Nicola Sturgeon: SNP has shown 'complete transparency' over Cambridge Analytica talks

Nicola Sturgeon has insisted the SNP has shown “complete transparency” over its dealings with Cambridge Analytica as she and her husband refused to disclose further details of their talks.

The First Minister said her party had ended discussions with the firm at the centre of the data harvesting scandal after deciding they were a “bunch of shysters”.

But her claims of transparency were undermined by her refusal to name the year the meeting took place or identify the consultant who met the company on behalf of the SNP.

Her stonewalling came as Labour’s Neil Findlay wrote to Peter Murrell, her husband, asking a series of questions about the talks including the political campaign they related to.

Mr Findlay also urged Mr Murrell, who is the SNP’s chief executive, to publish all documents relating to the party’s links with Cambridge Analytica.

Ms Sturgeon broke her silence the day after the firm’s former director of program development told a Commons select committee that it held talks with the Nationalists at its Mayfair headquarters and in Edinburgh.

Brittany Kaiser said she had not personally attended the talks, which she said involved pitches for work, but she had emails that could disclose who from the SNP had been present.  

The Nationalists said an external consultant had held only one meeting in London and the discussions were not taken further, but they refused to disclose the nature of the work Cambridge Analytica was pitching for.

The data firm, which worked on President Donald Trump's election campaign, has been accused of harvesting up to 50 million Facebook profiles without permission.

Alexander Nix, the former chief executive, was also filmed by undercover reporters boasting of using dirty tricks to influence elections, including manufacturing sex scandals.

Pressed by the Herald about the SNP’s dealings with the firm, the First Minister said: “There’s complete transparency. There was a meeting.

“We decided they were a bunch of shysters, unlike other people who didn’t and decided to work with them, and there was no further contact.”

But Jackson Carlaw, the Scottish Tories’ deputy leader, said: “The pressure is mounting on the SNP to provide more information, and no amount of question dodging is going to get them out of this situation.”

An SNP spokesman said the party had “never worked with” Cambridge Analytica and challenged Labour and the Tories to “come clean” about whether they had.