An attempt to justify handing £150,000 of public money to the profit-making organisers of T in the Park has been disparaged by a Perthshire politician.
Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop offered a written explanation to a Holyrood committee for the government grant to promoters DF Concerts, which was seeking funding to help meet the “close to £3 million” costs of moving the festival from Balado to Strathallan.
In the letter to the education and culture committee, Ms Hyslop said the grant was about protecting the “future viability” of an event that has large “economic, cultural and reputational benefits” for Scotland.
Strict conditions were attached to the grant that it could only be spent on venue hire and consultants’ fees, Ms Hyslop wrote.
But Scottish Conservative culture spokeswoman Liz Smith, who is a Mid Scotland and Fife MSP, said the letter “raises even more questions than it answers” and called for genuine transparency about how the money was spent.
Ms Smith said: “If it is correct that the £150,000 was used only to pay for costs relating to the venue hire and consultants’ fees then why, three months after the event, is it not possible to have a detailed breakdown of how this public money was spent in these two items?”
She questioned why the DF Concerts breakdown will only be shared on a commercially confidential basis with the Scottish Government and added: “I am sure the public will question this ongoing lack of transparency about the use of public funds.”
Ms Hyslop, who appeared before the committee earlier this month, said VisitScotland had invested £3m to support events, with those same events generating an extra estimated £82m for the Scottish economy.
She added: “As was the case with T in the Park, the one-off grant was approved to help offset some of the unanticipated additional costs incurred by the event organiser as a result of the requirement to move from the previous site at Balado and the time limited condition attached to planning consent for use of the new site.
“This served to protect the future staging of T in the Park as a multi-day, multi-stage event at Strathallan, along with the economic, cultural and reputational benefits delivered by the event for Scotland.”
A fortnight ago Geoff Ellis, the chief executive of DF Concerts, batted off suggestions of cronyism after it emerged Alex Salmond’s former special adviser Jennifer Dempsie fixed a meeting between Mr Ellis and Ms Hyslop, while Ms Dempsie was working on a contract with the T in the Park promoters.