Legal Advice To Be Given To Parliament In The Case Taken By Alex Salmond

2nd March 2021

The conservatives have threatened a vote of no confidence in the Deputy First Minister John Swinney over the legal advice given to the Scottish Government regarding issues in the enquiry into the botched legal case involving Alex Salmond.

Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints is currently looking at matters.

The key legal advice that underpinned the Scottish Government's defence of the Judicial Review taken by Alex Salmond will be released tomorrow.

The decision by Deputy First Minister John Swinney has received the prior agreement of the Law Officers in line with paragraph 2.40 of the Scottish Ministerial Code.

Ahead of release, under the General Data Protection Regulation, legal notifications to individuals impacted are required. These are expected to be complete and, subject to them, the Parliament will receive the material immediately thereafter.

Deputy First Minister John Swinney said:"In normal circumstances, government legal advice is not released. Indeed, such is the importance of being able to get frank, private advice, it is almost unheard of for the legal advice to be released.

"But, we have to acknowledge that the issues at stake now are not normal. The very integrity of the legal system is being questioned.

"Serious allegations have been made. This material allows people to confirm that these allegations are false.

"We have already shared in private with the Scottish Parliament's committee on these issues the substance of the advice.

"Now, we recognise that in order to counter to the false claims being made by some, we must go further. Subject to the mandatory legal checks and processes, we will release the key legal advice."

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will appear in front of the committee on Wednesday 3 March 2021.

Alex Salmond appeared in front of the committee on Friday 26 February 2021. A 6 hour session in which he laid out his case under questioning from MSP's. The video of proceedings is available HERE

The next meeting of the committee will be broadcast at https://www.scottishparliament.tv/ on Wednesday 3 March 2021.