Exclusive:SNP chief whip defends Patrick Grady and says party must ‘come together’ and focus ahead of general election

Owen Thompson claimed Glasgow North MP Patrick Grady had done “everything asked of him and more”

The new SNP chief whip has defended Patrick Grady, saying the previously-suspended MP should be allowed to “move on”, as he called for the party to “come together” and focus ahead of next year’s general election.

Owen Thompson suggested Mr Grady, the Glasgow North MP, had done “everything asked of him” and deserved a second chance.

The defence was issued after a Westminster panel last year suspended Mr Grady for making a sexual advance to a teenage member of staff, ruling the MP had engaged in "unwanted physical touching".

The SNP restored the whip to Mr Grady in December last year. At the time of learning his suspension, Mr Grady told MPs he was "profoundly sorry" for his behaviour at a social event in 2016.

Speaking exclusively to The Scotsman, Mr Thompson, who was brought back as chief whip in a fresh SNP reshuffle earlier this month, Mr Thompson insisted morale was “good” within the Westminster group, despite fellow MP Angus MacNeil losing his membership of the party in a spat over the approach to independence.

Asked about Mr Grady, Mr Thompson defended the disgraced MP’s presence on the campaign trail in Rutherglen and Hamilton.

Mr Thompson said: “I don’t see why he shouldn’t be, and I know that’s not going to make me popular.

“Patrick has at all stages done everything he possibly could to apologise. He’s never sought to obfuscate or obstruct the investigations into him, and at all stages done everything he’s been asked to do.

“If we believe in natural justice, he’s done everything that’s been asked of him and more. Somebody has to be able to move on, and I don’t see why that shouldn’t be the case, just because somebody’s a politician.”

Back in his role as chief whip, Mr Thompson, the Midlothian MP, insisted managing the SNP Westminster MPs was no different to being a whip elsewhere, but was a far cry from how the role was portrayed in shows such as House of Cards.

He said: “It feels like I never actually left it. It’s a pretty strange job, but it seems like something I’m relatively good at it.

“It’s not uniquely difficult to the SNP. It’s more about managing where things are changing or moving very quickly because as much as the role of the chief whip is portrayed in drama as the sort of whip cracker, the hard nut who is there to sort everyone out and spy on them, it’s actually more about the management of business and making sure things happen when they are meant to happen, when we’ve got speakers or debates.

“There are times where you are just chasing yourself and it's tricky to know what’s coming next. But I like that because every day is going to be different”.

Mr MacNeil was last month suspended from the party’s Westminster group – prior to Mr Thompson taking on his new role – following a clash with former chief whip Brendan O’Hara in July.

The suspension was decided with eight SNP MPs having confirmed they will step down at next year’s election, including former SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford and current deputy Mhairi Black.

Asked if he expected any other MPs to leave the group following the departure of Mr MacNeil – the MP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Western Isles) – Mr Thompson insisted the party was united.

He said: “Morale is good. It’s [departures] only natural in this point where you are effectively about a year out from the election. This is a time when folk of all parties all start to come together.

"It’s natural for folk to voice opinions, and that can lead to differences of opinion. But whenever you come to this period ahead of a general election, everyone comes together and gets focused on delivering for that.”

The new chief whip also suggested all SNP MPs would be expected to maintain support for the Gender Recognition Reform Act, citing its position in the party manifesto. The Bill, blocked by the UK Government, has been criticised by some members of the Westminster group, including MP Joanna Cherry.

Lady Haldane said on Thursday a judgment on whether the UK Government’s blocking of Scottish gender reforms was unlawful could take some time, after the conclusion of a two-day court case challenging the section 35 order triggered to stop the legislation.

Mr Thompson said: “I think if you’ve got a policy and manifesto that you got elected on, it’s not unreasonable to expect elected members to support policies in the manifesto they backed. We all have the opportunities to feed in different ways to the creation of manifestos and party policy.

“I think it’s absolutely fair for people to have opinions and differences, that’s natural and happens in all walks of life. But it comes to a point when you stand on a manifesto, you have to get behind that manifesto.”

Expecting a fierce battle with Labour for his seat at the next election, Mr Thompson also criticised Sir Keir Starmer and suggested his party “should be a bigger threat”.

