Nicola Strugeon has waded into the row over the publication of the Sue Gray report into the Downing Street partygate scandal.
The First Minister said the wrangling between the Met Police and the senior civil servant over which details should be published was creating “suspicion” that the process was helping Boris Johnson escape accountability.
The SNP leader spoke out after Scotland Yard made a request that Sue Gray make “minimal reference” to the Downing Street parties they are investigating when she hands over her report.
Sturgeon tweeted: “This gets murkier by the minute. Sue Gray and the Met are in difficult positions but the sequence of events and the situation arrived at now creates the suspicion - however unfairly - that the process of inquiry is aiding Johnson at the expense of public accountability.”
Labour and the Lib Dems have also joined the criticism, calling for the Gray report to be published in full.
Keir Starmer, who is in Scotland on Friday, said the Government had been “paralysed” by the Sue Gray investigation and the subsequent police inquiry into partygate.
The Labour leader told broadcasters he wanted to “see Sue Gray’s report in full and the investigation finished as quickly as possible, because we’re in this situation where the whole of Government is paralysed because the police are looking at what the Prime Minister was getting up to in Downing Street”.
Starmer said: “Any issues of prejudice have got to be worked through but this whole mess, this whole of paralysing of politics, is being caused by the Prime Minister and his wrongdoing.”
He added: “We’ve got a criminal investigation into the behaviour of the Prime Minister and what went on in Downing Street. There are bound to be process issues along the way, but this is caused by one thing, and that’s the behaviour of the Prime Minister.”
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