MICHAEL Russell, the Scottish Education Secretary, was last night accused of using cheap schoolboy tactics after he branded a seminar of eminent lawyers discussing the legal aspects of Scottish independence a "kangaroo court".
However, within hours of making the attack, Mr Russell had retreated, saying the experts were in fact not a kangaroo court while the Scottish Government issued a statement – insisting his retraction drew a line under the matter.
The forum in Edinburgh was organised by Lord Wallace, the Advocate General, who has argued that, thus far, the Scottish Government has failed to provide credible answers to key questions on the country's future were it to become independent.
The objectivity of the forum was called into question when Mr Russell tweeted: "Yet another kangaroo court masquerading as 'impartial' – farcical."
The legal experts included Austin Lafferty, President of the Law Society of Scotland, and Richard Keen, QC, Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, who successfully defended one of the men accused of the Lockerbie bombing.
Liam McArthur, the Scottish Liberal Democrat Education spokesman, attacked Mr Russell's broadside.
He said: "It is incredible that Scotland's Education Secretary deems it appropriate to attack eminent and respected lawyers and professors.
"Scotland's academic community will rightly be disappointed that their own government minister has attacked their integrity in such a cheap and public way.
"Mr Russell should spend more time ensuring the Curriculum for Excellence is a success and less time launching such schoolboy attacks."
After critical online responses to Mr Russell's comments, the Education Secretary retweeted, saying: "To be clear – the experts involved are not a 'kangaroo court' but there can be no faith in conclusions drawn by Jim '#Iamthelaw' Wallace."
Last night, a spokesman for the Advocate General said: "It is pretty surprising that the Minister responsible for Scottish education is spending so much of his time criticising senior Scottish legal figures for discussing independence.
"It seems once Mr Russell realised the calibre of those involved he came to the view that this would be a very eminent kangaroo court. He has taken to Twitter again to clarify his remarks and it is probably best just to leave it at that."
Meanwhile, a Scottish Government spokesman said: "The Cabinet Secretary has made his position perfectly clear that these experts are not a kangaroo court and, therefore, this draws a line under the matter."
In a separate development, the Scottish Trades Union Congress announced a series of public events to discuss Scotland's constitutional future but warned party-political wrangling risked stifling debate on the subject.
Grahame Smith, the STUC's General Secretary, said the organisation was "deeply concerned" party political rows might "strangle proper issue-led discussion".
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article