SCOTLAND’S ethics watchdog has been asked to investigate a Conservative MSP who resigned from his party’s front bench in a £50,000 lobbying row.
North East MSP Peter Chapman is the subject of a complaint to the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life.
The Commissioner examines potential breaches of the MSP Code of Conduct, and reports to Holyrood’s Standards Committee, which can reprimand or recommend suspensions.
It is understood one of Mr Chapman’s constituents raised the complaint after the MSP quit as the Tories’ rural affairs spokesman after what he called a “foolish” mistake.
The 68-year-old farmer admitted lobbying Aberdeenshire councillors to support a planning application from an organisation in which he had a £50,000 stake.
Mr Chapman failed to disclose his shareholding in the Aberdeen and Northern Marts (ANM) farming co-operative, which is expanding its operation at Thainstone, Inverurie.
“This is a very important part of the strategy for the group going forward and I’m just hoping that this application gets looked on in a positive manner,” he said in a voicemail left for an SNP councillor, and which was leaked to the Daily Record.
Within hours, Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson accepted his resignation “with regret”.
An SNP spokesperson said: “Peter Chapman has been caught out – and he was right to quit before he was sacked in disgrace.
“But this remains a serious issue for the Tories which they cannot just ignore.
“It’s important the Commissioner is given the opportunity to fully investigate Mr Chapman’s behaviour and that action is taken if he found to have breached strict parliamentary rules.”
A Scottish Conservative spokesperson said: “As Mr Chapman said, he stands to make nothing if the planning application to extend ANM Group's Thainstone centre goes through.
“He was acting not out of financial interests, but because he believes the application will be of benefit to his constituents and to the wider Aberdeenshire economy.
"Mr Chapman made an honest mistake in failing to set out his financial stake in ANM when he spoke to councillors about the matter last week, and he resigned honourably as a result."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here