Senior Scottish Labour MP in forged letters mystery

Catching up on last week’s Sunday Herald, as you do, I spied this story about Labour MP Adam Ingram:

Senior Scottish MP in forged letters mystery

A SENIOR Labour MP has refused to comment on a forgery row involving fake letters about him being sent to a local newspaper.

Former defence minister Adam Ingram is not responding to questions about how a 75-year-old Labour member’s name was used to defend the MP’s record in a series of letters. Councillor Michael McCann, the MP’s aide, also declined an invitation to discuss the subject on Ingram’s behalf.

Ingram,?who?represents East Kilbride, Strathaven & Lesmahagow, was criticised recently for having the largest-declared outside earnings of any Scottish MP. The long-serving politician makes up to £170,000 in consultancies and non-executive directorships on top of his £63,291 salary. The revelation was followed by two letters being published in the East Kilbride News under the name “Tony Carlin”, a former Labour councillor and party member.

One of the letters challenged the criticisms of Ingram’s outside earnings … Another letter, again from “Tony Carlin”, hit out at criticisms of the first piece of correspondence. However, the East Kilbride News has since reported that the two letters are forgeries.