James Hamilton’s inquiry has found that Nicola Sturgeon did not breach the ministerial code. The former Irish prosecutor, who serves as the independent adviser on the code, was tasked with reviewing the Holyrood First Minister’s actions in relation to the Alex Salmond affair.
Hamilton considered four allegations:
That Sturgeon’s failure to record meetings and phone conversations with Alex Salmond and others (held between March 29 and July 18, 2018) breached the code’s provisions that ‘meetings on official business should normally be arranged through Private Offices’ and ‘a private secretary or official should be present for all discussions relating to government business’. Further, that ‘if ministers meet external organisations or individuals and find themselves discussing official business without an official present… any significant content… should be passed back to their Private Offices as soon as possible after the event, who should arrange for the basic facts of such meetings to be recorded’.
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