SNP suspends councillor who voted for rapist taxi driver to keep licence

Chris Birt, a Highland councillor, has been suspended by the SNP after he voted to allow a taxi driver convicted of rape to keep his operator’s licence.

Birt was one of six male councillors who voted to take no action against David Brown, 50, who was sentenced to six years and nine months in prison earlier this year for attacking a female passenger.

Four of those councillors – Willie Mackay, Sean Kennedy, Duncan Macpherson and John Grafton – have since quit the licensing committee.

Mackay, an independent, has resigned as a councillor entirely.

The Lib Dem bloc on the council has already suspended Grafton from their group. Kennedy, also an independent, has quit the Independents group.

Birt was asked by the SNP’s leader on the council, Raymond Bremner, to resign from the committee. Bremner later confirmed Birt had been suspended from the group.

The sixth councillor is Conservative Ruraidh Stewart. A spokesperson for the party said it did not support the decision taken by the licensing committee but made no comment on Stewart’s position.

The four female councillors on the committee voted to remove Brown’s operator’s licence.

His taxi driver’s licence was suspended in January 2024 after details of the attack emerged, but the committee was asked to consider his operator’s licence shortly after he was sentenced in May.

Its decision will be reviewed by the whole council shortly.

Brown picked up his 18-year-old victim in Inverness in December 2023, sexually assaulted her in a layby between Strathpeffer and Dingwall, and then left her in sub-zero temperatures in Dingwall.