Mr Thompson won the Midlothian seat with a 5,705-vote majority at the 2019 general election, but Labour is looming. A Panelbase poll published in June had forecast Labour would win more seats than the SNP at next year's general election, despite currently having just one MP north of the border – Ian Murray.

Mr Thompson said: “The way that Keir Starmer seems to pander just trying to play it safe, adopting Tory policy after Tory policy, it’s a shame. At this point ahead of the 1997 election, there was an excitement about what a new government could bring, there was a new model that launched [under former prime minister Tony Blair] and I remember the excitement about that.

“All I’m seeing from this Labour party is more of the same that we get from this outdated Tory Government. While Starmer tries to win more votes in England, he’ll only push people in Scotland away, and I know that from the hundreds of the doors I knocked over the summer. There are genuine Labour people who just don’t see him as a Labour person. I don’t know what Starmer stands for, beyond getting into Number 10.”

Mr Thompson, who married his partner over the parliamentary recess, also accused Labour of not respecting democracy. He claimed they had frequently trampled over positions taken by Scottish Labour, following the two groups taking different positions on gender recognition reform, and the two-child benefit cap.

Mr Thompson said: “They have a Scottish brand. It’s actually not a Scottish party, but maybe allowing them to take their own positions from time to time would help, that’s what devolution is meant to be about.

“The fact is that [Scottish Labour leader] Anas Sarwar had to roll back on a couple of positions in Scottish Labour because effectively Keir’s come in and told him. There’s speculation that Starmer had [former Scottish Labour leader] Richard Leonard removed because he wasn’t on side enough. That’s the hand coming in from above, the London masters telling Scottish Labour what to do.

“He’s doing a good job of not exactly standing by his principles when he buckles on something like the two-child limit, one of the key factors in tackling child poverty. If a Labour leader buckles as quickly as he does, what else does he actually believe in?”.

A former leader of Midlothian Council, Mr Thompson said there were many on the Labour benches who were “just as frustrated as we [the SNP] are”.

Discussing his own party’s future, he suggested the eventual replacement for Ms Black as Stephen Flynn’s deputy at Westminster could be a surprise.

He said: “It tends to be the same conversation over the decades I’ve been involved, the ‘oh what will we do, who could be next’ and all that sort of stuff. But somebody always comes forward and it’s not always the obvious one. I don’t have a preference, but I’ve no doubt when it happens somebody will step into that role. The future’s bright."

Mr Thompson, who was first elected in 2015 before losing the seat in 2017, only to win it back in 2019, also discussed his passion for politics and what his proudest moments were.

He said: “We are the only party in here effectively highlighting the catastrophic damage Brexit has done, while Labour has gone ‘make Brexit work’. We’ve got two Brexit parties, and one of them will be the next Government.

“On a personal level, I think I’ve been able to highlight a lot of the corruption in this Government, such as crony contracts, and I’m really proud of the stuff that I’ve been able to bring forward on veterans’ support. There’s more to be done, but it’s just taking the things that come”.

Mr Thompson described his role on the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) of Parliament, which he said left him unable to comment on matters such as the spying allegations against China.

It emerged earlier this month that a 28-year-old parliamentary researcher from Edinburgh had been arrested in March on suspicion of spying for China. The man has said he is “completely innocent” and claimed he had spent his career highlighting the “challenge and threats presented by the Chinese Communist Party”.

The ISC, which Mr Thompson sits on, issued a report in July that was critical of the UK Government’s response to the threat posed by China, questioning the trade-off between economic interest and security concerns.

Mr Thompson said: “The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament is fascinating. There’s nine members and its role is to oversee the UK security services. That means we get briefings, reports, we carry out inquiries. And the most recent one, the China report was published a month ago now, and the Government’s response to that came last week.

“The price we pay for having access to that very high level information, very, very sensitive information, we all have to sign the official secrets act. But the price we pay for that is we don’t talk about the work that we do in it. We don’t talk about it, that way the agencies are confident to talk to us in a much more open way, so we can better scrutinise what they’re doing.

“The China report highlights a number of areas where there’s some concerns, perhaps about some of the activities that they are undertaking. I would recommend the report to anyone."