Tory Aberdeen South by-election candidate Douglas Lumsden “could not be bothered” to press Energy Secretary Ed Miliband on the North Sea oil and gas sector, the SNP has claimed.
Richard Thomson, the SNP candidate for the seat, hit out at Mr Lumsden, claiming he had failed to raise concerns about the industry with the UK Government.
It comes despite reports revealing the Tory MSP had submitted almost 1,000 Freedom of Information (FoI) queries in January last year.
The 987 questions said to have been submitted by the Conservative include demands concerning the number of sauce, salt and pepper sachets at Holyrood, as well as the number of straws procured by the Scottish Government over the previous 10 years.
An FoI request was sent to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero which set out to determine the Tory’s level of correspondence regarding the oil and gas sector over the past year.
The response said a search across both ministers and senior civil servants in the UK Government department had “found no documents that fall within the scope of your request”.
That is despite Tories seeking to use Thursday’s by-election as a referendum on the future of the oil and gas sector – much of which is based in Aberdeen.
Hitting out at his Tory rival, Mr Thomson said: “Douglas Lumsden had time to raise thousands of questions about tomato sauce sachets, but couldn’t be bothered to raise our oil and gas sector even once.”
The SNP candidate continued: “The Tories destroyed 70,000 oil and gas jobs and 1,000 jobs are still being destroyed every single month thanks to their tax on Scotland’s energy – Douglas Lumsden should apologise for the Tories’ 14 years in power and for blasting £185,000 on AI questions when he should have been defending our industry.”
A Scottish Conservative spokesman said: “This is increasingly desperate stuff from the SNP.
“Their candidate spent more time obsessing about independence than standing up for oil and gas workers when he was an MP previously.
“By sharp contrast, Douglas Lumsden has asked SNP ministers on nearly 20 occasions to publish their energy strategy and has relentlessly stood up for the industry at Holyrood over the last five years.
“Having worked in oil and gas for 25 years, he gets it and will champion their interests every day at Westminster.
“The only way to ensure Aberdeen South has an MP who backs getting Britain drilling again is to unite behind the Scottish Conservatives in Thursday’s by-election.”