NICOLA Sturgeon has denied any suggestion she had wanted to "get" Alex Salmond.

SNP MSP Alasdair Allan said that some have claimed the Scottish Government's revised sexual harassment procedure, which was also applied to former ministers, was "created to get Alex Salmond".

But Sturgeon said: "It wasn't. Absolutely, emphatically not. Alex Salmond has been, and I have said this many times, one of the closest people to me in my entire life.

"I would never have wanted to get Alex Salmond, and I would never, ever have wanted any of this to happen. If I could have, short of brushing complaints under the carpet which would have been wrong to me, if I could turn the clock back and find legitimate ways that none of this would ever have happened, then I would.

"Alex Salmond has been for most of my life, since I was about 20, 21 years old, not just a very close political colleague, a friend, someone in my younger days who I looked up to and revered.

"I had no motive, intention, desire to get Alex Salmond."

The question arose amid suggestions from Salmond last week that the harassment policy - drawn up by the Scottish Government in the wake of the worldwide "MeToo" campaign against female harassment - was done to deliberately target him, pointing out it included complaints about former ministers.

Sturgeon said she still believed processes should be in place to allow historic complaints to be investigated.

Asked if she believed there should be a procedure for retrospectively investigating complaints of sexual harassment against former ministers, the First Minister said: "Yes, unequivocally, absolutely.

"Politics perhaps more than any other walk of life, people in positions of political power are powerful people. Therefore it presumably is more difficult - not impossible - for people to bring forward complaints.

"If that ability to hold someone to account stops the moment you cease to be in that position of authority, clearly that is closing off the ability for you to be held to account should complaints come forward in the future."

The cross-party harassment committee is investigating the Scottish Government’s flawed probe into allegations of misconduct made against Salmond by two civil servants.

The former first minister had the exercise set aside in January 2019, with a judicial review declaring it “unlawful” and “tainted by apparent bias”. It emerged that the investigating officer had prior contact with those making the complaints - in breach of the government's own policy.

The Government’s unlawful handling ultimately cost the taxpayer more than half a million pounds.

Salmond was then charged and cleared at the High Court in Edinburgh of 13 charges of sexual offences following a trial in March last year.

Last week he told the committee in written and oral evidence he was the victim of a "malicious" efforts by senior allies of the First Minister -including her husband Peter Murreell, the SNP chief executive - to bring him down and even jail him.

He maintained the motivation behind such alleged actions was an attempt to divert public attention from the Court of Session'ss ruling that the Scottish Government had acted unlawfully in its handling of complaints against him by the civil servants.

But he contended the plan failed when he was acquitted of the criminal charges and focus was then put back onto the government's actions.

But in her evidence today, the First Minister said it was "absurd" to suggest that senior SNP and government figures acted with “malice” or that there was a plot.

She said: “What happened is this, and it is simple: A number of women made serious complaints about Alex Salmond's behaviour. The government, despite the mistake it undoubtedly made, tried to do the right thing. 

“As First Minister, I refused to follow the age-old pattern of allowing a powerful man to use his status and connections to get what he wants."