Alistair Bonnington

Let me first deal with the general confusion. Most Scots think that the Hamilton Report, published today, deals with the question of whether the First Minister misled the Scottish Parliament when she told MSPs that the first time she knew of the allegations of sexual misconduct against Alex Salmond (of which he was acquitted of in a criminal court) was on 2 April 2018.  On any view this is hardly a ringing endorsement of Nicola Sturgeon's reliability It does no such thing. Instead, the report deals with a possible breach of the Ministerial Code by Nicola Sturgeon on the question of whether she ‘failed to feed back’ the terms of her various meetings with Alex Salmond and others between March and July 2018.

There never has been a clearer case made out for the utility of law and lawyers than the so-called Salmond Inquiry in the Scottish Parliament. The 'Committee on the Scottish government handling of harassment complaints' to give it its correct title, has thus far failed to unearth the truth about the machinations within the Scottish government quite simply because it isn’t equipped to do so. Inevitably there is strong suspicion that this Committee was given the job precisely because it would have insufficient expertise or powers to investigate adequately. Committee members appear to have worked extremely hard at carrying out their task.