Hamilton Report clears Sturgeon on all four counts – but with redactions

Nicola Sturgeon did not break the ministerial code over the Alex Salmond affair. This is the verdict of James Hamilton QC after his inquiry, with a 61-page report that clears her on all four charges.  She got things wrong in her account to parliament, Hamilton said, by giving an ‘incomplete narrative of events.’ But this was a ‘genuine failure of recollection’ and not deliberate. On the four points he was asked to look into (many of the questions facing her are outside Hamilton’s brief) he has given as strong an exoneration as she could have hoped for. And did she mislead parliament? He ducks this question. “It is for the Scottish Parliament to decide whether they were in fact misled.”

To Hamilton’s apparent fury, his report has been censored so much as to be incomprehensible in all too many places. He has issued a separate statement to complain that his report “cannot be properly understood by those reading it, and presents an incomplete and even at times misleading version of what happened.” He