The Scotsman

Disillusionment, cynicism and £414.4 million - that was the final cost of the Scottish Parliament. After nearly ten years in which politicians and civil servants, architects and engineers, construction firms and consultants played the blame game, Holyrood's true cost was revealed yesterday. No-one responsible for the rise from the first estimate of between £10 million and £40 million to the eventual total lost their job. Ministers and senior public servants, who drove the ill-fated project, did not feel it necessary to do the honourable thing. And yesterday, we learned that no-one - individual or company - will be taken to court on behalf of the taxpayer to be held legally to account for their many errors. Coming to that conclusion cost taxpayers a further £600,000. So little wonder that, in announcing that the final bill for the home of Scotland's new democracy was £16 million below the most recent estimate of £430 million, the parliament's Presiding Officer admitted that the cost of the project was not merely monetary.