Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has today said she will be writing to the head of the UK Civil Service, Sir Jeremy Heywood, following the publication of details of a UK Government memo on her recent meeting with the French Ambassador.
The First Minister said: "This story has already been shown to be 100 per cent untrue – having been comprehensively rejected by both the French Ambassador and Consul General. The real issue is how a second hand and inaccurate account of this meeting – which was not even attended by the UK government – came to be written by a UK Government civil servant and then leaked to Tory-supporting newspapers at the start of a General Election campaign.
“It suggests a Whitehall system out of control – a place where political dirty tricks are manufactured and leaked. And the Foreign Office now appears to be denying the very existence of such a document. I am therefore writing to the head of the UK civil service, Sir Jeremy Heywood, requesting an urgent inquiry into the circumstances of such a false account being leaked for transparently political motives.”
The SNP also point to the fact that France’s Consul General in Scotland, Pierre-Alain Coffinier, who was at the meeting with the First Minister, was interviewed today on skynews and made it clear the claims are untrue.
