SHAMED former Finance Secretary Derek Mackay claimed almost £10,000 in expenses in his final year as an MSP despite never attending Holyrood, it has emerged.
New figures from the Scottish Parliament show he billed taxpayers £9,786 for 2020/21.
He also claimed £4,406 in February and March of 2020, immediately after he resigned in a sleaze scandal, making a total of £14,192 in claims while an absentee MSP.
Most of the claims related to rents for his constituency office and an Edinburgh flat.
Mr Mackay resigned on the eve of the Scottish budget on February 6, 2020 after the Scottish Sun revealed he had been pestering a 16-year-old schoolboy on social media.
The paper reported the then 42-year-old had contacted the boy out of the blue without knowing his age the previous August, then sent him 270 messages over six months.
Mr Mackay, who came out as gay in 2013, had been tipped as a future First Minister until the scandal abruptly ended his political career.
The Renfrewshire North and West MSP was not been seen at Holyrood again, and the SNP selected a new candidate for his seat in 2021.
However Mr Mackay continued to collect his basic £64,470 salary.
He was paid an automatic grant of £11,945 for loss of ministerial office after he quit.
He also got another automatic resettlement grant of £53,725 after he ceased to be an MSP, the first £30,000 of which was tax-free.
His final expense claims emerged as the parliament revealed MSPs claimed a total of £17.3m in expenses in 2020/21, when Holyrood was largely closed because of Covid.
The parliament made greater use of remote working during the lockdowns, meaning MSPs could take part in debates and vote without being physically present.
The total, which includes staff and office costs, was up by 1.8% on the previous 12 months.
The most recent year’s data shows total expenditure was £17,288,534, an increase of more than £300,000 from the previous year.
The party leaders’ allowance increased from £36,873 to £38,778.
Expenses paid to individual members rose by 2% to £16,749,902.
The bulk of this was salaries and pensions for MSPs’ staff at £13,891,973.
Spending on stationery and postage fell by more than £30,000 to £499,854.
Travel expenses also plummeted from £353,017 to £169.218.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel