Alex Salmond claims bank account was accessed by Observer reporter

Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond has said his bank account might have been accessed by a reporter.

The Observer newspaper looked into his account in the run-up to the 1999 Scottish election, he told the Leveson Inquiry into media standards.

"I have no evidence that my own phone has been hacked," he told Lord Justice Leveson.

But he added: "My bank account was accessed by the Observer newspaper some time ago, in 1999, and my reason for believing that is I was informed by a former Observer journalist."

Mr Salmond has repeatedly refused to answer questions at the Scottish Parliament on whether he had been the victim of phone hacking, leading to accusations he has treated Holyrood with contempt.

The First Minister always insisted the Leveson Inquiry was the correct place to air the issues.

A reference to purchases he made in a shop called Fun and Games, for young relatives, was mentioned in the alleged breach of his bank details.

The revelation has "coloured his view" of press standards, he said.

On wider Scottish press behaviour, he said: "More recently I think we'd have to accept, given the information which has now been into the hands of the police in Scotland, there are a significant, perhaps proportionally less but significant Scottish examples of possible criminality."

A number of Scots have been informed by police over the past year that people may have been victims of "illegality".

Much of the Scottish indigenous press and regional press has had no part in allegations of criminal behaviour, he said.

He criticised the Metropolitan Police for not handing over information quickly about possible criminal acts to Scottish police.

"It's only in the last few months that Strathclyde Police have examined all of that information and informed the potential victims of the possibility of criminal acts against them," he said.

"That seems to me a highly undesirable situation and something similar applies to possible breaches of data protection as well."

The Scottish National Party (SNP) leader has also faced pressure from his opponents about his relationship with media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, whose News of the World tabloid was closed amid the phone hacking scandal.

The pair met in February at Bute House, Mr Salmond's official residence in Edinburgh. It led to accusations he was keen to court the businessman despite public outrage over phone hacking revelations linked to the family of Milly Dowler.

During an earlier inquiry session, it was suggested that Mr Salmond's office was prepared to intervene on behalf of Mr Murdoch and lobby UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt on the proposed takeover of broadcaster BSkyB. One of Mr Salmond's advisers, Geoff Aberdein, was named in March as the person making the lobbying offer.

The Scottish Government has always maintained the only interest is in securing jobs.

A spokesman for Guardian News & Media, publisher of The Observer, said: "Mr Salmond first raised the matter of an alleged unauthorised access of his bank account with the Observer's editor last year.

"The allegation was that a journalist working for the Observer had accessed his bank details in 1999. As we explained to him last year, on the basis of the information he had given us, we have been unable to find any evidence to substantiate his allegation.

"As our response to him at the time made clear, we take this allegation very seriously and if he is able to provide us with any more information we will investigate further."

Mr Salmond told the inquiry he had been in favour of the BSkyB bid.

"I was in favour of what benefited the Scottish economy," he said.

"Remember I have no responsibility for broadcasting policy, I have no responsibility for plurality in the press but I do have a responsibility for jobs and investment in Scotland."

He added: "I would tend to put an emphasis on the jobs and investment aspects of this. It was for others to consider other matters."

Mr Salmond said he was prepared to argue the case for jobs and investment with Vince Cable, then Jeremy Hunt, but never got the chance.

He said the issue of the BSkyB bid was never brought up in discussions about newspaper support.

"If for example I'd believed that the merger of the consolidation of ownership of BSkyB would have resulted in the diminution of Scottish jobs then I would have been perfectly prepared to argue against it," he said.

Also, he said he never got a direct answer on potential support from Mr Murdoch for the SNP.

Mr Salmond said: "I wouldn't explicitly raise it at meetings necessarily because they'd always say 'go to the editors'. That certainly was Rupert Murdoch's practice, and I can't even remember, it may have cropped up in a James Murdoch meeting, but if so, he would say 'go to the editors. and go to the editors I did, as I say, sometimes successfully, sometimes not."

The Sun newspaper famously depicted Scotland in a noose in a warning against voting SNP in the 2007 Scottish election. The paper changed its position to back Mr Salmond for a second term as First Minister in 2011.

Mr Salmond said he had five meetings with Mr Murdoch over five years.

"It's perfectly reasonable," he argued. "It's not in the same league, if I may say, as Mr Blair or Mr Brown or Mr Cameron, but nonetheless, that's five times in five years.

"I saw Murdoch's evidence. I don't demur from that at all. He said he didn't know me well, and that's fair.

"Often we were discussing Scotland and his Scottish ancestry. The fact that his grandfather was the Church of Scotland minister in my old constituency of Banff and Buchan in Cruden Bay, for example, so there were a range of things for discussion."

The inquiry was reminded of the contents of an email from Frederic Michel, director of public affairs for News Corporation, which named Mr Aberdein.

Asked if it was true Mr Salmond would call the Culture Secretary "whenever we need him to", the First Minister said: "It's an encapsulation of what was in a conversation, but I had already established the point that I was prepared to make recommendations to the SoS to say that jobs and investment were matters that should be properly considered when the time was right to do that."

PA