Item 4 is on major capital projects. The latest report has been circulated. I invite comments or questions.
Just to maintain consistency for the three years that I have been on the committee, I will mention two items. The first is the new prison for Highland, for which £40 million was allocated in 2009; £62.8 million is allocated in 2014. The current project status is given as “In Preparation”. Five years on, there is an increase of £43 million and the project is still in preparation.
My second point, which I have raised on all these occasions, is about the dualling of the A9. One of the projects was on the section from Kincraig to Dalraddy, and I am pleased to note that that is on-going. The other, more significant, section of the dualling that was mentioned previously was from Luncarty to Birnam, but that has disappeared. I would like an update on what has happened with that previous commitment for the road between Luncarty and Birnam. I am very pleased that the work between Kincraig and Dalraddy, which is about 3 or 4 miles, is going ahead, but, from memory, the distance from Luncarty to Birnam is about 10 to 12 miles, and I think that that is the most congested part of the road.
We can clarify the matter with the Scottish Government. There could be a number of issues. One might be that the amount does not meet the minimum requirement for reporting; the other is that the process has not yet reached the outline business case stage. As I say, we can clarify that.
I emphasise the point that the section from Luncarty to Birnam is three times the length of the section between Kincraig and Dalraddy, which is why I mention it. It will be two to three times the cost.
We will clarify that with the Scottish Government.
I want to clarify a couple of issues. I note the new format that I think we are going to adopt. Is my understanding correct that we are going to have an evidence session on the next occasion, in six months’ time, with the ministers or the Government officials responsible?
An update is due in March 2015.
Right. The update document is clearly useful, but I am still slightly concerned about how much it flags up change, delays and slippage. We can see some examples, but I would like the one about Inverness College clarified—perhaps Mary Scanlon could do so.
Which page is it on?
It is pages 31 to 32. The document is laid out in such a way that the Government is supposed to flag up in the annex the projects in which there has been a change. For example, the completion date for Inverness campus, which I assume is a Highlands and Islands Enterprise building, appears to have slipped from May 2013 to November 2014. Inverness campus is not the same as Inverness College and has a separate entry in the document.
Highlands and Islands Enterprise has an input into Inverness campus.
Yes. Clearly, a number of dates have slipped, but that information emerges towards the back of the document. I am not 100 per cent convinced by the way in which the document is laid out that everything is immediately transparent. For example, I have a question about the south Glasgow hospitals project at the Southern general.
What page is that on?
Page 26, but it is also on page 5. It goes back to my worry about what we are saying about these projects. The document seems to give us at least some indication of what has happened over the past six months, which is useful, but it does not really give us a starting point and an end point.
When the plan was first drawn up—excuse me, but this is etched on my mind because it was of great political significance to me—and the decision was made to house the new hospitals at the site of the Southern general, the cost was estimated at—I think—£260 million. The decision to locate the new hospitals at the Southern general site was taken on the grounds of cost because that location was seen as being about £10 million or £11 million cheaper than another location. However, within a year or so, the estimated cost had risen to about £360 million.
In 2007, the project was going down the line of producing a public sector comparator figure for a non-profit-distributing programme, which is where the figure of £841 million came from. The estimate went from £260 million to £360 million and then to £841 million, which is a comparator figure that I assumed was the cost of the NPD route. The project then went back to being a traditional capital procurement one, yet the cost stayed at £841 million. I have to be honest: I have never quite understood how those jumps were made. The current cost is more than three times the original cost.
The costs were all in the public domain and were hugely debated. They were debated intensely in Parliament and in the local area where I live. This is the sort of thing on which I would like further information. I want to know how we got to this point. I am not sure whether it is a question for the Government or for the Auditor General for Scotland, but it is the sort of issue on which I would like further information. This document does not really satisfy. It sort of offers an assurance, but I do not find it assuring. How would I be able to pursue my concern about the south Glasgow hospitals project?
There are a number of different points here. There may well be particular issues that you want to follow through as an ordinary member of the Scottish Parliament. As far as the committee is concerned, it would not be for Audit Scotland or the Auditor General to answer the specific points that you raised; it would be for the Scottish Government to do so.
You asked a specific question about how the costs for the south Glasgow hospitals project went from the original figure to the figure that included an amount for NPD calculations, then stayed with the same figure although the project had reverted back to being a capital one. The only way in which we can get that clarified is to write to the accountable officer and ask for clarification on it, and we can certainly do that.
You may want to pursue the wider issues yourself, but we will have a chance to raise some of them when we have an oral report in March 2015. There are issues that you might want to pursue, but we will ask the accountable officer specific questions on them.
I think that that is a wise piece of advice for us. What we have been asked to do is look at how the update document is laid out and see whether we are capable of interpreting it as showing enough differences to flag up to other people.
The Government has been on a journey with this committee—since before I became a member of it—trying to produce improvement after improvement after improvement on how the information in the update document is laid out. Frankly, I do not know where else the Government can go now to improve the report or provide more detail without it becoming more burdensome than we require. From what I can see, the information on the new south Glasgow hospitals tells us when construction was started, when the project went to market, what the overall costs are and that a full business case is now available. Any member of this committee could seek that out to see what the variances are.
I am happy with the update document’s general direction in terms of how it is laid out. I, too, could crawl through it and look at every single project that is relevant for my area and my constituency, but it is not my job to do that here.
We can also ask Audit Scotland for its comments on whether the document is an improvement in reporting terms and whether it helps us to identify issues. I accept what Bruce Crawford has said, which is that it is not necessarily our job to go to through everything with a fine-toothed comb, but at the same time it is appropriate for the Audit Committee to identify and address areas of concern.
We can also seek comments from Audit Scotland, but for the moment—
Can I make another comment?
Yes.
The other material that goes with the document is the programme delivered by the Scottish Futures Trust on the hub projects. That information is produced online but, again, the difficulty with it is that it does not draw attention to slippage on dates and increased costs. That is the fundamental problem. It is not about whether projects are desirable or otherwise; it is about whether they are being managed properly.
I still have a problem with the updates on major capital projects. The difficulty with the process of information coming to this committee is that it implies in some way that we are approving or auditing it, or giving it some sort of official imprimatur. I do not think that we are doing that in this case. I just want to raise my concerns about the lack of information and the lack of scrutiny that we and the Auditor General are able to apply to the projects concerned. Just to round off my comments, I note that we are talking about billions of pounds of public money here.
It is useful to put on record that what we are not doing in considerations such as this one today is giving an imprimatur that indicates whether we think that the figures or the progress are acceptable. We are considering a report that is trying to lay out in a more helpful way the progress that has been made. There are a number of parliamentary routes available to members of other committees to pursue some of the report’s information. However, where we identify a problem, we can legitimately ask questions on it. We will have the opportunity to do that when we have the next oral update in March.
It would be wrong to suggest, however, that every time we get the update report on major capital projects it is up to us to go through each item or that, if nothing is said on one, that indicates the committee’s approval. That is not the purpose of our consideration.
We will seek clarification from the accountable officer on the report but, otherwise, I suggest that we note the report. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
Thank you for that. We will move into private session for the next agenda item.
12:14 Meeting continued in private until 12:46.Previous
Section 22 Report