Scotland’s top civil servant has said she does not know who used a Scottish Government social media account to criticise Tory politicians.
Leslie Evans also claimed it was not possible to say whether a Twitter attack on Conservative MSP Ruth Davidson had been intentional.
We revealed that the Government's official Twitter health account ‘liked’ a series of tweets from external users that were overtly political.
The feed, which has over 40,000 followers, must not make party political points.
One of the tweets stated: “So sad you hate Scotland having its own Parliament and prefer to be ruled by posh Eton educated millionaires, because @borisjohnson really cares about you [smiley face] Stay Alert #ThankYouNicola.”
Another tweet endorsed by the taxpayer-funded account told Davidson to “bog off”.
At the time, a Scottish Government spokesperson said there had been some “erroneous activity” which was deleted and a security review was also launched.
In a letter to Evans, Tory MSPs Donald Cameron and Annie Wells asked for the identity of the culprit and a series of questions on who had access to the account.
Evans said the account is managed by staff in the Government’s Communications Division who control its use.
She said special advisers do not have access to Government Twitter accounts, adding:
“In this particular instance, we are unable to determine who, specifically, was responsible for this erroneous activity, nor whether it was intentional or accidental. However, please be assured that as soon as we were alerted to this issue we removed the “Likes” and changed the password on the account to ensure access is restricted to authorised staff. Passwords are changed on a regular basis.”
Cameron said: “People will be astonished that the Scottish Government has no way of finding out who this was.
“If that’s a pattern repeated across all official social media accounts, there will be no way of stopping this happening again.
“Any private company would be able to nail down exactly who had access to official social media and when.
“It’s surprising the SNP government is either unwilling or unable to do this.”
