A PROMINENT lawyer in a Scottish Government-appointed post has been cleared of calling Alex Salmond "an a******" on Twitter.

Mike Dailly, a leading figure in the Labour Party in Glasgow and pro-Union campaigner, refused to quit his £8,000-a-year part-time post on the board of the Scottish Housing Regulator, an independent watchdog which reports to the Scottish Government, after calls by the organisation's chairwoman in June.

A complaint was raised with the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland. Mr Dailly's tweet prompted an online furore at the height of the independence debate and he soon apologised, claiming "it was a clumsy attempt to prove a point" about abusiveness on social media.

After an investigation Bill Thomson, the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland, found Mr Dailly had not breached the code of conduct for board members on public bodies. The complainant Kay Blair, chair of the Scottish Housing Regulator, had claimed the tweet was disrespectful.