Nicola Sturgeon can be proud of “changing the lives of people in Scotland for the better”, Scotland’s First Minister has said after she announced she will stand down at the next Holyrood election.

Conservative former minister Sir John Whittingdale, who raised the case in the Commons, said the couple should be ‘thanked rather than punished’.

Michael Steele was jailed for life in 1998 for the gangland murders of Tony Tucker, Pat Tate and Craig Rolfe, which he denied.