THE SNP have called on Anas Sarwar to back demands for Pam Duncan-Glancy to make a parliamentary statement regarding her friendship with a convicted sex offender.
It comes after the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar struggled to give a clear answer on BBC Scotland as to why the MSP retains the party whip in Holyrood.
He said that Duncan-Glancy “made a serious error of judgement” and when pressed on the lack of immediate action, Sarwar added: “She's a Labour MSP, for a matter of weeks, because we are going into an election where she is not going to be a candidate.”
Pam Duncan-Glancy previously announced she would step down at the next election after her friendship with Sean Morton came to light, and was removed as the party’s education spokesperson.
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Earlier this month, it emerged that she maintained her relationship with Morton even after he went to prison.
Morton was spared jail for his 2017 conviction for possessing images of girls under 15 and of a couple having sex with a dog. He was handed a community payback order, which included 140 hours of unpaid work.
The Daily Record revealed earlier this month that he had committed further offences which led to a prison sentence.
Now, the SNP have called on Sarwar to go a step further and demand Duncan-Glancy give a full statement to the Scottish Parliament to give clarity on the matter.
"Scottish Labour has kept the public in the dark for far too long - if Pam Duncan-Glancy maintained her relationship with serial sex-offender Sean Morton following successive convictions, then the public deserve to know what on earth is going on,” MSP Rona Mackay said.
"Anas Sarwar may want the Labour friends of sex offenders scandal to go quiet, but with Keir Starmer’s pal Matthew Doyle, who himself had links to Sean Morton, joining friend of Jeffrey Epstein Peter Mandelson in the House of Lords – this story is going nowhere.”
She added: "Pam Duncan-Glancy remains in Anas Sarwar’s rank and file, voting on legislation and supporting the Labour Party each and every day – the public deserve far better and quite frankly, it should be the bare minimum that friends of child sex offenders do not sit in Scotland’s parliament.
“It’s time Anas Sarwar took action, but the reality is there is something deeply wrong in the Labour Party where a multitude of MSPs are suspended and where friends of sex offenders are protected or bask in the House of Lords with a job for life.”
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