THE government was accused yesterday of attempting to undermine the Scottish National Party’s efforts to win independence for Scotland.

The SNP’s leader in Westminster Stephen Flynn MP questioned the role of civil servants in investigating SNP spending on its independence campaign and has written to Cabinet Secretary Simon Case.

Mr Flynn said in his letter to the head of the Civil Service that Westminster was “exerting ever tighter control on Scotland’s national democratic institutions” and is seeking to “stop the Scottish government from carrying out the work it was elected to do” to win a second independence referendum.

He said the advocate general for Scotland, Lord Stewart, the Westminster government’s top adviser on Scottish law, was investigating Scottish government spending on independence.

He also said that the Westminster government was “clearly active in attempts to counter pro-independence arguments,” claiming that a union strategy committee, chaired by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, had been established and that there had been a “large increase in the communications budget of the Scotland Office, which has become increasingly assertive in its anti-independence stance.”

Mr Flynn said he had no argument with Whitehall initiatives supporting the Westminster government’s policy supporting the union.

“But I struggle to see why that work is deemed impartial but Scottish government work on independence is not,” he said.

“The fact that attempts are now being made not only to deny people in Scotland the right to decide their own future, but to stop the Scottish government from carrying out the work it was elected to do, will reinforce the sense that Westminster is not interested in working in partnership but is only concerned with exerting ever tighter control on Scotland’s national democratic institutions.

“Many people in Scotland now believe the UK is no longer an equal partnership because of the actions of the UK government.”

Mr Flynn said the Cabinet Secretary had indicated that civil servants in Scotland may be issued with new guidance on the issue.

Giving evidence to the House of Lords constitution committee recently, Mr Case said that having civil servants working to “break up the United Kingdom” would be “unusual and worrying.”