1. I add my condolences to the loved ones of those who have died.

This week, we have heard more allegations about the scandal engulfing Nicola Sturgeon’s Government. At her press conference yesterday, the First Minister refused to address their substance, but claimed to refute the allegations. It has been a while since I was a journalist but, back then, “to refute” meant to prove a statement wrong, and I do not think that its meaning has changed since then. I will therefore ask the same question that the journalist asked yesterday and which the First Minister refused to answer; maybe she can properly refute it now.

It has been alleged that a legal document had been deliberately withdrawn—in other words, suppressed—from being handed over to a court by Government officials. Is that something that the First Minister knows happened, and is that not a summary dismissal offence?

It did not happen. I will come back to that point in a minute. I am quite astounded that Ruth Davidson has not seen the position that has now been narrated about that.

First, however, having David Davis, a Tory MP, reading out in the House of Commons, under the protection of parliamentary privilege, his old pal Alex Salmond’s conspiracy theories about the sexual harassment allegations against him must be the very epitome of the old boys club. [

Interruption

.]

The Presiding Officer:

Order, please.

The First Minister:

Holding this Government to account is vital, but anyone who chooses to cheer that on should not pretend to have the interests of the women concerned at heart.

On the specific question about the withheld document, as the Government confirmed yesterday, that claim is factually inaccurate. David Davis claimed that a document was withheld. Once we tracked down exactly what document was being talked about, we discovered that it was not withheld; it was handed over to the court on 21 November 2018 as production number 7.79. That is the answer to Ruth Davidson’s question.

I end by saying that, although parliamentary privilege might confer all sorts of protection, unfortunately for Mr Davis, it does not turn falsehood into fact.

I do not deal in conspiracies. I deal in facts—[

Interruption

.] It is a fact that her own lawyers said that it was

“unexplained, and frankly inexplicable” that information had been kept from them. Although that is ground that we have tread before, there is something that she has not been asked about, because it was released to the Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints only on Monday. That is a document dated 4 November 2018, which has not been reported yet and which could have been released the whole time, but instead has been sneaked out in the dog days of the inquiry’s time.

We do not know who the note’s author is, because that is redacted, but we know that it was sent to the very top of Government and discusses whether officials really do have to comply with their duty of candour. I will quote directly from it:

“... they ... felt it better, more credible and less shifty-looking if we proceed as proposed.”

It goes on:

“it will probably all end up being out there anyway ... and better to face it transparently than having this dragged out reluctantly and portrayed as a failed attempt at a cover up.”

Why did the Government go ahead with the attempt at the cover-up anyway?

The First Minister:

I think that everybody watching will have noticed just how quickly Ruth Davidson moved on from the first question that she asked. She stood up and suggested—as did David Davis in the House of Commons earlier this week—that a document had been withheld. I pointed out to her that that was factually inaccurate and gave her the production number of the document as it was handed over to the court on 21 November 2018, and she has the nerve to stand up and say that she deals in facts.

I think that people will see for themselves that that could not be further from the truth.

What she has just quoted is counsel saying to Government, “Here are things we should hand over, and we should hand them over rather than have any suggestion that we are trying to cover up”—although I think that they were actually saying that we should amend pleadings. I will be corrected if I am wrong on that. What did we do? We amended the pleadings. All of that is, of course, out there for people to see. The thing is that people do not have to take Ruth Davidson’s word or the word of the old boys club in the House of Commons for these things any more. They can go on to the website of the Scottish Government and of this Parliament’s Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints and read it all for themselves and make up their own minds.

The fact of the matter is that David Davis made serious and specific allegations in the House of Commons this week and they have completely fallen apart, which I think he should be apologising for. He has been tweeting this morning no longer even trying to defend the specific allegations, but shifting the goal posts. “Shifty” is definitely a word that I would use today, but in relation to David Davis and Ruth Davidson.

The First Minister says that there is no cover-up, but six weeks after the note that I read out, her own lawyers said that the Government had not complied with what the court told it to do. We know that the First Minister attended a meeting on 13 November 2018 with legal counsel, and all records of that meeting have either vanished or been destroyed. It is beyond anyone’s imagination that no notes were taken when the First Minister, her chief of staff, the permanent Secretary, and Queen’s counsel met. Is Nicola Sturgeon seriously trying to tell us that this is not a cover-up when, six weeks before key documents were finally dragged out of the Government, her own officials warned that it would look like a failed attempt at a cover-up; when her own lawyers, under her instruction, made false statements before a judge because a key email was withheld, despite emails around it in the same chain having been disclosed; and when all this would have stayed secret from the inquiry that is investigating it, but for the threat of John Swinney losing his job?

The First Minister:

Ruth Davidson gets more and more desperate on the issue every single week that passes. As one conspiracy theory after another is demolished and falls away, she just dredges the bottom of the barrel.

The fact of the matter is that this Government made a serious mistake, and I have said so on a number of occasions. It is a serious mistake, which I regret deeply. A point that should not be lost is that it is a mistake that was made in the course of the Government trying to do the right thing. In the world of the old boys club, that mistake would never have been made, because the allegations would never have been investigated, and would have been swept under the carpet instead. Ruth Davidson will see that old boys club a lot more closely when she joins the House of Lords, in just a few weeks’ time.

The fact is that scrutiny of the Government on all such matters is vital and important. As I have said, people can go and read the documentation for themselves. However, every time that it crosses over into buying into Alex Salmond’s conspiracy theories, politicians have a choice to make. They are entitled to make that choice, but they should not pretend that, in doing so, they are standing up for the women at the heart of the issue. The women were let down. I have apologised for that, and I am determined to learn the lessons of it and make sure that the Government learns the lessons of it.

Day by day, week by week, and drip by drip, more evidence comes to light over how the matter has been mishandled by the First Minister and her Government. There have been allegations of legal documents being deliberately concealed, and the lawyers who acted for the Scottish Government were furious at making false statements to court because key evidence was withheld even from them. Now it is claimed that the First Minister’s own chief of staff intervened in the scandal. However, we only know that because the evidence was published not in this Parliament, but in another Parliament altogether.

The evidence mounts up, as do the Government’s excuses. However, nothing can excuse the way in which the women at the heart of the matter were failed, nor the taxpayers’ money that was wasted. The one thing that has not happened is anyone in this Government taking the responsibility that they should take. The circumstances demand that someone loses their job over the matter. It could be the permanent Secretary, the First Minister’s chief of staff, or the First Minister herself, but, really, should it not be them all?

The First Minister:

In just a few weeks’ time, I will put myself before the verdict of the Scottish people. That is the ultimate accountability, from which Ruth Davidson is running away. Never let us forget that.

Ruth Davidson has stood up here again and mouthed another of the conspiracy theories regarding my chief of staff. Yesterday, we heard a complainer who had asked for my chief of staff’s help say categorically that what was being suggested by David Davis was

“fundamentally untrue and ... deliberately misrepresented”.

Week after week, Ruth Davidson stands up here and claims that, for her, it is all about the women. If that is true, I suggest to her that it is about time that she started listening a bit more to the women at the heart of it, and a bit less to Alex Salmond and his cronies.

The fact of the matter is that Ruth Davidson and the Tories are not interested in the evidence. The day before I gave evidence to the Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints, Ruth Davidson and her colleagues said, in terms, that they were not interested in anything that I had to say, because they had made up their minds.

At the heart of it is the fact that Ruth Davidson and the Conservatives are not interested in the women, nor in the evidence. They are interested only in using the situation as a political tool—because, frankly, they have nothing positive to put before the Scottish people. That is the reality.