One member of the Scottish parliament faces having to hand over almost £11,000 (around $13,500) to pay for an iPad data roaming bill that was completely avoidable.
While we don't know exactly which iPad Scotland's Health Secretary Michael Matheson was using — we're going to assume it wasn't an entry-level 10th-gen iPad and was more likely an iPad Pro — we do know that he'd been told to swap out an old SIM card a year before taking a trip to Morrocco. But for whatever reason, he didn't. And now he's quite literally paying the price.
In a situation that was entirely avoidable, and after Matheson was told he could claim the money on his monthly expenses, it's now been confirmed that he will pay the money back out of his own pocket. He's presumably now learned that the best iPad is the one that doesn't cost you thousands of dollars to read your email.
The decision to pay the money back was 'the right one'
The BBC reports that Matheson has agreed that the decision to pay the money back was "the right one in all circumstances," while he maintains that the roaming bill was for work he carried out while on his Moroccan visit. However, it's said that IT professionals who looked into the huge data expenditure stopped short of looking at exactly what he was doing to rack up such a bill.
As for how it happened, the BBC reports that "the parliament's previous mobile contract with EE came to an end in December 2021, and members were told to switch their devices across to the new contract with Vodafone." Matheson received an email urging him to switch SIM cards and it's also thought that he was spoken to in person, too. But swap SIM cards, he did not. And he's now on the hook for £11,000 as a result.
As an aside, the BBC also notes that the £11,000 bill is more than the total of all Matheson and his colleagues' communication bills combined — a figure that sat at £9,507 for the year prior.
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