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The Scottish and British Governments have disputed who should pay the £26m cost of Donald Trump and JD Vance’s recent visits to the UK. The US president spent four days at his golf courses in Ayrshire and Aberdeenshire in July, while the vice-president went on a family holiday to Scotland in August. For Mr Trump’s visit, the town of Ayr spent several days under lockdown, with groups of soldiers in camouflage seen searching the grounds, while a security checkpoint was set up outside the resort with a large fence erected around the side of the course. Shona Robison, the Scottish Finance Secretary, said the visits imposed “substantial operational and financial burdens on Scottish public services, particularly Police Scotland”. She said the estimated additional cost of policing the presidential visit alone was around £20m, requiring peak daily deployments of more than 4,000 officers. The estimated cost of Mr Vance’s trip was around £6m. Ms Robison said that while the trips were framed as private visits by the president and vice-president, they were “diplomatically significant”. She argued that the UK Government reimbursed the cost of a similar trip Mr Trump made to Scotland in 2018. In a letter to James Murray, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, she wrote: “Following your decision not to provide funding to Scotland for costs incurred in relation to the visit of President Donald Trump to Scotland in July 2025 and the subsequent visit of Vice-President JD Vance, I am writing to you to request that you reconsider this decision and provide full reimbursement for the cost of the visits.” She said the visits had not been “initiated” by the Scottish Government. “There is a clear previous precedent, where the UK Government has supported policing costs for visits to devolved nations by foreign dignitaries,” she continued. However, the UK Government said the Scottish Government was “responsible for policing costs” because the visits were not connected to “official UK Government business”. Ivan McKee, Scottish public finance minister, said: “We are clear that the UK Government should reimburse in full the significant costs of the working visits by President Trump and Vice-President Vance. “The visits were part of UK government international relations, with the Prime Minister formally meeting the president in two locations in Scotland during his visit. “It is completely unacceptable to expect the Scottish Government to foot the bill for what were clearly not private visits, as the UK Government is claiming.” The UK Government was approached for comment.
