Scottish Government asks UK to reimburse £26m costs for Trump visit

The Scottish Government is calling on the UK Government to reimburse the £26m cost of Donald Trump and JD Vance’s recent visits to Scotland.

The Treasury has so far refused. It said the visits were private and “not official UK Government business”, and that the Scottish Government is “responsible for policing costs”.

The US president spent four days visiting his golf courses in Ayrshire and Aberdeenshire in July.

The visit was officially private, rather than presidential, but Trump met with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and First Minister John Swinney while he was here.

The US vice president spent around four days in Ayrshire for a family holiday in August.

Although they were both billed as private visits, Scottish finance secretary Shona Robison said they both 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, which reflects peak daily deployments of more than 4,000 officers.

Costs for Vance’s family holiday were around £6m.

In a letter to the Chief Secretary of the Treasury, Robison said the visits were both “diplomatically significant”, and she argued that the UK Government should foot the bill.

Robison 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.”

Referring to the visits this summer, she said they were not initiated by the Scottish Government, nor were they part of devolved policy initiatives.

“Whilst I recognise this was not an official visit initiated by the UK Government, any visit by a sitting president and vice-president will always constitute a high-profile event,” Robison said.

She argued that there is a “clear previous precedent” where the UK Government has paid policing costs for similar visits.

More specifically, Robison said the UK Government reimbursed the cost of Trump’s visit to Scotland in 2018.

She warned that failing to reimburse the costs would “not only strain devolved budgets but also set a troubling precedent for future high-profile visits”.

The letter was sent to Treasury secretary James Murray last week.

Scotland’s public finance minister Ivan McKee 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.”

A UK Government spokesperson said: “These were private visits by the president and vice-president to Scotland, not official UK Government business.

“The Scottish Government are responsible for policing costs in Scotland as per agreed devolved funding arrangements.”

It is understood Trump’s visit in 2018 followed a UK Government invitation, and Principle 10 of the Statement of Funding Policy therefore applied.