Joanna Cherry Full Interview: Peter Murrell's Embezzlement & Calls for Inquiry

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-30

[00:00:01]Joanna, thank you very much for joining me on the Stee podcast. I think we've got to start by talking about the extraordinary Peter Muro case. He's obviously plead guilty to embezzling £400,000 from the S&P and that's led to calls for an independent inquiry. You've led some of those calls, perhaps a a parliamentary inquiry into how this was able to happen into some of the circumstances around it. And I wondered first off, why do you think that's so crucial? And what do you see as some of the kind of big unanswered questions here?

[00:00:31]>> Right. Well, I mean, there's two separate things going on here. There's Peter Merl's criminality, which he's plead guilty to, and then there's the question of how he was able to get away with such sustained embezzlement over such a long period of time in Scotland's biggest political party and its political party of government.

[00:00:50]And I'm one of several people who were asking questions as far back as 2019, 2020, 2021, not about whether Peter Murl was embezzling money. I don't think any of us thought that, but about the whereabouts of a fund a fund of money that had been donated to not just by party members, but also by members of the public who weren't party members, which is quite important to fund a second independence referendum because it was supposed to be ring fenced. It was over £600,000.

[00:01:22]And it was clear to anyone who could read a balance sheet in the SNP accounts that uh that money was no longer sitting on the balance sheet as a ring fenced account and had basically been spent on something else. So that's what we were asking questions about. And you know the S&P's national executive committee is elected by the membership who attend conference and so are the committee members. And back in 2020 I was one of about a dozen or so people who stood on a slate. We were known colloally as the good guys and the slate was to improve the governance of the party and the transparency of the governance and also particularly to find out what would happen to that money. We were specifically elected by the membership to do that and I was on the national executive committee but three of my colleagues were on the finance and audit committee and none of us could get any qu answers to our questions and the three members who'd been elected to the finance and audit committee they resigned and one of them who was also on the NEC read out a statement to the national executive committee explaining that they had resigned because Peter Merl was refusing to show them the books so they couldn't carry out their duty on the finance an audit committee of auditing the books because he wasn't showing them the books and that's a separate thing from the professional auditors who look at the accounts. This was the actual books on the background.

[00:02:44]And you'd think that if party members announced they were resigning because the CEO was refusing to show them the books, the National Executive Committee, which is the governing body of the SNP, might want to look at that and say, well, say to the chief executive, why won't you show the Finance and Audit Committee the books? But instead of doing that, they monstered this woman, Allison Graeme, who'd made the announcement as to why the three of them were resigning. They attacked her just as they attacked me, Roger Mullen, Caroline Mallister, other people on the NEC who were asking questions uh about the party's finances and and that little video that lots of people can see on social media of Nicola telling us not to ask questions about the accounts and that the parties in a very healthy state and to be very careful and I quote, very careful about asking questions. That video was recorded by one of my colleagues at that meeting. Was an online meeting. That was her response to people saying, "We've resigned because your husband won't show us the books." So, what needs to be looked at is not the criminality. And I know John Sweeney and others and Alan Smith on the telly last night. That's their stock line. The criminality has been looked at. Yes, it has. But the party now looks needs to look at how that was allowed to happen.

[00:04:06]why uh genuine concerns were shut down and and the thing is they weren't just shut down they were deep they were shut down in a deeply unpleasant atmosphere.

[00:04:16]I mean, when I resigned from the National Executive Committee, I wrote to Kirsten Oswald, who was the convenor of the National Executive Committee and I explained I was resigning because of the way that business was conducted. And I said to her, I've sat on many boards and governing bodies over the years and I've never experienced business being conducted in such a menacing atmosphere.

[00:04:38]And I use the word menacing advisedly [clears throat] because basically anyone who asked awkward questions about the party's internal governance was demonized as a traitor, a threat to the leadership uh and called all sorts of names and it you know people were encouraged to be very critical of us not just at the NEC but in the newspapers a lot of briefing against us and on social media.

[00:05:08]And the same for the treasurer Douglas Chapman who resigned. You know, when he resigned because he said he couldn't get access to the books. Um, as I said to Kirsten in my letter, the social media dogs were set upon him in a way I became very familiar with uh while I was involved in the SNP's national executive committee.

[00:05:27]>> So these this why I'm pushing for an inquiry because the SNP are the party of government. They are responsible for running the country and controlling a huge budget, taking in money, spending on public services, giving it out to Quangos and other bodies.

[00:05:46]And some of the people who were involved in shutting down scrutiny within the party are now members of the Scottish Parliament. At least one of them, Kirsten Oswald, is a member of the government. She was the convenor of the NEC. And as others such as Roger Mullen have explained in the last week, she was a leadership lackey who was there to shut down questioning and I do not think she's an appropriate person to be a member of the government.

