Alex Salmond lodges formal complaint over alleged disclosure of complainant's name

Alex Salmond has lodged a formal complaint with the Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans about the alleged disclosure of a complainant's name "in the Scottish Government process" in 2018.

Nicola Sturgeon has denied that this happened, previously at First Minister's Questions and today in her appearance at the harassment committee.

In his own appearance at Holyrood inquiry on Friday, Salmond said that the name of a complainant was shared with his former chief of staff, Geoff Aberdein.

This was alleged to have happened at a meeting in 2018. Two witnesses have written to the inquiry that Aberdein told them this at the time.

However, Sturgeon said the meeting did not happen as has been described.

Referencing the alleged incident today, Jackie Baillie said that would be "an extraordinary breach of confidentiality" and "in any other employment, would be a sackable offence".

She asked the First Minister: "Who authorised the senior member of your team to reveal that name, of one of the complainants, to Geoff Aberdein? Was it you, was it the Permanent Secretary or were they freelancing?”

Sturgeon replied: "I am not accepting that that happened, so therefore I am clearly not accepting that was authorised... I accept that this is a matter of contention and unfortunately there are legal constraints in terms of what we can discuss publicly at this committee.

"But that is not a constraint that in his consideration James Hamilton is under so I'm not going to sit here and just accept the premise of questions that are being put to me where I dispute the premise of the question."

James Hamilton QC is conducting a separate investigation into alleged breaches of the ministerial code.

A spokesperson later released a statement on behalf of Salmond.

It said: "Mr Salmond has lodged a formal complaint with the Permanent Secretary to the Scottish Government under the civil service code, on the conduct of the official who is alleged to have breached civil service rules by disclosing the name of a complainant in the Scottish Government process.”