We’ve just watched a hearing at the Court Of Session with regard to Alex Salmond’s civil claim against the Scottish Government. It was an ostensibly minor one, in which Salmond’s team were requesting a sist (pause) in the case for the fourth time, on the grounds of a number of ongoing police inquiries related to the events around the claim.
For most of the time Wings was the only journalist in a (virtual) room full of lawyers – although a couple of Scottish Daily Mail hacks turned up midway through – and we got to hear a dramatic surprise revelation.
James Hynd is a civil servant who was head of the Scottish Government’s cabinet, parliament and governance division during the inquiry.
(And he may still be – he’s a man with a microscopic digital footprint, and pretty much every piece of what little there is to be found concerns the inquiry. Indeed, the same is true of his entire department, which is extremely publicity-shy.)
But the hearing revealed for the first time that Hynd is currently subject to a criminal investigation by Police Scotland, with the name Operation Broadcroft, on suspicion of the serious crime of “wilfully making false statements on oath” to the inquiry.
And the ramifications of that extend much further than Mr Hynd himself.
It means there are now THREE live investigations which are, or may be, pertinent to Salmond’s claim – the newly-disclosed Operation Broadcroft, the much-discussed Operation Branchform, and a separate unnamed Crown Office inquiry (which Wings understands is now in the hands of Crown counsel) into perjury by an individual we are not legally allowed to name.
The significance of that is that if any of those cases were to prove wrongdoing, the Scottish Government’s defence to Salmond’s claim would collapse overnight (because the standard of proof required in a civil claim is lower than for a criminal one, so he would in effect automatically win without having to go to court, because the central fact of his case had already been established under a higher burden of evidence).
The Scottish Government, therefore, is keen to try to force Salmond’s claim to come to court BEFORE that can happen, in the hope that he won’t have the financial resources to go through with it.
James Hynd is one of a lengthy list of Scottish civil servants who have already been forced to “correct” or “clarify” evidence they gave at the Parliamentary inquiry.
Hynd played a significant role in the original Scottish Government investigation into the false allegations against Salmond, which was thrown out by Lord Pentland for being “procedurally unfair” and “tainted with apparent bias”.
He was the man charged by the Scottish Government with devising the new procedure under which the allegations were investigated, which he claimed to have done without any knowledge of any allegations having been made.
Should Operation Broadcroft find that James Hynd wilfully gave false evidence under oath, that would almost certainly be enough, by itself, to fatally torpedo the Scottish Government’s defence against Salmond’s claim. So readers will perhaps understand the sudden and otherwise-mystifying urgency on the part of the Scottish Government to try to use its financial muscle to shut the case down.
But while that would be major news in itself, it would of course only be a footnote to a much bigger story about the attempt to destroy the life of the former First Minister.
And while today’s events took place with very little in the way of fanfare, the bomb dropped by Salmond’s counsel in the Court Of Session this morning may herald an explosion with consequences that it is impossible to overstate.
