Meeting of the Parliament 10 June 2026 [Draft]
Well, what an extraordinary contribution that was. Kate Campbell got one thing right—only one—when she said that the SNP had no right to win after 19 years in government. She got that right.
I did not think that I would be thanking Anas Sarwar any time soon, but I thank him for bringing this debate to the chamber. It is absolutely right that we should be discussing this, but all that we have heard from SNP members so far is deflection and lashing out. They have not addressed the problem.
The details and the scale of the Murrell embezzlement are shocking. This whole affair is a scandal, and it cuts right to the heart of public trust in politics. People have a right to think that they can trust politicians and political parties. When SNP supporters donated money in good faith, they should have expected that it would be handled properly, but it was not.
We know what Peter Murrell has been convicted of, but the question before this Parliament is not about the criminal case. The real question is, how on earth was this allowed to happen? How could someone so central to the running of the governing party abuse that position over such a long period? Where were the checks? Where was the scrutiny? Where was the accountability?
Let us be frank: this affair did not emerge from nowhere. For years, there were concerns about transparency and about finances. There were concerns about money that had been raised for one purpose being used for another, and there were questions about how that money was being handled.
Instead of openness, we have had defensiveness. Instead of answers, there was evasion. Instead of proper accountability, there was the instinct—which we always see from the SNP—to circle the wagons and hope that the questions would go away. However, the questions have not gone away; they have only grown louder. Who knew what and when? Why were warning signs not acted on sooner? Why were legitimate concerns brushed aside? What does it say about the culture at the top of the SNP that such a serious breach of trust could occur under the noses of its leaders for so long?
When the party of government is engulfed in a scandal of this scale, it drags down confidence in politics as a whole. It tells the public that those who demand trust from others are not always willing to submit themselves to the same standard. That is corrosive to democracy itself.
No, this cannot be brushed aside with the claim that the courts have done their job, so everyone else should just move on. Criminal liability is one thing; political accountability is another. This Parliament has a duty to ask the questions that the public are asking. How did this happen? What failures made it possible? What reforms are now needed to ensure that it can never happen again?
There are questions for the Electoral Commission, the Crown Office, the police and the Lord Advocate. If the SNP has nothing to hide, it should welcome that scrutiny. If the party is serious about restoring trust, it should stop blocking, it should stop deflecting and it should start answering. The Murrell affair is not just about one man’s criminal conduct; it is about a system that failed, a culture that closed ranks and a public who deserve far better from those who seek to govern.
Nicola Sturgeon has not been charged with anything in relation to the scandal, but we have to ask—and this could be a question for an inquiry—what she actually meant when she told members of her party’s NEC that they should “be very careful” when questioning the finances and that there was nothing to see, although there was?
In the previous session, I introduced a bill that would have given us a system of recall. It fell because the SNP voted against it. Giving voters the ability to remove errant MSPs would have gone some way towards restoring trust in politics. The First Minister has made some encouraging noises about recall in the past couple of weeks when I have asked him about it, as did Alex Cole-Hamilton. We need the Government to get behind that, because we cannot do it without the Government and we need to get recall on to the statute book. At the end of the day, we must do something to restore trust in politics. The Government needs to have a rethink and should back the motion.