A top Scottish Tory who has given the party £147,500 in donations has been made a Scotland Office Minister by Boris Johnson and been given a peerage in the House of Lords to boot.
Malcolm Offord, a financier who spent 26 years in the City of London, has been made a life peer to fill the vacancy left by the sacking of David Duguid MP from the number three slot at the Scotland Office.
The move to appoint a donor with no elected political office to the government’s Scottish operation may open up another flank in the cronyism row over Offord.
The Scottish financier was at the centre of a cronyism row with Ruth Davidson when she endorsed him to become a Holyrood candidate amid internal Tory party row.
SNP MP Pete Wishart said Offord’s promotion to the House of Lords to give him a political platform to join the government showed contempt for democracy and Scotland.
Wishart said: “This is an outrageous appointment from Boris Johnson’s Conservatives. "
"Not only have they failed to finds someone from the ranks of the Conservative MPs they have had to go to someone who has an unsavoury financial association with the Conservatives in Scotland. People up and down the country will look at this in disbelief.”
Offord has a long background of supporting the Conservatives haven given £2500 to Michael Gove and nearly £150,000 to the party over a decade and a half.
The Greenock-born businessman also founded the ‘No Borders Campaign’ during the Scottish independence referendum to which he donated £20,000 and also worked for a think-tank founded by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith.
Scottish Secretary Alister Jack welcomed the appointment as "great news".
He said: “As we recover from the pandemic, Mr Offord will bring to bear a wealth of valuable business experience. I very much look forward to working with Malcolm over the coming months and years, as we invest in Scotland to grow our economy and create jobs.”
