Tory MSP's AI-generated questions may have cost taxpayers £185,000

Last year North East MSP Douglas Lumsden was criticised after submitting 1,300 written questions in Holyrood.

The questions ranged from asking the number of sauce and salt and pepper sachets in parliament, how many straws the government had procured, how many Scottish Parliament flags had gone missing, the number of flagpoles owned and their height, the profit made on jars of honey in the parliament shop, and how it verified that the beeswax used for the Great Seal of Scotland came from the Holyrood beehives.

At the time Kenneth Gibson, an SNP MSP and convener of Holyrood’s finance committee, dubbed Mr Lumsden the “£100,000 man”, based on the fact it costs around £98.51 to answer a parliamentary question, according to prices generated back in 2008.

However it has since emerged the average cost of answering a written question is now £138.07, and takes on average 3 hours and 40 minutes to process.

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The SNP says this brings the true cost to Mr Lumsden’s questions to £184,875.73 and took up more than 4,550 hours of civil servants’ time.

Mr Gibson has now asked the parliamentary authorities to review the written question system to make sure MSPs can still hold the Scottish Government to account while protecting taxpayers from bad-faith actors.

He said: “Mr Lumsden’s hypocrisy is staggering.

“In recent weeks he has denounced Scottish ministers for the cost of travelling to the US to discuss vital matters such as whisky tariffs and Brazil to tackle climate change.

“Yet the cost was a fraction of what Mr Lumsden has cost taxpayers by deluging the Scottish Parliament with over 1,300 AI-generated questions in only four months.

“You have to wonder if he even found time to read the answers?

“I’ll be asking the parliamentary authorities how we can ensure there is no repeat of such wrecking tactics.”

Mr Lumsden was responsible for a third of all the written and corporate body questions in winter 2024/25 and over half of the total questions submitted to the Scottish Parliament in January 2025.

When the criticisms were first aired last year, the MSP denied using AI to generate and submit the questions. He was urged to apologise and pay back the cost of answering the questions.

Mr Lumsden stressed that his questions had elicited key details from Scottish ministers across a range of important issues.

Opposition parties said this was a "flagrant abuse of taxpayers’ money” and said it was “clearly for no purpose other than the amusement of the Tory member”.

In response to the new criticism from Mr Gibson, Mr Lumsden said: “This is a pathetic attempt to stop opposition MSPs holding the rotten nationalists to account.

“Unlike SNP backbenchers, including Kenneth Gibson, who routinely read out scripted questions handed to them from nationalist spin doctors, I actually scrutinise this failing government.”