A SENIOR MP has said he regrets calling independence No voters "nawbags" on Twitter as he admitted to at times getting things "disastrously wrong" on social media.

Pete Wishart, who is chair of the Scottish Affairs Committee, said he tried to "push boundaries" online in a bid to engage with voters but issued a direct appeal to journalists not to criticise politicians for their posts.

He has previously been praised for his use of his social media site Twitter, which he described as a "crazy, anarchic, no-rules space", winning last year's Parliamentary Tweeter of the Year Award. However, he has regularly been criticised for his outspoken social media persona, most recently when he was forced to apologise after comparing Blairites to an "incontinent old relatives".

At a SNP conference fringe event, which examined whether social media was helping or harming politics, Mr Wishart said: "I think Twitter should be provocative... it's harder to have a distinctive presence, it's harder to say something significantly difficult to everybody else.

"That's what I try to do. I might not get it right, sometimes you get it disastrously wrong. Out of 40,000 tweets, a few will go badly wrong. If there is an effort to close that down it destroys it, but we need to try and get some rules of engagement so we engage with each other with mutual respect."

Asked specifically whether he regretted a December 2014 tweet in which he wished a merry Christmas to "Yessers and Nawbags alike", Mr Wishart said: "Of course. It’s one of these things, you’re always going to put stuff out, particularly when you’re trying to have a different approach to these things.

"It was meant as humour although it wasn’t accepted as humour. It’s still remembered almost two years after doing it but we’re all going to do this."

Mr Wishart has also become embroiled in online rows with JK Rowling, added: "I think sometimes journalists are perhaps just a little bit too harsh on us when we make mistakes. You saw an example of that this week when I put out a tweet which, again, I very much regret and I shouldn’t have done it. I immediately deleted it and I apologised for it.

"But it’s going to happen and if we’re going to be continually picked up and criticised and reminded of tweets from two years ago, it will get to the stage when politicians will seriously [rethink] being provocative."