Scottish National party members of the UK parliament are at risk of losing access to £1.2mn in public funding as they struggle to find a new auditor by the end of next month, the SNP’s Westminster leader admitted on Monday.
Stephen Flynn, the MP for Aberdeen South, said it was his understanding that unless the Westminster group filed its accounts by May 31, it would lose access to about £1.2mn in “short funds”, a state subsidy given to UK opposition parties.
Flynn’s admission on Monday highlighted the scale of the crisis facing Scotland’s pro-independence governing party. Later on Monday, the SNP’s new leader Humza Yousaf in his role as first minister of Scotland met with UK prime minister Rishi Sunak for the first time.
In an interview with BBC Radio Scotland, Flynn declined to repeat recent assurances by Ian Blackford, SNP MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber and his predecessor as the party’s leader at Westminster, that the group would be able to meet its accounts deadline.
Flynn, who was elected leader of the Westminster group in December, revealed on Monday that he had only discovered in February that it did not have an auditor. He said it had proven difficult to find a replacement because of the big demand for auditing services at this time of year and the SNP’s “undoubted challenges”.
As the party was rocked by a police investigation into its finances, the SNP revealed this month that its auditors Johnston Carmichael had stopped working with it around October last year.
Flynn added: “I thought it would be a relatively straightforward process to go and secure new auditors — that’s obviously proven not to be the case.” He was working to “get everything over the line”.
Former chief executive Peter Murrell and treasurer Colin Beattie were arrested and questioned as part of the probe, with the latter subsequently stepping back from that role last week. Both men were released without charge while the investigation continues.
The SNP must file its overall accounts to the Electoral Commission, an independent watchdog, by July, but the tighter deadline for its group of 45 Westminster MPs will raise further questions about the party’s ability to fund its activities.
The SNP received £1.18mn in short funds for the year 2022-23, according to the House of Common Library. Accounts filed by the SNP Westminster group for the calendar year 2021 show short funding amounted to about 60 per cent of its total income.
The SNP appointed Stuart McDonald MP as its national treasurer following the resignation of Beattie over the weekend.
Yousaf’s meeting with Sunak on Monday was the first encounter in office between the UK’s first Hindu prime minister and Scotland’s first Muslim first minister.
The two governments are at loggerheads over the UK administration’s refusal to approve a second independence referendum for Scotland. Westminster has blocked Holyrood’s gender self-identification legislation, and the two are also in dispute over Edinburgh’s plans for a bottle “deposit return” recycling scheme.
After the meeting, a spokesperson for Yousaf said that he had raised “concerns around UK government attacks on devolution” and restated the SNP government’s demand for a rematch of the 2014 referendum in which Scots backed staying in the union by 55 to 45 per cent.
UK officials said Sunak briefed Yousaf on the situation in Sudan and his government’s efforts to address the cost of living crisis during their “informal” private talks in the House of Commons.
In a veiled dig at the chaos gripping the SNP, Sunak had said it was vital for all levels of government to work together “with a relentless and focused approach”, the Westminster officials said.
additional reporting by George Parker in London
