Tories demand Yes Scotland apology over hacking claims

It has emerged that an investigation had found no criminality linked to official Yes Scotland e-mail accounts. Picture: PA

THE Conservatives have demanded an apology from Yes Scotland after it emerged that a police investigation into allegations of hacking at the pro-independence headquarters found no evidence that the Yes Scotland e-mail system had been hacked.

Deputy Tory leader Jackson Carlaw said the Yes campaign should say sorry to the police after it emerged that an investigation had found no criminality linked to official Yes Scotland e-mail accounts.

Carlaw’s intervention triggered a furious response from Yes Scotland, which pointed out that police are still making inquiries into the illegal hacking of a personal e-mail account of a senior member of the Yes Scotland team.

The row erupted over a police investigation which began in August when the Yes Scotland leader Blair Jenkins described the alleged hacking as a serious assault on democracy. The hacking allegations coincided with revelations that constitutional expert Dr Elliot Bulmer had been paid by Yes Scotland for an article supporting a written constitution for an independent Scotland, which appeared in a Glasgow-based newspaper.

Yesterday it emerged that Police Scotland had concluded that no criminality linked to a Yes Scotland e-mail account had been established.

Inquiries are continuing into the unauthorised access to a private e-mail account, where communications with Yes Scotland were “illegally accessed”.

Carlaw said: “Given the tantrums from the Yes campaign at the time over this, they really owe police an apology.”

A Yes Scotland spokesman claimed that the response of pro-Union politicians to the hacking investigation was a “deliberate and cynical attempt to deflect attention from their own embarrassment” over revelations that the Better Together campaign has been reprimanded for sending 300,000 unsolicited texts to voters.