THE top civil servant when Alex Salmond was First Minister will today appear before an inquiry being conducted by MSPs.
Sir Peter Housden, the Scottish Government’s permanent secretary from 2010 to 2015, told the committee in his written evidence he had to deal with inappropriate behaviour by ministers “in a number of settings”, and he had managed the issues informally.
The cross-party probe was established to find out what went wrong in the Scottish Government’s inquiry in 2018 into the handling of complaints against the former First Minister.
Salmond had the process set aside in a judicial review, proving it had been unfair, unlawful and “tainted by apparent bias”. The collapse of the Government’s case left taxpayers with a £500,000 bill for his costs.
Salmond was acquitted of 13 counts of sexual assault in March this year.
In his submission to MSPs, Housden said there was “self evidently more to do across the board to protect women and others at risk, and to ensure that egregious behaviour by people in powerful positions is strongly disincentivised”.
Leslie Evans, the current Permanent Secretary, has appeared twice before the Holyrood committee.
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