The Scottish Government has been impressive on Russia. Hasn’t it? Nicola Sturgeon said Russia should face the most severe sanctions. The finance secretary Kate Forbes also said it was the moral responsibility of every Scottish business to stop trading with Russia and that the government would do everything it could to help. Pretty strong stuff, I think you’ll agree.

Except: not really. It’s not how it looks. There’s a difference between what’s being said in public and what’s being said and done in private and the difference reveals a kind of quiet hypocrisy by the SNP on Russia. No one denies applying sanctions is tricky – as the Treasury Select Committee pointed out this week, they can end up hitting the last group you want to target: the poorest in Britain. But, in public and in private, you should at least try to be consistent.

So let me tell you about a case I’ve been writing about recently that reveals the extent of the difference between the public and the private. On the one hand, you have Kate Forbes saying the government will help companies to withdraw from Russia and on the other you have Scottish firms who are being told something different. They are effectively being told: you can trade with Russia and we will do nothing about it.

One of the companies in question is Saltire Seed, which sells seed potatoes from its base in Aberdeen. I spoke to its chief executive Tim Halliwell. I also spoke to PepsiCo who will be exporting the potatoes to Russia so they can be used in their snack business over there. And I spoke to a contact in the trade who told me what was really going on behind the scenes. None of it is impressive.

What has effectively happened is this. Informed of the predicament of the seed potato growers, the Scottish Government told them it was on the conscience of the individuals involved whether they wanted to proceed with the deals. However, the government also said they would issue the necessary approvals for the contracts to go ahead. Consignments such as this cannot happen without being certified by the government and the government said it would provide that certification.

This obviously creates a gap between the private actions of the Scottish Government and the public pronouncements and the same applies to PepsiCo. The company sought to get public credit when it said it was stopping the sale of its cola and other drinks in Russia, but when it came to the 2000 tons of potatoes due to be shipped from Scotland, it insisted the deal go ahead. In the words of one trader I spoke to: it’s legal but morally it’s a disgrace.

Pepsi’s defence to me was that Scottish farmers have spent four years nurturing the seed potatoes and that there are 40,000 agricultural workers in their Russian supply chain who they want to support. Saltire Seed’s Tim Halliwell also told me that the supply of seed potatoes is a long process and cannot easily be turned off. Fair enough. I have a great deal of sympathy for someone like Mr Halliwell whose business has suddenly faced an unexpected threat and a moral quandary.

But where I struggle – where most people would struggle I think – is with the official inconsistency between the public and the private. What the Scottish Government told me is that they do not approve export deals and are using all their available powers. But come on: the legal technicality defence will not do. Iryna Terlecky, who leads the Associations of Ukrainians in Great Britain, said it as it is: the Scottish Government should stop certifying the seed potatoes, but at the very least they should be open about what’s going on rather than trying to earn credit in public while quietly doing something else in private.

What some people in the trade think about all of this is clear: the Scottish Government washed their hands of the whole thing while attempting to earn credit for being tough in public and more importantly, being apparently tougher than the UK Government. To put it mildly, it is inconsistent. To put it less mildly, it is hypocritical. And the question in the end is: will the deal go ahead? The answer, I’m afraid, is undoubtedly yes.

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