Scottish Parliament Building Project
Agenda item 4 is consideration of the latest monthly report on the Holyrood building project. Members have a copy of the report—which was issued late yesterday afternoon—and two letters, from Paul Grice and Sarah Davidson, which we have received since we considered the previous monthly report. I did not think that it would be appropriate to take evidence from witnesses today, given that our agenda is heavy. The report is a steady-as-you-go report in terms of the information that it contains.
I will make a suggestion for the committee's consideration. My understanding is that the Presiding Officer is likely to give us a much more detailed report, which will include some migration issues, in time for our meeting of 22 June. I propose that we take oral evidence on the more detailed information on that day. It may be that members wish particular questions to be addressed at a future evidence-taking meeting. If we do not have an evidence-taking meeting before 22 June, it might be useful to identify outstanding issues before then, bearing it in mind that our meeting on that date is likely to be our last evidence-taking meeting before migration takes place. For the sake of completeness, we should ensure that we do that.
I refer to one of the last paragraphs of the monthly report, which refers to the recent vandalism. It says:
"Bovis has responsibility for site security".
Will Bovis Lend Lease be financially responsible for any damage? I am aware that, following the publicity from such an incident, copycat incidents can take place. I would like to think that Bovis will, if it is responsible for site security, be responsible for dealing with any subsequent vandalism.
We can write and ask for that information.
In his letter dated 29 April—which responds to questions on loss and expense that I asked at our meeting of 20 April—Paul Grice confirms that the total figure that is attributable to that item, which he—perhaps more technically correctly—describes as encompassing
"prolongation, re-sequencing, disruption and loss",
is about £100 million. That means that, when we add the additional costs of £13.84 million, approximately £115 million of the total cost of the Holyrood project is attributable to
"prolongation, re-sequencing, disruption and loss",
which means that no less than one third of the total cost could have been avoided; we could have had the same building for two thirds of the actual cost. That highlights an important issue for the Finance Committee as it looks forward to the swift dénouement of this tragedy: that we keep a very close eye on the issue of loss and expense.
I want to mention a particular matter regarding loss and expense, which I will certainly wish to pursue with Mr Grice, Mr Brown and Sarah Davidson next month. I am concerned about what monitoring is going on of all the people at the site who are doing little or nothing—in the words of Sarah Davidson, "waiting to be needed". What monitoring of the construction managers' performance of their duties is going on? Is there any? It is an extremely serious aspect of performance.
I am afraid that, from my perspective, the likelihood is that there will inevitably be more costs because of the complexity of the project and the inevitability that there will be further
"prolongation, re-sequencing, disruption and loss".
I feel that our prime focus should be on asking each witness who comes before us about that. I accept that they should do so in the third week of June, after we have had a more detailed report. I hope that their written submissions will spell out exactly what they have been doing to ensure that we are not throwing away millions of extra pounds through unnecessarily having hundreds of workers hanging around the site, waiting for their turn to do their job.
I do not want to go into the specifics that have been put to me because there is no way that I can tell whether they are robust. The problem is obvious and I wanted to set it out as I see it at length for the benefit of Paul Grice and his colleagues, so that they can focus on it and, before they come before us, provide in the corpus of their written report a clear statement about how they are tackling the problem.
In a sense, we are having a brief discussion today to gather together such points and to ask for precisely the information that Fergus Ewing and Kate Maclean seek.
Last week the cost of prolongation did not matter, because it was not going to happen. The £45.4 million end-of-year money was taken into this year. I asked what the additional cost was, given that projects that should have been paid for last year had been delayed. I was told that there were no additional costs whatever. All of a sudden, Paul Grice sends a letter this week that says:
"103.9m could be attributed to claims related to prolongation, re-sequencing, disruption and loss."
If that £100 million can be put down to prolongation, there is bound to be an increase in the amount of money that the end-of-year fund carried forward. I do not know why the team cannot be open and straightforward about it instead of trying to tell us that there will be no additional cost.
I paid my first visit down to that place last week. As someone who worked in engineering for many years, I was amazed to see in the garage area costly equipment that had been lying in dust for dear knows how long. Such equipment is normally hired out by the hour, day or week but—even to my untrained eye—it looked as though it had been lying there for months. At what cost? People hire equipment only when they are going to use it. They do not hire it then store it in case they need it. The figures speak for themselves. I am afraid that the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body has not been on top of the job, end of story.
Perhaps we could add the point about equipment to the points that Fergus Ewing raised about people; the issues are, in a sense, two sides of the same coin.
As there are no further comments, do members agree to say to the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body that we will take evidence from it on 22 June and that we expect it to provide the committee with a substantive report before then, which will cover the management of migration as well as building issues? Do members also agree to my writing to the Presiding Officer to say that we hope that the three issues that members have raised can be addressed either in a response or in the substantive report that we receive?
Members indicated agreement.
The committee will now move into private session to discuss the final three items on the agenda, which are consideration of an adviser for our cross-cutting review into economic development, an issues paper on relocation of public sector jobs and a draft report on the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Bill.
Meeting continued in private until 12:30.