Reform candidate suspended less than 24 hours after being unveiled as running for Holyrood

Stuart Niven was announced as Reform's Dundee City West candidate on Thursday afternoon, but just hours later allegations emerged about his financial conduct.

It was reported Mr Niven had been banned from acting as a company director for seven years after diverting thousands of pounds from a taxpayer-backed Covid loan into his personal account.

Mr Niven’s firm entered liquidation after he shifted taxpayer-funded loans during the Covid pandemic into his personal account.The former paratrooper previously ran Britannia Maritime Security Ltd.

Reform UK Scotland confirmed on Friday Mr Niven has been suspended pending further investigation into allegations regarding his financial conduct.

A spokesperson said: "We take allegations like this very seriously, and a full investigation is under way."

The suspension comes a day after the party's leader in Scotland, Lord Malcolm Offord, told LBC he was confident in the vetting process.

Speaking at the launch of the party's Scottish manifesto, he told LBC: "We've done a lot of vetting, fielding 73 candidates in short order is a mammoth task... I can't predict if something will pop out the woodwork.

"Right now we're happy we've done the vetting. This will be an interesting group of people who have done interesting things in the past, they are not professional politicians so by definition they're going to be interesting people."

Asked if he was getting excuses in early he added: "The point about Reform UK is we're not scripted, it's not a word salad, it's not a bunch of politicians speaking words no-one understands. They will find their own words and it will be quite different."

In December last year, Mr Niven admitted to breaching the terms of the UK Government’s Covid Bounce Back Loan scheme and after his company went into liquidation he was officially suspended from being a company director on February 10.

Two other Reform candidates have also come under fire for social media posts.

Senga Beresford, who is standing in Galloway and West Dumfries, previously endorsed convicted criminal Tommy Robinson and backed a call for Muslims to be deported. And Fife candidate Linda Holt had previously called former First Minister Humza Yousaf an "Islamist moron" and "not British".

In an interview with the BBC this morning Offord defended Beresford saying: “This was done in a former life before she was a member of Reform UK. We've all said things in the past that may be intemperate.

“I am saying that we have to grow up on this and not take offence at every moment in time.”

He also rejected calls by Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar for Beresford to be sacked as a candidate.

“I don't agree with that. I think at the end of the day, everybody has got a right to put themselves forward. And so long as they have not done anything in any criminal way, they're allowed to express their opinion.

“We're not stopping people from standing for Reform UK just because they might have said something fruity in the past."