A fingerprint officer who was dismissed in the wake of the infamous Shirley McKie case has won her long-running fight to get her job back.

Judges at the UK's highest court have ruled that Fiona McBride should be reinstated by the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) almost nine years after she was dismissed from its predecessor the Scottish Police Services Authority (SPSA).

Speaking following the judgment, Ms McBride said she was looking forward to getting back to work.

She added: "I have been fighting since 2007 to get my job back and I am delighted that the UK Supreme Court has sided with me.

"I want to make it clear from the outset that this legal action is not, and never has been, about Shirley McKie.

"I don’t know Ms McKie and I have never met her. When she lost her job I felt very sorry for her, despite the fact she received £750,000 in compensation.

"I loved working as a fingerprint examiner. I always took great care to do my job to the best of my ability. And yet I was unfairly dismissed.

"From the outset I was not interested in compensation for the loss of my job. I just wanted it back.

"Now, thanks to the support of my solicitors, Thorley Stephenson, and the five judges who heard my appeal, this is now possible."

The row goes back to January 1997 when Ms McKie, then a detective constable with Strathclyde Police, supposedly left a fingerprint at a murder scene in Ayrshire. She denied defying orders to stay out of the house where Marion Ross's body had been found.

Ms McKie was later cleared of perjury and awarded £750,000 in compensation. She also received an apology from the SPSA, accepting there had been an error in identifying the suspect fingerprint as hers.

The Herald: Shirley McKie was cleared of perjury and awarded £750,000 in compensationShirley McKie was cleared of perjury and awarded £750,000 in compensation

Ms McBride, who maintains there was no mistake, was later dismissed in May 2007 but took her case to an employment tribunal where she successfully sued for unfair dismissal.

The SPSA was ordered to reinstate her but after years of lengthy legal wranglings that decision was overturned.

The 48-year-old has now won her appeal to the Supreme Court where Judge Lord Hodge said the case should be remitted to the original tribunal.

The dispute centred on whether or not Ms McBride could be reinstated on restricted duties - as she could not give evidence in court due to the likelihood of the McKie case being raised by defence lawyers.

The SPA argued that returning her to the role of fingerprint officer without court duties, the role she had performed in the immediate aftermath of the McKie case, amounted to the tribunal amending Ms McBride's contract - a move judges are not legally allowed to do.

However, Judge Lord Hodge said: "In reading the employment tribunal’s reasons, I ask myself whether the tribunal was seeking to impose a contractual limitation on Ms McBride in the reinstatement order, which removed the excluded duties from her job description, or was simply recognising a practical limitation on the scope of her work caused by circumstances beyond her control and that of her employer.

"I am satisfied that it was the latter."

The case will now be passed back to the original employment tribunal for reconsideration of the compensation owed to Ms McBride given the passage of time.

A spokeswoman for SPA said: "We note the judgement in what is the latest in a long-running legacy employment issue. SPA will consider the details of the judgement carefully in determining its response and next steps."