[00:06:10]>> I mean we're recording this on Thursday and you might have seen first minister's questions or at least heard some of the lines from it and John Swinny was again kind of rejecting those calls for a parliamentary inquiry and his position is basically that there's been a police inquiry. It found criminality in the case of Peter Mororrow. the S&P is the victim and that's all there is to it.

[00:06:28]And I'm obviously paraphrasing a bit there, but that's kind of what my position is.

[00:06:31]>> Yeah, I saw that. I mean, it it's insulting to people's intelligence to pretend that for the first minister to pretend that he doesn't understand the difference between the issue of Peter Mur's criminality and the internal governance of the party. And you know, this is one of the reasons why I'm no longer a member of the SNP is that sort of level of dishonesty and treating people like they're idiots.

[00:06:58]You know, we're not idiots. And the SNP is not the only victim of this crime.

[00:07:03]The real victims of this crime are the ordinary people who gave money to the party and some of them were not even party members in the belief that the party was going to spend it on furthering the cause of independence not feathering the nest that Peter Merl shared with Nicholas Sturgeon which is what a lot of the money seems to have been spent on. Now these people are the victims of the crime and it's those people that who are [clears throat] owed an explanation. And then there's also the question of whether any public money, taxpayers money got caught up in Peter Murl's activities um or indeed in the general financial mismanagement because the S&P received short money and also received a grant from the electoral commission. Um, now I can't be certain what happened to that money, but I think in a situation where there has been such significant criminality and where there's clearly been a failure of internal governance, it's perfectly reasonable to be asking some questions about whether that whether or not that money was properly managed.

[00:08:07]So that's why I would look at like to see an inquiry. And I'm not suggesting a public inquiry because I know from my own experience now that I'm back in practice, these could be quite long drawn out things. I think what is needed here is is either a parliamentary inquiry and I would like to see that at Hollywood, not at Westminster, but if Hollywood doesn't get its act together and hold one. It's possible that Westminster, the Scottish Affairs Committee would hold hold one. And um you know, I don't really like the optics of that. I'd like to see Hollywood have to carry out that function. But the other alternative alternative would be to appoint somebody independent. You know, for example, an independent CC.

[00:08:45]And I stress I'm not suggesting myself because a I'm not independent and b I would be a witness. But you know, one of my colleagues, an independent experienced lawyer may be advised by a forensic accountant to carry out an inquiry. But I would like to see a parliamentary inquiry so people can be put on oath and asked questions about why they didn't respond to the concerns that were being expressed by their colleagues.

[00:09:12]You know, because where I'm coming from in all of this is I had a perfectly good career before I went into politics.

[00:09:20]I put myself forward for election as an MP because I became very caught up in the optimism around the independence referendum at least on the yes side and my belief that Scotland could be a better country and uh I have a long history of association with the SNP as uh did my father and so it's been in my blood since I was a childhood and I do care about the party and I felt that the party was not fairing well under Nicholas Sturgeon's leader leadership. I felt that she was missing multiple opportunities to advance the cause of independence and that she was a very performative politician who governed by announcement but didn't really know how to strategically deliver policy or a strategy that could advance the cause of independence.

[00:10:08]And I really believe that she's been guilty of failing to advance that cause of independence notwithstanding the opportunities that the Brexit process presented. And that's partly what I I've written my book, Keeping the Dream Alive, about. But now we know that at the same time that she was missing all these opportunities.

[00:10:25]It seems that Merl was stealing the money that people had given the party to advance those opportunities.

[00:10:33]And how he was able to do that is something I would like to see an inquiry into. His what kind of sentence he gets, whatever, that's for the judge. But the internal governance of the SNP matters to me. I would like to be able to rejoin the party at some point in the future, but I'm quite happy to be outside the tent just now because I I left the party because I was ashamed of what the SNP had become. And you know, this stushi surrounding Merl's guilty plea has completely overshadowed the vote on independence on Tuesday.

[00:11:07]And the level of cynicism that the leadership of the SNP, the current leadership are guilty of, I think is quite breathtaking because I believe that vote was an utterly performative thing. I think they must have hoped that somehow it would be a dead cat to put on the table to distract from the moral story. That obviously hasn't worked. You know, where's the strategy to take the fact there's been yet another vote in favor of independence in the Scottish Parliament forward? What's John Swinny going to do? I mean, Kier Starmer's already said no to another indie ref.

