A Nationalist Holyrood candidate has accused a councillor of lying over claims of racism in the SNP.

Emma Harper claimed Yen Hongmei Jin's allegations that she was taken off an approved SNP candidate list because of her Chinese roots were contrived.

Ms Harper's comments came after an employment tribunal on Thursday ruled it had no jurisdiction to hear Ms Jin's claims.

Ms Jin, a councillor in Lochar in Dumfries and Galloway, quit the SNP over the case, had moved to sue the party.

A tribunal judge ruled the removal from a list could not be equated to an action of removal from a professional qualifications list.

Ms Hongmei Jin said she is to challenge the findings by the tribunal and is determined to have her story told.

She had named Ms Harper in tribunal documents which alleged allocation of new branch members to another branch was orchestrated by party officials to help the winning candidate, Ms Harper.

Ms Harper said: "Ms Jin first made her contrived allegations of racism over a year ago after she twice failed to be selected as an SNP candidate for Westminster, then repeated the same old allegations last August when she failed to be selected as an SNP candidate for Holyrood.

"The number of members in each local SNP branch does not affect the vote for candidate selection at all.

"The bizarre statement that I 'confessed to a party member' is an outright lie and absurdly doesn’t even reflect the reality of the candidate selection process."

Ms Hongmei Jin said that Ms Harper "made her confession to another SNP member and she knows who is that person".

She said: "There is also correspondence between our branch and the HQ why we did not get the new members in our branch.

"Clearly if a branch decides to push their candidate through, more members they have more votes that candidate will receive.

"I have large number of documents on the case of racism and discrimination. The decision of the employment tribunal was not about these, it was simply about the 'jurisdiction' of the tribunal.

"The judge decided that he had no 'jurisdiction'.

"So it will simply go to a different court and the evidence will be heard in full in due course."

Ms Hongmei Jin added: "I am also appealing against the decision of the Tribunal for their verdict of not having the jurisdiction on this case."