John Swinney is being urged to sack the SNP’s Health Secretary Neil Gray after a former parliamentary standards watchdog said he risked undermining public trust in politicians.
Mr Gray is facing questions over limo rides he took at the taxpayer’s expense to see his favourite football team play home and away matches and which he failed to declare as a hospitality expense.
While his remit as Health Secretary includes sports, Mr Gray apologised in Holyrood last week after admitting that he had “given the impression of acting more as a fan and less of a minister”.
The Scottish Conservatives accused him of having “a jolly to watch the football” at the cost of the taxpayer and the First Minister has faced calls to order a probe into the limo use. Mr Swinney has, however, said that he considers the matter closed.
The Scottish Government said there was no need for Gray to declare the trips as gifts – even the instance when representatives of the Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) arranged VIP tickets for Mr Gray to watch the Dons in the national stadium in 2022, something he registered as a ministerial discussion rather than a freebie.
Sir Alistair Graham, chair of the committee on standards in public life at Westminster from 2004 to 2007, thinks he should resign in a bid to restore trust in politics for an already skeptical electorate.
He told the Scottish Daily Express: “Breaches like the ones we have seen from Neil Gray and other leading politicans, which people may think are relatively minor, in fact undermine public confidence in whether politicians are putting the public interest before the private interest.”
He added: “That is clearly the case here, where the use of an official car was plainly to satisfy the private interest rather than meeting the needs of the public.
“If there has been a consistent track record of failure to abide by the ministerial code at Holyrood, then it should be for the Scottish Parliament to take action against Neil Gray. He should not be allowed to get away with it.”
The pressure on Mr Gray comes after his precedessor Michael Matheson resigned after attempting to use public cash to pay for £11,000 of data roaming charges on his Scottish Parliament iPad – charges which were run up after the device was used to watch football on a family holiday to Morocco.
It comes as the party has been marred by infighting in recent weeks, with the Nats’ Westminster leader sparking a civil war within the SNP – after announcing his intention to boot his fellow party politician Alison Nicholl off the ballot in the Holyrood constituency of Aberdeen South and North Kincardine at the 2026 Scottish elections.
He claimed a report he asked Ms Nicoll to step aside in a phone call just hours before going public with his intentions was a “lie” but refused to say how Ms Nicoll reacted when he told her of his planned candidacy, merely saying they “had a fairly cordial conversation” and she “wasn’t surprised”.
