A Scottish newspaper has made a formal complaint about a politician after he spoiled an exclusive splash.

Scotland on Sunday is now awaiting news from the Scottish Executive on how the issue will be dealt with – both now and in the future.

Political editor Eddie Barnes discovered that an envelope containing personal information about hundreds of NHS workers had gone missing.

He contacted Finance Secretary John Swinney MSP for comment during the Saturday afternoon.

But by 5pm a statement had been issued to the wider media, effectively killing Eddie’s exclusive.

He said: “It’s a question of professional pride – you want to know that your exclusives will be in first.”

The paper would normally have been available in Glasgow and Edinburgh around 9pm on Saturday evening but by then internet sites had already run the story.

The paper has now written to the Scottish Executive media department in a bid to avoid a similar occurrence in future.

Eddie added: “We’ve just asked for some assurance that this would not happen again and a statement on their policy on this sort of thing.

“There’s often the point made to us to contact them reasonably early so they can deal with enquiries.

“They said they felt there was the public interest to get this information out.

“In my view, they didn’t want it to appear that this information had been forced out of them.”