The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-12382, in the name of Keith Brown, on building Scotland’s infrastructure for the future.
15:19
I welcome the opportunity to debate the role of infrastructure investment and to speak about recent activity and the prospects for the future.
Despite Westminster’s real-terms cuts of about 25 per cent to Scottish capital budgets between 2010-11 and 2015-16, we are taking decisive action to accelerate and sustain economic recovery. As was confirmed in the budget earlier this month, we will secure investment of almost £4.5 billion in 2015-16 by way of our capital budget, new borrowing powers, revenue-funded investment, regulatory asset base rail enhancements, capital receipts and, of course, allocation of some of our resource funding to capital assets. That investment will support an estimated 40,000 full-time equivalent Scottish jobs across the wider economy over the year.
Our infrastructure investment plan sets out our long-term strategy for development of public infrastructure. It sets out why we invest, how we invest and what we will invest in from now until 2030. Crucially, it also provides certainty and transparency to markets and the construction industry by outlining a clear pipeline of major infrastructure projects. Next month, I plan to announce the third annual progress report relating to the plan, together with updated investment pipelines. They will show that significant progress has been made in delivering the plan.
The debate is a good opportunity to reflect on the excellent progress that has already been made this year on our major infrastructure priorities.
The Queensferry crossing, which is Scotland’s biggest transport infrastructure project in a generation, is on track to be delivered on time and within the revised lower budget range. Last month, the new bridge’s three giant towers reached half their final height, and 10 per cent of the total bridge deck is now in place at either side of the towers. The project is providing up to 1,200 job opportunities and a large number of subcontract and supply-order opportunities for Scottish companies.
The new South Glasgow hospital was handed over to NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde by the contractor at the end of January. The new campus, which is one of the largest hospital complexes in Europe, has maternity, paediatric and adult hospitals all integrated in a single site.
I am glad to hear that the cabinet secretary is publishing a plan next month. What assumptions does the Government make in that plan about the future status of non-profit-distributing projects?
Gavin Brown will know that there is currently a challenge from Eurostat on classification of those projects. We remain confident that non-profit-distributing models are viable and we believe that we can meet Eurostat’s requests, but we are working on that with the Office for National Statistics. Our intention is to proceed with non-profit-distributing models, which have been hugely successful.
The delivery of the new South Glasgow hospital was achieved ahead of schedule and within budget, and the overall migration and commissioning process is expected to be complete by June 2015. At its peak, the project supported 1,500 jobs on site.
Our £1.8 billion schools for the future programme, which will deliver more than 100 new or refurbished schools by 2019-20, includes 18 schools that are complete and open to pupils and 16 that are currently under construction. It is estimated that the programme will support 1,500 jobs on average at any one time throughout its duration.
Earlier this month, I was at the track laying for the Borders railway project, as it was being completed between the Borders and Edinburgh. That railway is the longest domestic railway to be built in the United Kingdom in more than 100 years, and it has reached a significant milestone, which keeps the line on track to open for passengers in September 2015. The reopening of that line offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver a major economic and social boost for the communities that it will serve. In just a few short months, trains will be carrying passengers to employment, social and study opportunities, as well as bringing visitors and investors to the communities along the route.
In addition to the work that is being progressed on dualling the A96 from Inverness to Nairn, including the Nairn bypass project, we are pushing forward preliminary engineering and strategic environmental assessment work along the whole corridor. That is the first but not the least important step in developing a robust plan to improve connectivity between Inverness and Aberdeen, which demonstrates the Scottish Government’s commitment to investing in that strategically important route. When that work is completed, every single city in Scotland will, for the first time, be connected by either dual carriageway or motorway. That should have been true many years ago.
I welcome the developments on the Aberdeen to Inverness route. However, does the cabinet secretary share my view that it is also important that we invest in rail at the same speed as we invest in road in order to give passengers alternatives?
It is certainly important to ensure that we bear down on journey times right across the rail network. We have done that in many cases. If members look at, for example, the Edinburgh to Glasgow rail improvement programme, which is overseen by Derek Mackay, the result will be a 37-minute journey time, which is comparable to and competitive with car journeys.
We are dealing with rail infrastructure that is, in many cases, Victorian, and which has not had the investment that it should have had during previous decades. Some time ago, Patrick McLoughlin, who was a transport minister back in 1989 and is the current Secretary of State for Transport, came to Scotland and said that the problem here is that transport infrastructure has not been invested in for decades. He was right. We are trying to rectify that. Although I agree about the need to improve journey times, it is not possible to do everything at once, as I am sure David Stewart understands.
As I was about to say—this deals with the very point that David Stewart made—last November one of the biggest contracts to electrify the main Edinburgh to Glasgow rail line was awarded. The £250 million deal, which forms part of the £742 million Edinburgh to Glasgow rail improvement programme, marks a significant milestone in the project. As I said, it will provide 20 per cent quicker journey times and 30 per cent more capacity. It will also complete an overhaul of stations in both cities. The tremendous new-look Haymarket station was completed on time and under budget, and the transformation of Glasgow Queen Street station into a 21st century transport hub is planned.
Last October, we announced the bidders that were competing to win the contract to deliver the first of twelve major dualling schemes in the £3 billion A9 dualling programme. It is expected that the Kincraig to Dalraddy contract, which is worth about £50 million, will be awarded this summer, with construction starting thereafter on that five-mile stretch of road. The Scottish Government has made dualling the A9 a priority. I am proud that we are the first Administration ever to do so while recognising the range of economic and other benefits that that can deliver.
I invite the Parliament to welcome significant progress we are making across the length and breadth of Scotland. We are acting to deliver additionality through our £3.5 billion NPD hub investment programme, in the face of what I think everyone can agree are constrained capital budgets. The programme is a central component of that approach. The £1 billion extension to the programme, which we announced last year, will build on the success of the programme to date. I am pleased to say that whenever there has been an opportunity to invest further in our economy, this Government has taken it. In relative terms, our NPD investment programme is one of the largest investment programmes of its kind in Europe, with projects totalling more than £1.6 billion in construction.
Earlier this month, NHS Lothian’s project involving the Royal hospital for sick children, its department of clinical neurosciences and its child and adolescent mental health service reached financial close. The project is the first acute hospital facility to be procured under the NPD model. The development brings paediatric care, specialist neonatal care, neurosciences and adult and children’s emergency departments together in one place, making access to services much easier for patients and health professionals alike. The new building is anticipated to open in autumn 2017.
The largest NPD programme contract was formally awarded in December for the Aberdeen western peripheral route and the Balmedie to Tipperty scheme. At a recent meeting in Aberdeen, the First Minister announced that we had cut the sod on the scheme to a resounding cheer from the 400 to 500 members of the public who were there: that is how long anticipated the project has been. It is the biggest civil engineering project that the area has ever seen. It will bring substantial benefits, which we estimate to be worth about £6 billion over the project’s length, to communities, businesses and individuals across the whole north-east.
Construction will support about 1,500 jobs and more than 100 apprenticeships, graduate places, and other training opportunities. The scheme is bringing short-term economic benefits through £221 million of subcontracts, which have been either put to the market or are soon to be advertised, and it is estimated that longer-term benefits will bring, as I said, £6 billion of investment and 14,000 jobs to the north-east over the next three decades. The scheme will be delivered in stages, with completion expected in winter 2017, which is about six months ahead of schedule. We have listened to local communities. They said that they wanted to see first of all the Balmedie to Tipperty scheme being brought forward, as well as the scheme for getting people to and from the airport and the city centre, which I am sure Dave Stewart knows very well and which is crucial to economic activity in the area. We will advance those two stages.
The other major projects in the current programme include Inverness College and the City of Glasgow College, which between them are expected to provide facilities for nearly 50,000 students; Ayrshire College’s Kilmarnock campus, which will deliver state-of-the-art learning facilities and will play a huge part in the on-going regeneration of the town; and, of course, the M8, M73 and M74 motorway improvements, which will create hundreds of jobs and will drive significant economic, safety and accessibility benefits. That reminds me of the fact that many people in Scotland do not appreciate that we do not even have a full motorway between Edinburgh and Glasgow as things stand, but the M8 project will remedy that by ensuring that we have motorway all the way, and there are also the surrounding projects including the Raith interchange.
I am interested in the projects that Mr Brown has outlined and I welcome many of them. I am also interested in getting a bit of detail on the £180 billion that the First Minister indicated would be invested during the next session of the United Kingdom Parliament. In what year will that investment start and what is the cash breakdown for each year? How much extra money would be invested in each year? Does he have those figures?
Indeed I do, and I am happy to provide them to Willie Rennie. The £180 billion will be invested over the course of the next United Kingdom parliamentary session across the UK; Scotland will get its proportionate share. It seems to be eminently sensible for the First Minister to have said that we could, for a small reduction in the austerity measures that are being pursued by the Administration that Willie Rennie supports, alleviate some of the harm and create a huge amount of benefit by using that £180 billion across the UK for employment opportunities.
I would have hoped that Willie Rennie could get on board with that. I note from his amendment that he thinks it irresponsible of the SNP Government to make that investment. I point out that the coalition Administration that he supports said that it would by this stage have reduced the deficit to a £5 billion surplus. In fact, the reality is that there is a £50 billion deficit. That coalition promise has about as much weight as a Liberal Democrat promise on tuition fees. It has been proved to be wrong, and the approach that has been taken by the First Minister is a much more rational one.
Our NPD projects have had a good response from the market and the international investor community.
Forgive me for taking the cabinet secretary back to the point that he made about City of Glasgow College. Can he confirm that there will be no consequences for colleges including Clyde College in my constituency from the funding of the City of Glasgow College, and that there will be no reduction in provision at Clyde College in order to make the finances stack up?
The funding for the new City of Glasgow College has been allocated for quite some time: in fact, it dates back to when I was Minister for Skills and Lifelong Learning in 2010-11. The two things are not related.
As I said, there has been a significant level of international investor interest in funding for the M8, M73 and M74 motorway improvements and the AWPR. Funding has been supported by the European Investment Bank and a group of investors that are managed by Allianz Global Investors, one of the world’s leading integrated financial sector providers. That demonstrates the confidence in the marketplace in the NPD model from the international investor community and shows that, overall, Scotland’s infrastructure is seen as a viable and desirable long-term investment.
Parliament will be aware that infrastructure investment in its widest sense is central to the Government’s economic strategy. In the digital sector this year, we will extend access to the next generation of fibre broadband to 85 per cent of premises across Scotland in order to stimulate Scotland’s digital economy and to support businesses to benefit from the digital economy.
Our approach to housing and regeneration is fundamental to the Government’s overall purpose of sustainable economic growth, through tackling inequality, addressing market failure and creating jobs and business opportunities. We are spending more than £1.7 billion in the housing sector to deliver our target of building 30,000 affordable homes during this session of Parliament, and we will continue to support large-scale regeneration projects in 2015-16 through SPRUCE—the Scottish partnership for regeneration in urban centres—through the £50 million JESSICA loan fund, which is the joint European support for sustainable investment in city areas, and the £25 million regeneration capital grant fund.
We recognise the need for synergy between Scotland’s infrastructure and that of the rest of the UK. The Scottish Government supports high-speed rail, but not just to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. To realise its full benefit to the UK, the network needs to be extended further and faster to reach Scotland. That will help us to rebalance the British economy and will assist with ensuring future competitiveness and economic prosperity across Britain. Today I challenge the other parties, when they have a chance to speak, to say explicitly whether they support high-speed rail coming to Scotland or not. It is a simple question and it deserves a simple and straightforward answer.
