MORE than £1.5million of taxpayers’ cash will be spent annually funding a 25-strong team of civil servants to work on the Scottish Government’s independence push, it can be revealed.

The response to a freedom of information request reveals the rising cost of the unit set up by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon at the turn of the year to update the case for independence since the 2014 referendum.

They have been published today after the Supreme Court ruling last Wednesday found that the Scottish Government cannot unilaterally hold a referendum.

Ms Sturgeon will continue to seek an agreed referendum with the UK Government and has vowed to continue pushing for independence by pursuing a “de facto” referendum at the next general election by campaigning on the single issue of Scottish independence.

Donald Cameron, constitution spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives, which obtained the salary costs under FoI, accused the Scottish Government of wasting public money on their “pet project” while imposing “savage cuts” on essential public services. Deputy First Minister John Swinney has set out plans to cut public services by £1.2billion as rising inflation, currently more than 10 per cent, put pressure on government finances.

Mr Cameron has demanded that the team updating the independence papers be disbanded immediately and the civil servants in question be redeployed elsewhere.

“Most Scots will be appalled that Nicola Sturgeon is squandering huge sums of public money and civil service resources on her pet project at the same time as imposing savage cuts on key public services,” he said.

“It is further proof – if any were needed – that the SNP leader always puts her party’s interests before those of the country.

“By any objective measure the money has been wasted, too, because – as most legal experts predicted – the Scottish Government lost its case at the Supreme Court.

“In light of that ruling, there will be no referendum next year and so there is no justification for continuing to deploy civil servants in these roles.

“The Scottish Government’s independence unit must be disbanded now and the civil servants in question put to work on the issues that matter to people in Scotland, like the global cost-of-living crisis and the NHS, which is on its knees under this SNP-Green coalition.

“Nicola Sturgeon’s next step in pursuing her independence obsession is to try to frame the next General Election as a ‘de facto referendum’.

“Setting aside the arrogance of that strategy – it’s voters who decide the issues on which they vote – it is clearly a party-political SNP tactic, not something for the apparatus of government.

“Therefore, it would be utterly scandalous if independent, publicly-funded civil servants continued to be used for what is now purely SNP campaigning.”

According to the Scottish Conservative freedom of information request, 24 officials are working on the independence prospectus and related work plus a senior civil servant.

The party worked out the costs using the maximum annual salary of civil servants in each of the pay bands given.

It calculated that the Scottish Government will spend a total of £1,532,664 on staff working on the independence prospectus.

Three documents have been published so far in the Building the New Scotland series since the First Minister instructed officials to update the case for independence.

The first was a scene setter examining how Scotland currently compared with the performance of small independent states, the second on democracy, while the third focused on the economy.

More papers are to be published in the coming months, including ones covering matters including pensions and social security, EU membership, energy, and defence and security.

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said: "The Scottish Government accepts the outcome of the recent Supreme Court judgment. In light of majority support within the Scottish Parliament for an independence referendum, Scottish ministers remain ready to engage with the UK Government at any point on delivering that referendum.

“The Scottish Government will continue to set out, through the Building a New Scotland prospectus series, what could be done with the full powers of independence, reflecting clear Programme for Government commitments.”

Meanwhile, the SNP have insisted the country's independence movement will intensify the case for a new independence referendum and said the case is "poised to hit new heights" in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.

“This week’s Supreme Court ruling has shattered for ever the notion of the UK as a voluntary union of nations," said SNP depute leader Keith Brown.

“It has exposed as utter fiction the claim that it is a partnership of equals. And it has also laid bare the duplicity of the Westminster parties who are flagrantly breaching their own pledges to the people to respect Scottish democracy.

“But if those same parties think that this week has ended the debate on Scotland’s future they couldn’t be more mistaken.

“Because what we will now see is Scotland’s independence movement set up the democratic case for this nation’s voice to be heard and respected. It is a movement which will hit new heights by galvanising public opinion in every city, town, village and community the length and breadth of Scotland."

He added: “The Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems are breaking the promise they signed in 2014 in which they said it was for the Scottish people to decide how Scotland should be governed – and the subsequent promise in the Smith Commission report that nothing prevented people from choosing Scotland becoming independent if they wished.

"It is for those parties to justify to the people why they now believe they can so arrogantly renege on those pledges."