SHAMED MP Margaret Ferrier has accused her former party of 'hanging her out to dry' after preparing a statement on her coronavirus actions.
The Rutherglen and Hamilton West MP travelled more than 400 miles on public transport while knowingly carrying coronavirus, but said she thought she was following parliamentary rules.
The MP, who is refusing to resign, has now claimed the SNP pushed her to publish a prepared statement and only withdrew the party whip after massive public outcry over her actions.
The 60-year-old claims party officials told her she could get the whip back, as she had 'been honest'.
However as the Herald revealed, sources claimed she misled the party whips and parliamentary officials numerous times after allegedly saying she had to return home as a family member was unwell.
The MP said: "I just felt it was very pushy. You’ve just been told you have Covid. You’re stressed, with a lot of things going through your mind.
"You’re wanting somebody to help you. I said at that point: ‘Hang on a minute – as soon as this goes out am I going to be bombarded with abuse?’
"They were not considering the fact that I had only been diagnosed with Covid and I don’t know how that’s going to affect my mental state.
"It just went crazy. I still haven’t looked at Twitter but I have heard about it."
The MP said another conference call took place at 6.52pm the same day, during which she was told the party whip was being suspended.
Describing the call, she said: "They were sorry. They were going to have to take the whip off me but I would get back in because I was co-operating and had been honest.
“Losing the whip was more of a slap in the face because of all the hard work that I have done for the party since I joined it.
“I could appreciate the party’s decision at the time. They told me they would be able to contain this situation.
“Why suddenly have we got to the point where they have to take the whip from me?”
She added: “It was because the statement went out and it escalated.
“They pushed me to make a self-referral to the standards commissioner straight away. I was intending to refer myself anyway. You can imagine how sad and angry I was.
“I felt I was being hung out to dry.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article