CALLS for a House of Lords probe into the SNP over the Peter Murrell scandal have been dismissed by a senior party MP.
Pete Wishart said proposals to hold an inquiry in the upper house in Westminster amounted to a plot to give “cronies”, “bishops and aristocrats” the chance to “sit in judgment” of the party.
It comes after Lord Foulkes told The Times that peers could investigate the SNP if the House of Commons failed to do so.
The Labour peer said: “The ideal way forward would be to have a judge-led inquiry set up in Scotland, but obviously the SNP won’t do that.
“Failing that, the Scottish Affairs Committee are looking at this, and my feeling is that this would be better done by the Commons.
"But if for whatever reason that does not happen, then the Lords stepping in should be considered because there must be an inquiry. As a last resort, it’s something we would look at.”
He added: “The UK Parliament and Government has a responsibility to make sure that devolved governments are carrying out their responsibilities properly.”
Responding to the report about Lord Foulkes’s comments on social media, Wishart said: “So an unelected house composed of Unionist party donors and cronies, friends of former PMs, failed MPs, Church of England bishops and aristocrats should sit in judgment on a democratically elected party that has just won its fifth consecutive democratic election.”
The SNP have rejected Unionist parties’ calls for an inquiry into the culture under Murrell, which they claim allowed him to perpetuate fraud undetected for years.
Nicola Sturgeon’s estranged husband was jailed earlier this year for embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP.
In June, Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee deferred a decision on whether it would hold a probe into the Murrell saga, saying that “Holyrood was the most appropriate place for an inquiry”.
The Electoral Commission has previously confirmed it reviewed grants of public cash to the SNP and found “no evidence” of wrongdoing.
Dave Doogan, the party’s Westminster leader and a member of the committee, said at the time that an inquiry would be a “a complete waste of taxpayers' money” and “an unprecedented abuse of the House of Commons committee system”.
