Letters: Unanswered questions remain after Salmond court case win

It states the investigation officer “will have had no prior involvement with any aspect of the matter being raised.”

Why did Judith MacKinnon, the Head of People Advice, who already had a draft copy of the document, fail to take account of this? Why did Leslie Evans, the most senior civil servant in charge of the matter, fail to pick up on this and appoint Ms MacKinnon in the first place?

Would it be too much to expect the First Minister to have been aware of the details of the correct procedure? She tells us that she met Mr Salmond on April 2 when he “voiced his various concerns about the process”.

Presumably one of his “concerns” was that the appointment of the investigation officer was flawed. If she was ignorant of correct procedure previously then presumably she could, at that point, have scrutinised the process that had been followed.

At the time she proclaimed that she “robustly” defended the actions taken. And she similarly continued to refuse to admit that the SNP Government had erred until Tuesday’s court proceedings.

This case is to cost the Scottish taxpayer £500,000 or more, much of it, paradoxically, to pay Mr Salmond’s legal costs. Could at least some of this money not have been saved if Ms Sturgeon had been willing to admit her Government’s mistakes at an earlier date? She could have closed down the initial investigation and initiated a fresh one immediately that followed the correct procedure.

Ms Sturgeon now states that a fresh investigation “could” be pursued. I would hope that the only doubt in the matter hinges on the outcome of the police investigation into the allegations. Mr Salmond – “no angel” by his own admission – stresses that he is “certainly not guilty of criminality”.

Mr Salmond is, of course, innocent until proven guilty of any allegation criminal or otherwise. He has ended the current government investigation purely on a legal technicality.

But that does not amount to a dismissal of the allegations against him. And what matters in this issue – more than costs to the taxpayer or internal SNP squabbling – is that the complainants are given a fair hearing and a proper investigation into their allegations.

Colin Hamilton,

Braid Hills Avenue,

Edinburgh.

I ALWAYS worry when people call for others to be sacked especially when they want to score cheap, self-serving political points (“Salmond in call for Evans to consider her position”, The Herald, January 9). People’s lives and careers can be unjustifiably ruined by such actions.

However, after Alex Salmond’s victory in the Court of Session, I think his call for the Leslie Evans, head of the Scottish Civil Service, to consider her position is more than justified.

The Scottish Government and its advisors must have known very early in this case that they had contravened their own rules, thereby justifying Mr Salmond’s complaint. Yet they ploughed on to the last minute of the regardless of the £500,000-plus cost to us, the long suffering taxpayer.

Derek McKay, Finance Secretary, and Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister, implore us to accept higher taxes to help the less well off and frankly I would support this if it were not for the blatant waste of taxpayers’ money by the Government in this and so many other cases.

I’m prepared to accept that the initial mistake was probably inadvertent but, to plough on regardless, racking up this huge bill, is incompetent and unacceptable, especially given the disservice to the two complainants.

A head or two should roll and an apology for mis-spending £500,000 from Nicola Sturgeon would not go amiss either.

Ian McNair,

47A James Street,

Cellardyke.

WHAT a monumental mess created within the Government administration under the SNP. The hard-pressed Scottish taxpayers find themselves presented with a bill for half a million pounds and the two women, who made the allegation, must be wondering what on earth is going on.

Now we have Alex Salmond, the former First Minister, hinting that he may now sue for damages.

Nicola Sturgeon declared that “This is not a victory for anyone” ; she will have a job convincing Mr Salmond, and many of us looking on, of that.

The First Minister behaved like a schoolmistress, dealing with a school exercise in awarding, as it were, nine out of 10 marks when saying that only one aspect of the procedures was proved to be in error. The fact is that, for the procedures to stand up as being robust, it needed a ten out of ten. I wonder when we will be enlightened in detail about what transpired during the five times Mr Salmond was in contact with his successor while he was being investigated by the Scottish Government amid allegations of sexual harassment.

The Permanent Secretary, Leslie Evans, whether she stays or goes, will forever be linked, unfortunately for her, with this sorry episode .

Ian W Thomson,

38 Kirkintilloch Road,

Lenzie.

IT is so sad that the press reports the Alex Salmond case as a case against the Scottish Government. It is a case against an incompetence within the civil service.

The Permanent Secretary and Judith MacKinnon, her human resources adviser should have known that the way the investigation was carried out and, indeed, who was carrying it out was fundamentally flawed.

Having spent the overwhelming part of my working career in senior HR positions it is so obvious that any investigation should be completely independent.

There are two serious consequences of this mistake. First, it seemed as if Alex Salmond was taking on his own party and not, in fact, the civil service. Secondly, we are left picking up the bill for this error on the part of senior civil servants.

Legal officers must also have been involved. What was their advice before the case reached the court?

Will we see admissions of incompetence followed by resignations? I am not holding my breath!

Dave Biggart,

Southcroft,

Knockbuckle Road,

Kilmacolm.