Davis revelations expose arrogant and out of control SNP clinging to power

Writing on Reaction on 1 March, Gerald Malone, himself a former Conservative MP, suggested that a member of either house of the UK Parliament or of the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood might make use of parliamentary privilege to disclose matters in the Alex Salmond affair which the Scottish government has tried to conceal by presenting the committee of inquiry with documents only in redacted form. On Tuesday evening, making use of such privilege, David Davis entered the lists with a cogent speech in the House of Commons.

That speech has already been published here – also on The Spectator website. So you can read it in full and there is no need for me to repeat what he said in detail. I would say only that the case he laid out is damning.

It was a clever as well as cogent speech, clever because Davis, known to be friendly with Salmond, was aware that any intervention by an English Tory politician was likely to be met with suspicion, even hostility, in Scotland, especially perhaps by those irked or angered by Boris Johnson’s description of devolution as “a disaster”.

On the contrary, Davis made it clear that to his mind the difficulty experienced by the Scottish Parliament’s committee of inquiry into the Salmond affair arises from the inadequacy of the Scotland Act of 1998 which established the Scottish Parliament.

First, it did not provide for separation of powers. The Lord Advocate is not only head of the prosecution service but also effectively a minister in the Scottish government. The two roles are incompatible.

Second, he observed that the Scottish civil service remained part of the UK civil service, but was nevertheless quasi-independent, loosely supervised, and consequently had failed to develop its own mechanisms of accountability. The result, he said, “has been a tolerance of failings which would normally have led to resignations.” One’s own view is that the civil service has been too close to politicians, even too subservient, unable or unwilling to say, “Minister, this is wrong – you can’t do that”.

Third, perhaps more questionably, he asserted that MSPs do not enjoy the same parliamentary privilege as members of the UK Parliament and that while he could use that privilege to discuss matters relevant to the Holyrood Inquiry, any MSP who did so “would likely find themselves facing prosecution”.

I say this assertion is questionable only because no MSP has put the matter to the test.

Be that as it may, Davis was clear that the Scottish government had not only pursued its determination to defend the civil case which Salmond brought against the process of the investigation of complaints against him long after its own lawyers had declared it to be unwinnable, but that it has subsequently obstructed the Holyrood committee of inquiry in its investigation of the whole murky business, and done so consistently. In short, any failure of the devolution settlement revealed by the affair results from the inadequacy of the Scotland Act’s provisions for the investigation of government malpractice. It is not that the Scottish Parliament has too much power, but that it has too little power to scrutinise government and hold it to account.

It is natural that in a small country, where everyone knows everybody else,  distinctions between the different arms of the state may become blurred. This means that there is all the more reason to provide for the clear separation of powers. It is not only that members of the Holyrood committees too often appear to feel that their first loyalty is to party rather than parliament, not only that senior members of the civil service have, on the evidence of this affair, colluded with ministerial advisers if not – perhaps – with ministers themselves. It is not only that the dual role of the Lord Advocate is improper. Worst of all has been the eagerness of officials of the governing party, especially its chief executive, the First Minister’s husband Peter Murrell, to egg on the investigation. Murrell has said that the email in which he said the more fronts Salmond was fighting on, the better, was “out of character”. As David Davis observed, this would be irrelevant even if true.

As for the First Minister herself, we all know that she has suffered lapses of memory – something that may indeed be considered “out of character”. I have no doubt that she found herself in an invidious and unwelcome position. Her friendship with Salmond was long-standing and she was in his debt. He had picked her out early, promoted her and fostered her career. But political friendships are fragile – think of Thatcher and Major, Blair and Brown – and it would be no great surprise, quite understandable indeed, if she had come to resent his unwillingness to step into the shadows of retirement.

She was also in difficulty once she knew of the investigation into the complaints brought against him. She couldn’t be seen to encourage them and probably had no wish to do so. At the same time she couldn’t do anything to shut them down. That would have been very wrong. When she at last appeared before the committee of inquiry, she insisted that Salmond’s allegation of a conspiracy to destroy him was “fantasy”, but mounting evidence, much now laid out by Davis in the Commons, suggests that, if there was no conspiracy, there was certainly considerable eagerness to see him pursued. She may not have lied to the committee, but she was surely, in the late Alan Clark’s great phrase, “economical with the actualité”.

Anyone interested – and this should be anyone with a care for the integrity of the Scottish government and civil service – should read Davis’s speech and think about it. Consider, for instance, that line: “the Committee of Inquiry has been given the right to summon evidence but not to use it”.

The Salmond Affair is the first real, serious political scandal in Scotland since the Scottish Parliament came into being in 1999. Almost 20 years ago a first minster, Henry McLeish, was forced to resign because he had failed to disclose documents detailing income from the sub-letting of a room or a couple of rooms in his constituency office. This was a small misdemeanor, nothing in comparison with today’s can of worms. Today, nobody has resigned. No civil servant has been disciplined. No politician has accepted responsibility. No official of the governing party has held his hands up. McLeish said he had been guilty of “a muddle, not a fiddle”. Muddle and fiddle are words far too weak for the Salmond Affair.

Addressing the Rump Parliament in 1653, Oliver Cromwell said, “You have sat here too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

The Rump slunk away. The managers of the Salmond Affair stay obstinately and complacently in place.