Legal fights took big toll on Salmond’s well being through the remaining years
Alex Salmond’s battle for justice against the Scottish Government overshadowed the final years of his life and may have accelerated his death, according to a close friend.
Conservative MP David Davis made the claim as he vowed to continue the fight to give the Scottish Parliament new powers to allow MSPs to probe the conduct of SNP Government ministers and officials.
Former Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, now acting leader of the Alba Party, also said it is ‘likely’ that Mr Salmond’s family will continue an ongoing legal battle with the Scottish Government over ‘malfeasance’ by civil servants during the investigation into complaints.
It means that the Scottish Government is still likely to face the prospect of being dragged into another legal battle in the courts despite Mr Salmond’s death, while ministers could face increased scrutiny about their actions at Holyrood.
Alex Salmond’s legal battle against the Scottish Government overshadowed the final years of his life, say friends
Conservative MP David Davis, right, was a close friend of Mr Salmond
The former SNP First Minister had been battling for years to ensure former colleagues are held accountable for the botched probe into sexual harassment complaints against him.
Mr Davis, who was a close friend of Mr Salmond’s over many years, is campaigning for MSPs to be given parliamentary privilege so they can more effectively scrutinise and investigate the actions of the Scottish Government, including in relation to outstanding questions about the probe into Mr Salmond’s conduct.
Speaking yesterday, Mr Davis said: ‘What I’m trying to do, in parallel to whatever Alex’s estate choose to do, is to open up this whole issue, give those powers to the Scottish Parliament, the powers of privilege – that is protection against prosecution or lawsuit, the right to summon people to give information and provide witness – and I want to see a separation of the powers of State and judiciary, which is true in the rest of the UK but not in Scotland so the prosecutors are as it were part of the State, and I want to see a duty of candour on the Government.
‘Now, I had a debate on this just two or three months ago and, in essence, the new Labour Government have agreed to do it and it is a question of how I ensure this happens quickly really, so that we can get proper answers in what really happened in the treatment of Alex Salmond, which frankly put a huge pall over the last several years of this great man’s life and, who knows, it might even have accelerated his death – I don’t know, I can’t comment on that.
‘So I want to see this exposed, opened up so that the Scottish Government is forced to answer the questions it ought to answer on this matter.’
Mr Salmond died after collapsing at a conference in North Macedonia
Mr Salmond lodged a petition at the Court of Session last November for malfeasance – the wrongful exercise of lawful authority – by Scottish Government civil servants during the investigation into harassment complaints made against him.
When he lodged the petition, he said that no single person had been ‘held accountable’ for the botched Scottish Government probe into the complaints, which was found to have been unlawful and tainted by apparent bias.
He was reportedly seeking £3 million in damages and loss of earnings from the case.
Mr MacAskill yesterday said he believed the case was ‘likely’ to be continued by Mr Salmond’s family.
He told BBC Good Morning Scotland: ‘It’s a matter for the family to decide.
‘My own position is that I will respect whatever the family decide, but I would certainly hope and I believe that they are likely to continue this, because that court case will expose, I believe, malfeasance amongst individuals and institutions that really has to be brought out to allow history to properly remember Alex Salmond.’
Members of the public left floral tributes to the former First Minister outside the Scottish Parliament
The Scottish Government previously had to pay Mr Salmond more £512,000 in legal fees when it lost the Court of Session judicial review case in 2019.
When paying tribute to Mr Salmond yesterday, his lawyer David McKie claimed the ‘apparatus of the State’ had been used against him.
The senior partner at Levy & McRae said the firm represented Mr Salmond ‘at a difficult time in his life and career’ through the judicial review, criminal trial and parliamentary inquiry.
Mr McKie said: ‘Alex’s courage and strength of character over the three-year period, from the Scottish Government launching an unlawful process against him, throughout his criminal trial in which he was cleared on all charges by a jury of his peers, to his unimpeachable evidence in the Parliamentary Inquiry, was absolutely incredible.
‘What he endured – the apparatus of the state turning against him – would have broken many people, but not Alex.
‘He remained utterly determined to see justice done, but showed no bitterness or anger towards his accusers or to the many others who jumped on the bandwagon to condemn him, even before any evidence had been produced or presented.
‘Instead, he simply focussed on the evidence and understood, unlike many commentators at the time, the importance of the due process of law.’
At the time Mr Salmond lodged the Court of Session petition, then First Minister Humza Yousaf said it would be ‘robustly’ defended.
