Taking Scotland Forward: Infrastructure and Capital Investment
The next item of business is a debate on taking Scotland forward: infrastructure and capital investment. I call Alex Neil to open the debate. Cabinet secretary, you have 10 minutes.
15:37
Because this is my first speech in my role as Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment, I thought that it would be useful to begin with an overview of my responsibilities and to touch briefly on all the main areas of policy for which my colleague Keith Brown and I are responsible.
First, this is probably the first portfolio of its kind in the whole of the United Kingdom, as it brings together the total infrastructure and capital investment of the entire Government. The figures show that that is a substantial responsibility. In the public sector in Scotland we procure £9 billion of material and supplies every year. We have a £2.5 billion mainstream capital investment programme to manage, on top of which we have a £2.5 billion non-profit distributing investment programme. We are responsible for Scottish Water—a company that has a turnover of more than £1.1 billion—as well as for the European structural funds, regeneration, fuel poverty, housing policy and, of course, transport. By any definition, we have a fairly wide range of responsibilities, which we are both looking forward to working on.
Unfortunately, we are coming to the job against a background of substantial cuts in capital spending that have been enforced on us by successive Governments in London to the tune of 36 per cent over the four-year period of the current UK spending round. However, our attitude to the cuts is not to just lie down and take them but to rise to the challenge and to identify new ways of getting more value out of the money that we have, as well as ways in which we can make better use of the asset base in the public sector and use money that has been saved as a result of more efficient use of our assets for reinvestment in essential front-line services.
My function is a combination of my previous responsibilities for housing and communities and some of Mr Swinney’s previous responsibilities for infrastructure and capital investment. I pay tribute to the tremendous innovative work that Mr Swinney undertook over the past four years. During that period he presided over £14 billion-worth of investment in the capital assets of our country. He has been instrumental in starting major new projects, including the south Glasgow hospitals, the Forth replacement crossing and schools for the future.
Only yesterday, along with the Duke of Gloucester, Mr Brown and I had the pleasure of attending the opening of the new section of the M74, a project that has been talked about since 1965, and which we have now delivered as of last night, when we saw the first traffic transgress the new part of the motorway. The M74 will bring together the east and west of Scotland, cutting journey times by up to 10 minutes and, I believe, bringing up to 20,000 new jobs to that part of Scotland.
I am sure that the traffic was guilty of something, but possibly not “transgressing”.
Will the cabinet secretary confirm that the success of the M74 project owes a great deal to the initial support and active contribution of Glasgow City Council?
It also, of course, had those from Transport Scotland, Renfrewshire Council and South Lanarkshire Council. I would be the first to recognise that. They, along with me, traversed the M74. They did not “transgress” it; it has been a long day, starting at the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee this morning.
On top of that, we have a record housebuilding programme—the highest number for 20 years.
Over the past four years, the Scottish Futures Trust has developed into a major instrument of Government policy and is a model that is now being copied by Governments in other parts of the United Kingdom and, indeed, overseas.
We would all agree that the role of infrastructure and capital investment is absolutely central to improving the economic growth prospects of our nation. Capital investment and infrastructure facilitate and enable the growth of private sector and wealth-generating activity, and they improve the performance of public service delivery. Policies are all dependent on one another. For instance, to have a successful education policy requires us also to have a successful housing policy, because a child who lives in an overcrowded house will not realise his or her full potential at school. They will not do so unless they are living in decent, spacious accommodation. Similarly, to achieve maximum outputs on health, it is far better and more sensible to have good housing, so that old people, in particular, do not need to live in housing that is damp or that can otherwise make them ill, directly or indirectly.
All those services are extremely important. The issue is not just one of investment in new housing, new hospitals, new colleges and new roads; it is also important to maintain our existing assets at a high level. One question at the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee this morning was about the role of the road maintenance budget. That is a very good example of where a good maintenance policy, with significant investment, can save us having to spend more money on upgrading, renovating or replacing particular assets.
Funding those assets presents the major challenge in the years ahead. I have already mentioned our mainstream programme and the NPD programme. We are also considering other approaches to innovative funding, not the least of which is more substantial borrowing powers coming to the Scottish Government through the Scotland Bill—I hope—than the powers that are currently proposed.
We are seriously considering the possibility of raising equity capital from pension funds and from individual savings accounts and other institutional funding, along with pension funds and other private institutional funds, for housing and possibly wider infrastructure investment.
