McConnell backs dual inquiry into SNP finances after Murrell guilty plea

Peter Murrell’s guilty plea to embezzling £400,310.65 from the Scottish National Party has turned Operation Branchform into more than a criminal case. It is now a credibility test for the SNP and for the wider machinery of Scottish self-government, after a theft that prosecutors say ran for 12 years, from August 2010 to October 2022, and funded items including a motorhome, cars and other luxury goods.

Murrell admitted the offence at Edinburgh High Court on 25 May 2026, ending the role of the SNP’s former chief executive as the central figure in an inquiry that has shadowed Scottish politics since his first arrest in April 2023. Operation Branchform originally centred on allegations that £660,000 raised for a second independence referendum had been spent elsewhere, and it led to searches of the home Murrell shared with Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP headquarters in Edinburgh and a campervan parked at the home of his mother in Fife.

Police Scotland widened the political fallout still further before closing its work on Nicola Sturgeon and Colin Beattie in March 2025, leaving Murrell as the only person charged. That sequence has left the party defending not only its accounts but its judgment, its oversight and its internal controls over donations and campaign money. John Swinney has called Murrell’s conduct an “overwhelming betrayal” and apologised to SNP members and supporters. Sturgeon, meanwhile, said she had no knowledge or suspicion that Murrell was using SNP funds for personal purposes, and later said she had been “misled” like others.

Against that backdrop, Jack McConnell has argued that scrutiny must not stop with one parliament or one committee. He wants a joint inquiry involving the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee and the equivalent committee at Holyrood, warning that a probe seen as dominated by Westminster unionists could lack legitimacy in Scotland. McConnell said the case should not be viewed as “the UK Parliament poking its nose into Scottish politics,” but as a broader examination of political party funding, public money, transparency around small donations and protection for small donors.

The Scottish Affairs Committee already has the machinery to move if it chooses. It scrutinises the expenditure, administration and policies of the Scotland Office and wider UK-government policies affecting Scotland, giving it a route into the public money and governance questions raised by the Murrell case. A coordinated inquiry would also avoid a gap that no single legislature can fill alone: Westminster can test UK-wide funding rules and controls, while Holyrood can examine the devolved political consequences and the effect on trust in Scotland’s institutions. Scottish Government FOI papers showing the First Minister was told of a Branchform update on 19 January 2026 only sharpen the sense that the scandal has reached the heart of government.