Why Scotland deserves answers over SNP's handling of £700m offshore wind bonanza

For some reason, it had been decided to place a cap of £100,000 per square kilometre on bids by private companies. Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton complained that a similar English auction had made “four times” as much as – in initial deposits alone – and, by imposing a cap, the government and Crown Estate Scotland had “explicitly stopped companies paying a vast amount more”.

We will never know whether firms would have paid billions of pounds instead of just £700m, but the suspicion remains that Scotland missed out on a vast sum of money for no particularly good reason.

READ MORE: Scottish Government accused of 'burning through' over half of ScotWind revenue reaped from wind sites in 12 months

SNP mismanagement

Nonetheless, there were hopes the money raised would act as a kind of national ‘wealth fund’ to help smooth the energy transition and pay for necessary upgrades to infrastructure – essentially helping to ensure Scotland’s foundations were fit to support a modern, 21st-century economy.

Unfortunately, it appears that this idea was overly optimistic for a simple reason – it failed to factor in the SNP’s long track record of economic mismanagement, fondness for pet projects and excessive spending.

It really should be no surprise to anyone that the SNP has been raiding this sizeable piggy bank to prop up day-to-day spending, enabling the government to avoid having to make unpopular cuts to public services – or put taxes up even further.

READ MORE: How I learned Scotland is sitting on transformational wealth while investing £2.6 billion in energy

Now spending watchdog Audit Scotland has begun what it describes as “early scoping work” on a probe into the ScotWind offshore projects, as well as a “performance audit” of the renewable energy sector. We await their findings with interest.

Has Scotland been short-changed by its own government? Are ministers unnecessarily frittering away a giant legacy that could have achieved so much more?

These are questions that deserve answers. It’s just a shame Audit Scotland plans to publish its findings in the autumn, rather than before May’s Scottish Parliament election.