Labour has called for Alex Salmond's senior adviser to join him in giving evidence under oath to the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics.
The call for Kevin Pringle to give evidence to the inquiry came as the adviser was named in Leveson Inquiry documents as a contact with News Corporation representative Frederic Michel on March 2 last year.
But a spokesman for Mr Salmond hit back, claiming Labour's attack was an "embarrassing blunder" as had been shown by representations to the inquiry last Thursday asking for corrections to the documents and clarifying who was involved.
However, Labour party business manager Paul Martin said Mr Pringle was the First Minister's head of media relations "yet the Scottish Government expect us to believe he had no role in managing the media relationship which Alex Salmond prizes most highly – his relationship with Rupert Murdoch".
Mr Salmond's spokesman accused Labour of flailing around "in a bid to throw as much mud as possible".
He said: "Their claims are completely unfounded because the fact is this phone call was actually with the First Minister, and did not involve any advisers, as we made clear last Thursday."
Labour accused the SNP of cowardice yesterday after none of the party's MPs turned up to an Urgent Question in the Commons on the UK Government's dealings with the Murdoch empire.
The SNP said the party was represented by MPs from Plaid Cymru.
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 hereComments are closed on this article