{"id":328781,"date":"2025-12-21T21:53:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T21:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/328781\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T21:53:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T21:53:08","slug":"labour-msp-to-quit-holyrood-over-links-to-sex-offender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/328781\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour MSP to quit Holyrood over links to sex offender"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Scottish Labour MSP Pam Duncan-Glancy will not seek re-election to Holyrood next year as she does not want her friendship with a convicted sex offender to &#8220;become a distraction&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Earlier this month Duncan-Glancy <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cqjgq2z4wj2o\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">stood down<\/a> as the party&#8217;s education spokeswoman after admitting an &#8220;serious error of judgement&#8221; over her links to Sean Morton.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The Glasgow region MSP submitted her resignation after the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyrecord.co.uk\/news\/politics\/scottish-labour-education-spokeswoman-quits-36358285\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Daily Record newspaper<\/a> said she had maintained contact with Morton, a former Labour councillor who admitted having indecent images of children and extreme pornography in 2017.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">At the time Labour said she had done the right thing and it considered the matter closed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Duncan-Glancy, who was elected to Holyrood in 2021, had been selected to contest a Glasgow seat.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">But in statement, issued on Sunday, the MSP confirmed that she had withdrawn her candidacy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Duncan-Glancy said: &#8220;While this has obviously been a very difficult decision &#8211; and it is the greatest honour of my life to represent Glasgow &#8211; I do not wish for a personal friendship to become a distraction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;I am grateful to have had the opportunity to serve, and I remain committed to returning a Scottish Labour government next year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Morton, a former councillor for Fochabers Lhanbryde, was ordered to carry out unpaid work and put on the sex offenders register after he pled guilty to possessing two indecent child image offences.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">He had claimed the images were <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-42647568\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">sent to him anonymously<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">A Scottish Labour spokesperson said: &#8220;Pam Duncan-Glancy has withdrawn as a parliamentary candidate for the Glasgow Kelvin and Maryhill constituency.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;She has taken the decision to step aside as she does not wish recent stories to become a distraction from the work of the party or its priorities.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;The selection process will now be reopened so that a replacement candidate can be chosen.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scottish Labour MSP Pam Duncan-Glancy will not seek re-election to Holyrood next year as she does not want&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-328781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}