Press Office

Aired: Sunday, 25 July, 2010 10:00
Sunday Live with Adam Boulton

Any quotes used must be attributed to Sky News, Sunday Live with Adam Boulton

ADAM BOULTON:
Scotland will not be bullied over Lockerbie, that is the First Minister Alex Salmond’s view this weekend in the face of pressure from US Senators. They want the Scottish government to justify the controversial release of Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi. The First Minister of Scotland joins me now from Abderdeenshire, Mr Salmond thank you very much for being with us. Before we get into all the technicalities of this, given that Al-Megrahi is still alive nearly a year after he was released, would you accept with hindsight that it was wrong to release him?

ALEX SALMOND:
No, because you have to take a judgement, that’s what Kenny MacAskill did on the information given to him at the time and it was a judgement taken in good faith and with due process. Of course when Kenny MacAskill had…

ADAM BOULTON:
But it was a mistake because he’s still alive and he was meant to be dead in three months.

ALEX SALMOND:
No, well when Kenny MacAskill announced the decision, if you go back and remember Adam, you’ll know that Kenny said he could live a shorter period, he could live a longer period, no one ever claimed there is an exact science from any doctor on the exact time scale that anybody has got to live, that’s a judgement that only the Lord Almighty knows exactly how long people have got to live. Everybody in their own personal experience of friends or family members suffering from terminal cancer knows that is not an exact science and nobody ever claimed it was. 

ADAM BOULTON:
The problem is that we haven’t yet had published by the Scottish government the full medical evidence about Al-Megrahi have we and we have these doctors like Karol Sikora and there’s another one today saying they were consulted and they actually veered on the side of Al-Megrahi living a long time.

ALEX SALMOND:
That’s simply not true, Adam, for two counts. Firstly, what we published was the medical advice that came to the Justice Minister, that’s medical advice compiled by Dr Andrew Fraser, the lead clinician, the head of medical services for the Scottish Prison Service and he used the advice in compiling that of four national health service, national health service consultants in Scotland and the primary care physician. All of that has been published. There is a confusion between case notes of examinations and actual medical reports which we have published and what was before the Minister when he took his decision. The second … Adam let me finish.

ADAM BOULTON:
Yes, but two of them were, I mean Dr Waxman, Professor Waxman and Professor Sikora both say that they said he was likely to live longer.

ALEX SALMOND:
You should have let me got to the second point. Professor Sikora, if you do your research, has explicitly denied the Sunday Times story which ran a few weeks ago and he has explained …

ADAM BOULTON:
I wasn’t talking about the Sunday Times story.

ALEX SALMOND:
Professor Sikora has denied the story that appeared a few weeks ago about what he said, about the length of time to live, but can I point out to you that the views of people who are paid by the Libyan government were not taken into account in terms of the medical advice that was compiled by Dr Andrew Fraser. He compiled a report based on the views of four consultants in the national health service in Scotland and the primary care physician. Not only would he not have taken the advice of people who were paid by the Libyan government into account but practically he couldn’t have because their advice arrived four days after the medical report was compiled and that, Adam, is a fact.

ADAM BOULTON:
But we have also got Professor Waxman speaking to the Express today, "The Scottish government took it’s own advice not mine, I did not say three months and I am not surprised at all to see him still alive’ and he is a cancer expert so you seem to have picked the expert who took the most convenient view.

ALEX SALMOND:
No, we didn’t. The Professor, as you’ll note, was paid for as he says by the Libyan government and he says they didn’t take my advice, they took the advice of people in the national health service in Scotland. You wouldn’t seriously have expected us to take the advice of people, whoever eminent, who were in the pay of the Libyan government. We didn’t do that Adam and if we had done that then we would be open to criticism. Honestly, the Director of Health of the Scottish Prison Service made a medical report, nobody is seriously, are they, questioning his professional integrity in making that report? Nobody is seriously, despite however convenient it is after the event, says that estimating the time of death is an exact science. I mean Ronnie Biggs was freed a month or so before Al-Megrahi on the same criteria and is still alive. We have had three other cases of people on compassionate release in Scotland who have survived for more than a year. Nobody has seriously claimed it is an exact science and of course Kenny MacAskill made that very point when he announced the decision on compassionate release of Mr Al-Megrahi. 

ADAM BOULTON:
How do you feel about American senators expecting you and your Ministers to give account of yourselves before a US Congress Committee?

ALEX SALMOND:
Well they are perfectly entitled to ask but as you well know, I am First Minister of Scotland, I’m responsible to the Scottish Parliament and to the Scottish people, that’s the line of accountability and you also know if the Scottish Parliamentary Committee invited President Obama to give evidence on the war in Iraq and the Westminster Foreign Relations Committee asked Hillary Clinton to give evidence on Afghanistan, they were politely decline and say no, they are responsible to the American legislature so I think we know where the line of democratic accountability lies.

