Revealed: Green Minister’s 350-mile eco trip... in a chauffeur-driven limo
GREEN Minister Lorna Slater is facing fresh accusations of hypocrisy after making a 350-mile round trip to visit a treeplanting project – in a taxpayer-funded Ministerial limousine.
Ms Slater, whose party is renowned for its car-hating policies, was picked up by a chauffeur from her home in the Edinburgh area and taken to the ‘rewilding’ centre, near Loch Ness, before being driven back the same day.
Ironically, the purpose of her long-distance car trip was to promote a scheme designed to help protect the environment.
The MSP – who landed a Government role in 2021 after the SNP struck a power-sharing deal with the Greens – came under fire last week after she chartered a cruise boat to visit an island, rather than use the notoriously unreliable ferry service.
Now The Scottish Mail on Sunday can reveal that, over the past year, while repeatedly calling for Scots to take public transport and restrict their use of private vehicles, Ms Slater has used a chauffeur-driven Ministerial car for no fewer than 50 journeys.
The Scottish Government’s transport strategy includes a stated aim of cutting car travel by a fifth. Yet our analysis shows that, when it comes to her own travel arrangements, Ms Slater – co-leader of the Scottish Greens – is happy to swap trains, buses and bicycles for a luxury limo.
Official records show that, as well as using a Ministerial car for the eco-trip to the Highland rewilding centre, she also:
• used a limousine in November to travel between a number of venues around Aberdeen – even though they could have been reached by public transport;
• asked a chauffeur to transport
‘Ms Slater is the Green queen of hypocrisy’
her across Edinburgh on various occasions rather than use the city’s bus and tram network.
Ms Slater’s car journeys yesterday prompted claims that she was the ‘queen of hypocrisy’.
Tory MSP Graham Simpson said: ‘Lorna Slater hires a boat rather than take a ferry and uses government limos rather than take public transport or even, perish the thought, get somewhere under her own steam.
‘Ms Slater talks the talk but rather than walk the walk she would rather be chauffeur-driven. She is the Green queen of hypocrisy and Scotland is seeing through her double standards.’
Ms Slater, 47, is the Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity. She was pilloried last week for chartering a private boat to visit Rum in the Hebrides, which is served by a state-owned CalMac ferry.
However, the latest criticism focuses on a journey she made by road last October. The visit to the Dundreggan rewilding centre near Loch Ness saw Ms Slater hop in a Ministerial limo to be chauffeur-driven there and back.
Once at the centre, which will grow trees for planting on the hills across the Highlands, she hailed the project as ‘an exemplar of long-term nature restoration’.
On another trip, taxpayers paid for her return rail ticket from Edinburgh to Aberdeen. Once there, she was picked up by a Ministerial car, which she used to travel between several venues in the city – including the university, the James Hutton Institute and the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre.
At the end of her visit, she failed to use her return rail ticket – and instead was driven back to Edinburgh in the Ministerial car.
A further occasion saw her driven from her home to an appointment a short distance away in Edinburgh before being picked up again and whisked to Waverley Station to catch a train.
In another flurry of car journeys, the Green politician was driven on ten trips in the space of nine days last year, travelling almost 600 miles across Scotland, visiting Argyll, Dumfriesshire, Edinburgh and Perthshire in the process.
Meanwhile, in February this year Ms Slater was driven a few miles from her home to a recycling centre in Musselburgh, East Lothian. A journey the month before saw her use a government car to travel from her home to a recycling centre in Blochairn, in the east end of Glasgow.
In all, Scottish Government data shows Ms Slater took 50 car trips within the past 12 months.
The journeys came as the SNPGreen Government pushes its Active Travel Framework, calling for ‘walking and wheeling’ to be prioritised, with cars bottom of its ‘sustainable transport’ strategy.
A string of other policies that punish drivers are already under way, including forthcoming enforcement of Low Emission Zones which will ban more than a million cars from the centres of Scotland’s four biggest cities.
Her travel also follows the publication of the Scottish Government’s National Transport
Strategy which aims to ‘develop policy interventions to reduce car kilometres by 20 per cent by 2030’.
Ms Slater, already under fire for the shambolic Deposit Return Scheme, which has been delayed until next year, was accused of hypocrisy last week after she used a private ferry for her official visit to Rum on Friday.
The Scottish Government said hiring the boat ensured the best value for taxpayers and allowed Ms Slater to ‘maximise time on the island’ even though Rum is served by a CalMac ferry.
The Scottish Conservatives described her specially chartered boat as a ‘vessel of hypocrisy’, saying that islanders on Rum are concerned about the provision of timetabled ferry services.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘Travel is an essential part of Government business and Ministerial cars are used for business purposes only.
‘Ministers take their responsibility to travel sustainably very seriously and aim to use more sustainable forms of transport wherever possible.’