SCOTTISH Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie has rejected the notion his party fielding candidates in the General Election snatches away votes from the SNP.

In a BBC interview, Harvie was asked whether he felt any “responsibility” for potentially splitting the Scottish independence vote when Green candidates run in Westminster seats, many of which look set to be tight in the forthcoming poll.

It was highlighted to him that some believe Green votes could be the difference between an SNP candidate winning and a Unionist candidate taking the spoils.

But he said he did not agree with the concept, as he hit out at people feeling “bullied” into supporting bigger parties because of the Westminster system.

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He said in the Podlitical interview: “Firstly, I don’t accept the premise [that Green candidates take votes from SNP].

“It rests on the idea people’s votes belong to one party or another and they don’t. People’s votes belong to the voters and it’s for each party to set out a stall on why people should positively vote for us.

“I know that the UK election system [is] hugely undemocratic and many people feel almost bullied into voting for one of the bigger parties despite what their true beliefs are.

“We take the view that the only wasted vote is a vote for something you don’t really believe in. So if you want to vote for not only independence but a progressive vision on Scotland as a peace builder, challenging ideas like membership of Nato with its first-strike nuclear policy, challenging the ideas about the current balance of the energy system […], it’s Greens who have made the impact on that.”

In December SNP Elgin councillor Jeremie Fernandes branded the Greens’ decision to run for the Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey seat as “incomprehensible”, suggesting it would only help the Tories.

Councillor Draeyke van der Horn will be the party’s candidate in the area, after becoming the first Scottish Green to win a seat on Moray Council in 2022.

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'Disappointment over GRR'

Elsewhere in the interview, Harvie spoke about his frustration around a “deeply toxic reaction against equality” as the Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) Bill passed through the Scottish Parliament before being blocked by the UK Government.

He said there was a “deep sense of disappointment” with so many politicians turning against the legislation in Scotland when at one stage, all the main parties were behind it.

Harvie went on: “In the run-up to 2016 election I was on a platform at a hustings debate where all five parties in Parliament sent their leaders and all five party leaders spoke up in favour this legislation and since then we’ve seen the growth of a deeply toxic reaction against equality and I’ve been subjected to that and many others have been subjected to that abuse online and offline in a way that I genuinely would not have believed possible back in the days when we were repealing Section 28.

“Difficult and homophobic though that period was, even at that point I felt like that was the death rattle of that kind of prejudice.

“Now thanks to deliberate choices by some in politics and some in the media to rekindle that type of prejudice, we’re in the same kind of moral panic mostly focused against transgender people and it’s deeply dispiriting to see that happen.”

Harvie spoke out last month against the Scottish Government having approached millionaire tycoon Brian Souter to help organise a dinner with business leaders in Edinburgh.

Souter funded a private campaign in 2000 opposing plans by the then Labour administration in Edinburgh to scrap Section 28 - a Thatcher-era law that prevented councils from "promoting homosexuality" in schools.