A forensic expert at the centre of the Shirley McKie fingerprint scandal has won a Supreme Court appeal in a bid to get her old job back.

Fiona McBride, 48, was one of four fingerprint specialists who said a fingerprint left at a murder scene in 1997 belonged to former detective constable Shirley McKie.

Ms McKie, a detective at Strathclyde Police at the time, was charged with perjury after denying that the fingerprint found on a doorframe at the scene of the murder of 51-year-old Marion Ross was hers.

The perjury conviction was later quashed and it was accepted by Scottish ministers that there was a mistake, with Ms McKie receiving £750,000 in compensation.

Ms McBride lost her job as a forensic specialist at the Scottish Police Services Authority, now the SPA, in 2007 over the long-running scandal.

In 2009, two years after Ms McBride was dismissed, an Employment Tribunal ruled that she should be given her job back because she had been unfairly dismissed.

The SPSA accepted that Ms McBride was unfairly dismissed but rejected the ruling to reinstate her in her former role.

She then appealed her sacking to the Court of Session in Edinburgh. Judges ruled against her being reinstalled in her old job but said a tribunal should look again at the issue of compensation.

Ms McBride then took her case to the Supreme Court and on Wednesday three judges ruled to allow her appeal.

As a result Ms McBride, from Clydebank, is to be reinstated and is entitled to the payments due under the Employment Rights Act 1996 for the period since her dismissal until the reinstatement takes effect.

The justices remitted her case to the original employment tribunal to assess those sums.

Ms McKie was accused of leaving her fingerprint at the Kilmarnock home of murder victim Marion Ross but she challenged the findings of the fingerprint experts and was later cleared of perjury and awarded £750,000 in compensation.

In 2011, a public judicial inquiry concluded Ms McBride and her colleagues had not acted improperly in identifying the fingerprint, although it was not Ms McKie's.

After Wednesday's ruling, Ms McBride said: "I have been fighting since 2007 to get my job back and I am delighted that the UK Supreme Court has sided with me. I want to make it clear from the outset that this legal action is not, and never has been, about Shirley McKie.

"I don't know Ms McKie and I have never met her. When she lost her job I felt very sorry for her, despite the fact she received £750,000 in compensation.

"I loved working as a fingerprint examiner. I always took great care to do my job to the best of my ability. And yet I was unfairly dismissed. From the outset I was not interested in compensation for the loss of my job. I just wanted it back.

"Now, thanks to the support of my solicitors, Thorley Stephenson, and the five judges who heard my appeal, this is now possible.

"I would like to show my great appreciation to everyone who backed me through nine years of personal hell, including Ken Macintosh MSP, David Ogilvy, my family and friends. And now I am just looking forward very much to getting back to work."

Mark Thorley, of Thorley Stephenson Solicitors, said: "I have always believed in the strength of Fiona's case and I am very pleased with this outcome."

The judgment states: "There is now no challenge to the further involvement in this case of the Employment Tribunal (ET) which heard Ms McBride's claim in 2008 and issued its judgment in 2009.

"The Court was informed that Employment Judge Lucy Crone remains in office but it was not known if the lay members of the original ET are still in service.

"I therefore propose that the Court should remit the case to the original tribunal, or to a tribunal which includes the member or members of the original tribunal who are still in office, to consider variation of its order relating to the matters specified under section 114(2) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 in view of the time that has passed since its order was made.

"I also propose that counsel be invited to make submissions within 21 days about the order for expenses which this Court should make."