The report, published today, acknowledges that the former Holyrood Labour leader had been wrongly advised by the Standards Committee clerks not to register the donations, before receiving contrary advice from the Scottish parliamentary Standards Commissioner.  However, it states that Alexander had only sought this advice after the 30-day deadline of receiving the donations. 

The donations complaint, made by an SNP researcher, was lodged following the Paisley North MSP’s failure to register ten donations over the £520 limit to her leadership campaign last year within the required timescale in her parliamentary Register of Interests.

This comes after the cross-party Standards Committee last month ruled that Alexander had broken parliamentary rules by neglecting to register the donations on time and voted by a majority of one to impose a one-day ban from Parliament on the former leader on the first Wednesday of the next parliamentary session in September – a decision yet to be ratified by MSPs in Parliament after summer recess.  The committee’s vote, split along party lines, was branded politically motivated by Labour. 

Labour has now slammed the committee’s report as biased.  Duncan McNeil MSP, chair of the Labour group in the Scottish Parliament said: “This is a highly flawed report.  It flies in the face of the Parliament’s own lawyers and it is clear the decision reached by the committee was politically motivated.

“Not just the Labour group, but other MSPs are concerned about the manner in which the process of the committee has been politicised by the SNP.”

A spokesman for Alexander said: “It is a ridiculous situation. The Standards Commissioner says the code had been breached yet the committee says Ms Alexander could not be held responsible for the uncertainty in the law.

“She sought and received unambiguous written advice from the Parliament’s clerks based in turn on written advice from the Parliament's lawyers, yet the committee decided to punished her for following that very advice. The Parliament’s lawyers have since told the committee they would offer the same advice again.”

McNeil added:  “The complaint that led to this report  was lodged by a member of the SNP. He had a political agenda and the SNP adopted a blatant partisan approach on the committee to sanction Ms Alexander.

“This report also has profound implications for all members of the Parliament and the Standards Committee’s decision has still to be ratified by the Parliament.”

The committee’s report sets out the details of the complaint made against Alexander, the procedure undertaken by the committee to consider these complaints plus its conclusions and recommendations.