ANAS Sarwar has denied that he was ordered to remove the whip from Pam Duncan-Glancy over her relationship with a convicted paedophile.
The Scottish Labour leader insisted that new information came to light on Tuesday this week which sparked an independent investigation, and so the MSP had the Labour whip removed.
Duncan-Glancy quit her frontbench role as education spokesperson after her continued relationship with Sean Morton, a convicted sex offender, came to light on December 5 last year. She later said she would not be standing in the Holyrood election just a few weeks later.
Morton, a former Moray councillor, confessed in 2017 to possessing indecent images of girls under 15 and of a couple having sex with a dog.
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He pled guilty and was given a community payback order, which included 140 hours of unpaid work.
Morton was also given a three-year supervision order and was placed on the sex offenders register for three years.
Sarwar repeatedly defended Duncan-Glancy retaining the party whip in Holyrood despite her links to Morton being known, telling the BBC on January 25 that she would only be an MSP for a “matter of weeks”.
At the same time, pressure grew on Keir Starmer over his decision to appoint his former chief of communications, Matthew Doyle, who campaigned for Morton after he had been charged, to the House of Lords.
Doyle was sworn in to the unelected chamber on January 12. When his links to Morton were revealed on December 27 by The Times, Number 10 insisted that they had been fully investigated.
The newspaper published a photograph of Doyle wearing a T-shirt that stated "Re-elect Sean Morton" after the councillor had been charged.
At the time, Downing Street said it was aware of the association with Morton and that it was brought to the attention of Starmer's now former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and his deputy Jill Cuthbertson. This is understood to have led to an internal inquiry, but did not stop officials from signing off on Doyle's peerage.
A Number 10 spokesperson said in December: “Questions regarding Matthew Doyle’s past acquaintance with Sean Morton were thoroughly investigated, including through several interviews with Matthew Doyle, prior to his appointment [to the Lords].”
Doyle insisted that Morton was maintaining his innocence at the time of the campaign in May 2017 and that he regrets supporting him.
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But as questions over Starmer’s judgment grew, following the scandal over his appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US despite his links to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein being known, Number 10 claimed Doyle had not told them he had campaigned for Morton after he had been charged.
Starmer claimed Doyle had not given a “full account of his actions” before he was given a peerage.
Duncan-Glancy lost the Labour whip on Tuesday, the same night that Doyle said he would not be taking on the Labour whip in the House of Lords.
The National put this to Sarwar at a press conference in Edinburgh on Friday, asking if he had been ordered to remove the whip from Duncan-Glancy, noting that he had previously defended allowing her to keep it.
In what appeared to be a nod to his failed gambit to force Starmer out of Number 10 earlier in the week, he said: “That script might have worked a week ago. It certainly, definitely, doesn't work now.
“So maybe rehash them for future weeks and future press conferences.
"But specifically on the issue of what you said the difference is there is now an independent investigation with new information that came to light, and in light of that independent investigation, we chose to remove the whip from Pam Duncan-Glancy.
“But there's clearly a different approach.
“When I found out I didn't appoint Pam Duncan-Glancy, I sacked Pam Duncan-Glancy.
“When I asked questions of Pam Duncan-Glancy, and she was not able to give me appropriate answers, I withdrew her as a candidate.
“And the moment an independent investigation was sparked, she had the whip withdrawn.”
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The National asked if it was a coincidence that both Duncan-Glancy and Doyle lost the whip on the same evening, Sarwar replied: “Well, the investigation happened, was sparked the same day, and so, she was suspended on the same day the investigation took place.”
Earlier, Sarwar told journalists that he felt “liberated and energised” to take on the Holyrood election campaign, despite his calls for Starmer to stand down.
He admitted that he had spoken to the Prime Minister on Thursday, following his press conference, but would not go into details about what the pair discussed.
We previously told how Duncan-Glancy defended her relationship with Morton after she lost the Labour whip.
She said she was “deeply disappointed” by Scottish Labour’s decision to remove the whip
Duncan-Glancy said that while she did not condone Morton’s crimes, he remains someone who is vulnerable and in need of support.
