“HE’S going after everything – he wants our souls I think,” was how Tim Morrison – one of the Orkney Four – reacted yesterday after news that a hearing to consider expenses in the Frenchgate court case against their lying MP Alistair Carmichael would likely be heard early next month.
Papers from both sides have been submitted to the Court of Session in Edinburgh, and Carmichael is said to be seeking costs with a “punitive” element. Morrison told The National: “He put his motion in yesterday, we put in our counter motion and he’s going after everything – basically he wants our souls I think.”
He and the other petitioners – Fiona Grahame, Cary Welling and Phaemie Matheson – took Carmichael to a rare Election Court over a memo he leaked that wrongly claimed Nicola Sturgeon would have preferred the Tories to remain in Downing Street after last year’s General Election.
Lady Paton and Lord Matthews last month found that Scotland’s only Liberal Democrat MP had told a “blatant lie” when he said in a TV interview that he had been unaware of the memo until after he was asked about it by a journalist.
But they ruled it had not been proved “beyond reasonable doubt” that he had committed an “illegal practice” under Section 106 of the Representation of the People Act 1983.
“What he’s doing is going for punitive damages because of the complexity of the case,” Morrison said. “They want to charge us extra because of how difficult the case was, effectively an extra burden of costs.
“Now that’s partly within the court’s discretion and whether they would do that or not is interesting.” Morrison said the four were considered “complete victors” after the two-day hearing, and had the option of pursuing costs then.
“We had a long conversation about that but decided against it, because if we lost at the end it would be worse for us,” he said.
“Bearing in mind that we won two of the three legal points, the court could rationally be expected to take that into account when it makes the [costs] decision.”
Grahame added: “We’ve seen what Alistair’s looking for which is basically everything, but we’re contesting that because we won two out of three legal points and our case was legitimate. We’re feeling very upbeat. We are just sad he hasn’t conceded that he only won one point, which was on a legal technicality, and that he did tell a blatant lie.
“It’s a shame that he’s behaving in such a way.”
The Orkney Four have used the crowdfunding website Indiegogo to raise money for their legal costs and, by last night, nearly £205,000 had been raised from almost 10,000 supporters.
A similar appeal for Carmichael has raised £14,000 from 200 people.
Morrison said the petitioners were about £5,000 short of what was needed to pay their legal costs thus far.
“When you take away charges for credit card and PayPal donations, as well as Indiegogo’s charges, what we’ve got is about £180,000 – so we are short of what we need to pay our existing bills of around £185,000 – an eye-watering amount of money,” he said.
He was critical of the way Carmichael’s team had “strung out” meetings about televising the court case, when they had just one lawyer in attendance.
“It’s inconceivable to me that their costs are what he’s told the press they are – he said £150,000 and I just don’t believe that.”
The petitioners had said that any money left over would be given to food banks, and Grahame said they had tried to keep their costs down.
“We’re not relaunching the crowdfund, we’ve just kept it going and every so often we update it, because if you relaunch it you’ve got more expenses,” she said.
“Our aim was to get £208,000 to cover everything we had to pay for on our side.
“We’re just really sad that that money is not going to a better cause – the food banks.”
The National View: The Orkney Four deserve our continuing support
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here