Something went wrong - please try again later.

Thank you for signing up to The Courier daily newsletter

Sign up for our daily newsletter of the top stories in Courier country

A Dundee politician was the only Scottish Labour MP to miss a major vote on the controversial “bedroom tax”, despite being in Westminster’s debating chamber just hours earlier.

Yet Jim McGovern still issued a press release condemning Conservative and Liberal Democrat politicians who voted down his party’s proposals this week.

The Dundee West politician can be seen in the House of Commons chamber at 12.18pm on Wednesday during Prime Minister’s Questions.

However, almost exactly four hours later, the official Hansard record shows he was not present for a division which could have seen the spare room subsidy scrapped.

Three hours after that, a press release was issued from Mr McGovern’s office which quoted him as “speaking on the debate”.

Labour sources were said to be “furious” at his failure to attend the afternoon session, where the attempt to scrap the spare room subsidy was defeated by a narrow margin of 298 to 266.

One London insider described it as “the final straw”.

In the emailed statement, Mr McGovern said: “The ‘bedroom tax’ is one of the most hated of the coalition Government’s policies, which is why Labour called for this vote in Parliament and is why we subsequently voted to scrap it.”

Mr McGovern has declined to comment on his reasons for not voting.

Every other Scottish Labour MP, including new leader north of the border Jim Murphy and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, was present.