[00:11:41]John Swinny says they're going to have talks about it. You know, you don't have to be a rocket scientist or have a crystal ball to know that Kirst Star is going to say no again. What's John Swinny going to do? Um, you know, what's his plan? I don't believe he has a plan.

[00:11:55]And you know, I think John Sweeny's main function in life was to try and pull the party back together as leader and to get a big brush and dustpan and sweep as much of the scandals of the last few years under the carpet as possible. But I don't actually think the SNP will advance, govern well, or deliver independence until it addresses the scandals of the last few years, faces up to them, um puts matters in order, and then moves on. And I don't think that will happen under John Swinny because he is too much associated with the sturgeon era.

[00:12:32]>> Yeah. So you don't think John Sweeney is the man who will deliver independence then?

[00:12:36]>> No.

[00:12:37]>> No. And can I just ask were you sort of surprised or shocked when you shot when you saw the sheer scale of Merl's spending? I mean some of it was just astonishing as well as being quite bizarre. You know, there's obviously the the motor home, the two cars, the luxury goods, the cosmetics, but there's also stuff like, you know, chopsticks and eye wateringly expensive pens. Pens I didn't even know could even be that expensive.

[00:13:02]>> Me, too. Yeah, I didn't know that. I mean, um, well, I mean, it seems to me he's just been using the SNP credit card to buy whatever he fancies from mundane everyday items like laundry baskets to, you know, luxury cars and a luxury a luxury motor home. Uh, I mean, it's quite extraordinary. Um, and I don't buy the excuse that uh Nicholas Sturgeon just assumed that he because they had a big income, he was able to afford all of these things. You know, you have to be pretty loaded to be able to buy a car that's worth £87,000 or a motor home that's worth £124,000.

[00:13:46]Even if you're on say hundred grand a year, you can't really afford that sort of thing.

[00:13:51]So, I'm I I don't buy that explanation.

[00:13:56]And I don't I I think the best thing that can be said is that Nicola has shown a remarkable lack of curiosity about the high-end items that were coming into her household.

[00:14:09]But on the other hand, I'm not really interested so much in that. I'm more interested in the fact that she and others deliberately frustrated any proper financial scrutiny within the party. I don't think they did that because they knew Peter Merl was stealing money, but I think they did that because they knew that Peter Merl had played fast and loose with that independence referendum fund and it had been basically spent on the snap election in 2017 and other general party matters rather than being kept for a second independence referendum. And you know, it does rather beg the question, did these people really think there was going to be a second independence referendum if they were so relaxed about the money that had been raised for it being spent on other things?

[00:14:55]>> Yeah, I I should say just for the sake of the podcast that Nicholas Surgeon has released a number of statements through her lawyer, Amaranoir, denying all knowledge many of Peter Mororrow's criminality. Um, but I I wanted to ask if no inquiry is held and it seems like there's a possibility that it wouldn't happen in Hollywood. It might not even happen in Westminster. Is there any other routes to pursue to get some of the answers to the questions that you are raising here about governance within the party and why >> questions were shut down?

[00:15:24]>> Well, unless the party itself's got an appetite to look at that, which I don't think it does under the current leadership, I suspect nothing will happen from the SNP.

[00:15:34]um you know the membership could push for something but you know the membership's been pretty hollowed out over the last six or seven years and a lot of the kind of people who would have had the gumption to kick up a fuss about this have left um you know people have been asking me this week you know various people have texted me and asked do you think I could demand my donations back um and uh I think that would probably be quite a tricky process um without an independent inquiry, I wouldn't have any confidence that the truth would would would get to the bottom of it. No. Uh I don't see how we would do that.

[00:16:17]>> I mean, the other aspect I was interested in is do you think there's any questions for Johnson Carmichael? I mean, they were the auditors of the S&P throughout the throughout this period. I know they resigned in 2023.

[00:16:27]um they kind of released a statement around that time that didn't really go into details around that. Um but they I mean they were auditing the accounts. Do you think there's questions that they need to answer here?

[00:16:36]>> I wouldn't like to comment on that because I don't have enough information.

[00:16:39]I mean the police did say that Marl had been quite devious and had uh covered his tracks with false invoices and the like. Um and you know the auditors have a limited function. Uh what I really my real concern is that if the books had been properly opened and properly scrutinized by the finance and audit committee, what Merl was up to might have come to light a lot sooner.

[00:17:07]And you know, it's hard to describe the culture of the party under Sturgeon's leadership.

[00:17:15]No, no disagreement was brooked. Anyone who asked difficult questions or just wanted to explore issues was treated as though they were a threat to the leadership, a traitor to the party, etc., etc. And you know, interestingly, there was a very high correlation between people who were asking questions about the missing money and people who were asking questions about the independent strategy and the wisdom of putting so much emphasis on the policy of selfidentification.

