Ex-Minister Admits Leaking Sturgeon Memo

Nicola Sturgeon has accused Alistair Carmichael of an election "dirty trick" after he admitted leaking a memo about her during the election campaign.

The former Scottish Secretary said he was responsible for releasing claims that the SNP leader wanted David Cameron to return to Downing Street.

The apparent conversation took place between Ms Sturgeon and the French Ambassador Sylvie Bermann in February and was released to the media during the general election campaign.

At the time Mr Carmichael flatly denied any knowledge of the memo before it became public but has now confessed "it was an error of judgement" he regretted.

Ms Sturgeon has always maintained the contents of the memo - which also allege she thought Ed Miliband was not "PM material" - were "100% untrue" and insisted that she wanted to lock Mr Cameron out of Downing Street.

She told Sky News: "I do not think there is any place in election campaigns for dirty tricks like this. We should fight campaigns on the strength of our ideas and policies, not by engaging in smear campaigns or dirty tricks.

"I am a politician that has spent my career campaigning against conservatives, the idea that I wanted to see another Tory government is absurd."

Ms Sturgeon is calling on the Liberal Democrats' only surviving MP north of the border to consider his position.

She said: "I think Alistair Carmichael owes an apology to his constituents, not just for leaking the memo but for saying in the election campaign that he did not, that he knew nothing about it and the first he knew about it was when he was called by a journalist.

"That is the basis on which people were asked to vote for him and now we find out that he was not being entirely honest when he said that and he was the one who leaked it."

The confession comes after a Cabinet Office inquiry - investigating how the memo got to the Daily Telegraph newspaper - concluded its findings.

It found the memo was written by Mr Carmichael's special adviser, Euan Roddin in the Scottish Office who believes his account was an "accurate record" of the conversation but that part of it may have been "lost in translation".

The Cabinet Office found that Mr Roddin was the person who gave the memo to the Daily Telegraph but that the Scottish Secretary had given his approval.

In conclusion, the Cabinet Office said: "Senior officials who have worked with him say that he is reliable and has no history of inaccurate reporting, impropriety or security lapses.

"The Cabinet Secretary has concluded that there is no reason to doubt that he recorded accurately what he thought he had heard. There is no evidence of any political motivation or "dirty tricks"."

This contradicts Ms Sturgeon's outright denial that she made the comments.

Ms Sturgeon said: "They (Cabinet Office) did not say that was no question over the truth of the memo. What they said, and I accept this, was that the civil servant who wrote the memo wrote it in good faith. They thought that they had accurately recorded what they heard. But that civil servant also said in the memo that they accepted that it could have been lost in translation."

Both Mr Roddin and Mr Carmichael have now declined to take their severance pay - which in Mr Carmichael's case is £16,876.

Mr Carmichael also released a statement saying: "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."

Ms Sturgeon posted a letter of apology from Mr Carmichael on Twitter and tweeted: "I have received letter from @acarmichaelmp apologising for leak and accepting that contents of memo not correct."

Mr Carmichael was not re-elected to Government in the election but kept his seat in Orkney and Shetland constituency.