The Press Complaints Commission has thrown out a Labour MP’s complaint against a weekly newspaper over its pre-election coverage.

Newly-elected MP Michael McCann complained about the East Kilbride News, saying the paper had failed to publish his ‘final say’ on his General Election campaign and had published an earlier statement by him instead.

The newspaper said Mr McCann submitted his election address on the afternoon the paper went to press, long after the statements sent in by other candidates, and it ended up in the ‘quarantine basket’.

It lay there undiscovered until the following day when the paper had been published, but he did not accept this explanation and was unhappy the News refused to publish his final election address in a subsequent issue.

But the News did explain in the next issue what had happened to Mr McCann’s statement.

In his decision, the PCC’s William Gore concluded the remedial action by the newspaper was a sufficient response to the complaint.

He said readers could have been misled by the publication of the old statement under the headline ‘The candidates have their final say’, so the newspaper had a duty to remedy the situation, which it had sought to do with a follow-up piece.

Mr Gore said: “The complainant said this was insufficient redress and asked that the newspaper publish his intended statement. The commission did not agree this was necessary.

“The newspaper was not under an obligation to publish material from any election candidate, either before or after the election.

“The important point was to explain to readers the statement that appeared was a previous statement and that the complainant had intended for a more up-to-date piece to have been included. It was also right for the newspaper to provide an explanation of what had gone wrong with its email system.

“The published article achieved this objective and the commission did not consider that further action was necessary in response to the complaint.”