We continue to facilitate infrastructure investment by others and are actively promoting innovative finance in order to lever in public and private investment. That is true of the national housing trust initiative, the tax incremental financing scheme—which is active in Glasgow City Council’s Buchanan quarter project and Falkirk Council’s Grangemouth project—as well as the growth accelerator model, which is extremely important.
Last August, we announced that the Scottish Government would invest £0.5 billion in infrastructure in Glasgow by way of a city deal agreement between the Scottish Government, the UK Government and the eight Glasgow and Clyde valley councils.
The Scottish Government recognises the importance of infrastructure investment. I have set out some of the significant steps that we are taking to expand investment to secure economic recovery. During 2015 alone, I expect that infrastructure projects worth around £1.5 billion will complete construction and be ready for use. This Government is supporting investment in schools, colleges, hospitals and transport.
The steps that we are taking demonstrate not just what is being achieved, but what more could be achieved if the UK Government were willing to change its course on public spending. This Government has made that case consistently and I invite Parliament to support it today.
I move,
That the Parliament recognises that infrastructure investment has an essential role in delivering sustainable economic growth by supporting jobs and enhancing Scotland’s asset base; welcomes Scottish Government action to maintain levels of investment in transport, health, schools and housing and other projects and programmes through a range of funding mechanisms; supports the strategic, long-term approach set out in the Infrastructure Investment Plan; acknowledges the value being delivered through major projects including the Queensferry Crossing, the M8, M73, M74 improvements, the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route, A9 and A96 dualling programmes, the Borders rail link, the New South Glasgow Hospitals project and the Schools for the Future programme; recognises the further benefit that projects such as high speed rail would bring and calls for all parties in the Parliament to make clear their support for Scotland being included in HS2; notes that the UK Government has cut the Scottish capital budget by around a quarter in real terms over the current spending review period; calls on the Chancellor to use the 2015 budget to boost capital investment; notes that real-terms increases in spending, limited to half a per cent each year, would see debt reduce as a share of GDP over four years, but would result in a further £180 billion investment in UK infrastructure, skills and education to further boost the economy compared with the UK Government’s current spending plans, and believes that such an approach offers an alternative to the UK Government’s failed austerity agenda.
15:35
I welcome today’s debate on building Scotland’s infrastructure for the future, which gives us the opportunity to recognise the key role that infrastructure plays in our communities, our towns and our cities. Across the Parliament, we might disagree on the strengths and weaknesses of Scotland’s infrastructure, but we should all agree that developing a strong, forward-thinking infrastructure policy is crucial to a sustainable and prosperous Scotland. The debate gives us the chance to pause and reflect on where we are with our current infrastructure investment plan and on some of the successes and challenges that have been experienced.
Investing in major infrastructure projects is a central element of the Scottish Government’s strategy to promote economic recovery. The five largest infrastructure projects that are under construction are key to improving Scotland’s road and rail network. The five projects will cost a combined £3.8 billion to build but, if building, financing and operating costs are taken into account, the combined budget commitment over 30 years is estimated to be £7.5 billion. The Scottish Government considers that spending to be affordable in the long term, but the fact that it still needs to demonstrate the reliability of its analysis has led to concerns about budget cuts across the portfolio having an impact on service delivery.
The hugely important city deals are key to Scotland’s future infrastructure. With an investment of £1.13 billion from Westminster, the Scottish Government and participating local authorities, the Glasgow city deal is an example of how we can come together for the greater good of Scotland. It is expected to raise £2.2 billion for the local economy, as well as creating tens of thousands of jobs through its construction phase and many more permanent jobs thereafter. The city deals create economic growth through infrastructure, innovation, jobs and skills, and they should be commended for their cross-party approach.
Many of the infrastructure projects that I have detailed will have an enormous benefit for our local and national economies. In considering how to build Scotland’s infrastructure for the future, it is of benefit to reflect on some of the practices that have gone before and how we can improve on them in the future.
As of August last year, a third of the projects that are set out in the infrastructure investment plan had been approved and were under construction, while 60 per cent had not had an outline business case approved. Good-quality business cases are vital for project scrutiny, decision making and transparency but, according to Audit Scotland, business cases for the Borders railway and EGIP projects were not complete and up to date at all stages. Consequently, at certain decision points, the Government had not fully demonstrated the projects’ viability, value for money and affordability.
I hear an echo of Labour’s previous reluctance to support Borders rail. Is the member suggesting that the money that is being invested in Borders rail should have gone elsewhere?
Absolutely not. There is no reluctance on my part to support Borders rail. I was pleased to hear the cabinet secretary mention it in the context of updating us on projects, and I look forward to those updates.
In its report, Audit Scotland said that the Scottish Government needed to improve public reporting of infrastructure projects. Except in the case of the Forth replacement crossing, the Government has not informed the public or the Scottish Parliament of the combined estimated financial commitment arising from the projects.
Reporting of the building cost estimates for other projects has at times been incomplete or inconsistent. A litany of projects have been delayed, including the Aberdeen western peripheral route, the Borders railway, EGIP and the dualling of the A9.
Does the member accept that, when campaigners block projects through legal action, the Government cannot really do much about that?
I am not sure that a response is required to that point.
The cancellation of the Glasgow airport rail link project, in which almost £29 million of taxpayers’ money was wasted—
Will the member take an intervention?
Can I make some progress? I will cover GARL again slightly later.
I look forward to that.
If routine public reporting of infrastructure projects was undertaken, delays and cost increases could be better understood.
Another project on which openness and accountability would be appreciated is the Scottish Government’s handling of Glasgow Prestwick airport. Audit Scotland’s report shows that the Scottish Government’s plans to sell Prestwick airport back to the private sector are viable but that it could take until 2022 for the airport to become profitable. Audit Scotland recommends that the Scottish Government provides a clear vision and strategy for Prestwick airport that takes into account the airport’s development potential and includes robust business and financial plans, a full evaluation of potential risk and a well-defined and regularly reviewed exit strategy that sets out the timescale for selling the airport to the private sector.
There are risks to each project, but more needs to be done to ensure that new infrastructure projects are developed in a more strategic way, which includes ensuring that transport links are an integral consideration in the planning process. My colleagues will discuss in greater detail crossrail, EGIP, the city strategies and Glasgow Prestwick airport.
In looking ahead for Scotland’s infrastructure, I would like to see improvement in community engagement and community buyout. Last Monday in Glasgow’s east end, I visited four community-led projects: a housing association, a community transport project, a community hub and a forthcoming music venue. Those projects are run for the community by local people and have not been pushed by the Government or the council. All levels of government have a duty to play a role in supporting the advancement of community projects across Scotland.
Between 1999 and 2007, we achieved change in many communities across Scotland through the redevelopment and regeneration of areas because the communities picked up the baton and challenged and led their areas to change for the better. I want us to support communities again to develop, encourage and embrace a community spirit that will bring long-term positive change.
Developers have a legal requirement to consult communities on applications for national and major developments. The idea for standards came from people on the front line of community engagement. More than 500 people from the statutory and voluntary sectors and from communities were involved in developing and producing the national standards for community engagement. However, the standards have not been updated since 2005, so it is now time to look at how we can engage with communities when building Scotland’s infrastructure.
Engaging with communities and service users should be an instrumental part of any infrastructure investment plan, especially when it comes to public transport. People must have a say about the trains and buses in their area. We need to regulate bus services to ensure that those who rely on them can continue to use them without their route being threatened by cuts. By backing Iain Gray’s proposed bus bill, we can give councils and Strathclyde partnership for transport new powers to have some control over routes, timetables and fares.
I just want to ask Mary Fee the question that I asked in my speech, because I know that she is running out of time. Jim Murphy has said that he is not in favour of high-speed rail stopping in England. Does she support high-speed rail coming to Scotland?
I confirm that I support high-speed rail coming to Scotland.
Scottish Labour has already announced that, in line with our counterparts down south, we will seek to bring the rail franchise to a non-profit contract. Scottish Labour is also committed to investing in Glasgow’s crossrail scheme, which could carry up to 4 million passengers a year and, according to SPT, could create up to 113 new jobs over 10 years, contributing £36 million to Glasgow’s economy.
Another area that needs to be considered when looking at Scotland’s infrastructure is how to incorporate low-carbon infrastructure investment. As WWF has pointed out, the decisions on infrastructure that are taken now will have an impact for many decades to come. Scottish Government decisions on infrastructure investment need to match the ambition of Scotland’s climate change legislation.
The Government’s motion rightly recognises the importance of infrastructure and investment in sustaining economic growth. We support high speed 2 as it would deliver high-speed rail to Scotland. However, the motion chooses to blame Westminster entirely for any spending deficits while not acknowledging the Scottish Government’s budget responsibilities and decisions.
The amendments from Gavin Brown and Willie Rennie acknowledge the key role that infrastructure plays in driving forward regeneration, as well as the need for openness, accountability and strategic guidance. The amendment in my name identifies the need for a more strategic and focused approach while recognising the pressures that we are under.
I move amendment S4M-12382.3, to leave out from “welcomes” to end and insert:
“supports the long-term approach set out in the Infrastructure Investment Plan but notes that, as of 15 August 2014, under a third of the projects remaining are currently in construction; notes that more needs to be done to ensure that new infrastructure projects are developed in a more strategic way, including ensuring that transport links are an integral consideration in the planning process; acknowledges that a number of promised projects have encountered delays, including the Edinburgh Glasgow Improvement Programme and the Borders railway project, or have been cancelled, such as the Glasgow Airport Rail Link, at great cost to the taxpayer; further notes that there is still further investment required to support user-focused development of the Scottish transport system, including dualling of the A9, electrification and dualling of the rail network, especially on rail lines north of Perth, and ensuring that bus regulation is developed to ensure the bus network meets the needs of passengers not commercial operators; recognises the further benefit that projects such as high speed rail and Crossrail would bring in speeding up journey times in Scotland, and calls for cross-party commitment to long-term projects such as these.”
15:45
The first email that I opened this morning was a news summary sent by The Scotsman. The first item was an article about how the tough transport supremo, Keith Brown, was going to destroy the Opposition parties in a debate today—he would use the debate as a platform to put them on the rack over high speed 2, which was to be the centrepiece of his speech and the debate. Members can imagine my surprise when he did not mention HS2 until he was 13 and a half minutes into a 14-minute speech. Almost under his breath, he whispered that he would be pushing HS2, before moving swiftly on to talk about housing trusts. If that was Keith Brown pushing the Opposition parties, I look forward to hearing him being consensual.
I am interested that the member thinks that the minister should push things, because the Conservative amendment mentions no projects and nothing positive whatsoever.
The Conservative amendment is very clear and asks for the investment update plan to be published as soon as possible. I am sure that Mr Mason will understand that that investment update plan includes every project—not just some of them—that the Scottish Government is doing, as well as some that it is probably not doing as quickly as we want. Mr Mason ought to read amendments a little more carefully before jumping in with such interventions.
In an intervention, Mr Rennie asked the minister about the magical £180 billion. The First Minister dreamed up a scenario in which an extra £180 billion could be found and no one would notice—there would be no impact at all. It has taken the best part of a week to get any detail from the Scottish Government about where that money is coming from and what the Government is going to do. The interesting point is that, if we followed the Scottish Government plans, we would eventually eliminate the deficit in 2024. It would be almost two full parliamentary sessions before we attacked and eliminated the deficit.
