An SNP MP’s email address was used to sign up to a website for those seeking adulterous affairs.

Michelle Thomson said that she had been a victim of hackers and that someone had used her email to access the cheating site without her knowledge - it is possible to create a fake Ashley Madison account using someone else's name and email.

Ashley Madison, which carries the slogan "Life is short. Have an affair", was attacked last month by a group calling itself the Impact Team.

Ms Thomson said: “Along with potentially millions of others, an out-of-use email address seems to have been harvested by hackers. I am not aware of or in contact with either Avid Life (which owns the site) or Ashley Madison and look forward to finding out more about what has actually happened.

“However, having a personal email address linked to an account doesn’t mean that person is really a user of Ashley Madison. Users are able to sign up to the site without responding to an email verification, meaning anyone’s email address could have been used to create an account.”

More than 100 official UK Government email addresses are also reported to be linked to the site.