News / Carmichael admits leaking controversial memo
NORTHERN isles MP Alistair Carmichael has admitted responsibility for the controversial leaked memo suggesting Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon told the French ambassador she hoped for a Conservative victory in the general election.
On Friday Carmichael, who was secretary of state for Scotland in April when the memo was leaked to the Daily Telegraph, apologised to the first minister and the ambassador Sylvie Bermann and accepted the memo’s contents were incorrect.
He has also turned down the three month’s severance pay he would expect as a former Cabinet minister in the UK government after losing his position following the election result.
The apology came after a Cabinet Office inquiry into the source of the leak was Carmichael’s special adviser Euan Roddin, who used a government mobile phone to call a journalist at the Conservative Party supporting newspaper on 1 April.
Carmichael admitted to the inquiry that he had agreed that Roddin should leak the memo as it was in the public interest to show the difference between what the SNP were saying in public and in private.
Sturgeon and the ambassador immediately denied the content of the memo, which said that the first minister “confessed that she’d rather see David Cameron remain as PM (and didn’t see Ed Miliband as PM material)”.
The memo went on: “I have to admit that I’m not sure that the FMN’s tongue would be quite so loose on that kind of thing in a meeting like that, so it might well be a case of something being lost in translation.”
On Friday afternoon Carmichael issued a statement saying he had not seen the memo before it was published in the Daily Telegraph.
However he was aware of its content and agreed that his special adviser should make it public.
“I should not have agreed this. It was an error of judgement which I regret,” he said.
“I accept full responsibility for the publication of the document.
“I have written today to the first minister and to the French ambassador to apologise to them both.
“Had I still been a government minister I would have considered this to be a matter that required my resignation. I have therefore informed the cabinet secretary that I will decline my ministerial severance payment.”
Carmichael told Shetland News that the memo had been written by a reliable civil servant confirming a discussion he had with a French consul “which appeared to indicate that first minister was saying something different in private and public”.
He said: “In that context on the face of it there was a public interest in this information being known.
“The first minister and French ambassador have denied this was part of their discussion. I obviously have to accept that and therefore accept the judgment call I made was clearly wrong.”
He denied that there was any political opportunism involved in the leak which happened in the run up to a general election during which the SNP were becoming increasingly popular.
Carmichael was the only Liberal Democrat MP to retain his seat in Scotland, albeit with a greatly reduced majority, beating the SNP candidate Danus Skene by three per cent of the vote.
The MP said that while he would have resigned as a cabinet minister, he intends to continue as MP for the northern isles.
Carmichael’s statement can be read in full here.
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