What would happen to public sector net debt? It would barely shift over the entire four-year projection: it would start at 81 per cent and fall to 79 per cent of gross domestic product. What impact would that have on the markets and the cost of borrowing? How much extra would it cost Scotland and the rest of the UK to get the magical £180 billion? We do not know.
Will the member take an intervention?
Perhaps Mr MacKenzie will be able to shed some light on the issue.
Mr Osborne has failed to meet every single borrowing target that he has pledged himself to. What impact has that had?
Perhaps we need to send a copy of the budget and the autumn statement to Mr MacKenzie, because on just about every economic measure—much to his dissatisfaction, I am sure—the plan appears to be working.
What about the deficit?
We will come to the deficit.
This year, we have a higher growth rate than any other G7 country has, and next year our growth rate is projected to be higher than that of every other G7 country apart from the United States.
We have the highest employment rate we have ever had. While the unemployment rate is too high, it is far lower than it was expected to be, at just over 5 per cent, compared with France, where it is 10 or 11 per cent.
As the cabinet secretary knows, the deficit was 10 per cent—almost 11 per cent—of gross domestic product when the coalition took office, whereas it is about 5 per cent of GDP now. That is called cutting the deficit in half. As he probably also knows, a small surplus is projected by 2017-18. It has been delayed a few years more than was planned but certainly not for the two full sessions of Parliament that it would be delayed under the Sturgeonomics plan that the Scottish Government appears to have concocted.
I will deal with a couple of other issues that the cabinet secretary raised. He complained about how the capital budget has been cut. However, it is entirely up to the Scottish Government how much of its budget it decides to put into capital. It cannot shift money the other way round so, if it was complaining about revenue, we would have to take that on the chin. However, if the Scottish Government wants to shift money from revenue to capital, it is perfectly at liberty to do so. To no real measurable degree has it chosen to do so.
The Scottish Government complains bitterly about the amount of money that is available yet, in 2011-12, there was a £30 million underspend on capital—that was £30 million that the Government could not spend on capital. I accept that Keith Brown was not the Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Investment and Cities at the time, and perhaps on his watch things will be different, but that year was not alone. In the following year—2012-13—the Scottish Government was unable to spend £29 million on capital. That is £59 million in just two financial years. Perhaps Mr Brown will do better than that—I certainly hope that he will—but if the Government cannot spend all the money, it is a bit rich of it to complain about the level of money.
Will the member give way?
I think that I have only 15 seconds left but, if there is any leeway, I will certainly give way to Mr Brown.
I will help Gavin Brown out, because I know that he is coming to the end of his speech. Does he yet feel able to respond to the question whether his party supports high-speed rail coming to Scotland?
I do not know why the cabinet secretary asked that again. Every single time we have been asked that question, we have said yes. Of course we support HS2—we always have done. It is interesting to note that the Scottish Government only ever wants to debate the issue in the run-up to a general election. The last time that the Scottish Government wanted to debate HS2 was in the run-up to the previous general election. We supported HS2 then and we support it now.
In the interim, perhaps Mr Brown might want to focus on some of the rail services for which he has direct responsibility. He might want to focus on Scotland. In a briefing, Transform Scotland said:
“Scotland’s rail network north of the Central Belt is in dire need of investment.”
What promises do we hear from the Government there? Transform Scotland points out that,
“In 1895, one could get from Dundee to Edinburgh in 57 minutes but nowadays the fastest rail trip is 64 minutes.”
The Scottish Government would do better to focus on the powers that it has and get its own house in order before blaming everybody else and complaining about the powers that it does not have.
I move amendment S4M-12382.1, to leave out from “welcomes” to end and insert:
“calls on the Scottish Government to explain the performance of the non-profit distribution pipeline since its creation, and asks the Scottish Government to publish an updated progress report for the Infrastructure Investment Plan as soon as possible.”
15:53
The Government motion asserts that £180 billion can be borrowed without adding to the national debt, but when the minister was asked for some details—such as the starting year and the breakdown year by year—he said that he had the detail, there was a lot of bluster and then there was no detail at all. On something that is central to the Government’s attack on the UK Government, he has not provided any detail. It is not a worked-out plan; it just seems to be a slogan.
I am surprised that the Scottish Government thinks that it can just put forward a slogan. It should provide some detail instead. I give the minister another opportunity to provide me with the detail right now. I will take an intervention. Can he give me the breakdown of £180 billion? When does it start? How much per year? Can he give me that kind of detail?
I am happy to do so for the benefit of Willie Rennie: £25 billion in 2016-17, £43 billion in 2017-18, £52 billion in 2018-19 and £60 billion in 2019-20—a total of £179 billion. Will Mr Rennie support that?
The fascinating thing is that it has taken the minister intervening on me for him to provide any kind of detail at all. The fact is that he still believes that borrowing that amount of money will reduce, not increase the national debt. I do not know what kind of economics he is involved in. Perhaps he will intervene again, as I would like to know what the interest rate will be. How much extra will the Government pay for that £180 billion? Does he have that detail? Can he tell me that?
First, I do not think that anybody can anticipate what the interest rate will be, given that the Governor of the Bank of England has been talking about possible negative interest rates. From what the member has just said, does he continue to support austerity, even given the wipe-out that the Lib Dems are about to experience at the election? Is poverty of ambition—the ambition for austerity—the only counsel that the Lib Dems have?
The Liberal Democrats have been involved in ensuring that we have a stronger economy, with 170,000 new jobs—any member on the Scottish National Party benches will probably be too embarrassed to mention that. We have 170,000 extra jobs in Scotland as a result of our economic plan—a plan that the SNP said would not be effective.
The reality is that the minister does not want to tell us how much extra it would cost to borrow that amount of money because that would have a direct impact on schools, hospitals and road and rail projects right across Scotland. It is not free money. The reality is that it would cost us, and it would cost us dear. The irony is that the SNP proposes to use UK growth—the growth that I and Gavin Brown have just talked about—to fund the extra borrowing. That is the price. That is the irony of what the minister has outlined today.
The UK Government has taken a responsible approach to balance the long-term costs of borrowing against the entirely natural desire of ministers such as Keith Brown to spend as much as possible. That is the balance that the SNP is going to break. If the SNP could give us any kind of detail about the future and how much this would cost, I would have greater confidence in the minister’s handling of these matters. However, the balanced approach of the UK Government will be undermined if the SNP gets its own way. Members who have read the Fiscal Commission recommendation—I am sure that that includes every member on the SNP back benches—know that that is a bad idea. The recommendation was that the Scottish Government should follow the UK downward trajectory on dealing with the deficit, but it is about to be ignored and consigned to the dustbin. All of that, simply for a slogan.
To add to Gavin Brown’s points about the Scottish Futures Trust, my party has been concerned about how the Scottish Government and the SFT have handled capital spending. Remember that the trust could not get 80 per cent of its capital out of the door in the first year. Now we find out from a written answer—not from an oral statement in this chamber but from a written answer from John Swinney—that eight hub projects that were due for financial closure are being delayed. Can the minister say whether that includes projects such as Muirhouse centre in Edinburgh, as part of the Lothian health bundle; Kelso high school; Anderson high school in Lerwick; Newbattle high school; Baldragon academy in Dundee; and many other projects right across Scotland? Such projects will potentially be directly impacted by the Government’s mishandling of the matter.
My party has been committed to high-speed rail and to bringing it to Scotland. We do not need a motion to tell us to do that; Gavin Brown is right about that. I am interested, however, in what has happened to the Scottish Government plan for a high-speed rail route between Edinburgh and Glasgow, which was announced back in 2012. An SNP press release said at the time:
“the SNP has refused to wait for Westminster to put Scotland in the fast lane and has committed to high speed rail between Glasgow and Edinburgh.”
The press release went on to say,
“this announcement from the SNP Government means we will have high speed rail even before the completion of the London-Birmingham HS2 line”.
I repeat,
“even before the completion of the London-Birmingham ... line”.
However, according to reports from the newspapers, the high-speed rail line needs to be brought to Scotland before anything happens here. It gets worse. An official from the Scottish Government has said that nobody has actually announced high-speed rail—nobody from the Scottish Government has announced high-speed rail.
We need some clarity from the minister. What has happened to the promise that high-speed rail would get to Scotland before it even got to Birmingham? Where are the details and the plans? Where is the route? We need to know that kind of detail. Is it just another one of the Government’s promises that comes to nothing?
I move amendment S4M-12382.2, to leave out from “welcomes” to end and insert:
“welcomes the increasing amounts of capital funds made available to the Scottish Government by the UK Government and the additional borrowing powers agreed; notes that the recently published SNP fiscal plans increase debt and divert money from infrastructure to debt interest for a generation, and further notes with concern the review of the financing model underpinning the Scottish Futures Trust and the implications for Scottish infrastructure.”
16:00
One of the defining features of this Government’s budgets in recent years has been the transfer of budget from resource to capital in an effort to offset—at least partially—the damaging cuts from Westminster, which have disproportionately targeted capital spending. It is difficult to follow the logic of the London Government in cutting the Scottish Government’s capital budget by a full 26 per cent, because it is the exact opposite of the economic wisdom on recession economics.
The logic of capital investment in infrastructure is not just about the economic multipliers that accompany such investment, or the increased number of jobs that are supported and created, but about our long-term competitiveness.
Capital investment is an investment not just in the present, but in our future. Without that investment, our competitiveness declines; our productivity declines; our national wealth and wellbeing decreases; and all our problems and challenges increase.
The policy is not just about throwing money at public projects as Labour did, or throwing money at the private sector through private finance initiative contracts, as both Labour and the Tories would like us to continue doing. It is about steering a prudent middle course and seeking genuine value from public investment. It is about ensuring that there is added value from public investment and showing that there is a virtuous course to be steered between, on the one hand, the public inefficiency that we used to hear about and, on the other hand, private sector greed.
Perhaps no project exemplifies those virtues better than the Queensferry crossing. I would have settled for the crossing being on time and on budget, but at this stage in construction it is a remarkable achievement for the project to be on course to be on time and below budget. We should celebrate and learn from that achievement, and we should set the same standard for all public contracts. When we set those high standards for public sector project delivery, we can also set a sustainable model for comprehensive and continual capital infrastructure investment and improvement. We can then bring into being the long-term certainty that is provided by the infrastructure investment plan.
It is a great pity that the Labour Party has forgotten the lessons that it learned from Keynes following the last great recession, and that the party has been unable to learn from the enlightened view of debt that Keynes demonstrated in negotiating the war debt over a suitably long period. It is a great pity that Labour members have forgotten the lessons of their political forefathers, who built their way out of the looming post-war recession, for they understood that we cannot cut our way out of recession if our goals are long-term competitiveness, long-term increases in productivity and long-term prosperity.
We can, however, build our way towards prosperity by investing in infrastructure and high-quality jobs—
Would it be the member’s preference to collect the £180 billion using taxation, to borrow it, or a mixture of the two?
That is an interesting intervention, because Gavin Brown knows full well that the scenario is more complex than that. He knows that, by stimulating growth, taxation will increase. It is not a matter of having higher or punitive tax rates; it is a matter of stimulating the economy and thereby increasing taxation. I am pretty sure that Gavin Brown also knows that had Mr Osborne followed that kind of wisdom, we would be in a far better place than we are now. Unlike what Gordon Brown said, nobody can stop the boom and slump cycle. It just so happens that we are approaching the boom phase of the cycle now.
