Asked five times in a row, John Swinney gave the same answer five times. He had “already apologised for what happened in this case.”
The questions came from reporters at the Scottish Parliament on June 25, after First Minister’s Questions. They wanted to know whether he would say sorry to Cynthia Guthrie and Allison Graham, two former SNP members who say they were bullied out of the party after raising concerns about its finances. The Scottish Daily Express counted five refusals, and said the First Minister was short with those who pressed him.
Two women who asked for the books
Guthrie and Graham sat on the SNP’s finance and audit committee. According to the Express, they repeatedly asked then chief executive Peter Murrell to open the books and were ignored. They quit in March 2021 during a heated National Executive Committee meeting, where, they say, a member’s rant left them treated “like a daft lassie”. They allege that Ian Cockburn’s position was backed by Nicola Sturgeon, then party leader.
They spoke out the same week Murrell was jailed for embezzling more than £400,000 from the party over 12 years. The pair told LBC their time on the committee was a “pantomime” and that they were being used as “patsies” for a “cover up”.
“It’s not good enough to say he was a master criminal and everybody else was a victim,” Guthrie said. She wants an inquiry into the SNP’s finances. Later she called Swinney’s response “not good enough” and his opposition to an inquiry “unsustainable”, the Daily Record reported.
The First Minister’s line
Swinney’s position is that the victims are the party members. “I’ve apologised to party members as they are ones with legitimate interest in this because they are the ones who had money stolen from them,” he said. Pressed on whether that covered people who had since left the SNP, he answered that the victims were members who had money stolen by Murrell’s embezzlement.
On an inquiry he was flat. Parliament had decided there would not be one, he said, and it would be “absolutely non-sensical” to hold an inquiry “into the victim”. He also suggested he did not believe Sturgeon and others at the time were “bullies”. When a journalist said he was not being clear, he accused the reporter of “putting words in his mouth”.
Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay had raised the issue earlier in the chamber. “As expected, no apology to the whistleblowers,” he said afterwards, adding that Swinney “was the heart of the coverup, then and now.” He called him “the king of the SNP cover-ups”.
Sources
- Rattled John Swinney refuses FIVE times to apologise to SNP whistleblowers 'bullied' out of party by Nicola Sturgeon – Scottish Daily Express
- John Swinney refuses to apologise to former SNP members who tried to blow the whistle on Peter Murrell – Daily Record
