Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints
[2] However, 18 months later, she revised her account, saying she had forgotten about an earlier meeting, on 29 March 2018, in which Salmond's former chief of staff Geoff Aberdein told her about the complaints.
Murrell claimed not to have discussed the allegations in detail with his wife Nicola Sturgeon, which Liberal Democrat member Alex Cole-Hamilton said was "hard to believe".
This would have required the meetings to be recorded, and both Labour and the Conservatives described this as "a direct conflict" between Murrell's evidence to the committee and Sturgeon's statements to Parliament.
[18][19][20] Giving evidence in person in February 2021, Salmond claimed that senior figures in the Scottish Government and the SNP plotted to remove him from public life and to send him to prison.
[21][22] In the course of the inquiry, numerous Scottish Government civil servants had to correct statements or apologise for giving misleading evidence on oath: in her first appearance before the inquiry, Communications Director Barbara Allison denied receiving a text from Leslie Evans following Salmond's successful judicial review that said, "Battle maybe lost but not the war".
James Hynd, the civil servant head of the Scottish Government’s cabinet, parliament and governance division, initially told the inquiry that he had heard "rumours" in relation to Salmond's conduct, but subsequently wrote to the inquiry to say that he was "not aware of any rumours about 'sexually inappropriate behaviour' on the part of Mr Salmond or other ministers."
[26][27] Finally, facing a vote of no confidence which all four opposition parties threatened to back, Deputy First Minister John Swinney agreed to release the Scottish Government's legal advice on 2 March 2021.
[28] Documents and emails showed that two people supported Salmond's assertion that the meeting of 2 April 2018 was convened as a government, not party, matter.
[29] The publication also backed up Salmond's allegation that the identity of one of his accusers had been passed to his former chief of staff, contradicting Sturgeon's statement that "to the very best of my knowledge I do not think that happened".
[30][29] On 17 March 2021, David Davis MP used parliamentary privilege to criticise the Scottish Government's handling of allegations against Alex Salmond.
He told the House of Commons, "I have it on good authority that there exists from 6th Feb 2018 an exchange of messages between Judith Mackinnon and [Scottish government's director of people] Barbara Allison suggesting the first minister's chief of staff is interfering in the complaints process against Alex Salmond.
[31][32] Nicola Sturgeon rejected Davis' claims, describing them as "the latest instalment of Alex Salmond's conspiracy theory," and re-iterated her confidence in Liz Lloyd.
The Committee concluded it was "hard to believe" that Sturgeon did not know of concerns of inappropriate behaviour by Salmond before November 2017, the date when she says she was first alerted to any issues.
[41] One individual failing was that of Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans who they stated was instrumental in the collapse of the defence to the judicial review action by Salmond.
They concluded that the major errors were a failure to identify crucial documents early and choosing an investigator who had previous contact with the women complainants.
