In the last few months there has been plenty of time for reflection and I decided it was time to set the record straight. My 2 years serving as the MP for Ayr Carrick and Cumnock was the biggest privilege of my life and opened my eyes even more so to the wonderful bit of Scottish west coast we call home and the amazing people and communities we have live here. I am a firm believer that as an elected member you have to be open, transparent and accountable to your constituents which I feel I did to the best of my abilities on a daily basis, the one dark cloud that hungover me however was the negative smear campaign in the media both, in one local and national newspapers which in turn played i

The MP delegation to New York, I took part in, earlier this year was in representation of the SNP Westminster Group and included high-level talks with representatives from UN Women, UNDP and the UN Youth envoy, discussing work on gender and equalities, people living with disabilities and international youth engagement. I attended as the SNP Westminster Spokesperson on Disability. We were also involved in promoting Scotland’s art and music scene as well as meeting with many Scottish organisations and societies. The trip was funded by ‘short money’ and falls very much under the guidelines of what the funding should be used for. The purpose of ‘short money’ is to allow the group to fulfil the r

The gambling industry can offer false hope, often to people who are vulnerable, and I had and will always have serious concerns about the impact of betting on poverty, so I found this particular attack quite astonishing. It seems I was being criticised for raising these issues with the sector, rather than refusing to engage with them. My own family has been in the past affected by problem gambling, and that is why I, like many MPs from across the political spectrum, welcome initiatives like Gamble Aware Week. I believe the industry has a long way to go when it comes to promoting responsible gambling. Every MP and MSP with a racecourse in their constituency are sent a badge which gains free a

In November of 2015 several newspapers carried a story about Conservative MSP John Lamont complaining to the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland about money received by my company, Caledonii Resources, from Chic Brodie when he was an MSP, and implied that these funds were used to help the independence referendum campaign in 2014 and my General Election campaign in 2015 - all of which was completely false. This was a recurring issue for John Lamont, who has raised it with the press with stunning regularity since 2013. From 2012 to the start of my election campaign in 2015 I ran my own events/business support company. One of my clients was the then MSP Chic Brodie. Al

I fully understand why people are uneasy about elected representatives employing family members. The system has been seriously abused in the past, most notably in 2008 when it emerged that Tory MP Derek Conway had employed both his sons as assistants while they were full-time students, and that there was no evidence that either of them had actually undertaken any work. This revelation was the forerunner of the 2009 expenses scandal, which brought to light a whole range of expenses abuses, and is why, quite rightly, there are now strict rules and intense scrutiny around employing family members, and why there is now have an Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority that analyses all staff

Trolling and online abuse has been on the rise over the past 2 years, particularly for female MPs of all parties, and I have been no exception to this. As more and more politicians see Twitter and Facebook as being a new way to connect with voters, so the keyboard warriors have taken the opportunity to post negative, misleading and often offensive comments safe behind their twitter handle and anonymous profiles. When I was an MP, I was prepared to face criticism of my political beliefs and work, and I developed a thick skin to brush off the repeated derogatory remarks about my appearance and intelligence, but the last 10 months or so has seen this trend spill over to include members of my f