Craig Hoy: “Scots will be concerned that dozens of taxpayer-funded devices have been lost or stolen in such a short space of time.”

Scots will rightly be furious that the SNP are shelling out record sums of taxpayers’ money on an army of spin doctors to try to defend their appalling record in government.

It’s indefensible that, while John Swinney imposes soaring taxes and cuts essential services to the bone, he and his Nationalist ministers refuse to cut their own cloth accordingly.

This is a deeply worrying sign for hard-pressed Scots, who are already being clobbered by sky-high SNP taxes.

Every single Scot is over £2,700 better off because we are part of a strong United Kingdom.