As I was saying, we can build our way towards prosperity by investing in infrastructure and high-quality jobs—by investing in our future. That is why the SNP Government is calling on the chancellor to use his budget to scrap the austerity project and to bring forward a 0.5 per cent year-on-year increase in budgets—only 0.5 per cent. The argument is not about whether to cut the debt; it is about how we cut it and about the speed of debt reduction. It can be done in a way that leaves a harmful legacy, such as if we keep on Mr Osborne’s course, or it can be done in the Scottish Government’s preferred way, in which we continue to invest more in infrastructure. That would build our competitiveness and productivity, and it would build a better future for everyone in Scotland.
16:06
This is an important debate and I am happy to contribute to it. Those of us who have been here since 1999—I think that I am the first member to speak who has been here for as long as that, although I do not look it—will know that the debates on infrastructure projects have not always been happy ones. Whether about the Parliament building, the trams, the Glasgow airport rail link, the western peripheral route or the Haudagain roundabout, about which I probably knew far more than was healthy for me when I was leader of the Labour Party, it feels as though we have been talking about these things since Methuselah was a boy.
The reason why the debates have been contentious is that we understand precisely why investment in infrastructure and construction is so important. I welcome the fact that we have an inquiry into the trams project, but I still regret the decision to sell off the land round the GARL project when the idea remains alive, because that makes it more difficult to resuscitate the project at a later stage.
Infrastructure projects are particularly important in tough times. In my constituency, the construction of the M77 extension was not just about increasing transport measures; it opened up economic opportunity that would not otherwise have been there in parts of my constituency. That is also the case with the M74 project. We know that we will not get those benefits from infrastructure projects by accident. I am interested in the cabinet secretary’s view on who precisely takes the lead in the Government agencies on links with the creation of economic opportunity and ensuring the delivery of community and local regeneration.
In tough times, we apply a different set of rules to infrastructure plans than when resources are perhaps easier to come by. Through infrastructure, there is a huge opportunity to create jobs, support local businesses and sustain communities, but that is not inevitable. I am on record as regretting the way in which the Queensferry crossing contract was let, which meant that there were fewer ways in which to create economic opportunities for local businesses. Contracts are different at different times. Simply saving on a budget is not necessarily a saving if we deny ourselves the chance to create economic opportunities at a later stage.
It is essential that there is rigorous reporting on and analysis of the economic, social and environmental impact of infrastructure projects that have already happened in order to inform us about how projects should be taken forward in future. The cabinet secretary will know as well as I do the importance of infrastructure in creating and directing the role of our cities. We have heard a lot about city deals and so on, and we know that cities’ ability to generate opportunities at that level can be supported by decisions made at the Scottish level. I reflect on the importance of crossrail, which I know that others will talk about, particularly in the west of Scotland and Glasgow.
I hope that the cabinet secretary will forgive me if I concentrate on one particular infrastructure project: the new South Glasgow hospital, which the motion refers to. We know that it is an important development. It is exciting and massive and we commend all those who have brought it to this stage so successfully for the amount of work that it has created and the opportunities that it will create in the future. We recognise that it is a facility for Glasgow and Scotland and a centre of excellence for Scotland and beyond. It is not just a health project but a very significant opportunity economically, both at construction stage and later. We know that the project has been delivered through cross-party support and we welcome—I certainly do—the health outcomes that come from that development and the opportunities for local jobs and economic regeneration as a consequence of so many people being in the locality.
However, I cannot overstate the degree of vocal unease—if not anger—about the impact of the project on the community. We have a cross-party responsibility to respond to and respect the concerns about the impact of a significantly higher workforce, the number of patients who are coming in and the way in which the hospital is drawing in businesses related to medicine and academic research work. The workforce simply accessing its work, as a consequence of the project, will have a huge impact on the local community, particularly on parking and transport, and inevitably measures will have to be put in place to protect local streets. There will have to be parking measures, but local people resent in the strongest terms the need for them to pay for that as a consequence of decisions that were outwith their control.
It is essential to understand, take responsibility for and seek to mitigate the impact of such an infrastructure project on local people, who are saying, “Yes, we have a Scotland-wide facility, but we did not ask for it and we’re going to have to pay for the consequences of it.” Collectively we need to look at what transport support is there and what resources could be provided to ease the impact on local people. The project is worth £800 million and I believe that it would take only a tiny proportion of that to ensure that the hospital is a good neighbour to the local community rather than a concern for it.
It is a national project—the motion argues, if not boasts, that it is a national project—and I believe that it is necessary to address the consequences of that national project. The Scottish Government is, I believe, part of the solution, and I have already spoken to the health secretary about this. It is a matter not for the health budget, but for the infrastructure budget, and I urge the cabinet secretary to meet me and, if possible, constituents and groups to respond to their concerns, understand the significant impact that the project is having on them and identify, with all those who want to celebrate this great project, solutions that will address those concerns.
I repeat that I welcome the hospital and I celebrate the difference that it could make to people’s lives. I hope that the cabinet secretary or indeed the transport minister will, in their summing-up, confirm their willingness to meet me and others and to identify the resources that are a logical conclusion of the £800 million that have already been invested. That will address the very strong sense of injustice at local level, where people are facing the consequences of something that we all want to celebrate. If we want the hospital to open in the best of circumstances, it is incumbent on us all to find a way to respond to those concerns, not by taking money out of the health budget or the council budget, but by taking money directly out of the very budget that, as we have celebrated, creates jobs and opportunities at both the local and the Scottish levels.
16:14
Although I speak in this debate in a personal capacity, I draw members’ attention to my honorary vice-presidency of Railfuture UK and to my being the honorary president elect of the Scottish Association for Public Transport. In the current climate, I should say that I receive no pay whatsoever for either of those appointments. I should perhaps also say that I am a regular user of the one Scotland card that gives me access to scheduled bus services throughout Scotland at no cost to myself.
This is a timely debate that will allow me to celebrate what has been achieved in public transport and to highlight some of the remaining challenges. We have had interesting contributions so far. Given his remarks, I take it that Gavin Brown is responsible for the fact that flying from central London to central Paris is slower than it was in 1931, when the Imperial Airways service, which operated from Croydon to Le Touquet, cost 4 guineas—which is a lot cheaper than today, although, of course, the value of money is different.
Likewise, I take it that—reductio ad absurdum—when Willie Rennie criticises proposals to spend more on capital expenditure and improving the economy, he would abolish the entire capital programme, because that would be of enormous benefit to the economy. Perhaps I am carrying that a little further than he would seriously take it.
Scotland’s railway network makes a great deal more geographic sense than many. Less than 10 per cent of rail journeys starting in Scotland end outwith our country. That is a smaller proportion than is the case for any other area of the Great Britain rail network. However, that underplays two important things about cross-border rail.
First, only 10 per cent or so of public transport journeys from Scotland to London are by rail. Most are by air. That is a ferocious and unnecessary burden on our environment. Currently, travel times are slightly better by air, perhaps by about an hour. However, the reliability of rail travel is substantially greater, and the nature of rail travel from city centre to city centre, using transport that gives one access to wi-fi, hot and cold running drinks and so on, without mode change, means that passengers are more relaxed and ready for work at journey’s end.
We can look at what is happening with the climate. The east coast of the United States of America is having the worst of all winters, demonstrating the effect of climate change, and there are significant difficulties in getting access to water in the west, a situation that is extending into the midwest in the summer. That shows that, if the environment is overexploited, it will bite back. The issue of high-speed rail concerns economic issues but also climate issues. We have to get out of the air and on to rail.
In the shorter term, if we can speed up the journey, that will be helpful. It has to happen soon. It will take some time to get HS2 into place, but there are huge economic benefits as well as huge benefits in terms of the climate. It is one of the most important projects for everyone who lives on this island, and addressing climate issues is important for people around the world.
I want to say a few targeted remarks, chosen more or less at random, about some of the things that we might be thinking of doing but which have not yet been mentioned.
First, we need to find ways of ensuring that the rail infrastructure can better support freight. We have seen huge success with Tesco putting its dry goods on the railway network up to Inverness.
I believe that the freight facilities grant was in the member’s remit when he was a minister. I strongly support the freight facilities grant, but does he share my view that it is crucially important, particularly for lines in the north, that we have more dualling of track, because the basic problem that we have is a constraint and a lack of capacity on those lines?
Where freight is concerned, I would suggest that the problem is slightly different. I do not underplay the value of dualling, but not in relation to freight. For freight, if we are to get the fresh goods on to the network, the important thing is that we have a resilient network with alternate routing, so that the delivery of fresh goods is not compromised by technical problems that will occur even in the best managed of networks.
We need to freight-enable more of the network and the alternate route around Aberdeen. A lot has been done by the previous Government and this Government in that regard. To that extent, I hope that signalling between Aberdeen and Inverness will become a priority.
It is quaint and fascinating to see the token working between Elgin and Forres, but, really, a 160-year-old system might be capable of being updated. By the same token, north of Inverness it is perhaps time that we saw a little about the plans to replace the obsolete—no longer just obsolescent—radio token system.
Looking to roads, the success of the average speed cameras on the A9—saving lives, reducing accidents and improving journey times overall for the mix of traffic that we have—indicates that we should have more of that on our road network across Scotland. I hope that Willie Rennie will speak to his colleague Danny Alexander, who should be prepared to change his mind, as others have done on other subjects.
I travelled on the Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine line on the day it opened, travelling on the footplate of the Great Marquess—a steam train. I have it diaried to travel on the first day of the Borders railway. I travelled across the Forth road bridge in 1964 on the day that it opened. My great uncle was chair of the campaign committee for it in the 1930s. I very much look forward to crossing at the earliest possible opportunity on the new road bridge across the Forth.
We are making huge progress. There will never be a day when each and every one of us does not have more things that we want to do, so we have to prioritise. I think that broadly we are making good choices. I look forward to much more being spent on rail than perhaps has been spent in the past as a share of the budget, but good progress is being made. I give my congratulations to the Government.
16:21
I have to say that this is one debate that I could look forward to, as an opportunity to talk for half an hour about capital investment and infrastructure in my constituency would require no notes whatever. However, I do not have that long, which is why I do need some notes in order to make sure that I stick somewhere near a script.
I will start by addressing the issue raised by Gavin Brown and Willie Rennie. We need to bear in mind that, as those gentlemen know, capital goods are not just money spent; we actually get quite a lot of things for capital expenditure.
We get the capital goods themselves, which might have enormous value for a very long period if they are properly constructed. Daily, we cross bridges that were constructed goodness knows how long ago.
We get the benefit of the capital in the short term because the project had some justification. There was some benefit to be derived on an annual basis for that capital expenditure—otherwise, it would never have been chosen.
We also get the opportunity that Stewart Stevenson pointed out, because just improving the railway network gives us an alternative way of getting somewhere. It is the kind of redundancy that we need in any system. That is why electricity systems have multiple loops in them, so that the sky does not fall in if something breaks down. That is the kind of benefit that we get from just improving infrastructure systems.
We also get work, jobs—productive and skilled jobs—and opportunities for apprenticeships and training, which means that we are able to develop the skills of those who are coming along. We also retain the skills of those who are working on the job. If anybody was to talk to the construction industry at the moment, they would recognise that one of the real problems is that the downturn has sent skilled people away and the industry is struggling to get them back, because they have gone to do something else and, to some extent, they have lost their skills.
