Willie Rennie lends support to Alistair Carmichael following report into leaked memo

Willie Rennie has lent his backing to Alistair Carmichael after it emerged that the former Scotland Secretary had been responsible for leaking an inaccurate memo between Nicola Sturgeon and the French Ambassador in the run up to the General Election.

The memo, later refuted by both the First Minister and the French Ambassador, had suggested Sturgeon said Ed Miliband was “not prime minister material”.

At the time of the controversy over the leaking of the memo, Carmichael told Channel 4 News that the Cabinet Office inquiry centred not on “somebody in public life”, but “a civil servant”.

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The Scottish Lib Dem leader said: “He deeply regrets his actions, has accepted responsibility for his error of judgement, apologised to Nicola Sturgeon and the French ambassador and declined his ministerial severance payment.

“It is clear to me that recent events are an aberration.

“As a liberal I believe that people deserve a second chance. I hope fair-minded people would agree that Alistair Carmichael should be given that second chance.”

The Scottish Liberal Democrat Party executive met on Saturday, agreeing that Carmichael should not face disciplinary action.

Meanwhile the SNP is calling for a formal investigation by the House of Commons standards watchdog.

SNP deputy leader Stewart Hosie said: “Mr Carmichael has no credibility in continuing as an MP and in my opinion he should stand down. It is appropriate for the Standards Commissioner to get involved and arrive at her own conclusions, having investigated the full facts.

“Mr Carmichael went on TV after this bogus story broke, denying that he had anything to do with the dirty trick. He said that he knew nothing about it until he got a call from a journalist. We now know all of this to be 100 per cent untrue.

“The dirty trick was bad enough - but his blatant attempt to cover it up until after the General Election is ten times worse.

“There are also questions for Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie and indeed former Lib Dem UK leader Nick Clegg to answer - what did they know, and when did they know it?

“Mr Rennie was one of the first to comment on this false story. Did the Special Adviser who gave the incorrect memo to the Telegraph and used his government phone to contact them also call Willie Rennie about it? The telephone records would answer that question. And did Alistair Carmichael speak to Willie Rennie, his party leader in Scotland, about it, which seems likely?”

The fallout from the leak prompted the Cabinet Office to hold an inquiry, with its report clearing the civil servant in the Scotland Office who drafted the memo.

The civil servant told the inquiry team he believed the account of the conversation between Sturgeon and the French Ambassador was accurate, but pointed to the memo's inclusion of a caveat that some of its meaning may have been “lost in translation”.

Instead, the inquiry found that Carmichael's then-special adviser Euan Roddin provided a copy of the memo to the Daily Telegraph on April 1, and "discussed the memo with a journalist on a number of occasions".

Carmichael – who is the sole remaining Scottish Liberal Democrat MP – told the inquiry that he gave Roddin permission for the memo to be leaked to the paper.

The report says he has accepted that he "could and should have stopped the sharing of the memo", adding that neither Carmichael nor Roddin will take severance pay – usually equal to three months' salary for ministers.