NICOLA Sturgeon has addressed questions over a meeting between the SNP and Cambridge Analytica (CA), as Ruth Davidson's attempts to link the party to the data firm backfired at First Minister's Questions.

The SNP have confirmed that an external consultant travelled to London to hear a pitch from CA, but they dismissed the company as "a bunch of cowboys" and held no further meetings.

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon says Cambridge Analytica are 'a bunch of shysters'

Sturgeon was pressed on the issue by the Scottish Conservative leader at FMQs, with Davidson asking when exactly the meeting took place, where it was held, and who the consultant representing the SNP was. 

"These are very simple questions to someone who is committed to full transparency," she insisted.

But Sturgeon told her: "I am not going to name somebody who was working for the SNP as a consultant, somebody who has done nothing wrong.

"I am here to answer questions on behalf of the Scottish Government, but I'm happy to answer questions on behalf of the SNP, I'm the leader of the party, and I am not going to name somebody who has done nothing wrong who was working on behalf of the SNP in order that a witch hunt can be carried out into that person."

And during the noisy exhanges in Holyrood, the SNP leader hit back, saying it was the Conservative Party that was "mired in links to Cambridge Analytica".

The company has been under fire over the use of Facebook users' personal data in Donald Trump's race for the US presidency.

Davidson said: "Here is transparency SNP style – transparency SNP style is fling out allegations at opponents, it is fail to set out your own record, it is deny you know anything about it and then when you are caught out it is giving half answers to legitimate questions.

"When it comes to dealings that others have had with Cambridge Analytica, the First Minister and her party have spent weeks demanding full transparency.

"Yet when it comes to the SNP it took a whistleblower giving evidence in a parliamentary committee before facts even began to be dragged out into the open.

"Now I know the SNP have raised sanctimony to an art form but what stinks here is the reek of hypocrisy."

Sturgeon responded: "In terms of the SNP, let's cut to the chase and get to the nub of the matter. Yes, two years ago, before the concerns we're talking about now had come to light, somebody on behalf of the SNP had a meeting with Cambridge Analytica.

"We decided we didn't want to do any work with them, and as a result we've never hired them, we've never paid them any money, they have never done any work for the SNP and they have never done any work for the Scottish Government."

However, she said the links between Cambridge Analytica and their parent company SCL "are many and legion".

During the exchanges, the First Minister also questioned why the Scottish Tory leader had not borught up the work "the work to save BiFab, the extra money for farmers announced yesterday, and the extra money for tackling domestic abuse announced this week".

Sturgeon went on to challenge Davidson to say if any of the reported dealings between either the UK Conservative Party or the UK Government and Cambridge Analytica were untrue.

On Twitter, the Scottish Conservatives said no representative or consultant had met with CA, but that applied only to the Scottish branch of the party.

Speaking yesterday on the subject of the meeting between CA and the external consultant for the SNP, Sturgeon 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.”