FORMER Labour health minister Susan Deacon has attacked fellow MSPs in Labour and the Scottish National Party for trying to get a Scottish exemption from equality law.

She called on the Scottish Parliament yesterday to stay true to its founding principle of equality and stand up to pressure from the Catholic church for an exemption from equality legislation over gay adoption.

She spoke out angrily against the deal done between Holyrood ministers and the church hierarchy, which would have let the church turn a blind eye to a new adoption law allowing same-sex couples to adopt.

Although the Scottish Parliament voted last month not to put a legal exemption into the adoption law, preferring an informal arrangement with the church, the issue has erupted again this month because Westminster is passing equality legislation that could undermine that deal.

It would mean Catholic adoption agencies being required to place children with gay couples, and their refusal on the basis of conscience and objection to the gay lifestyle could be ruled illegal.

Ms Deacon, who is standing down from Holyrood in May and is one of the few Labour MSPs who takes a liberal stand, said MSPs seem to have forgotten the founding principle of equality with which the parliament was set up, and that the compromise would not have been attempted eight years ago.

She argued the row has been portrayed as if the Scottish Parliament is being undermined by Westminster, when instead Westminster is forcing MSPs to reconsider why they are willing to go along with continued discrimination against gay couples.