Who Called in the Cops?
If anyone's guilty of jigsaw identification it is surely the Scottish government. It has used the women as a human shield. If the officials had accepted responsibility three years ago for this epic scandal none of this would have happened. https://t.co/qdPOOxhrP9
— Iain Macwhirter (@iainmacwhirter) February 21, 2021
It's hard to disagree with The Herald's Iain Macwhirter who argues that the SNP Government is wholly responsible for the epic scandal surrounding its handling of sexual harassment allegations.
"The true author of this cover-up-that-isn’t is not the Crown Office, of course, but the SNP Government. The harassed harassment committee has voted essentially on party lines throughout on this pro-Government majority. The SNP MSP George Adam took the extraordinary step last week of accusing members of the Corporate Body of “jeopardising the court-ordered anonymity of complainants in sexual offences cases”. “What if it had been their wife, their daughter, their mother,” he went on, “would they have made the same decision?” To suggest that fellow MSPs on this body, who are elected by the Parliament, would risk the welfare of complainants is astonishing."
One thing that is still as clear as mud, to me at least, is how did Police Scotland become involved - who referred the case to the police and on what basis?
Because the Court of Session judgement did not instruct the Scottish Government to make the case a criminal matter - all it did was strike down the original, flawed investigation.
So who decided the Scottish Government should wash its hands of the affair since this raised the evidential bar from the civil test of 'on the balance of evidence' to the much more demanding criminal test of 'beyond a reasonable doubt'?