THE SNP’s Westminster leader was chastised in the House of Commons after asking an urgent question about the use of a £560,000 contract for opinion gathering on the union.
As revealed by The Herald, the Cabinet Office awarded a contract using emergency coronavirus legislation to conduct research into public attitudes towards handling of the pandemic and other issues – including on the union.
Public First, a firm owned by friends of Dominic Cummings, was given the contract early in the pandemic, with court documents detailing that Michael Gove had asked for research to be done on attitudes to the union.
The SNP say that the spending is a misuse of public funds, have asked the Prime Minister to launch a inquiry and today pressed junior Cabinet Office minister Julia Lopez on the contracts.
READ MORE: 'Scandal' over Gove's use of pandemic research contract to test attitudes to the Union
However Mr Blackford could be heard shouting “that’s a lie” during Ms Lopez’ answer to his question, and was also told off by speaker Lindsay Hoyle after saying the Prime Minister had been sacked twice “for lying”.
MPs began shouting at the SNP leader to withdraw the remarks.
Mr Blackford said: “The scale of this particular scandal makes it one of the biggest yet. The Secretary of State ordered the use of a £560,000 emergency Covid contract to conduct constitutional campaigning on the union. Instead of using an emergency COVID contract for PPE for the NHS, the minister chose to order political polling.”
He continued: “The truth and this government are distant strangers, and that should come as no surprise. Remember the Prime Minister has been sacked not once but twice for lying.”
Mr Blackford asked how many other [pieces of “political polling” had been conducted by the Government and urged ministers to release the data “in full”.
Ms Lopez responded that the contract “did not relate to constitutional campaigning and any suggestion government carries out party political research is entirely false.”
Mr Blackford could then be heard shouting “that’s a lie, that’s a lie” from the Commons, which interrupted the MP’s answer.
She continued: “Government regularly conducts research in every part of the UK to support policy development in this case we're testing public attitudes related to the COVID 19 pandemic and this became very particularly relevant as different regions of the UK began diverging their approach to testing.”
Ms Lopez added that the “non-sensitive” elements of the work would be published “in due course” and said: “Separately the Cabinet Office carries out polling on attitudes towards the Union on a regular basis but this work was paused during the Coronavirus crisis.
“We are aware that the Scottish Government also conducted polling on attitudes in relation to COVID, and we did not see this research, and nor would we expect to.”
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