SNP MSP accused of leaking harassment committee report which concluded Nicola Sturgeon had misled parliament

Former MSP Andy Wightman has accused the SNP of leaking the findings of the committee which investigated the botched handling of harassment complaints made against Alex Salmond.

Wightman, who sat on the committee last year, said the leaks were “the most serious breaches of the MSP code of conduct ever to have taken place”.

He added it had been orchestrated to “undermine the impact of the report’s publication”.

The Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints was set up after the government was forced to pay over £500,000 in legal costs after the courts ruled an internal probe into the behaviour of the former first minister was “unlawful”.

The cross-party committee concluded Nicola Sturgeon had misled parliament, pointing to a “fundamental contradiction” in evidence about whether she agreed to intervene in the probe.

The confidential report was leaked to the media four days before it was due to be formally published, in violation of the MSP code of conduct.

It caused significant anger among MSPs on the committee, with two members reportedly walking out of a meeting after they had been made aware of the leak.

At the time, Sturgeon said the “very partisan leak” was “not that surprising”.

The SNP members of the committee – Alasdair Allan, Stuart McMillan, Maureen Watt and convener Linda Fabiani – dissented from the conclusion that Sturgeon has misled MSPs.

And in a statement released by the SNP afterwards, Allan, McMillan and Watt accused other members of the committee of making “11^th-hour predetermined political assertions that have no basis in fact”.

Speaking out a year on from the report, Wightman said: “Opposition MSPs had no interest in leaking the committee’s findings in advance. This would merely serve to undermine the impact of the report’s publication.

“The vicious smears and lies spun by the SNP comms machine plus the timings of documents I circulated leads me to the conclusion that it was an SNP member of the committee who leaked these findings to the SNP media in order to spend the next four days trashing the committee.

“In the coming months we will learn more I hope about what exactly went on.”

While originally announced in January 2019, the work of the committee was unable to get underway as separate criminal charges were brought against Salmond.

After the former first minister was acquitted, the committee took evidence from several senior civil servants, SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, Sturgeon and Salmond.

A separate independent report by senior lawyer James Hamilton concluded the First Minister did not breach the ministerial code.