Those are some of the benefits, and I would gently point out that the economic multiplier is greater than 1. Capital expenditure is the thing to do. Yes, we have to find a way of paying for it in the short term, but it is well known that we get that money back in time. Mike MacKenzie, who is no longer with us in the chamber, is absolutely right. The discussion about whether we are going to pay for capital expenditure by borrowing or tax becomes redundant because in time the tax will replace the borrowings.
Given all that the member has just said, why did the Scottish Government switch only a tiny fraction of funding from revenue to capital?
I am not going to answer for every pound or penny or even million, but let us be clear that that is always the choice, because we have other things to do with that revenue, particularly when the budget is dropping. There are always choices. We know that; no one has ever denied it.
I will not get through this afternoon without mentioning some of the issues in my constituency, because my constituents would probably not let me, but first I want to pick up on a thought from what Johann Lamont said. I have to agree with her: I think that we should have an assessment of projects. I do not know quite how long it would take to get there, but I suspect—and I suggest that the Scottish Government does this—that we should have a serious look at the numbers and the benefits. We need to learn from things that were done in the past, and it does not matter whether we did them, Labour did them or the people before Labour did them. Unless we learn the benefits and try to get to the economics of that, we are not going to learn the lessons—and we really should be doing that.
I sympathise with the point that was made about parking around a hospital. I was elected as the councillor for the Ninewells ward in Dundee about three weeks—I think—before the parking scheme was brought in to accommodate the fact that the car parks had been privatised, and I sympathise at a personal level with the problem of having to deal with that. However, it is not insoluble. The issue is to ensure that it is seen by everybody involved to be handled sensibly and sensitively, but I understand that there is a problem.
I have two minutes left to consider the issues. My constituents would be extremely upset if I did not start with roads. There is absolutely no need to talk to the cabinet secretary about the Laurencekirk junction, so I am not going to do that, but I have at least mentioned it.
The trains are an important issue and one about which we could wax eloquent for quite some time. We need to do what we can to improve the network. Our great grandchildren will wonder why we spent so much money on roads. There is an answer and we know it—that that is the current way of doing things—but we also know, and they will recognise, that the better way to move stuff around is on the railways. It is a great pity that Dr Beeching got his axe out when he did, because we are living with the consequences.
I merely mention that the best way in terms of routing to improve the position from the central belt to Aberdeen is to come up from Dundee via, essentially, the route of the A90, which would put railways back into Forfar and Brechin and all the way on to Laurencekirk and eliminate the problems around Montrose. I am sure that the minister will either be aware of that or reflect on it in due course.
I also reflect that the Government has spent quite a lot of money on flood protection. Significant money is visibly being spent in Brechin at present, and another scheme is to come in Stonehaven in due course. These things are important, albeit that they perhaps get forgotten rather a lot. We also have three new secondary schools being built—or finished, in the case of Mearns academy. I am grateful for those, as of course are my constituents.
I will finish by looking at the position on broadband. It is entirely clear to me that we are moving to a situation in which Government resources need to be focused on broadband. The Government knows that, so I am not telling anybody anything that they do not know. However, we will be able to deliver on the NHS in remoter areas, of which I have many in my constituency, only if we have the ability to Skype or the equivalent. We need broadband up the glens if folk are not to be seriously disenfranchised. It is plain that BT is not going to go there; I have talked to it about that.
The cabinet secretary mentioned 85 per cent coverage. The trouble is that I—and he—have some of the other 15 per cent, and people there will be seriously disenfranchised if we do not grasp the thistle somehow or other. Please—we need to find a way of addressing that. I also recognise that it should be UK money, but that is for another day.
16:28
Every speaker so far has mentioned the importance of investing in Scotland’s future infrastructure. We are at one on that. There are several strands to the debate. One is the local interests that we have, but at the same time we need to consider the national interests.
I start with a local interest regarding the Robroyston area in my constituency. The minister is aware of the background. The development of Robroyston was conceived in and came from Glasgow City Council’s local plan and it has always been intended that a railway station be built there. More than 2,000 houses have been built in Robroyston since the 1990s and development continues there. I and other elected representatives have welcomed the interaction with the minister on the subject and it is welcome that we have moved forward, but he is aware that we are now at the stage of taking forward the appraisal of the Robroyston railway station. We are at the crucial stage at which our application has to be submitted for final approval from the station fund.
I would welcome clarity from the minister in his closing speech on the stage that the station fund is at—the expenditure that is available to it and whether it is still accepting applications. Like us all, the minister has recognised the importance of Robroyston railway station to the future of not only Robroyston but the rail network.
We also recognise at a national level that Glasgow’s future depends on the necessary funds being put in place to develop a transport infrastructure that deals with many of the challenges that the city faces. It is not only the population of the city of Glasgow—more than 600,000 people—that we need to support but those who depend on the city’s infrastructure to travel to and from work every day.
On a less positive note, a number of Glasgow residents have raised concerns in respect of the cancellation of the GARL project. When it was revealed in October 2013 that nearly £30 million of public money had been spent on the butchered Glasgow airport rail link proposal, it was interesting to note that a spokesperson—not the Government directly—said that
“£176 million of capital investment has been saved as a result of cancelling this project.”
The minister has to answer for the fact that the project was agreed in the Parliament by the vast majority of those who are in the chamber. Government ministers who are here also supported the GARL proposal.
Will Paul Martin give way?
If John Mason wants to apologise to Glaswegians for the cancellation of the GARL project, I would be more than happy to give way.
Does Paul Martin accept that the argument for GARL is difficult because the airport is so close to the city centre and the bus link is so good that rail does not really add a lot?
I challenge John Mason to meet those who commute to and from Glasgow airport and tell them that they have a good bus link. In all the feedback that I have heard from constituents and, indeed, the business community that supported the GARL proposal, I have never heard the comment, “Yes, we are very happy with the airport link.” Look at some of the challenges that Glasgow faces, in particular the build-up of traffic to and from the airport on the M8 motorway. For John Mason to be an apologist for the SNP and say that there is a substantial bus link in place is wrong and shows how out of touch he and the SNP are on the issue.
Also, if we look at the benefit to the economy of investment in the Glasgow airport rail link we see that for every £1.20 spent on it, the Scottish economy would have benefited by £1.25. There would have been substantial economic benefit.
I will conclude on a more positive note about one other project that I would like to take forward with the Scottish Government. In doing so, I pay tribute to the campaigning skills of Ken Sutherland, who has advanced the argument for Glasgow’s crossrail project. The campaigners have made some powerful arguments in favour of that project and I ask the Government to take into consideration the additional borrowing powers that will be available to it to implement the project. I ask the minister to comment, in his closing speech, on the Glasgow crossrail project and how we could work together on it. It would be important for Glasgow and might allow the Government to redeem itself in some way for cancelling the GARL project.
We all welcome the debate. There are some positive aspects to the Government’s proposals and we welcome them, but I hope that we can work together with it to take forward some other elements. However, we have to expose some of the cancelled projects that are an unacceptable part of the Government’s history.
16:34
As we have heard, the Scottish Government has maintained investment in infrastructure in key areas, such as transport, health, schools and housing. It has done so against a backdrop of austerity and a cut of a quarter in its capital budget that has been imposed by Westminster, however unpalatable that fact may be to Liberal Democrat and Conservative members.
The infrastructure investment plan that was published in 2011 sets out the ambition to invest billions of pounds in more than 80 major capital projects between now and 2030. As the Scottish Government’s economic strategy aims to grow our economy, it is vital that we plan for the future.
My constituency, Edinburgh Southern, is seeing excellent development in its schools and hospitals. The £1.25 billion Scotland’s schools for the future programme is delivering for our communities. Both Boroughmuir high school and James Gillespie’s high school cater to the young people of my constituency, and both schools are finally seeing much-needed new facilities being built.
Last year, work began on a new Boroughmuir high school building in Fountainbridge, on a brownfield site at the former Fountain brewery. The estimated cost is between £20 million and £30 million, and around 1,165 pupils will benefit from fantastic new facilities that will provide an impressive learning environment.
James Gillespie’s high school is also seeing investment. In May last year, I was delighted to attend the ceremony to mark the construction progress of the rebuild project alongside the headmaster, Donald J Macdonald, and pupils from the school. That £34 million project will result in brand new facilities being built that will cater for 1,150 pupils. The Scottish Government has pledged to support more than £20 million of the cost of that project. Both projects are expected to be completed by the summer of 2016.
Those school developments are not just about planning for the future; they are contributing to Scotland’s economy now. That is a key part of the Government’s infrastructure investment plan. Increased spending in such infrastructure programmes not only equips our young people with a first-class education in new, modern facilities; it has a direct impact on Scotland’s economy in supporting jobs and apprenticeships locally.
The Scottish Government is not just investing in new schools. Following the tragic death of Keane Wallis-Bennett at Liberton high school last year, the existing gym hall has been demolished and work is under way to replace it with new facilities. The City of Edinburgh Council estimates that the cost of that will be up to £2.5 million. The Scottish Government’s offer to contribute two thirds of that expenditure is to be welcomed.
Edinburgh has also seen much-needed investment in its hospitals, including in the Royal Edinburgh hospital and the Royal hospital for sick children. The new Royal hospital for sick children will be located at the site of the existing Edinburgh royal infirmary at Little France, and the department of clinical neurosciences will also be based there. That will create a world-class centre of excellence on a single site. Work is due to start in summer 2017 to deliver that £227 million investment.
We are also due to see the redevelopment of the Royal Edinburgh hospital campus at Morningside in four phases over the next 10 years. Many local people were disappointed that the Tipperlinn bowling club could not be accommodated within the new plans, despite its having been part of the initial agreement document and the revised proposals. A serious question remains over whether the health board has followed through on the historical commitments that it made in 1978 to provide equivalent facilities if the site was ever required for future building. However, that is not a matter for today.
The £48 million phase 1 development started in January 2015 and is expected to be completed by autumn 2016. It includes new accommodation for an adult mental health in-patient service, older people’s mental health assessment, an intensive psychiatric care service, and the new Robert Fergusson national brain injury unit. In November 2014, the Scottish Government committed a further £120 million for future phases of campus redevelopment. That investment will allow the Royal Edinburgh hospital to become the premier mental health facility in Scotland, with better public access through the site, including paths and cycle ways.
That final point allows me to return to a favourite subject of mine: investment in cycling infrastructure. I was delighted that the Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, heeded my call and provided some £3.9 million of the money that is coming to Scotland through the Barnett formula for investment in cycling. This year, there will be the largest-ever Scottish Government investment—almost £40 million—in cycling and walking.
It is encouraging to see the difference that such investment is making, whether it be the £750,000 to plug the gap on the national cycle network at Strathyre to Kingshouse in partnership with the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority, or the investment closer to home in Edinburgh, where additional funding of up to £3.6 million has been earmarked for Leith Walk, for the creation of an exemplar urban corridor to prioritise walking and cycling. Much of the investment is matched by partners. For example, through the community links programme of £19 million, Sustrans generated £25 million in match funding in 2014-15.
I will end with a reference to skills. In order to successfully build and maintain first-rate infrastructure, such as our schools and hospitals, we must ensure that the workforce in the construction and engineering sectors is fully equipped with the relevant skills and training.
