Andrew Liddle
An Aberdeen MP has written to the leader of Scottish Labour to demand an apology over accusations that SNP members are “milking the system”.
Kezia Dugdale’s party had seized on figures published by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) apparently showing Westminster nationalists had spent significantly more on expenses than their predecessors.
However, it has now emerged that, due to an error in transferring data to its new website, IPSA’s figures for 2014-15 had not been updated, which led to the inaccurate comparisons.
On Sunday, former First Minister Alex Salmond demanded an apology from Scottish Labour. And Aberdeen North MP Kirsty Blackman has now written to Ms Dugdale, urging her to “take responsibility” for the claims.
In the letter, she said: “As leader of Scottish Labour, I ask you to take responsibility and do the decent thing by retracting, and apologising for, the false, offensive and highly personal attack that your press office made on myself and my SNP colleagues.”
She said IPSA “has now clarified, SNP MPs actually cost over £1million (£1,140,801.64) less than our Labour and Lib Dem predecessors.”
She added: “On average, each SNP MP costs around £21,000 less than their predecessors, and I have personally claimed almost £40,000 less than my Labour predecessor.”
A spokesman for Scottish Labour said: “The SNP MPs’ travel expenses were £1.3million in 2015-16, and that has not changed despite IPSA’s error. And, of course, they didn’t even start in the job until May, so any comparison with 2014-15 is misleading.
“Some SNP MPs have racked up travel expenses of over £40,000, considerably higher than their predecessors even using IPSA’s amended data.
“There has been complete silence from the Nationalists about why their costs are so high. Taxpayers need an urgent answer from the SNP about this use of public funds.”