UK ministers and the Conservative party’s Scottish leader Douglas Ross should face a formal inquiry after an apparent leak of the Chancellor’s Budget, Brendan O’Hara has said.
Mr Ross, at First Minister’s Questions in Holyrood last week, announced that Jeremy Hunt was uprating pensions and benefits by inflation before the Chancellor himself announced it in the Commons.
Argyll and Bute MP said afterwards that there were ‘serious questions to answer’.
“There are strict rules in place around the details of budget statements, and the Tories appear to have flagrantly breached those rules around market sensitive information,” he added.
“They cannot claim they were using the same information given in advance to other parties as that was heavily redacted in terms of the Chancellor’s key announcements.
“There should now be a full-scale investigation into this by the Cabinet Secretary, the head of the UK Civil Service, and I am writing to him today to request such an inquiry.
“Douglas Ross may have thought he was being smart by pre-empting the Chancellor in this way – but if the tables were turned he would be the first on his feet demanding an investigation, so he and his Westminster colleagues should now face the same level of scrutiny.”
The Scottish Conservative party has been contacted for comment.
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