NICOLA Sturgeon has mounted her most robust defence yet of her Justice Secretary in the row over Police Scotland after Ruth Davidson claimed he may have broken the law.
The Scottish Tory leader said Michael Matheson may have exceeded his powers when he intervened in a decision of the force’s oversight body, the Scottish Police Authority (SPA).
However, linking her own fate to his, the First Minister insisted Mr Matheson had acted “entirely appropriately” and in a way she would have expected of a minister.
The rumbling row over Police Scotland concerns the SPA’s decision last November to allow Chief Constable Phil Gormley to return to duty despite bullying allegations against him.
Mr Gormley has been on special leave since September and is currently the subject of three misconduct investigations by an independent watchdog, and potentially faces a fourth.
After then SPA chair Andrew Flanagan told Mr Matheson of Mr Gormley’s proposed return, Mr Matheson queried the SPA’s decision-making process.
When it emerged the SPA had not consulted the watchdog or the police about the return, Mr Matheson asked the SPA to reconsider and it reversed its decision.
Mr Gormley’s lawyer claims the Justice Secretary had no legal authority to intervene.
However there is no minute of the meeting to establish exactly who said what to whom.
At First Minister’s Questions, Ms Davidson described the situation as a “fiasco” and said it was “shocking” that no minute was taken when such a “massive decision” was involved.
She said: "It is about whether the Justice Secretary acted unlawfully by directing the SPA to stop the Chief Constable coming back to work against their own recommendations.
“The truth is that we do not know. In fact, we cannot know because... incredibly no minutes had been taken. It is the SNP’s secret Scotland and it stinks.”
She urged Ms Sturgeon to change the legal framework around policing to give the parliament more say in the running of the single force, rather than the government.
But the First Minister told MSPs Mr Matheson had been right to question the SPA, and said the opposition would be asking serious questions of him if he’d done nothing.
She said: “The Justice Secretary has acted entirely appropriately. I would have thought that all members across the chamber would have welcomed that fact.
“The justice secretary did not intervene in a disciplinary matter; he asked legitimate questions of the SPA to determine whether it had carried out its functions appropriately.
“Let me be clear not just that it is fine by me that my justice secretary asks legitimate questions but that I expect that of my Justice Secretary.
“I expect my Justice Secretary to do the job that he was appointed to do.”
The row is expected to carry on into next week, when Mr Flanagan is due to give his side of the story to MSPs.
She said she suspected the Tories were only asking about the police as a “deflection” in light of Tory MPs acting like “nothing more than lobby fodder” in a Westminster vote on Brexit.
Ms Sturgeon’s official spokeswoman later described Mr Davidson’s secret Scotland remark as "nonsense", and said civil servants had not minuted the meeting between Mr Matheson and Mr Flanagan because the follow-up action was for the SPA, not the government.
Labour MSP Daniel Johnson said: “Exactly what happened in the meeting between the Justice Secretary and the chair of SPA to discuss the future of Phil Gormley becomes less clear by the day.
“It is simply beyond belief that Scottish Government civil servants did not minute a meeting of this importance with an operationally independent outside body. Nicola Sturgeon’s answers gave no assurances to the public, who will rightly be concerned at the chronic lack of transparency in this government.”
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