Nicola Sturgeon at book festival awarded £300k from taxpayers which hired her ex-aide

Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney pictured in the Scottish Parliament.

By Democrat reporter

The Scottish Government announced a £300,000 grant of taxpayer’s cash for a book festival featuring Nicola Sturgeon weeks after her ex-chief of staff was appointed as a director, according to a report in today’s Sunday Mail..

The former first minister is among the headliners at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival with an event to launch her memoir, Frankly.

It comes as her former top adviser, Liz Lloyd, was hired as a director of the literary event in May.

Last week, John Swinney’s government announced a “one-off” £300,000 lifeline for the festival to continue its long-running schools programme.

It comes after the book festival lost its chief sponsor Baillie Gifford last year following a campaign by eco activists over the firm’s fossil fuel ties.

Lothian Tory MSP Sue Webber said: “Taxpayers will be asking questions about how the SNP suddenly found this money a matter of weeks after Nicola Sturgeon’s most senior former adviser was appointed a director of the festival.

“While the book festival is ultimately crucial for Scotland’s culture and Edinburgh’s economy, many will be thinking this is not a mere coincidence. The SNP was only scrambling to find this funding because Baillie Gifford was hounded out from its long-held sponsorship by climate activists.

“SNP ministers should come clean on how this funding was awarded and if there was any lobbying from former colleagues who were once at the heart of the nationalist government.”

Lloyd, pictured above, worked for the Scottish Government for nearly a decade as Sturgeon’s top aide, working closely with current FM Swinney who was then deputy FM. Lloyd was Sturgeon’s chief of staff from 2014 until 2021 then a strategic adviser until the ex-FM quit in 2023, when Lloyd also left her post.

The book festival said it would be “spurious” and “misleading” to suggest any link between Lloyd’s appointment and the announcement of the cash, which it said had been planned for months. The event’s government funding has more than doubled in the past year to a record £820,000.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “These claims are untrue. Ministers took the decision on 28 March 2025 to provide this one-off funding for Edinburgh International Book Festival.”