Sturgeon deserves credit for act of contrition

NICOLA Sturgeon yesterday did something that is all too rare for a politician: she apologised after admitting she had done something wrong. For this act of public contrition, the Deputy First Minister deserves credit.

Her admission, in a statement to Holyrood, that though she acted in good faith it was wrong to urge a court to consider alternatives to jail for benefits cheat Abdul Rauf, one of her constituents in Govan, was both genuine and dignified.

Ms Sturgeon's apology was also detailed in that she told MSPs that she also regretted using the word "mistake" to describe Rauf's offence which, we must not forget, involved defrauding tens of thousands of pounds from the Department for Work and Pensions.

Her admission that she should only have drawn the court's attention to Rauf's personal circumstances would seem a statement of the obvious to most people, but at least Ms Sturgeon came to see the error of her enthusiastic ways.

However, the Deputy First Minister's contrition yesterday raises questions about the SNP government, and particularly the blustering "110 per cent" support she was given last week by First Minister Alex Salmond.

It would have been better had Ms Sturgeon and Mr Salmond considered the difficulty they were in when the Rauf story broke and apologised immediately, rather than trying initially to tough it out, only to have to climb down embarrassingly yesterday.