What has been overlooked in the Frenchgate memo affair is the operational nature of the Scotland Office. A meeting between Scottish ministers and representatives of foreign nations should not contain blatant inaccuracies.
The author of the memo recorded the fact that even he didn't believe what he'd just written but submitted it anyway as a factual record of that meeting. Staggeringly, no one in the Scotland Office challenged the legitimacy of this practice.
One then has to question everything the Scotland Office has done under Carmichael's leadership.
How many more memos contain blatant inaccuracies?
Are staff so demoralised at working in the Scotland Office that they just don't care whether a memo is accurate or not?
Why did the fact that when even the author of a memo disbelieves what they've just written did this not flag up that there was a serious problem within the Scotland Office?
As far as I know, no one in the current Conservative government has expressed any concern over these failings. Even the Cabinet Office inquiry concluded that the memo's author "is reliable" and "there is no reason to doubt that he recorded accurately what he thought he had heard."
And that is as far as they went. This person clearly is unreliable and their system for recording such meetings - via a phone call that took place over a week after the meeting took place - is clearly a process that needs to be scrapped entirely.
Perhaps the Conservatives have been lulled into false confidence by the change of the man at the top, from the Lib Dem Carmichael to the Tory David Mundell.
But Mundell was a minister in the Scotland Office both before and during Carmichael's reign, serving as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland from 2010 to 2015. He is possibly tarred by the same failings.
It is time David Cameron took the wider issues around Carmichael and the Frenchgate memo seriously and call for a full review of the procedures and practices within the Scotland Office. Further, he needs another department to check all memos written by the Scotland Office about meetings with foreign representatives to check their accuracy.
Finally, David Cameron has to answer the question: is there a culture of inaccuracy within the Scotland Office?
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