Question to the Scotland Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, when he first became aware that the memo written by a Scotland Office civil servant on 6 March 2015, containing an account of the meeting between the Scottish First Minister and French Ambassador, had been leaked.

Following the leak of a Scotland Office memorandum that formed the basis of a story in the Daily Telegraph on 3 April, which was when I first became aware of the leak, the Cabinet Secretary instigated a Cabinet Office-led inquiry to establish how the memo to which the honourable Member refers came to be written and how it got into the public domain. The findings of the inquiry were published on the 22 May 2015 and are available at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/scotland-office-memorandum-leak-cabinet-office-inquiry-statement. These findings specifically refer to the role of the then Special Advisor and the former Secretary of State for Scotland. These findings also make clear that no one else had any involvement in the leaking of the memo.