Opinions differ over Scottish support for the Olympic bid

Sports Minister Patricia Ferguson claimed the games would create millions of pounds for Scotland from tourism.

She is due to tell a conference: "Scotland stands shoulder to shoulder with London in its bid to host the Olympics in 2012."

Nationalists have argued that London would get gold from a successful bid, while Scotland would be an also-ran.

The Scottish Nationalist Party's Alex Neil, convener of Holyrood's enterprise committee, said: "We've already had the Dome. Scotland's share of that was �100m and this is Dome Mark Two.

"It is us subsidising London, which has got three times the population of Scotland and is far, far wealthier than Scotland. Why should we subsidise London?

Nationalist Alex Neil dubbed the games Dome Mark Two

"The danger for Scotland is we could be robbed of something like �70m worth of Lottery and other funding."

Mr Neil added: "The fact of life is we're going to get nowhere near �70m, but we are going to see our local sports clubs and other good causes going down the tube because there's not going to be the Lottery money there to sustain them."

Support for Mr Neil came from Independent MSP Margo MacDonald.

"My concern is that in getting the games so much money will have to be spent that the money that should be going into development of sport in Scotland will have to be cut by �10m," she said.

"That's far too much money for us to lose."

However, Ms Ferguson said: "I think the opportunity of a successful bid for the whole of Scotland is immense.

"There are enormous spin-offs for us both culturally and in terms of sport and tourism. But it's up to us to maximise these benefits."

Sports Minister Patricia Ferguson is backing the London effort

Ms Ferguson added: "The Scottish government doesn't want to see money being diverted from good causes so we're working very hard to make sure that doesn't happen and if there is any kind of diversion, that is minimised as far we possibly can."

In October, a London Olympic bid chief urged Scotland's Nationalist politicians to get behind the campaign to bring the games to London in 2012.

Mike Lee's plea came after polls indicated that people north of the border were less supportive than those in the rest of the UK.

Mr Lee, communications director of the London bid, said: "The national figures would be much higher if you took out Scotland. The levels of support in Scotland are not great."