We need to ensure that colleges across Scotland do not discontinue important courses linked to our construction and engineering related industries. The continuation of the national certificate and higher national certificate building services engineering courses, which are under threat at Edinburgh College, are designed to prepare young people to work directly in the engineering and construction industry. The qualifications offer a clear and proven vocational path to many exciting job opportunities—jobs that are significant in maintaining and developing Scotland’s infrastructure.
Despite the budgetary constraints within which it is compelled to operate, the Scottish Government remains determined to deliver vital infrastructure projects, jobs and economic growth for the benefit of the people of Scotland.
16:41
I am tempted to say that I agree with Jim Eadie and to sit back down—[Interruption.] Thank you very much, Gavin Brown.
It was interesting to read the Scottish Government’s motion. It is almost a piece of literature, which is testament to the amount of work that has been done and on which things must be said. It also refreshed my memory on the 2013 update of the infrastructure investment plan.
A lot of the projects have been on-going since the update and even since the time of the first infrastructure plan’s publication. I was pleased to hear Mary Fee say that Labour very much supports Scotland’s being included in HS2. I hope that the other parties will also be able to confirm in their closing speeches their support, so that we have the strength of the Parliament behind the Government when it makes the case for that. As far as I am concerned, the case for bringing high-speed rail to Scotland has to be made.
There are causes for concern in the amendments. I note that Paul Martin said that, generally, there is agreement that we should go forward with the infrastructure projects, with some justifiable concerns about different matters. On seeing the reference to crossrail in the Labour amendment, I was struck by the fact that we have not heard a lot of the unionist parties talking about the London crossrail project and Scotland’s contribution to that. That led me to think about what Scotland could do with fiscal autonomy and the £400 million share of that project’s cost.
The Liberal amendment expresses concerns that the SNP’s fiscal plans will
“increase debt and divert money from infrastructure to debt interest for a generation”.
I absolutely believe that we have made and, indeed, shown the case that we can manage down a deficit without attacking society’s social fabric, as the Westminster coalition Government is quite clearly doing.
I was interested to hear Willie Rennie mention the price of borrowing. To go down that route is to argue against any borrowing whatsoever. The price of austerity is more important. Ask people out there about the price of the austerity measures that are wrecking the fabric of our society and making things difficult for single people, families, and working people right across our country. That is the true price, and it is one that is not worth paying, as far as I am concerned.
I also note the concern in the Liberal amendment about the Scottish Futures Trust. I am more concerned about the on-going cost of private finance initiatives, which were entered into with great gusto by the Labour-Liberal coalition over this Parliament’s first eight years. I am concerned not just about their on-going capital costs, but about their on-going management costs. NHS Lanarkshire is still suffering from that: it is paying the price of PFI for ancillary services. The Scottish Futures Trust is looking into the possibility of bringing some of those initiatives back into the public sector, which is an admirable thing to do. If we are talking about whether to have private finance initiatives or the Scottish Futures Trust and a non-profit-distributing method of financing public projects, I know what I would pick every single time.
The Government is to be commended on its husbandry of resources in terms of infrastructure, and on the way in which projects have been managed. Over the years, I have become convinced that, far too often with the big public sector megaprojects—not just in this country but in many countries—there is deliberate underestimating of costs because everybody knows that once a project gets so far down the road it must be completed. One thing about the Scottish Government is that it has been honest, up front and transparent about costs and how projects are monitored and managed, which is showing in some of the results that we are getting.
I am really pleased that there has been quite a bit of investment going on in my constituency. The M74 motorway will be a great improvement, and the links around the Raith interchange will be a great improvement for the East Kilbride expressway, allowing better access to the rest of Lanarkshire and to our cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Just yesterday, I was looking at the Hunter health centre, which has had £20 million of investment from the Government. It is not just straight from Government through the Scottish Futures Trust that investment in infrastructure comes; the Dollan aqua centre in East Kilbride, for example, has had funding from sportscotland. There are many different ways in which the Government invests in our infrastructure.
One of the most important things, which is unique in the UK at the moment, is that the Scottish Government’s approach to infrastructure and investment is not just about big, small or medium-sized projects, but about social investment. Investment in people should always count when we are designing projects, and SNP policies such as free childcare, free tuition fees and free prescriptions absolutely highlight our commitment to improving people’s lives and to increasing opportunity. Nicola Sturgeon, as First Minister, has made that clear in a lot of the presentations that she has made lately. One of the biggest infrastructure projects that we should all be thinking about in this session of Parliament, and for the next, is investment in the infrastructure of our people, because that is how we will really be successful.
16:47
I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate on building Scotland’s infrastructure for the future. I am going to focus on Prestwick airport, because it is an important link not just to the rest of the UK but to Europe and beyond. As such, it is vital to the economy of Ayrshire, and of course it provides thousands of jobs.
By way of background, Prestwick airport is of great strategic importance because it adds about £47.6 million to the Ayrshire economy, and in the wider Scottish context the figure is £61.6 million. The airport directly supports 300 jobs and about 1,350 jobs indirectly, and the wider aerospace industry around Prestwick is estimated to support around 3,200 jobs.
Despite about £10 million in investment from the Scottish Government, the airport looks tired and still needs further support to see it through a difficult period before it can start to make profits so that it can pay back the Government loans and be sold on. The recent Audit Scotland report estimates that the total funding that is needed before a return to profitability in 2021-22 would be about £40 million.
Unfortunately, the cabinet secretary has left the chamber, but I would like to ask whether he thinks that that is a reasonable estimate and when we can expect a business plan so that everyone is kept informed of progress.
In the past year, there has been a drop in passenger numbers of about 15 per cent, mainly due to Ryanair, which is the only airline that operates from Prestwick at the moment, transferring flights to Glasgow airport. However, there has been an increase in freight business over the past year and there has been an encouraging increase in the amount of military use due to the length and the density of the composition of the runway. The second runway acts as one of the UK’s two principal designated hijack sites. The airport also offers other benefits to the aviation industry in Scotland. For example, it is used for flight diversions in bad weather, during aircraft emergencies and in air-sea rescues.
The availability of land, services and skills means that Prestwick offers the best potential in Scotland for aircraft conversion, dismantling and recycling operations. It is also the only airport in Scotland that has a direct rail connection on its doorstep. If the Glasgow crossrail project was developed, the airport would be connected by rail to the rest of Scotland. None of the other Scottish airports has such a connection.
What can be done to get Prestwick airport back on track? First, as a result of the work of the Smith commission, Scotland will have control of air passenger duty rates, so it will be possible to reduce or to remove APD. As is the case for all the Scottish airports, it is anticipated that that will hugely increase passenger numbers. When he returns to the chamber, perhaps the cabinet secretary can say what the Government plans to do with APD when it gains that power?
Secondly, we should be looking to develop growth through new routes and carriers because, as I mentioned earlier, Ryanair is the only passenger airline that is operating from Prestwick. Perhaps the cabinet secretary or Derek Mackay could update Parliament on whether any progress has been made on securing additional routes or carriers.
The team Scotland approach will encourage new routes from any of Scotland’s airports, including Prestwick. We should bear in mind the fact that there are commercial sensitivities.
Our position on APD is clear. What is the Labour Party’s position on APD? It appears that the Westminster election will come before the transfer of powers to the Scottish Parliament.
The Labour Party supports control of APD coming to Scotland. It is in the Smith commission report.
The biggest game changer for Prestwick would be acceptance of it on 26 February—this Thursday—as one of the preferred bidders for the UK spaceport and its subsequent success in that process as the only spaceport in the UK. To be clear, that would not mean Prestwick becoming a centre for space tourism for the super-rich; rather, it would allow Ayrshire to capitalise on its status and to play a key role in satellite launching and manufacturing in the space-science sector, which currently earns £11.3 billion in revenues. That figure grew by 7.2 per cent between 2011 and 2013, despite the recession.
Currently, the UK has no satellite launch facilities of its own, so if Prestwick were to become a spaceport, it would be the first facility of its kind, which would open it up to an untapped wealth of future potential and make it ideal for taking Scotland’s infrastructure to a new dimension. That would have a huge impact on the Scottish economy through the promotion of skilled jobs, through training facilities and through opportunities for hi-tech supplies and services. It would also boost tourism.
You need to bring your remarks to a close.
I hope that I have highlighted why reinvigorating Prestwick airport is key to not only the Ayrshire economy but to the Scottish economy. It has a huge amount of potential to be an integral part of the infrastructure of Scotland in terms of road, rail, sea and airspace. The reality is that, if we properly support Prestwick, it can take Scotland to the moon.
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I do not say this with any great satisfaction, but we need to know why one of the ministers has been missing from the chamber. I do not how the cabinet secretary can be expected to sum up when both ministers have not been here for the whole debate.
Would you like to respond to that, cabinet secretary?
I would, Presiding Officer. I was out of the chamber for the last speech only, to go to the toilet. I think that that is acceptable. I have otherwise been here for the entire debate.
You have made your position clear.
16:54
If there is one thing that we should never lose sight of, it is the importance of investing for the future. Of course there is a need for day-to-day expenditure on doctors, teachers and medicines right now, but we also owe it to our children and to future generations to invest in infrastructure.
It does no harm to look back at some of the things that have been achieved. For example, local projects that have benefited my constituency in the east end of Glasgow are the M74 completion; the Airdrie to Bathgate rail link, which gives us a direct link to Edinburgh; the Commonwealth games infrastructure, including the sports facilities, Dalmarnock station and, especially, the athletes village, which is now seeing residents moving in; and, very locally, Garrowhill primary school, which has just come into operation.
Right now, we see more projects happening in my area, including the M8, M73 and M74 improvements that are mentioned in the motion; the electrification of the Whifflet rail line; and the Clyde Gateway urban regeneration company, which has achieved major improvements in Dalmarnock in Glasgow and across in Rutherglen in South Lanarkshire. Some of those improvements are easy to see—for example, a new police building—while others are less visible but equally important, such as restoration of contaminated land, which can cost millions but opens the door to future development.
We probably all have lists of projects that we would like to see happening. We have heard of some already, but I will concentrate on two areas, the first of which is housing. There has been a surprising lack of mentions of housing thus far in the debate, but I remain convinced that housing is one of the best areas for investment. Clearly, housing investment will help people at the bottom end of the scale who are currently in old houses that are difficult to heat and where they might face overcrowding, which has a knock-on effect on kids’ education. Other folk are stuck upstairs in closes when they can no longer manage the stairs. Investment in housing has huge benefits in reducing energy costs, ensuring families have enough space, improving mental health and many other things.
Not surprisingly, the second area that I want to mention is rail, not least because I am co-convener of the cross-party group in the Scottish Parliament on rail. I am glad to see that rail has had serious attention in the debate. Of course, when members come to the cross-party group—as I hope the new Minister for Transport and Islands will—it does not take them long to hear of the wide range of projects that folk would like to see. As has been mentioned, the Airdrie to Bathgate line has been opened very successfully, and it should be able to handle many extra passengers when Queen Street station high level and the tunnel are closed for refurbishment and the EGIP improvements.
I am delighted that EGIP is now going forward below the original budget. The idea of longer trains between Glasgow and Edinburgh was a real breakthrough and saves so much having to be spent on signalling in order to increase frequency, which was the original plan. Electrification around Glasgow has been moving steadily forward after many years of little action. Most recently, as I said, there is the Whifflet line, which runs through Carmyle, Mount Vernon and Baillieston in my constituency and which means that trains are able to use the Argyle line and many more destinations for passengers on that route. Clearly, the Borders line is also shaping up well, and I very much look forward to trying it out in the autumn—albeit maybe not on the first day.
