THE SNP’s new chief executive Murray Foote has been tasked with getting the party’s rebuttal unit off the ground in the coming months.

We previously told how the First Minister said the unit – designed to tackle “disinformation and opposition attacks" – would be launched in the coming months.

Humza Yousaf previously said work was under way by the SNP’s digital team on the project and that he hoped it would be up and running by autumn.

Speaking at a Q&A with members at the South Scotland regional assembly on Saturday, the FM said he had been doing a “fair bit of work” on the project during the summer months.

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He praised the “particularly good digital team” working out of the party’s headquarters in Edinburgh.

On combatting disinformation regarding independence, the FM said: “If we spent all of our time rebutting every single piece of disinformation there’s nothing else we would do at this point as the government.

“So we’re going to have the vehicle whereby our membership are able to send in – we’ve seen this bit of disinformation, how do we counter it and we’ll see what we can do to counter it.

“We’ll also be quite select at those lies that end up getting wide coverage, how do we make sure that before they get a chance to spread, how do we make sure that we’re countering them with the truth and of the facts and the situation?

“So absolutely right, you’ve heard right it will be ready to go in autumn.”

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Yousaf added that Foote as chief executive will have a key role to play in the unit.

“Someone who gets the media inside out, who’s been part of the media for many, many years, he and I have had an early conversation and he agrees entirely that one of the priorities for him and headquarters is getting the rebuttal unit up and running.”