Craig Hoy: “The damning results in this survey show that SNP ministers have lost control of their ever-growing army of civil…”

The bank must not become another SNP vanity project where taxpayers are left to foot the bill for failure while ministers dodge responsibility.

John Swinney and his ministerial colleagues need to accept their approach is going to mean more pain for Scots in the coming years, through more tax rises or spending cuts or both.

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.

John Swinney was clearly ignoring the warnings from business leaders and economists that continually hiking taxes kills growth.