Looking forward, the challenge is in choosing which projects should be priorities. Glasgow airport is often mentioned as needing a rail or tram link, as has been said in the debate. In an ideal world, I would welcome that. I guess that I am somewhat torn as to how high a priority that should be. In the February recess, I flew from Edinburgh to Berlin and then from Berlin to Glasgow, so I used three airports and two had a rail or tram link that was fine. However, the easiest and quickest trip to or from all three airports was that for Glasgow. The bus into the city centre is absolutely great, although I accept that there are problems in the rush hour. However, I doubt that the train could really compete with the bus on journey time. So, whether a Glasgow rail link should be a priority is a tricky decision, especially when there are many other transport and non-transport priorities asking for money.
Crossrail is another major rail project that has been mentioned. Again, ideally, I would love to see that as it would link Ayrshire and Renfrewshire to the rail network north and east of Glasgow. Just as the Helensburgh to Edinburgh line takes passengers into and out of Glasgow as well as through the city, so crossrail could take passengers from Kilmarnock, Ayr and Paisley to Edinburgh as well as to Glasgow. Clearly, however, crossrail will work only if there is a station at Glasgow Cross that links with the Argyle line underneath, with connections to Motherwell, Hamilton and elsewhere. That would not come cheap; it would improve transport connections and boost a struggling area, but it would be a serious expense.
Against the Glasgow-focused projects, albeit that they also benefit much of the rest of Scotland, there is a need to address other projects around the country—for example, double tracking the line to Aberdeen from the south at the current bottleneck at Montrose. I am, of course, a Glasgow MSP, but we all have to think nationally as well. Aberdeen and the north-east surely deserve a proper rail line all the way.
You need to bring your remarks to a close.
Of course, the Perth to Inverness line also seriously needs to be dualled.
As I said, I was recently in Berlin, which is investing in a superb city-centre station as well as a new U-Bahn line. I think that we are all saying in the debate that building Scotland’s infrastructure is important and a good thing. However, the question is whether we are willing to walk the walk as well as we talk the talk. Are we willing to sacrifice current day-to-day revenue expenditure in order to invest more for the future? I suggest that the Opposition parties would have more credibility if they suggested areas that need to be cut back in order that we could invest more.
17:00
It would be remiss of me to sum up without mentioning my sister, who is a nurse at the Southern general hospital in Glasgow. Johann Lamont talked about the new hospital, which she recognises is a great facility, and the substantial issues around creating it. As my sister has observed, the impacts on the local community are substantial. A lot more work will be required to manage the transition smoothly. I am now off the hook with my sister.
Jim Eadie spoke with great pride about the projects in his constituency. I was pleased that he mentioned cycle routes, which I am keen on advancing. John Mason was right to pick us all up for not mentioning housing infrastructure. I was delighted that he mentioned the dualling of the line to Aberdeen. The fact that Europe’s oil capital does not have a dualled railway line is to our shame and needs to be put right pretty promptly. I know that there might be technical difficulties, but it should be a top priority.
Nigel Don’s comments about broadband were absolutely right: we need to advance much more significantly than we are advancing now. The UK Government and the Scottish Government are working in partnership to advance that agenda, but it needs a far greater focus than it currently has.
Is the member aware that the Federal Communications Commission in the United States is changing the definition of broadband so that nothing under 20 Mbps qualifies? Is it time for ambition in the UK to be raised?
I admit that I am not a student of the Federal Communications Commission in the United States. I would always encourage us to be aspirational and, I hope, to meet Stewart Stevenson’s aspirations—if that is a valid interpretation of his intervention.
From listening to quite a lot of SNP members, and particularly the minister, people would think that all the investment in these worthy projects is a result of the Scottish Government’s work and that all the things that we cannot do are the UK Government’s fault. The reality is that we can afford all the projects, because we have the stability and security of a strong UK economy. In fact, we have been able to increase expenditure on capital since 2010 quite significantly. I know that expenditure is not as much as some members would like, but we have been able to increase it because of the solid management of the economy, which has created 170,000 jobs. In relation to the G8, GDP is up and we are performing incredibly well.
Will the member take an intervention?
Not just now.
As a result, our bond yields are relatively low, which allows us to borrow even more. When members talk with great pride of all the projects in Scotland that we are investing in, it is worth reflecting on the fact that that is possible because of the UK economic strength in which we have invested over the past few years. We should not forget that.
I was disappointed with Linda Fabiani.
Aw.
I know—it is difficult for me to accept, but sometimes I am disappointed in Linda Fabiani. I was disappointed when she said that she is not interested in questions about the Scottish Futures Trust; she would rather look back to a previous Government’s failings than question her own Government. That is all too often a trademark of SNP back benchers, who are unwilling to question their own ministers about significant issues.
HS2 provides an example. I would still like to know from the minister—perhaps he will include this in his summing-up—whether the Scottish Government is absolutely committed to building the Edinburgh to Glasgow high-speed rail link before the UK Government gets its link to Birmingham. Is that still the commitment, or has that changed? I would like to know. Perhaps Linda Fabiani could have asked that question.
On the Scottish Futures Trust, I would like to know how the eight hub projects will be impacted by the potential reclassification of the NPD programme. We were given a cursory dismissal and told that it would all be fine. The Scottish Government has said before that it will all be fine, but sometimes there are difficulties.
What does the £180 billion commitment to additional capital spend throughout the United Kingdom mean for the Scottish Government’s fiscal commission, which said that, to meet the aims of the oil fund, the Scottish Government should match the downward trajectory on deficit reduction of the United Kingdom? What does that mean for that grand, bold commitment?
Those are three big questions that I had hoped that Linda Fabiani would ask, but unfortunately she did not. Perhaps she will ask those questions in a future debate, because we need scrutiny not just from Opposition members but from SNP members.
There was a bit of an interchange between various members—Stewart Stevenson, Nigel Don, Mike MacKenzie and John Mason—about the value of capital investment. We recognise the value of capital investment. What many members finally admitted was that it is about a balance—about what we can afford—so that we can have the confidence of the international markets, which lend us the money to keep the bond yields down in order to ensure that we can continue to undertake capital investment. We recognise that that has a price, which has to be paid; SNP members should recognise that, too.
17:06
We have had an interesting debate. Among the highlights was Mike MacKenzie celebrating the Queensferry crossing being built on time a year or two before it is complete. Another was Mr Stevenson, in responding to the point that train journey times now are slower than those a century ago, suggesting that we really should not worry, because London to Paris air travel was apparently faster in 1931 than it is today. I am sure that he says that to his constituents when they ask for the train times to be sped up slightly.
For three minutes, Mr Don told us how important capital spending is. When he was asked why very little spending was switched from revenue, he suggested that things are a bit more complicated than that.
Unlike Willie Rennie, I was not disappointed with Linda Fabiani. My favourite line of the debate was when she described Keith Brown’s motion as “a piece of literature”. That will be hard to beat. She obviously prefers the motion to any of the amendments.
The Scottish Government has done some good work in relation to infrastructure, transport, housing and so on, and it would be churlish to suggest otherwise. However, it is the Opposition’s job to ask the key questions when things are not going well or are clearly going wrong.
One of the questions that I put to the cabinet secretary early in the debate was about NPD projects. Given the questions that are being asked and the investigation that is going on, my question was simply about what assumptions will be made about NPD when the infrastructure investment plan is published. The answer was that the assumption is that everything will basically be fine and that we do not need to worry at all. The cabinet secretary can correct me in his speech, although I am happy to give way now.
I think that I said that our assumption is that NPD is a viable method of procurement and that we intend to continue with it. We have to meet the challenge that Eurostat has set out and work with the ONS on that. However, our assumption is that NPD is a viable process and we intend to continue with it.
I suppose that my point is that, if the ruling goes the way that the cabinet secretary does not want it to go—I have to say that none of us wants it to go that way—there will have to be some contingency and a plan B. If the infrastructure investment plan rests entirely on the assumption that everything will be fine, we will all be disappointed and there is bound to be some impact on projects. That was the reason for asking the question.
Rail has featured heavily, as it should. I read out a quote from Transform Scotland not to embarrass the Government but because it is important. If a respected organisation that makes a lot of really good points says as bluntly as Transform Scotland has that
“Scotland’s rail network ... is in dire need of investment”,
it is incumbent on all of us to note that and look carefully at the suggestions that Transform Scotland makes about how we might move things forward.
Transform Scotland directly quotes former First Minister Alex Salmond, who said in 2008 that
“railways must at least compete with roads”.
If the train times between Edinburgh and Perth and between Dundee and Edinburgh are slower now than in 1895, that compares miserably with road times. Rail is nowhere near competing with road if train times compare poorly with those of well over 100 years ago. It is incumbent on the Government to do something about that and to suggest how it will make sure that, when we have a similar debate in five or ten years, the position is somewhat different.
Given that the cabinet secretary is here with the transport minister, I will ask about a point in the spring budget revision, which was published just last week. On page 65, it appears that £74 million is coming out of the rail budget for the financial year 2014-15. I can lodge a written question to ask why that is the case but, if the ministers have an answer today, it would be interesting to know why £74 million is coming out of the rail budget this year via the spring revision.
With that thought in mind, under the heading “Motorways and trunk roads” in the spring budget revision, there appears to be a change of £201.8 million, which is a sizeable sum. It is described as a
“Technical budget adjustment in respect of Transport revenue financed infrastructure projects”.
There may well be a good explanation for that, so I put the same question to the Scottish Government—why is that the case and what does that £201 million represent? It is important that the Parliament knows what the situation is.
To return to rail, it is not just the Perth to Edinburgh journey or the Edinburgh to Dundee journey where we have had criticisms. The Edinburgh to Glasgow project has been scaled back in some parts. Some of that was to do with cost savings and I accept that entirely, but some of it was not—some of it was a genuine scaling back. Some of that involved reducing the journey time by six to eight minutes instead of the 13 minutes that were promised, although the Government described the change as just being about reprofiling. It was considerably more than that, and the Government rightly received lots of criticism about that.
Let us hear the answers from the Government. There are areas where I think that it has done well, but there are areas where legitimate criticism is needed. Instead of the Government hiding from that criticism, let us hear the Government answer it, give an explanation and tell us what it will do about that criticism.
17:12
This has been an excellent debate, with strong, passionate speeches from across the political divide, but of course there has not been complete consensus. My sense of the debate is that there is a strong theme that infrastructure investment has an essential role in delivering sustainable economic growth. Of course, the key question is which projects, where in Scotland, can deliver the biggest bang for the buck.
We have heard about John Maynard Keynes once already. He is of course the renowned economist who played a key role, along with Beveridge, in designing the post-war welfare state. He once argued that, during a recession, it was worth paying workers to dig holes in the ground and then fill them in again, as that stimulated the economy through the multiplier effect. Of course, that is not feasible today, but the principle behind it remains. How do we identify projects? How do we appraise them? How do we finance and control them once they are approved?
The Queensferry crossing, for example, which was mentioned by the cabinet secretary as well as by Mary Fee and other speakers, is the largest public sector contract since devolution. I should perhaps declare an interest in the project as a former member of the Forth Crossing Bill Committee. I spent what seemed like months and months of my life in the previous parliamentary session taking evidence from grandees such as Stewart Stevenson—in his former role as transport minister—about the real, micro detail of how it would operate in practice.