ADAM BOULTON:
Do you feel that the American authorities, who are clearly pointing the finger not just at BP but pointing the finger at you as well, are they being straight with us? For example there is a suggestion in one of the papers today that they actually discussed the way in which Al-Megrahi should be released which sounds rather different from what even President Obama was saying last week.

ALEX SALMOND:
I think there is a great virtue in this case of publishing all the documents and I took from what the Prime Minister and the President says that they wanted to do that. I should point out that the only things that the Scottish government haven’t published in terms of documentation are our correspondence, some of it, with the UK government which the previous UK government said we couldn’t and our correspondence with the American State Department which the American government, up until now, have said we couldn’t publish. Interestingly enough Senator Menendez who is in charge of the hearing next Thursday has given me five questions to answer, which I will be delighted to do because we want to facilitate the hearing that the Senator’s having, the fifth of which is to ask us to publish information from the American government. I would be delighted to do so but up until now that permission has been withheld but presumably Senator Menendez who is a distinguished United States senator, will be able to ask the State Department to give him that correspondence.

ADAM BOULTON:
Let’s put it this way, do you recognise the stuff that’s been leaked to the Sunday Times, is it true that the Americans said to you that they would rather Al-Megrahi was released as a free man into Libya rather than kept in custody in Libya?

ALEX SALMOND:
I think a fair description of the American government’s position is they didn’t want Al-Megrahi to be released. However if he was to be released they thought it was far preferable for compassionate release as opposed to the prisoner transfer agreement and presumably the reason they were so opposed to the prisoner transfer agreement is roughly the same grounds that the Scottish government had for opposing that agreement, because it was signed initially at the same time as an oil deal was being signed in the famous ‘Deal in the Desert’. The position of the United Kingdom government was stated by – and that’s the then United Kingdom government and not the present one – was stated by David Miliband in the House of Commons last October when they said that they didn’t want Mr Al-Megrahi to die in a Scottish prison for a range of reasons. That of course is not the position of the present United Kingdom government but there seems to be a, well obviously there is a contradiction there.

ADAM BOULTON:
Let’s be clear, as far as the Scottish government is concerned, what discussions did you have with BP about the release of Al-Megrahi or indeed about Libyan prisoner exchanges in general?

ALEX SALMOND:
We had no discussions with BP on any of these matters full stop. Anything connected with the PTA or Mr Al-Megrahi or compassionate release we had absolutely no discussions whatsoever with BP. Of course the practical reason why we can’t help American Senators – and that is their line of enquiry, that’s what the vast bulk of their questions are about – is that we didn’t have any such discussions. Obviously BP have admitted there were a range of discussions and in William Hague’s letter this weekend to the American committee it seems that these discussions were more extensive than anyone had hitherto thought but these were not discussions with the Scottish government, they were discussions with the previous United Kingdom Labour administration and again, just as I would say it would be helpful for the US government to publish all the correspondence, I think the present Prime Minister, I think he’s right in saying that he is going to publish all that correspondence as well. When all that correspondence is published, let me tell you, the position of the Scottish government will be vindicated throughout this matter, not because everyone agrees with us but because we’ve acted throughout this matter with total integrity and following the best precepts of the Scottish legal system and we’ve been influenced by no other factor whatsoever.

ADAM BOULTON:
You’ve just been talking about the Deal in the Desert, signed in the presence of Tony Blair with BP, allowing BP to exploit Libyan offshore oil reserves. You’re a man who knows the oil industry, when you talk about the Deal in the Desert, do you believe there was something improper about that deal or not?

ALEX SALMOND:
As I said at the time back in 2007, when interestingly enough neither David Cameron as Leader of the Opposition or American Senators seemed at all concerned about this matter, I said to say the least it was highly unfortunate that a commercial deal should be signed on the same day as a judicial matter covering a prisoner transfer agreement. I think it is entirely appropriate incidentally for the past UK government and presumably the American government and the present UK government to want to bring Libya back into the proper democratic circle of nations, I think that is an entirely proper thing to do, it’s a laudable objective. I just think it was highly unfortunate to say the very least for the former Prime Minister, Mr Blair, to sign the prisoner transfer agreement on the same day as a oil commercial deal was being signed. It has given root to a whole legion of conspiracy theories and I think that was deeply unfortunate which is why we opposed it at the time, we’ve opposed it publicly and privately over the last three years. I think incidentally, whatever else you might say about the current controversy, I think the wisdom of the Scottish government not going down the prisoner transfer agreement route has been well and truly validated.

ADAM BOULTON:
And will it help the awkwardness of the situation on all sides if Tony Hayward is replaced as CEO of BP?

ALEX SALMOND:
I’ve got no real views on that. I think it would be very difficult to believe that one man at the top of BP is to blame for all of these huge misfortunes affecting the company. I think if the company has to decide to do different things either with regard to how it deep water drills in the United States or elsewhere or how it conducts itself generally, then that’s a company matter, not just a matter for Tony Hayward.

ADAM BOULTON:
Alex Salmond, thank you very much indeed for joining us this Sunday Live.