Documents released under FOI reveal that Scottish parliament could have cost the taxpayer £200m less

According to the Sunday Times, documents released under freedom of information legislation have revealed that the Scottish parliament could have cost the taxpayer £200m less if it had been built under a private finance deal.

"The papers show that a select group of MSPs was secretly advised halfway through the construction process that the total cost would be £225m if they switched to another method of funding."

The proposal was rejected by members of the Scottish parliament’s corporate body in August 2001. The corporate body members who were aware of the paper were Sir David Steel, the presiding officer at the time, Des McNulty, Labour MSP and former minister, Andrew Welsh, an SNP MSP, and Robert Brown of the Liberal Democrats.

Holyrood would have cost half as much under PFI (Sunday Times, 2 January 2005)

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