Leadership candidates respond to high-profile SNP resignations
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Candidates vying to be the next First Minister have responded to SNP media chief Murray Foote's resignation over the party's membership.
Ash Regan, Humza Yousaf and Kate Forbes are at the Inverness Courier Leadership Debate in the Highland capital this evening.
SNP membership has fallen to 72,186 from 104,000 two years ago.
The party had previously denied a fall in membership of 30,000.
Mr Foote tweeted this evening: "Acting in good faith and as a courtesy to colleagues at party HQ, I issued agreed party responses to media inquiries regarding membership.
"It has subsequently become apparent there are serious issues with these responses.
"Consequently, I concluded this created a serious impediment to my role and I resigned my position with the SNP group at Holyrood."
Also resigning today was senior aide Liz Lloyd, who was First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's chief of staff. She has gone after it emerged she was helping Mr Yousaf's leadership campaign.
Ms Lloyd tweeted today: "As Nicola Sturgeon’s chief of staff and strategic adviser over the last eight years it has always been my intention to leave government when she does.
"It has been the biggest honour of my life to work with the First Minister and to have had a unique opportunity to serve the people of Scotland."
Mr Yousaf said: "First and foremost I want to pay tribute to Murray Foote.
"You mentioned Murray Foote and he has done an excellent job for all of us and many members of the SNP.
"I am very sad to see him go.
"And to be frank this is why, one of the internal things which is not necessarily of interest to people that are not part of the SNP, this is why our headquarters needs reformed and I have been saying that since day one.
"It needs to connect better with our branches, it needs to work better as a structure.
"And I am afraid this issue around the membership data, which I believe should have been released at the very beginning of this contest, is symptomatic of some of the problems that HQ sometimes finds itself in."
Ms Regan said: "It did chime very much with anecdotal information that I've received, I've had a lot of people writing to me over the last couple of months telling me that they are thinking of leaving the party for a couple of reasons.
"The main ones are lack of progress on independence, I think many people think we have been pursuing a strategy that hasn't been working, we haven't been making the case for independence strongly enough."
A spokesperson for the SNP said: "Murray has been an outstanding head of press for the Holyrood Group and we thank him for his service.
"He has acted entirely in good faith throughout.
"The Party was asked a specific question about loss of members as a direct result of the GRR [Gender Recognition Reform] Bill and Indyref2. The answer given was intended to make clear that these two reasons had not been the cause of significant numbers of members leaving.
"The membership figure is normally produced annually and is not produced in response to individual media queries, including in this instance.
"In retrospect, however, we should not have relied on an understanding of people's reasons for leaving as the basis of the information given to Murray and, thereafter, the media.
"A new, modernised membership system is currently being developed for the party."
