An independent review of 2009’s Homecoming celebrations has found that the economic benefits to the country were “substantially overestimated”.

In particular, the number of jobs created was found to be “probably no more than 900”, compared to the previous estimate of 1536: an overestimation of around 70%.

And while the official public sector budget for the campaign was £5.5m, the report noted that an additional £3m from VisitScotland and VisitBritain promotional campaigns was not included, bringing the total to £8.5m.

The review was conducted by Dr Geoff Riddington, who was hired by Holyrood's Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee to research the impact of last year’s events.

Dr Riddington said a previous review by consultancy firm Ekos was "out-of-date and incorrect and substantially overestimates the actual impact".

He claimed that Ekos double-counted organisers' expenditure in The Gathering review, leading to an overestimate of expenditure with that event, and said that parts of Ekos’s analysis were “fundamentally misleading”.

Dr Riddington concluded: "In the author's view, an independent body such as Audit Scotland may well be more appropriate to conduct such evaluations given that they would have no other policy interest in the success or otherwise of a programme such as Homecoming Scotland 2009."

A Scottish Government spokesman said: "The success of Homecoming Scotland 2009 is clear - it delivered £53.7m to Scotland's economy, representing a return of almost 10:1 on the core investment of £5.5m.

"Homecoming delivered 22% above the target of £44m set at the outset of the year.

"The targets and methodology used to evaluate Homecoming follow standards used extensively by the national and international events and tourism industries."

Labour tourism spokesman Lewis Macdonald said: "Alex Salmond's claims about the success of Homecoming have turned out to be more bogus than Brigadoon. This report finds that SNP ministers underestimated the cost of the event and overestimated the number of jobs it created.

"The case for a full investigation by Audit Scotland is now proven beyond any reasonable doubt. When large sums of public money are involved, we need complete transparency and openness."

Liberal Democrat culture spokesman Iain Smith said: "This latest report is a damning insight into the SNP Government's handling of Homecoming 2009.

"This was a good idea but handled appallingly by the SNP. Scotland has paid a high price for this SNP botch-job.”