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Malcolm Offord said his comments about an Edinburgh knife incident were not racist
The leader of Reform UK in Scotland has denied fuelling racial tensions with comments he made following a stabbing in Edinburgh.
Malcom Offord has been criticised by both Scottish Labour and the Scottish Greens for linking the incident in the Calders area on Monday to a "massive insurge of immigrants".
Lord Offord said he based his comments on photographs he had seen and claimed statistics showed a rise in crime by people "from foreign lands".
He also defended joining late-night patrols in Glasgow, denying they were a vigilante group but instead claiming they were a community response to local concern about the safety of the city centre.
The most recent recorded crime figures for Scotland show a small (3%) increase, but the long-term trend has been downwards, by about 50% since the 1990s.
There are no published figures on the ethnicity or immigration status of people who commit crimes in Scotland.
Police Scotland has previously said there are no markers available on its crime recording systems to do this and they would need to search every individual crime report to see if such information has been recorded.
Lord Offord, 61, faced questions from journalists as he announced he would stand in the Greenock and Inverclyde constituency in the Scottish Parliament election in May.
He defended remarks he made about a knife incident in the Calders area of Edinburgh on Monday where two people were injured and a 23-year old man was subsequently charged with attempted murder.
Police have said it was not terrorism-related, and have warned that misinformation has been spreading online.
The morning after the incident, Lord Offord is reported to have raised it unprompted during an "in conversation" event at a conference, suggesting it was linked to a "massive insurge of immigrants and illegal immigrants".
Lord Offord told BBC News he had seen photographs and heard an account of what happened from a taxi driver who came from that area of Edinburgh.
"All I said was we've obviously had an incident here, we've got a problem with cohesion in our cities - I didn't go any further than that but I said I can see from the photographs that is the profile of the individual."
PA Media
Lord Offord was questioned by journalists at a news conference in Inverclyde
Lord Offord also defended his decision to join unofficial night patrols in Glasgow city centre, and insisted it was wrong to describe them as "vigilante patrols".
He said the participants were out on the streets "helping people who need help" citing a man who was assisted getting medical treatment after a fall.
"There's no law enforcement here, this is purely to give safety and security - a safe presence, particularly for women and girls coming out of the pubs to know that they are there," he said.
He said he had joined the patrols to see the situation for himself, and he was responding to local concern about safety and security.
Lord Offord was born in Greenock and lived there until he was 18 before leaving for London. He later set up an Edinburgh-based private equity company and became wealthy working in finance.
He was appointed to the House of Lords in 2021 by Boris Johnson but defected to Reform UK from the Conservatives in December.
There had been speculation he might run for Holyrood against Scottish Labour's deputy leader Jackie Baillie in Dumbarton, but Lord Offord said Inverclyde was the natural choice.
"This is my home town, I was born here and raised here, I lived here for 18 years of my life," he said.
"I went to my school here, my local primary school, my local secondary school. I love this community - I still love this community and I still have family here."
He also denied reports that he was opposed to faith-based schooling.
He said he had spoken of his surprise as a child when he went to a non-denominational school and his friend went to a Catholic primary, but he believed integration could be achieved without abolishing denominational schooling.
Lord Offord gave an example of the school campus shared between Port Glasgow High School and St Stephen's High School.
