Scottish Government ministers have been accused of failing to accept their share of the blame for Edinburgh’s tram fiasco.

The line from Edinburgh Airport to the city centre was years late and millions of pounds over budget when it finally opened in 2014. And the inquiry chaired by Lord Hardie into what went wrong with the project criticised the the city council, its tram firm TIE and the Scottish Government for “a litany of avoidable failures”.

But in a statement to the Scottish Parliament, Transport Secretary Mairi McAllan defended the government’s decision to withdraw Transport Scotland’s support for the project in 2007 after the SNP’s bid to scrap the project had failed. And she told MSPs many of the changes recommended by Lord Hardie had been implemented “years ago”.

Lothian Tory MSP Miles Briggs said there was little in Ms McAllan’s statement to suggest SNP ministers had “accepted their role in the failures” around the project. He said: “The former Deputy First Mnister John Swinney is mentioned 156 times by name in the report, but not once today by the Cabinet Secretary in her statement.”

Want to see more SNP fails? – Politics Matters