[00:17:44]we were more or less the same group of people and you know we were very very marginalized and you know when I went up to that press conference on Monday to speak to the press before John Swinny did somebody pointed out that I seemed quite emotional and I hadn't planned to be emotional I just was emotional and I know that several of my former colleagues who um were on the NEC and the finance and audit committee have been very emotional this week cuz we were treated appallingly. We were really really marginalized within the party, called all sorts of names.

[00:18:25]Some of us found that we became quite unwell as a result of our treatment.

[00:18:30]And it's a vindication to see Marl plead guilty.

[00:18:36]But there are a lot of other questions to be answered independently of Marl's guilty plea and Marl's admission of criminality.

[00:18:45]>> Yeah. I wanted to ask as well, I mean, you've recently published your own memoir, Keeping the Dream Alive, which recounts your experiences within the SNP and your um let's just call it difficult relationship with uh with Nicholas Sturgeon. Um I mean, you write about an explosive row with Nicholas Sturgeon when you faced bullying allegations which you were later cleared of. And in response to some of the claims in your book, a spokesperson for Nicholas Dersian described you as a deeply bitter individual and your book as a work of fiction. Um, did you get any sense of how your book was received within the wider SNP?

[00:19:17]>> I know there's been quite a debate about it. I've been invited by some SNP branches to come and speak about the book. Other people think I'm a terrible traitor to the party. Um, I'm not a bitter individual. I'm very lucky that when I lost my seat as an MP, I had a good job to fall back on and a a very loving partner and family. And uh really it's been a relief for me to be out of SNP politics. I'm happier now than I was in the last few years as a SNP MP. Um the person who said the book was a work of fiction said that before the book had been published. So, I'm not quite sure how she and I think it was if she had been able to to read it, but it's certainly not a book of fiction, and I've gone to the trouble of vouching my sources and putting proper footnotes in the book, as you might expect from a lawyer. But there's a big chunk of the book missing, and that's the story of what happened internally in relation to the finances because I had to take that out for legal reasons because Peter Merl's uh Peter Merl's trial hadn't happened and he hadn't plead guilty yet. And you know, my publishers and I were really hope I always thought he would plead guilty. I thought the party will not want a trial and it will not want evidence about what's been going on in open court and he'll be lent on to plead guilty, but I didn't think it would take quite so long. So, um, my publishers are keen for me to put all that stuff back and probably a bit more into the paperback edition of the book. And I think the book will be more rounded when I do that because at the moment there's something rather to me there's something rather obviously missing because this is a big story a big part of the story of what was going on behind the scenes in the SNP over the last six or seven years is what happened with the finances of the party and as I say I just wasn't able to hardly mention that in the book.

[00:21:00]Um, you know, I wrote my book because I wanted to try and explain I wanted to tell people what had gone on from as an insider story of what was going on behind the scenes in the last 12 years. And I wanted to explain and set out for people why despite all the opportunities all the elections the SNP won uh all the opportunities of the Brexit years the popularity of Nicola and the party during the co years uh the election of Boris Johnson as prime minister the madness of the Liz trust regime despite all those opportunities the party wasn't able to take advantage of them to advance the cause of independence and and I wanted to explain explain why that was. I wanted to explain where the energies of the people who should have been moving the cause of independence forward were engaged and they were engaged in destroying the reputation of Alex Salammon.

[00:21:56]Uh absolute Stalinist attitude towards management of the party and an obsession with identity politics. I wanted to explain that in my book and of course I wasn't able to talk much about the finances but as I said I will in the next edition of the book. So um you know Nicholas Sturgeon has a habit of playing the woman and not the ball and her spokesperson uh did that in relation to my book and it's really just a very handy way for Nicola to avoid addressing any of the substantive issues that I raise in the book. And you know I'm a lawyer to trade. I've been very careful to vouch my sources. I've told the truth in that book and it's not a very pretty truth, but it's true. And you know, one of the things I I I've set out is the evidence that suggests that there was um a conspiracy to remove Alex Sammon from public life. And Peter Merl was at the heart of that. And now that we know that he's a dishonest liar, I would like to see people look more seriously at his role in relation to what happened to Alex Salmon and um that WhatsApp group which we all know about now and his role in in pursuing Alec to his grave actually. I have no doubt that the stress of what happened contributed to Alex's early death. um I saw his health deteriorate and um I don't think people should be allowed to use the law in the way that I believe was done to get rid of their political enemies. We can't have that happening in Scotland. Whether you're a nationalist or a unionist, we cannot have that level of corruption in Scottish public life.

