COMMENTS have been unearthed in which Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross expressed his frustration at supposedly having to “bend over backwards for [an] ethnic minority”.
Ross made the comments while serving as a councillor in Moray in 2013, four years before he was elected to represent the constituency at Westminster.
After his election in 2017, in which he beat the SNP’s Angus Robertson, Ross gave an interview to Core Politics in which he said he would “like to see tougher enforcement against Gypsy Travellers” if he were prime minister.
Ross said in March that he “deeply regret[s] my answer to that question and the way it was interpreted, and I said that at the time”.
He added: “It’s never something I should have answered as my top priority if I had one day as prime minister.”
However, comments newly unearthed by OpenDemocracy have suggested that Ross was engaged in what he termed a “long battle” with the Traveller community in Moray.
In comments made in 2010 while a councillor for the Lhanbryde and Fochabers ward, Ross suggested it would be “too much” for people who live near a land-fill site to also live near a Traveller community.
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Responding to a proposed Traveller site in Nether Dallachy, near Spey Bay, Ross said: “I have concerns about the ability to manage and control the site if it is in a more remote and rural area.
“I also think that given the people of Nether Dallachy already live next to the only land-fill site in Moray, to now propose a travellers site is too much – I don't think that's fair for a small community."
As well as expressing concerns about Traveller sites being too remote, Ross also chaired a committee which ruled that such halting sites would not be allowed within one kilometre of an existing settlement.
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Speaking in 2013, Ross told The Northern Scot of his frustration after a Scottish Government official granted a Traveller community a chance to stay at a settlement they had created.
He told the paper: "I have to say I am disappointed and frustrated that we seem to have to bend over backwards for this ethnic minority.”
Ross added: “These actions are not reciprocated by their actions to the planning department and the council.”
Ross’s committee’s one-kilometre ruling was labelled a form of “apartheid”, an attack the now Scottish Tory leader said was “very inappropriate and deeply insulting”.
A Scottish Conservative spokesperson told OpenDemocracy: “These historic accusations are false. They do not accurately represent Douglas Ross’s work as a councillor, his time on the local planning committee, or his views. At all times Mr Ross acted within the Councillors Code of Conduct when he chaired the cross-party planning committee.”
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