Scotland's top prosecutor was last night urged to resign after dodging questions about tipping off John Swinney over the prosecution of Nicola Sturgeon’s estranged husband.
Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain, KC, was criticised by MSPs after claiming she had fully explained her failure to mention a memo to the First Minister last week in Holyrood.
‘All I ask for is common decency,’ she pleaded, earning applause from the SNP benches.
Ms Bain also said it was ‘unprecedented that a law officer is being asked to comment in this way about a live case’.
Tory MSP Stephen Kerr said: ‘Dorothy Bain had another opportunity to come clean in parliament today, but she refused to explain why she deemed it acceptable to tip off the SNP leader about the party’s former chief executive being charged.
‘That’s a shameful dereliction of duty and she should seriously consider whether her position is tenable.’
Last week, it emerged Ms Bain sent a memo to the First Minister on January 19 about an indictment being served on former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell.
It said he was accused of embezzling £459,000 from party funds - a figure not made public for almost a month.
Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain has come under pressure after sending memos to the First Minister over the Murrell case
Mr Swinney said it was ‘entirely appropriate’ for Ms Bain to brief him on ‘sensitive’ cases
Amid claims of the SNP getting a political advantage, Ms Bain was forced to deny being ‘corrupt’.
Defending her action last week, she said she informed the FM of a ‘significant development’ he ought to know about.
She told MSPs: ‘The figure appears on the indictment, and it was, therefore, a figure that I was able to share.’
But she failed to mention she also gave Mr Swinney the figure in a March 2025 memo, ten months before any indictment.
Mr Swinney also failed to mention it the following day at First Minister’s Questions.
On Tuesday, Ms Bain provided the earlier memo to parliament, triggering a fresh row about the memos.
She was forced to return to the chamber last night to explain her omission.
She said she had not seen the memo immediately prior to addressing MSPs and she did not want to risk proceedings by talking about it unprepared.
Mr Murrell is the former SNP chief executive
‘It would have been quite improper for me to make a whimsical or ill informed reference to a document that I hadn’t seen before entering the chamber.’
She added: ‘I understand why people may feel uncomfortable… but the reason the First Minister gets to know some things that the public do not is because he has responsibilities that the public do not.’
Tory MSP Murdo Fraser said she had failed ‘five times’ to explain why she shifted her justification for giving Mr Swinney the £459,000 figure away from the indictment.
He added: ‘She has accepted the answers she gave to this parliament last week were incomplete and insufficient because she had not looked at all the papers available to her. That in itself should be a matter of concern.’
Mr Kerr said afterwards: ‘The latest bombshell revelation about the Lord Advocate’s conduct in relation to the criminal case against Nicola Sturgeon’s husband reeks of scandal.
‘Serious questions remain as to why Dorothy Bain didn’t tell Parliament the whole truth about her shady briefings to Swinney when she was in Holyrood last week.
‘That’s either a serious lapse in judgment or an outrageous example of SNP secrecy.’
MSPs later voted down a Tory proposal calling for a fuller statement from Ms Bain today.
Earlier, Mr Swinney said it was ‘entirely appropriate’ for Ms Bain to brief him on ‘sensitive’ cases.
