I don't believe so - perhaps you can provide evidence to demonstrate that the investigation cannot be rerun until the inquiry is concluded. I doubt very much there will be as it would be completely counterintuitive - effectively placing government decision making completely on hold while an inquiry (not of their making) concludes. The equivalent would be to suggest that until the Grenfell inquiry is complete there should be no revision to building regulations on cladding and there should be no work to remove cladding.
Once again I think you are wrong. Given that there are 3 inquiries into how the Government conducted itself during the first investigation I think the Government has little credibility to undertake an investigation into the complaints against Salmond without first clearing itself of wrong-doing.
We have an inquiry into whether Sturgeon should resign because she allegedly broke the ministerial code. She is also accused of misleading Parliament because she forgot about mentioning to Parliament that she had a meeting with Geoff Aberdein, Salmond’s former chief of staff, in her office on March 29, 2018 about the sexual misconduct allegations against Salmond.
We have another inquiry into why the Government continued pursuing the same strategy for the investigation that would take them to a judicial review, when they had apparently been given legal advice that they would lose the judicial review, which then resulted in a waste of £512,000 of taxpayer money in legal costs.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18998773.alex-salmond-accuses-nicola-sturgeon-lying-msps-breaking-ministerial-code/It s nothing like Grenfell. How can the government be seen to carry out a fair investigation about a sensitive issue such as sexual misconduct, that is based purely on one person's word against another, while the government's credibility in carrying out investigations is shot to pieces? There are now allegations that Sturgeon's chief of staff revealed the name of one of the complainants to Geoff Aberdein, which Sturgeon is denying. Of course if the government thought they could get away with it, they would still carry out the investigation. However, in this instance they can't get away with it because they are up against Salmond, not some Joe Public whose rights they can steamroller over with minimum publicity. Salmond is a public figure so he generates huge publicity and public support - the government were stupid to be this sloppy when going after a public figure.
I think you are more on the right track here - the scottish government - effectively the SNP and Sturgeon really, really don't want to be forced to make a decision to uphold or not uphold the complaints. While in the initial investigation this seemed sensible as they were on the front foot, they are now so firmly on the backfoot compared to Salmond that either to uphold or not uphold is dynamite. If they uphold then they will feel the full force of Salmond highly successful campaign to appear as the victim. If they don't uphold they will be seen as weak, in hock to the powerful big beast and also to have failed women who took a very brave decision to come forward and complain about Salmond.
Salmond did not just "appear" as the victim - he was the victim of an unfair investigation.
So much better to have his acquitted by someone else (the criminal court), where there was little likelihood of conviction as it is a one person's word against another person's word, consent issue with a beyond reasonable doubt burden of proof. And to simply allow the original reason to vanish under the weight of inquiries, never to return.
Disagree. The government can't carry out an investigation while they appear to lack credibility.
And all the time there are the complainants, who when coming forward, quite reasonably expected their complaints to be considered and for a decision to uphold them or not uphold to be made on the balance of probabilities. But that hasn't happened, three years on and I see no reasonable likelihood of it happening any time soon, if at all. What message does that send to someone else thinking of making a work-based complaint of sexual harassment against a very senior colleague - hmmm.
That was always a distinct possibility if you change the rules and then allow retrospective investigations. I am sure the women weren't naïve enough to think the process would not be held up if the government botched the investigation. It's unfortunate if women in general are naive enough to think that complaints will not be robustly defended by the people they are accusing and the sooner they get the message it will not be a walk in the park the better prepared they will be. I am sure if the women were being accused of misconduct they would equally robustly defend themselves against the accusations.
The government had appointed an official, Judith MacKinnon, to conduct an apparently independent investigation even though she had already met and counselled both complainants though MacKinnon denied she had coached them in their complaint. MacKinnon did not deny she had met the two women at the same time as she had been copied into a series of draft versions of the Scottish government’s new ministerial complaints code in November 2017, as had Leslie Evans, the permanent secretary, and MacKinnon’s boss, the Scottish government’s director of people, Nicola Richards. The code made clear that an investigating officer should have had “no prior involvement with any aspect of the matter being raised”.
When this appearance of bias was pointed out to the government by Salmond, the government ignored it, and he had to take it to judicial review.
Therefore it sounds bizarre for you to suggest the government presses on with conducting a new investigation without first establishing whether the government has any credibility in carrying out investigations against Salmond.
The complaints themselves seem to be about conduct that may or may not have been consensual or may or may not have been exaggerated or reinterpreted or conduct that may or may not have been fabrications or misremembered. Given it's one person's word against another it is problematic if the investigation is carried out by the government while there is still the appearance of bias and misleading Parliament hanging over the government's head.
