Top mandarin faces calls to intervene after emails showed civil servants trying to justify statement they knew was untrue
The country’s most senior civil servant has been urged to investigate Scottish officials over claims they helped Humza Yousaf to engineer statistics in an apparent cover-up.
Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, is facing calls to intervene after emails showed officials, supposedly bound by impartiality and honesty rules, concocting calculations to justify a statement made by the First Minister that they knew to have been untrue.
The row centres around Mr Yousaf stating at Holyrood on June 22 that Scotland had the “majority of the renewables and natural resources” in the UK.
Emails released under Freedom of Information rules show that within hours of the claim being challenged by Liam Kerr, a Tory MSP, Mr Yousaf’s officials privately confirmed that the statement had been inaccurate.