Michael Matheson, Scotland’s Health Secretary, has announced that he will pay back the total cost of an £11,000 data roaming bill that he incurred while on holiday. The charges were accrued while using a parliamentary iPad on a trip to Morocco to complete constituency work. According to Matheson, the charges were incurred as a result of an outdated sim card.
Whilst the Scottish Parliament had agreed to pay the bulk of the costs as a legitimate expense and the rest using Mr Matheson’s office allowance, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care says he has reflected and accepts that the sim card should have been replaced at an earlier stage. This comes after Mr Matheson paid £3,000 towards the bill out of his expenses budget.
Following mounting pressure from opposition MSPs calling on the minister to personally cover the costs, Mr Matheson concluded that it was the best course of action to pay the sum of £11,000 himself rather than risk losing his ministerial salary in an ongoing expenses row.
After being warned by IT officials about the need to change his sim card almost a year prior, questions were raised. For a minister heading into a challenging winter period in the health and social care sector, the last thing Mr Matheson needed was to be pursued by reporters over a personal integrity issue. Michael Matheson has been a Member of the Scottish Parliament since 1999 and is seen as a straight shooter; the decision to pay back the full amount could, therefore, be driven by his own sense of personal integrity as well as political considerations
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