Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee, made up of MPs from Scotland, said it would wait for the outcome of the Scottish Parliament vote before it made a decision on launching its own inquiry. <\/p>\n
In a statement, the committee said it had agreed Holyrood was the “most appropriate place” for a probe. <\/p>\n
If a Westminster inquiry was set up, both Swinney and Nicola Sturgeon could be asked to give evidence under oath. <\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the first minister’s spokesman claimed that a probe would “destroy the credibility” of the Scottish Affairs Committee and its convener, Labour MP Patricia Gibson. <\/p>\n
He would not be drawn on whether the first minister would co-operate with a Westminster investigation, replying that Swinney would “decide how to respond when we see what is agreed to”.<\/p>\n
People can be summoned to appear in front of a UK Parliament committee, though they are unlikely to face any serious sanctions for refusing to do so.<\/p>\n
If someone rejects a formal request, they can be found in contempt of parliament. Historically, those found guilty of contempt could be fined or imprisoned, though no-one has been locked up since 1880, or fined since 1666.<\/p>\n
The Scottish Affairs Committee is made up of six Labour MPs, two Conservatives, two Liberal Democrats and one from the SNP. <\/p>\n
Scottish Tory MP Andrew Bowie said there were several “unanswered questions” about the Murrell case and said it was “incumbent on MPs to get to the bottom of it”. <\/p>\n
But SNP Westminster leader Dave Doogan, his party’s sole representative on the Scottish Affairs Committee, has argued against any attempt to “weaponise a taxpayer-funded Westminster committee to take pot shots at their political opponents”.<\/p>\n
Murrell is due to be sentenced on 23 June. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee, made up of MPs from Scotland, said it would wait for the outcome of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-632202","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\/632202","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=632202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}