic of that is this legal advice has to be given to the committee.”

He is right. Writing yesterday, in The Press and Journal and The Courier newspapers, the former special adviser to the Scottish Government Campbell Gunn said that he could not see the logic in the Scottish Government’s position. He said this:

“If, as they say, they have nothing to hide, then surely they shouldn’t hide things ... Do ministers, advisers and senior civil servants have any conception of how their current position looks from the outside?”

If even people in the SNP are saying that, the Government really needs to start listening. There have been numerous occasions in the past when the SNP and ministers have demanded that the will of this Parliament be respected. For example, on 31 March 2017, the First Minister said this:

“In my view, the will of the Scottish Parliament must be respected. It is a question not of if it is respected, but how”.

That is the situation that we are in today. It is time for Scottish ministers to respect the will of Parliament, stop delaying, stop the obfuscation and provide the legal advice without further delay.

Time is running out on the committee inquiry. If the Government wants to have any shred of credibility left when it comes to openness and respecting the will of Parliament, it must produce the legal advice. That is what my motion says, and I have pleasure in moving it today.

I move,

That the Parliament recalls the vote on motion S5M-23218 on 4 November 2020, in which it called on the Scottish Government to publish the legal advice it received regarding the judicial review into the handling of harassment complaints against the former First Minister, Alex Salmond; notes that the legal advice sought has not yet been published, despite the Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints requesting this by 13 November 2020, and calls on the Scottish Government to respect the will of the Parliament by providing the legal advice without any further delay.