Glasgow MSP and East Renfrewshire councillor Colm Merrick has been censured over a delay in registering paid work for an SNP MP.
The Standards Commission for Scotland ruled Merrick, who represents Glasgow Anniesland and the Giffnock and Thornliebank ward, breached the councillors’ code of conduct.
Merrick has been serving as an East Renfrewshire councillor since 2017. He was elected to represent Glasgow Anniesland in May.
A panel found he failed to record his part-time employment for a former MP Kirsten Oswald on his register of interests between August 2022 and October 2025, despite receiving remuneration for the work.
It decided an internship with former Anniesland MSP Bill Kidd was not “sufficiently significant” to require registration as a non-financial interest.
Helen Donaldson, who chaired today’s [Tuesday] hearing panel, said: “A failure to ensure a register is kept up to date as required removes the opportunity for openness and transparency in a councillors’ role.”
She added it “denies members of the public the opportunity to consider whether the councillor’s interest may be likely to influence their discussions or decision-making”.
The panel was “concerned that the respondent did not register the paid role with the MP over a prolonged period of time, despite it being his personal responsibility to ensure that this register of interests was accurate and up to date and despite receiving reminders from council officers about the need to keep it updated”.
He was censured — a formal recording of the Standards Commission’s severe disapproval — rather than given a “more severe sanction”, like suspension or disqualification, as there was “no evidence that the respondent had attempted to conceal his interest” or benefitted from failing to register it “timeously”.
Donaldson added Merrick, who did not attend the hearing, had “co-operated fully with the investigative and hearing processes and had apologised for failing to register the remunerated employment with the MP within the required timescales”.
The panel had “no reason to doubt the respondent’s failure to comply with the code was the result of a misunderstanding of the code’s requirement and was therefore unintentional”.
Complaints against elected members are investigated by the Ethical Standards Commissioner, Ian Bruce, who reports to the Standards Commission.
Bruce had received an anonymous complaint about Merrick, which was withdrawn when the commissioner “declined to grant anonymity” to the complainer. However, he decided to investigate given “the serious nature of the alleged conduct”.
He told the panel that Merrick also made a self-referral after being given an opportunity to do so by the commissioner.
All councillors are required to update their register of interests within one month of changes occurring. Bruce concluded Merrick had breached the code in relation to the part-time work and the internship, although he said it was “potentially debatable” for the internship.
He believed the councillor’s expression of “regret” for failing to declare the internship, which he had said was due to a “misunderstanding”, was a “tacit admission on the part of the respondent that his internship was one that members of the public might reasonably think could influence his actions, speeches, decision-making or voting in the council”.
However, the panel decided he did not need to register the internship as a non-financial interest as it was not considered “sufficiently significant as to be likely to influence the respondent’s decision-making at council”.
It made the decision as there was unlikely to be “any crossover between the MSP’s constituency work and the respondent’s work as a councillor”.
Members also noted the MSP had not held a ministerial role and the pair, as representatives of the same party, were likely to have a “shared political outlook”.
