Should the Scottish Government have ploughed another £20m into concert hall plan?

In dishing out another £20 million, it is not the good opinions of the hoi-polloi that the Scottish Government covets. “Here’s another £20 million to prove we’re not the Philistines you might otherwise consider us”.

Within certain circles, it will be sacreligious to even question the priority endorsed by John Swinney that there is no better use of £20 million, in the capital far less Scotland as a whole, than to promise additional funding to meet the burgeoning costs of what its promoters have named the Dunard Centre.

Hey presto. The Scottish Government, permanently impoverished by its own account, can dip into a pre-election piggy-bank and pull out £20 million in response to a highly-articulate, incredibly well-connected lobbying demand. Just remember that - the next time your local library or community centre closes or a theatre company goes bust.

The Dunard Centre has its origins in the philanthropic largesse of an exceptionally wealthy individual. This is admirable. If she wanted to contribute handsomely towards the establishment of a concert hall, then who could complain? It’s her money and if that’s how she wants to use it, then that is her entire entitlement.

It was also reasonable for the public sector to support this private initiative within modest limits, depending how you define modest. The Dunard Centre was already part of the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal through which the Scottish and UK governments committed £10 million each, alongside £5 million from Edinburgh council. Pretty generous, I would have thought.

But then, of course, the inevitable happened. They were no longer contributing towards a project that was originally to cost £45 million – always a shrewd tactic to start with an implausibly low number and then work upwards from there. Since then, the estimated cost has gone in steps from £45 million, to £75 million, to £114 million and now to a handsome £162 million.

And I’ll let you into a secret. It will not stop there. Mr Swinney’s £20 million will no sooner have been subsumed into the budget than further bells and whistles will emerge from the wings, not to mention the subsidy demands to follow.

And where will the same people turn to make exactly the same clamour for more public money, and stamp their feet if they don’t get it? As costs soared, the alarm bells should have sounded and the answer should have been: “We have done our bit with £25 million. Thereafter, if philanthropy wants to create a concert hall, then that is exactly what philanthropy should deliver, and everyone will applaud”.

If there is one certainty about very rich people, it is that they know other very rich people with trusts, foundations and family wealth buried deep in the tax havens of the world. As the costs of the Dunard Centre quadrupled, the appropriate place to go looking was to other private philanthropic sources, or commercial sponsorship – not to the Scottish Government.

The Royal Bank of Scotland still has a lot of penance to pay for the reputational damage it inflicted upon Scotland, not to mention the net £10 billion loss to taxpayers. It has contributed a long lease on the redundant site which may be a capital gain foregone. But it is not hard cash and with profits of £1.2 billion last year, a substantial contribution towards £20 million would be a fleabite in their PR budget.

But where exactly is Mr Swinney’s £20 million to come from? Is it from the arts and culture budget which is already, we are told, heavily over-subscribed? Or indeed, has there been any decision about how the “pledge” is to be funded – or is that a matter for another day from a government to which it is always the headline that matter?

Unusually, for such a grand commitment, there is not even a press release from St Andrew’s House. Just the headline.

To the lobbyists for this money, £20 million is a modest sum, demanded as of right. It will transform nothing and I simply do not believe that if they could find the other £142 million, they could not have made up the full kitty. On the other hand, there are many parts of Edinburgh and Scotland in which £20 million really would make a difference.

There is no city in Scotland where wealth and entitlement live so cheek by jowl with poverty and deprivation than Edinburgh. In parts of the city where child poverty runs at 35 per cent, there is no magnet to attract philanthropy – but £20 million investment in communities might really matter.

Or take a comparator from where I live. The Islands Deal funded by Scottish and UK governments, covering Shetland, Orkney and the Western Isles – with all their economic and cultural fragility – is worth a paltry £30 million over ten years. Projects which have long been aspired to are being squeezed out because there is not enough money to go round.

The same story could be told in many parts of Scotland which do not have the lobbying power of a grandiose arts project in the centre of Edinburgh. Neither do they have access to “philanthropists” whose recurrent demand seems to be that the public purse must subsidise their well-advertised philanthropy. Unto them who have, it must be given.