Nicola Sturgeon has accused the Tories of using her husband as a “weapon” to damage her in the Salmond Inquiry.
She also said Ruth Davidson was indulging “wild conspiracy theories” after the Conservative MSP quizzed her on Peter Murrell ’s evidence to the Holyrood probe.
A special Parliament committee is examining how the SNP Government bungled the handling of sexual misconduct complaints against the former First Minister.
Salmond pursued a judicial review and it was accepted the internal Government probe had been unlawful.
The fiasco cost the taxpayer over £500,000 and ended the friendship between Nicola Sturgeon and Salmond, whose allies believe he was targeted by the Government and SNP figures.
A key issue for the committee is the nature of the meetings between Salmond and Sturgeon - at the First Minister’s marital home - during her Government investigation in 2018.
Sturgeon previously said she took part in meetings as leader of the SNP, rather than First Minister, adding that it would not have been “appropriate” for the summits to be Government meetings.
She also said in written evidence to the committee that her response related to “my actions in a party/personal capacity”.
However, at a session of the Holyrood committee this week, Murrell, who is also SNP chief executive, said the meetings were about a Government matter.
The Tories have claimed Murrell’s evidence indicates Sturgeon misled Parliament and breached the Ministerial Code.
Raising Murrell’s evidence at Holyrood, Davidson asked Sturgeon whose version of events she found most believable.
Sturgeon replied: “I have already set out the reasons for, and circumstances of my meeting with Alex Salmond in written evidence.”
She added: “My husband had no role in these meetings, had no role in the matters under investigation by the committee. Ruth Davidson might want to attack my husband, and use him as a weapon against me, people will draw their own conclusions about that, but it doesn’t change the basic fact of the matter that he had no role in these issues.”
Davidson continued to press by saying there are “two completely opposing versions of events”.
Sturgeon said: “I have set out what I thought might raise immediate implications for my party, and the meeting I had with Alex Salmond, and why that turned out not to be the case.”
She added that the committee Inquiry is looking at how the Government investigated complaints of sexual harassment, an issue she said should be treated seriously:
“But those who choose to instead indulge wild conspiracy theories I think make it less likely, rather than more likely, that we learn the lessons of that.”
Davidson also raised the insistence by Sturgeon and Murrell that they did not discuss the subject matter of the Salmond meetings which took place at their own home.
Sturgeon said she deals with “confidential” matters every day, adding:
“I don’t gossip about these things, even to my husband. I am the First Minister of the country, not the office gossip, and I take my responsibilities in that role extremely seriously.”