[00:23:43]And I believe that there is evidence of dirty dealing and there is a motive for dirty dealing. Everyone thought Alex Sammon was going to try and make a comeback in 2017 after we lost all those seats. The S&P lost all those seats in the general election. If Alex Amon had made a comeback, Peter Moral's criminality probably would have been uncovered much earlier and a lot of people who relied on Nicola and Peter for their well- paid jobs would have been out in their ear. So, there was plenty of motive to take Alec out as a potential competitor to Nicola. And I would like to see that evidence taken seriously. You know, those of us who said there was a problem with the party's finances were treated like we were cranks or tinfoil hack conspiracy theorists, we've been proven right about that. And um I'd like to see those of us who have raised legitimate concerns about what happened to Alex Salmon. I would like to see that respected and now looked at properly by the authorities.

[00:24:39]>> And I was sort of fascinated by that. Um it's it's just a small section of the book, so I don't want to make too much of it, but you just mentioned in passing that Alex Sam had believed that someone within S&P HQ had hired a private detective um to kind of follow him. Was that was that just a suspicion he had or was there actually I mean what made him think that?

[00:24:59]I have to be very careful uh what I say about this because I don't have a huge amount of information, but Alec believed that he had information to suggest that.

[00:25:10]He also thought his council, Gordon Jackson Casey, had been followed by a private detective during his trial. And he warned me that he thought they might have a private detective keeping an eye on me to see if there was anything in my life that could be used to smear me. And uh there wasn't really but at the time I was anti on anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medication because of the stress I was experiencing in the party and my office manager Fraser my chief of staff advised me not to put the boxes from my medication in the recycling to give them to him. I used to give them to him once a month and he disposed of them at his house. And you know, again, that sounds rather fanciful, but now we know that SNP staffers spied on SNP MSPs at Hollywood.

[00:25:57]I can't understand why that hasn't been taken more seriously. The fact that unelected staffers were spying on elected parliamentarians.

[00:26:07]No doubt, as I understand, to intimidate women who had gender critical views.

[00:26:11]It's a massive scandal. This is kind of Watergate type stuff. Why isn't it being taken more seriously?

[00:26:20]You know, we just can't have this kind of corruption in our public life in Scotland. The Parliament must take it seriously and do something about it, you know, and the Greens need to not just be the SNP's pathies to cover all this up.

[00:26:35]Well, just finally, because I know we've taken quite a lot of your time, but I mean, you've already mentioned independence and the concerns you had within the party about the way it was pursuing or or not really pursuing the independence cause. We've obviously this week, as you touched on earlier, had John Swinny calling on Westminster to grant a section 30 order. Downing Street saying no. We've been through all this before. It feels like we're just going around in circles. Uh John Swinny was kind of implying previously that he had some kind of secret plan or that you know no one could really know what he was going to do next. Do you have any faith that there's anything going on behind the scenes or this is all just a load of nonsense?

[00:27:11]>> Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Nicola, lots of people thought Nicola had a secret plan for years and that turned out not to be the case. Um and I don't think John Swinny has a secret plan. In fairness to John Swinny, he's inherited a bit of a difficult situation because I think Nicholas Sturgeon really uh um reversed the independent strategy up a blind alley and but he certainly hasn't handled it very well. You know, he perd SNP getting an outright majority when it was obvious they weren't going to do so.

[00:27:42]And now he's trying to pretend he didn't say that at all and follow um follow another course. But there's really no substitute for doing the hard work that's needed to convince more people to support independence. The country split down the middle. The SNP are getting a, you know, they don't get that 50% vote of all of us who support independence any longer. You know, they probably get about a third of support, maybe a wee bit more when there's an election on because they're the only option really for people to vote for.

[00:28:13]Um, and so they, you know, they need to do some serious work on answering the questions that troubled people at the last independence referendum. And one of the things I write about in my book is the efforts I made and others made, not just me, other people made behind the scenes to try and get the party to look at these issues and the resistance with which we were met. And I think what's happened to the SNP is part of the wider malaise in in British politics that the party is now largely stuffed full of professional politicians both elected and staffers whose main aim in life is to win elections so they can remain in power, remain with their comfortable salaries and a guaranteed job. and they're not really terribly interested in how they deliver their aims or terribly interested in policy development. And I think you we've seen the same happen with the Labor Party at Westminster. They've won an election.

[00:29:09]They don't really seem to know what to do with the power that they've got. And so I'm very critical of the SNP because I was part of it. I feel a responsibility to be honest about what happened and also I would like to see it reform itself. Um, but I do think what's happened to the S&P is part of a a wider a wider malaise.