The UK government needs to “step up” and reimburse the £24.5m cost of Donald Trump and JD Vance’s recent visits to Scotland, Holyrood’s public finance minister has said.
Provisional costs of almost £24.5m for the two working visits have been published by the Scottish government.
Ivan McKee said it was “ridiculous” that the UK government had so far refused to provide funding, framing both trips as private visits, despite the fact that the US president held meetings with the EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, as well as the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, during his time in Scotland in July.
Trump visited his golfing resorts at Turnberry in Ayrshire and Menie in Aberdeenshire during a five-day trip in July, while the US vice-president, JD Vance, spent about four days in Ayrshire in August.
In a letter to James Murray, the Treasury’s chief secretary, Scotland’s finance secretary, Shona Robison, said the visit imposed “substantial operational and financial burdens on Scottish public services, particularly Police Scotland”.
The Scottish government estimates that the provisional cost of policing the presidential visit alone was £21m, reflecting peak daily deployments of more than 4,000 officers, while costs for the vice-president’s trip were about £3m.
The complex policing operation was the largest in Scotland since the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, and included local officers, national divisions, special constables and wider UK colleagues for specialist support.
Robison wrote: “Following your decision not to provide funding to Scotland for costs incurred in relation to the visit of President Donald Trump to Scotland in July 2025 and the subsequent visit of Vice-President JD Vance, I am writing to you to request that you reconsider this decision and provide full reimbursement for the cost of the visits.”
The UK government said the visits were private and “not official UK government business”. The spokesperson added: “The Scottish government are responsible for policing costs in Scotland as per agreed devolved funding arrangements.”
While Robison pointed to previous precedent when the UK government reimbursed the cost of Trump’s 2018 visit to Scotland in 2018, it is understood that visit followed a formal UK government invitation, in which case it covered security costs, according to its statement of funding policy.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland, Ivan McKee said:“The UK government needs to step up and pay. I think it’s ridiculous, it was clearly a work visit … Particularly when you have the prime minister Keir Starmer spending time with Donald Trump, having press conferences with them, conducting international business with them, it’s really stretching the bounds of credibility to say this was just a private holiday trip.”