Things have come almost full circle, as I have now joined the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee, which took evidence from the project director last week. It is interesting that within the project’s financial plan there is an item for optimism bias, which is the psychological trend towards assuming that everything will be all right on the night in relation to cost and getting the project done on time.
I wonder whether David Stewart is aware that, when officials first came to me when I was Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change, the putative budget for a project that was not fully developed was £3.4 billion to £4.3 billion. Will he join me in congratulating all the engineers and officials—and indeed the Government—who got the price down to approximately one third of the top value that it was originally thought the project might cost?
I am sure that members across the political divide want good value for money. I was going to make the point that optimism bias was a part of the original contract, and it is quite an interesting concept.
The other spin-off in public procurement that I am sure members all agree is positive is good employment practice. Last week at committee, we received an assurance from the Forth crossing project director that there is now no blacklisting operated by the contractors, which I am sure all members will appreciate, and that more than 100 apprentices and trainees are employed on the project.
I echo Nigel Don’s plea that we should view infrastructure not solely through the prism of large-scale capital funding projects. Digital infrastructure as well as communications infrastructure and mobile, broadband and wi-fi connectivity are vital pieces of the jigsaw. I will give members an example: if someone opens a new hotel in the Western Isles and wants to operate online booking, it would affect their business if broadband was non-existent.
I got some figures just this morning that showed a breakdown of broadband speeds for every Westminster constituency in the UK. Surprise, surprise—the Western Isles had the worst rate and the lowest speed. Notwithstanding that statistic, I welcome the broadband delivery UK funding, which is enabling broadband to be rolled out throughout the Highlands and Islands.
The Scottish Government is currently spending £127 million, which is being topped up with £19 million from BT, to roll out the fibre optic broadband backbone. That will, it is hoped, ensure that the situation that David Stewart has described improves significantly. I am sure that he will agree with me that the Scottish Government deserves at least some credit for that.
I would give all credit where credit is due. There has been a good positive union dividend through BDUK, of course, as the work involves UK funding.
Gavin Brown mentioned the reasonable point that Transform Scotland made in its briefing, which was—echoing Alex Salmond’s comment as First Minister in 2008—that rail must compete with roads. The third national planning framework, published in 2014, contained an aspiration to complete the electrification of rail between all our cities. Perhaps the cabinet secretary or the minister could, in winding up the debate, provide an update of where we are on the issue. When will Glasgow and Edinburgh to Inverness be electrified north of Perth?
In my remaining minutes, I will mention a couple of other contributions from members. Mary Fee made some excellent points about community engagement and low carbon infrastructure. I enjoyed Gavin Brown’s amusing and insightful analysis; he is always very professional and well informed, particularly on financial issues and on the serious issue of high-speed rail.
I agreed with Willie Rennie’s points about the breakdown of the budget. Mike MacKenzie stole my line about Keynes, but I will forgive him—it is a broad church.
Johann Lamont made some excellent points about the positive nature of the South Glasgow hospital link. We must all recognise the impact that the link has had on local communities, particularly in parking and transport. I am sure that the cabinet secretary will pick that up.
Stewart Stevenson is always interesting and amusing—I am not quite sure whether he is the father of the house yet, but I certainly enjoyed his contribution. I was not sure from listening to his comments whether he had invented penicillin and rail, but perhaps I misunderstood him. I particularly liked his point about drivers passing over tokens on some of the rail journeys north of Edinburgh.
I agree very much with Nigel Don’s comments, particularly on broadband, and Paul Martin made some excellent points about GARL. Margaret McDougall made an excellent point about Prestwick, and I will remember for the future her line that Scotland could have a route to the moon through the application for the spaceport.
I am running out of time. In conclusion, we believe that delivery of strategic investment in infrastructure is essential to achieve sustainable economic growth. I believe that members on all sides of the chamber can support the Labour amendment, which calls for new projects to be developed in a more strategic way—for example, by speeding up rail electrification and developing crossrail.
Finally, we need a future commitment to a not-for-profit rail operator so that customers, rather than groups of shareholders or foreign Governments, get the profit.
17:19
As Dave Stewart said, the debate has generally been quite good. Unsurprisingly, I suppose, members have wanted to highlight issues and projects that are particularly important to them, which is natural enough. The parties also have different priorities, although I cannot recall off the top of my head any proposal coming from another party that has changed a budget for an infrastructure project, apart from back in 2007, when the other parties all voted for the trams project against the Scottish Government. Aside from that, by implication, the parties must share many of the priorities on infrastructure projects that we have persisted with.
I will pick up on two points that Dave Stewart made latterly. First, on rail, Nigel Don and Stewart Stevenson made a plea for more rail expenditure vis-à-vis road expenditure. It might surprise them to know that, in some periods over the past few years, rail expenditure has exceeded the expenditure on roads. It is worth bearing that in mind. There has been a £5 billion programme over the current control period, which is a huge amount of money, although I recognise that given the nature of the rail network throughout Scotland and the lack of investment right through the time of British Rail—which had to have an 8 per cent rate of return—there is a big project to undertake. We have made substantial progress through the Airdrie to Bathgate line, the Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine line, the Borders railway and many other projects. I of course accept that we want to do more on that, but we have to be guided by resources.
I am grateful that Johann Lamont mentioned the M74 project, which I do not think that I mentioned. She is right to say that that has produced tremendous benefits in the west of Scotland, particularly by freeing up roads from congestion and providing ease of access, not least to Glasgow airport. Many people have told me that access to the airport has been transformed by the completion of the road.
Johann Lamont also made a number of points about the new hospital in Glasgow. In fact, when I went for my reprehensible comfort break, that was one of the issues that I ended up talking about with Johann Lamont at some length. She makes a fair point, which she has already raised with the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Wellbeing and Sport. When I spoke with her subsequently, I committed to raise the issue again with the health secretary. I do not know whether she is aware that a meeting is taking place on 2 March, which will involve the health and transport elements of the Scottish Government, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Glasgow City Council and SPT. That is the kind of corporate or joint approach that I think Johann Lamont is asking for, and I undertake to ensure that she is kept up to date on the outcome of that meeting.
As far as I recall, Jim Eadie was the only member who mentioned at length cycling and walking. He rightly mentioned the record expenditure that is being put into that. He mentioned two particular projects: the £3.6 million exemplar project on Leith Walk and the project at Strathyre, which will help to complete that part of the national cycle network. Those are important projects, not just for cycling but, crucially, for walking. That is important, as walking can be as beneficial for health as if not even more beneficial than cycling. We are delighted to have put in that kind of money this year, which builds on efforts in previous years.
I come on to the second point that Dave Stewart made, which is an important one, because there is genuine confusion on the Labour benches in relation to this matter. The current legislation has always allowed us to have a not-for-profit bid for the railways. That will not change as a result of the Smith commission, as has been suggested will happen in some press releases. However, what is changing with Smith—because we made representations to this effect—is that, if and when the changes go through, we will be able to make a public sector bid. In fact, we could go beyond that and ask whether we can make a direct award, although that is not currently provided for in the Smith recommendations.
We proposed that approach, and we would have liked to have seen a not-for-profit bid. However, to be honest, on the idea that has been mentioned by some Labour members that that equates to renationalisation of the railways, I must say that cannot happen if we are committed to franchising. We cannot have the two things: franchising and nationalisation. We certainly cannot guarantee that. There is some confusion about that, so it is as well that we try to clarify things at this stage.
Paul Martin made a point about Robroyston, and he and I have discussed the issue in the past. I have tried to encourage him and others to come forward with a proposal. I should say that none of the moneys in the station investment fund, which equates to £30 million, have yet been disbursed. A large number of projects have come forward, and at least two of them are further advanced than the Robroyston proposals. In fact, not many proposals are that far advanced, because of the issues that Mr Martin mentioned about trying to work up a case. As I have said, there is obviously a good case to be made, but a case has to be brought to the station investment fund. It will be for Derek Mackay to look at that when it comes forward, but we cannot do anything until we get the application.
Mention was made of high-speed rail. Gavin Brown spoke in lurid terms about what he read in The Scotsman regarding what I was going to do to the Opposition parties. I checked the statement that I put out, and it said that I would challenge the other parties. [Interruption.] Well, that is what it said, and I did challenge the other parties.
The Press Association is running with the story that I have successfully got a commitment from each of the three parties to bring high-speed rail to Scotland. Gavin Brown and, I think, Willie Rennie said that that should be no surprise to anybody, but I can tell them that it is. If, like me, they talked to UK ministers or even Opposition spokespeople and tried to get a commitment to bring high-speed rail to Scotland, they would know that there has never been such a commitment.
We must move to the next stage. I am delighted that each of the Opposition parties has said that it is committed to high-speed rail. The point is that those parties have to convince those who take decisions down in Westminster that they should bring high-speed rail to Scotland. There is no proposal from the Liberal Democrats or the Conservatives to bring high-speed rail to Scotland.
I will give members an idea of the significance of high-speed rail. We are talking about a massive benefit to not just Scotland but the whole of the UK, because it is not a one-way thing. Obviously there would be massive benefits both ways if we joined the second most economically active part of the UK—the central belt of Scotland—with England, and there would also be benefits further north from that improved connection. However, despite the fact that the UK Government has been prompted endless times to bring high-speed rail to Scotland, it has made no proposal to do that.
Will the cabinet secretary give way?
I thought that Gavin Brown wanted to intervene there and restate the commitment. If Willie Rennie will, for the first time, ask Susan Kramer and others to support high-speed rail coming to Scotland, I will be delighted to let him intervene.
The minister seems to be pleading with other members rather than taking an intervention from me.
Can the minister answer the question that I posed earlier, which he has failed to answer so far? His Government said that it would build the Edinburgh to Glasgow high-speed rail link before the UK Government invested in the line to Birmingham. Is it still the case that that is the commitment?
I made it very clear, as we have made it very clear in the past, that we have undertaken a study on that. If he thinks that it makes sense to have a high-speed rail link between Edinburgh and Glasgow without knowing whether we are to have a high-speed rail link coming from the south, he basically does not understand transport projects. He should think about it for a short time.
I will come back to two points that Willie Rennie made. First, he was utterly disingenuous when he implied that classification or reclassification of NPD projects was a problem or failure on the part of the Scottish Government. [Interruption.] He is nodding now. Surely he must know that the finance secretary has discussions with his counterparts in Westminster, who have the same challenge in terms of classification. The finance secretary works very closely with them to ensure that we have budget cover for the projects that we intend to take forward. Despite that, Willie Rennie tries to portray it as a problem or failure on the part of the Scottish Government, which is disingenuous.
Mr Rennie’s other point was about the First Minister’s statement regarding £180 billion of borrowing. He challenged me to provide the figures, which I gave to him, but he still complained. The vital point, which Linda Fabiani made, is that there is an ideological difference. We are committed to an alternative to austerity, whereas the Liberal Democrats are committed to austerity and have been for the past five years. They have failed to get the budget deficit down as they said they would do: instead of a £5 billion surplus, they have a £50 billion deficit. The Liberal Democrats have failed to do the things that they said they would do.
It is not like Franklin D Roosevelt with his new deal—with the coalition we get a bum deal. We have had nothing from it but austerity, and we propose a different course of action.