Tory quits his role over ‘foolish’ lobbying
A SENIOR Tory MSP has had to resign from Ruth Davidson’s frontbench team after he was embroiled in a lobbying row.
Peter Chapman has admitted he asked Aberdeenshire councillors to back a planning application without disclosing he had a financial link to the firm involved.
The 68-year-old quit as rural affairs spokesman yesterday, claiming he had been ‘foolish’.
Miss Davidson accepted Mr Chapman’s resignation but faced calls to ‘clean up’ her party over a series of controversies involving MSPs.
It emerged yesterday that Mr Chapman had last week spoken to several members of Aberdeenshire Council’s Garioch committee about an application by farming co-operative Aberdeen and Northern Marts (ANM) Group.
In a message for an SNP councillor on the group, Mr Chapman introduced himself as an MSP and rural affairs spokesman – but failed to declare that he had £50,000 worth of shares in the co-operative.
Instead, he urged support for the extension of its operations at Thainstone, Inverurie, claiming it would be important to jobs in the area.
Yesterday, Mr Chapman said he did not stand to gain financially from any growth in the company but admitted he had ‘failed to maintain high standards of transparency’.
He sent a resignation letter to Miss Davidson after it emerged the message he left with an SNP councillor had been made public.
In the message he said the expansion of ANM was an ‘important part of the strategy for the group going forward and I’m hoping this application gets looked on in a positive manner’.
But in his letter to Miss Davidson yesterday he wrote: ‘It’s quite clear with hindsight that I should have made my financial interest in the phone calls clear and that it was a foolish oversight on my behalf not to do so.
‘I failed to maintain the high standards of transparency that is expected of MSPs.’
Mr Chapman will continue as an MSP for North East Scotland. Miss Davidson accepted the resignation with ‘regret’.
It is the latest controversy to hit the party. Alexander Burnett was last year reprimanded and sanctioned by Holyrood’s standards committee after failing to declare interests.
And it emerged that Tory Finlay Carson had hired his own IT firm to design his website – then claimed the cost back from the taxpayer.
Nationalist MSP Stewart Stevenson said: ‘The time has come for Ruth Davidson to clean up her party. The Tories think they can do what they want and get away with it – but time and time again they get caught out.’