Murrell used false accounting and fake invoices to hide SNP embezzlement, court hears – UK politics live
Murrell used false accounting records and fake invoices to cover up his embezzlement, court told
The money embezzled by Peter Murrell came from SNP membership fees and donations by party members, the Edinburgh court was told. The Press Association report:
Alan Cameron KC told the high court in Edinburgh that the former SNP chief executive had embezzled the funds from SNP party bank accounts “over which he had control”.
He went on: “The accused made direct transfers of money and used his party charge card and those of two other staff members to make purchases not connected with party business.
“Other members of staff were unaware he was using those cards for that purpose.”
The court also heard Murrell falsified accounting records and created fake invoices in a bid to cover his tracks.
Peter Murrell appeared in court dressed in a dark blue suit and black tie, and gave a nod to his lawyer John Scullion KC as he was led to the dock.
Key events
Here are some pictures released by the Crown Office in Scotland of items purchased by Peter Murrell with funds embezzled from the SNP.
BBC Scotland has more details of the Peter Murrell hearing this morning on its live blog. And, on its live blog, Sky News has pictures of some of the items purchased by Murrell with stolen SNP funds.
Andy Burnham would not call snap election if he became PM, spokesperson says
Andy Burnham will not call an early election if he becomes prime minister after the Makerfield byelection, a spokesperson for the Greater Manchester mayor has said.
At the weekend a report claimed Burnham was considering an early election. Initially his team did not comment on the claim.
But today a spokesperson for Burnham said he had ruled out calling a snap election.
Murrell used false accounting records and fake invoices to cover up his embezzlement, court told
The money embezzled by Peter Murrell came from SNP membership fees and donations by party members, the Edinburgh court was told. The Press Association report:
Alan Cameron KC told the high court in Edinburgh that the former SNP chief executive had embezzled the funds from SNP party bank accounts “over which he had control”.
He went on: “The accused made direct transfers of money and used his party charge card and those of two other staff members to make purchases not connected with party business.
“Other members of staff were unaware he was using those cards for that purpose.”
The court also heard Murrell falsified accounting records and created fake invoices in a bid to cover his tracks.
Peter Murrell appeared in court dressed in a dark blue suit and black tie, and gave a nod to his lawyer John Scullion KC as he was led to the dock.
Motorhome bought by Murrell with SNP money only driven for four miles, court told
The Edinburgh court also heard details of the vehicles bought by Peter Murrell with money embezzled from the SNP, the Press Association reports. PA says:
Advocate depute Alan Cameron KC said one of the vehicles included a Volkswagen Golf car, which was later sold and the proceeds used towards buying a Jaguar I-Pace worth more than £81,000.
The advocate depute said a false invoice was created for this, submitting the claim as “stage payment”.
Cameron said: “He claimed that the payment was for staging for national events.”
The advocate depute also discussed the purchase of a motorhome by Murrell, which was worth £124,550.
When police seized the vehicle from his mother’s house, the odometer showed it had only been driven for four miles.
He said it was described as a “van rather than a motorhome” when the invoice was filed.
Cameron said: “It was never used or seen by any other party member or employee.”
Court hears details of Peter Murrell’s spending with money embezzled from SNP
Items bought by Peter Murrell included a £3,000 robotic lawnmower, a court hearing for the former SNP chief executive heard. The Press Association reports:
Advocate depute Alan Cameron KC read out a list of items while setting out the prosecution narrative at the hearing, which took place before judge Lord Young.
They included purchases from Montblanc, which sells luxury stationery, worth more than £23,000.
One item included a robotic lawnmower worth more than £3,000.
Cameron KC said: “This item was described as legal fees and found when police searched his house.”
No 10 urged to review religious knife rules after Henry Nowak murder
In interviews this morning Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister, said that police video footage released last night showing Henry Nowak being handcuffed while bleeding to death was “absolutely harrowing”. Nowak was killed by Vickrum Digwa who has been jailed for life for murder.
Digwa told police who arrived at the scene that he had been racially abused by Nowak.
In an interview with Sky News, asked if he thought Nowak was the victim of unconscious racial bias by the police against white boys, Thomas-Symonds said the Independent Office for Police Conduct was investigating the conduct of the officers who attended the scene.
He went on:
Whilst it’s absolutely right, we have to look at the conduct of what happened here and draw the lessons, it is also the case that up and down the country … there will be police officers running towards danger when others are running in the opposite direction, putting their bodies on the line to keep us safe and we shouldn’t forget that.
In his interview on the Today programme, asked about the case, Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, said that the police treatment of Nowak was “absolutely abhorrent” and that it suggested that something had gone wrong with the way the police were operating.
Asked if he thought the police treated Nowak as they did because he was white, Burghart replied: “If if that’s what happened, then that is absolutely abhorrent.”
In what he described as an “emergency address to the nation” on YouTube this morning, Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, claimed that the case showed “we’re living in a two-tier culture in this country where the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities” and that people should respond “with pure cold rage”.
Sarah Jones, the policing minister, is expected to make a statement to MPs on the case later today.
Steven Morris has more on the story here.
Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister, has defended Pat McFadden over his comment, revealed in the Mandelson files, about Labour MPs always asking “who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others”.
In an interview with Times Radio, Thomas-Symonds said that McFadden was a “diligent, committed minister” and his views on social security and welfare “are very well known and consistent”.
He went on:
Pat’s view has always been that it is not about benefits, that is not where the debate should be. The debate should be about opportunity, and indeed that is what he has been working on.
In an interview with Sky News, asked if he thought the benefits bill was too high, Thomas-Symonds said:
It depends which part of the budget we’re talking about, because if we’re talking about pensions, then I’m very proud that it’s this government that is putting those increases in the state pension, the amount it’s going up.
On the bills that I would call economic and social failure, where we want to give people opportunity. I think that is obviously a different part of the bill.
Asked if he thought those parts of the welfare bill were too high, he replied:
Yes. Of course.
The point is, though, the motivation for changing that is not somehow salami-slicing financial budgets. The motivation for changing that is because we want to give people opportunity, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Peter Murrell has arrived at court for a further hearing, following his admission that he embezzled more than £400,000 from the SNP, the Press Association reports. PA says:
Murrell, the party’s former chief executive, was brought to the high court in Edinburgh in a white prison van.
He sat in the back wearing a dark suit with no tie.
Judge Lord Young will hear a prosecution narrative on Tuesday, where the facts of the case will be set out.
UK government has failed Palestinian people, says senior Labour MP
The UK government has let the Palestinian people down and failed to make it economically impossible for Israel to continue to act with impunity in the West Bank and Gaza, the Labour chair of the foreign affairs select committee, Emily Thornberry, has said. Patrick Wintour has the story.
Tories accuse Starmer of not revealing all his Mandelson messages
Good morning. Keir Starmer is chairing cabinet today as Labour MPs mull over the coverage of the Peter Mandelson files. In terms of revelations relating to Mandelson himself, the impact is probably not as bad as many MPs feared; Politico quotes one official as saying the mood last night was at the “top end” of expectations. Here is our main story about the data release, by Henry Dyer and Pippa Crear.
There will be more coverage today.
The Mandelson documents were only released because of a humble address tabled by the Conservative party. Kemi Badenoch launched this move in part because she suspected Starmer was covering up the full extent of what he knew about Mandelson’s connections with Jeffrey Epstein when he appointed him ambassador. The documents published yesterday did not provide any new evidence to back up this assertion, although some material relating to Epstein was held back because of the police investigation. But the joy of a fishing expedition is that you never quite now what you will catch, and the Tories struck gold yesterday with the revelation about Pat McFadden joking about how Labour MPs were always asking “who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others”. Most of the rightwing papers are splashing on this today, and it has the potential to be as damaging to the party as Liam Byrne’s famous “no money left” (another flippant remark, intended to be private, that was exploited ruthlessly, but unfairly, by the Tories).
The Conservatives could sit back and take the view “job well done’”. But Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, was giving interviews this morning and he told the Today programme that he thought Starmer had not revealed all his Mandelson messages.
Burghart said:
There’s a lot of stuff that’s missing. Anybody who’s looked at these 1,500 pages will see acres and acres of white space, these constellations of asterisks, huge amounts of redactions.
Now, some of that is fine because it’s national security issues, our relationship with the Americans.
But it’s also clear there’s a lot of material that wasn’t published. And we know that because all ministers were asked to hand over their WhatsApp messages between them and Peter Mandelson and lots and lots of ministers, some very senior people, have handed over a nil return.
There are almost no exchanges between the prime minister and Peter Mandelson. There are no exchanges between people like Peter Kyle, who were very close allies of Peter Mandelson. And so it’s clear that stuff has been deleted or has gone missing.
When asked if he was claiming that messages from the PM had been held back, Burghart replied: “I suspect that, if they haven’t been handed over, they’ve been deleted.”
He pointed out that, in the Commons yesterday, when Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the PM, was asked to give an assurance that Starmer had not deleted any messages from Mandelson, Jones was unable to give that assurance. Burghart went on:
It beggars belief that there were so few exchanges between Mandelson and the prime minister. There’s almost nothing in the record.
So either this stuff is being deliberately withheld or it’s been deleted.
But in answer to your question, yes, it’s obvious that there is still stuff that’s missing. Whether we ever see it or not, I don’t know.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.
9.30am: Peter Murrell, the former SNP chief executive and estranged husband of Nicola Sturgeon, is back at the high court in Edinburgh where, following his guilty plea on embezzlement charges, there will be a “narrative hearing” setting out an agreed accounts of his crimes.
11.30am: Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
12.15pm: Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, is giving a speech at the SXSW event where he will call for a ban on social media for under-16s.
After 12.30pm: Sarah Jones, the policing minister, is due to give a statement to MPs about the murder of Henry Nowak, and the police response to it.
Lunchtime: Andy Burnham is doing a campaign visit in Makerfield.
1.30pm: Rhun ap Iorwerth takes questions as first minister for the first time in the Senedd.
2.30pm: John Swinney, the Scottish first minister, takes questions at Holyrood for the first time on a Tuesday, under a new plan to hold FMQs twice a week, not just once a week.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
