Scottish Secretary refuses to say if he will pay back cost of VIP football seats

The Scottish Secretary has refused to say whether he will return the cash that paid for his VIP visit to a Premier League football match.

Ian Murray and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar were treated to free hospitality at Anfield last week for the Liverpool v Bournemouth game.

The freebie, paid for by Salmon Scotland, comes amid a row over the tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of gifts given to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and his top team.

On Wednesday, the Labour leader said he would pay back £6,000 worth of donations, including the cost of six Taylor Swift tickets and a designer clothing agreement for his wife.

The cash amounts to a small percentage of his gifts though and does not include the cost of his football tickets, worth tens of thousands of pounds.

Asked by the PA news agency on Thursday whether he would pay back the cost of the Liverpool trip, the Scottish Secretary refused to answer at least three times.

Speaking after an interfaith candle lighting ceremony in Edinburgh, he said: “It’s really important for the government and the opposition to engage with sectors and engage with businesses.

“Scottish Salmon is the largest exporter of foodstuffs in the whole of the United Kingdom and being able to create those relationships is really, really important.”

He added: “This was a really important engagement to have as one of our key sectors in the economy.”

The Prime Minister has committed to overhauling hospitality rules for ministers to ensure better transparency about what is provided following the freebies backlash.

Mr Murray said that while his government had been transparent, it was right that the rules should change.

Asked if he would take such a donation again, he said: “What I would take again is the ability to be able to work with businesses and sectors, which is what we should be doing as a government, and making sure that that’s transparent and in the public record.

“As the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster laid out, the rules will change to make it even more transparent, to make sure that government ministers are registering stuff as the same way that we do as MPs, which is not the way it is at the moment.”

He said it was right for the Prime Minister to hand back some of his donations while that review is under way.

Questions about gifts intensified on Wednesday after it emerged that long-standing Labour backer Lord Waheed Alli was under investigation by Parliament’s standards watchdog over an alleged failure to register interests.

Lord Alli, a media tycoon known in political circles for years, was brought to wider public attention in recent weeks due to scrutiny of his gifts to the Prime Minister.

These included £20,000 in accommodation during the election campaign, which the PM said was to allow his son to study for his GCSEs in peace at the peer’s central London flat while the family home was surrounded by media.

The Prime Minister also accepted glasses and clothing for both himself and his wife Lady Victoria Starmer, declaring £16,000 in donations and £39,122 in gifts from the peer since October, according to the latest register of interests.

During his trip to Brussels earlier this week, Sir Keir said it was “right” for him to repay some of the gifts.

“We came in as a Government of change,” he said.

“We are now going to bring forward principles for donations because, until now, politicians have used their best individual judgment on a case-by-case basis. I think we need some principles of general application.

“So, I took the position that until the principles are in place it was right for me to make those repayments.”

He has previously defended his decision to accept hospitality in order to attend football matches, citing security concerns which prevent him from watching from the stands without a large and expensive police presence.

The Conservatives accused the Prime Minister of only being transparent when “his back’s against the wall”