MINISTERS are to take expensive legal action to prevent the disclosure of just one paragraph of the First Minister's communications with a senior civil servant over complaints against her predecessor Alex Salmond.

The communication which has been disclosed after a Freedom of Information request discussed a zero tolerance approach to sexual harassment.

The Scottish Government has decided to take the case to the Court of Session while choosing not to disclose a few lines in a letter sent to Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans who was investigating allegations of sexual misconduct which Mr Salmond later successfully challenged in court.

It details Nicola Sturgeon's contacts with Mr Salmond about the case and explains how the former First Minister believed the Scottish Government process was "unlawful".

It reveals that Ms Sturgeon had talked with Ms Evans "on many occasions the importance of a zero tolerance approach to sexual harrassment within the Scottish Government".

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In March, Mr Salmond was cleared of sexually assaulting nine women while he was Scotland's first minister.

A jury found the former SNP leader not guilty on 12 of the sexual assault charges facing him, while another was found not proven.

Mr Salmond had said he was innocent of all the charges against him throughout the two-week trial.

The women who made the allegations against Mr Salmond included an SNP politician, a party worker and several current and former Scottish government civil servants and officials.

During his trial, Mr Salmond said some of the charges against him were “fabrications for a political purpose”. Ms Sturgeon, on the other hand, dismissed claims that her allies in the party conspired against Mr Salmond as a “heap of nonsense”.

Mr Salmond was also the subject of an investigation by civil servants after allegations of sexual misconduct, which he later successfully challenged in court.

In the letter, Ms Sturgeon says that she had been contacted twice by Mr Salmond and on both occasions, she said "it would not be appropriate for me to seek to intervene in the process in any way and I did not do so".

A paragraph is redacted before the First Minister explains that after "careful consideration", I decided not to inform you of these approaches as I did not want there to be any suggestion that I was seeking to intervene in the process".

But after a further approach from the Mr Salmond and "given its nature and that it represents a potential challenge to the process, I have decided that I should make you aware of it".

She informed the Permanent Secretary that Mr Salmond considered the process being followed by the Scottish Government to be "unlawful".

And she wrote that Mr Salmond had legal advice to the effect that he would be successful in an application for a judicial review of the process.

And if any finding is made against him, she said it was his intention to lodge an application for judicial review "to seek to have the process declared unlawful".

The Herald: Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond

Ministers say the redacted paragraph in that letter "is exempt information" for the purposes of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act "and so ought not to be disclosed".

They said that as the Scottish Information Commissioner has required them to take the step of disclosing the letter "in its entirety", they have decided to appeal the decision to the Court of Session.

They say that as there is an appeal they do not have to disclose the paragraph.

Ms Sturgeon tells the Permanent Secretary in the letter: "I want to be very clear that my purpose sending this note is not to ask you to cease the investigation or to influence its course in any way – it is to be transparent with you about my knowledge of a potential challenge to the process.

"You and I have discussed on many occasions the importance of a zero tolerance approach to sexual harassment within the Scottish Government and the importance to building confidence in such an approach of taking such complaints seriously and ensuring proper investigation."

Nicola Sturgeon referred herself to an independent ministerial ethics body in January, 2019, bowing to intense pressure to allow an investigation into her actions in the Alex Salmond sexual harassment case.

The First Minister’s move followed her admission that she held a secret meeting with Salmond at her home, in the presence of her government-employed chief of staff and one of Mr Salmond’s advisers, where he briefed her on a Scottish government inquiry into sexual harassment allegations against him.

Opposition parties said that meeting and a subsequent phone call with Salmond were in clear breach of the ministerial code since discussions with outsiders on government business had to be immediately reported to civil servants.

Ms Sturgeon previously admitted it took two months before she raised the meeting and phone call with Ms Evans, and only did so because she was about to meet Mr Salmond for a second time.

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The code states meetings on official government business have to be set up through the government office and that detailed records need to be made of those contacts.

It adds: “If ministers meet external organisations or individuals and find themselves discussing official business without an official present – for example, at a party conference, social occasion or on holiday – any significant content (such as substantive issues relating to government decisions or contracts) should be passed back to their private offices as soon as possible after the event.”

On June 6, 2018 Ms Sturgeon finally wrote to Ms Evans to tell her about her meeting and that she knew about the investigation into Mr Salmond.

That newly disclosed letter shows that Ms Sturgeon advised Ms Evans that legal action by Mr Salmond against the Scottish government was imminent. She denied that was an intervention in the inquiry.

"I am clear that the seniority, political affiliation or relationship to me or my government of any person subject to a complaint should have no bearing on how it’s handled. To that end, you have my support in taking whatever steps you consider necessary and appropriate to investigate any complaint about inappropriate conduct within the Scottish Government," she wrote.

"It remains my view that it would be inappropriate for us to discuss the substance of the investigation prior to its conclusion.

"I intend to inform the former First Minister that I have told you about his approach to me and to advise him again that it would not be appropriate for me to intervene in the process.

"Finally, I am also mindful of the public interest considerations that arise when allegations of this nature are made. At this stage, however, it is my view that the interest of ensuring that the conduct of the investigation is fair to all parties and respects the confidentiality of the complainant(s) is the priority."

Ms Sturgeon and Mr Salmond were said to have had a total of three face-to-face meetings and two phone calls where the investigation was discussed over a 15-week period in the summer of 2018.

Ms Sturgeon had previously insisted her meeting with Salmond was a party matter but later acknowledged claims that she acted in line with the ministerial code needed to be confirmed by independent advisers.

Her conduct was to be investigated by a two-person panel made up of Dame Elish Angiolini, a former lord advocate, Scotland’s chief prosecutor, and James Hamilton, a former director of public prosecutions in the Republic of Ireland.

This is to be conducted in private and is an internal investigation, but has been held up by the Covid crisis.

Dame Elish Angiolini later declined to be involved because she was at the time in charge of a review of the wider police complaints system.

MSPs are scrutinising how the Scottish Government acted when two sexual harassment complaints were made against Mr Salmond in January 2018. The complaints were dealt with under a new complaints procedure drawn up by Ms Evans and signed off by Ms Sturgeon in 2017.

Mr Salmond was adamant the process was unfair and launched a judicial review against the government he once led. The Scottish Government had intended to fight Mr Salmond in the courts, but before the case went to a full hearing it admitted it had acted unlawfully. Lord Pentland described the government’s investigation as “tainted with apparent bias”.

After his civil court victory, Mr Salmond called on Ms Evans to resign, arguing she bore ultimate responsibility for the botched investigation as Scotland’s most senior civil servant.

Last week the First Minister said an investigation into her role in the handling of complaints against Mr Salmond should not be “limited to one aspect of the ministerial code”.

Earlier this month, Mr Salmond requested the independent adviser looking into Nicola Sturgeon’s conduct widen the scope of the inquiry.

A remit set out by Deputy First Minister John Swinney earlier this year said Ms Sturgeon’s role, if any, in the investigation into Mr Salmond would be scrutinised.