The role of innovation is absolutely critical. Of the new housing investment and innovation fund, £20 million is for new council housing, £20 million is for new housing association houses and £10 million is open to all comers for innovative ideas. The innovation £10 million has been oversubscribed by a factor of five; the other two elements have been oversubscribed by a factor of three.
I was glad that the Minister for Housing and Transport this morning announced a major new innovation for the Scottish Government in working with Homes for Scotland—the umbrella organisation for developers in Scotland—to introduce a mortgage indemnity guarantee to help the first-time buyer market, in particular, to get moving. That was a proposal that was also in the Labour manifesto, although I think that it was probably nicked from our January policy document, as every good idea from the Labour Party has been.
I do not want to underestimate the importance of European funding. Tomorrow, the European Commission will publish its set of proposals on European funding for the period after 2013. Again, I am sure that Parliament is united in agreeing that we must make maximum use of European funding. It is likely that there will also be an announcement from the European Commission that a European infrastructure investment fund and a European digital investment fund will be established.
I want to emphasise the importance of the digital strategy and transport to connecting our cities and our rural and urban areas to each other, and to connecting Scotland to the rest of the world. We attach great importance to transport and to our digital strategy and we look forward to receiving a fair share of the £530 million that is being made available across the UK for investment in digital.
That is a brief overview. I believe that the chamber is united over much of what I have talked about. It is important for us to look forward rather than backward and to deliver as much as we possibly can in terms of capital investment for the benefit of our businesses, our people and our nation.
15:47
I congratulate Alex Neil on his appointment as cabinet secretary and on this dedicated parliamentary debate on the new ministerial portfolio of infrastructure and capital investment. If long words and long titles are anything to go by, Mr Neil can look forward to a busy time in his new job.
Mr Brown’s job title is a little more self-explanatory. There is no need for a job description to be presented in Mr Brown’s speech in order for us to understand the responsibilities of transport and housing. As we have just heard, the responsibilities of both ministers are wider than that, but the headline issues of housing and transport are a good place to start.
Last night, a number of members enjoyed a parliamentary reception that was organised by the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations. That is a sector that I know well. My wife, Sandra, is a board member of Langstane Housing Association in Aberdeen and I am a tenant of Dunedin Canmore Housing Association here in Edinburgh. Of course, the central purpose of housing associations and co-operatives is not to provide market-rent properties in our major cities—although I am grateful that they do—but to provide social rented housing for people on modest incomes. That is also the central purpose of local authority housing.
Mr Neil and his colleagues were re-elected last month on a manifesto that said:
"Overall, our aim is to build over 6000 new socially rented houses each year."
That is an ambitious target, so I lodged a number of parliamentary questions to find out how ministers intend to achieve it. Earlier this month, Keith Brown provided the Government's latest estimate of house completions in the current financial year, which fell only a little short of 6,000. If the Government’s target had been to build 6,000 homes available for below-market rent and mid-market rent and for sale through shared equity or shared ownership, the Government might be able to claim that it was on target, or at least close to it. However, the SNP’s pledge in its manifesto was to build each year more than 6,000 new homes in the social rented sector, which does not include—under any definition of social renting as it is understood by housing providers—mid-market rental or rent-to-purchase schemes.
It was therefore surprising to receive some more written answers at half past two this afternoon to questions that I had asked about how many affordable homes, and how many homes for social rent, ministers intend to build in each of the next five years. What became apparent from those answers is that a party manifesto pledge of 6,000 social rented homes a year has been transformed into a Government plan for 6,000 affordable homes, which is a much wider category with no guarantee that the main beneficiaries will be those who are on low incomes and for whom social rented housing is the only affordable option. I asked how many homes for social rent would be built, bearing in mind the manifesto commitment. The answer was not 30,000 homes over five years, but that ministers plan
“5000 new council houses during this parliament, but have not set an overall target for council/housing association for social rent.”
That is not what the SNP manifesto said; 5,000 council houses is a long way short of 30,000 new social rented homes over five years.
A few weeks ago, Shelter Scotland described the Government’s housing plans as creating a “black hole” between what it intends and what it has funded. The answers that I have received seem to suggest that Shelter Scotland is right.
All housing providers need certainty if they are to plan for the future delivery of new homes. The pot of money that is available to housing associations this year—£20 million in the specified part of the innovation fund, as Mr Neil said—does not allow them to plan ahead at this stage. The cash limit of £40,000 a house means that the associations are not able to focus—
I thank the member for allowing me to intervene. Just to correct him: the £40,000 is not a limit; and the other figure that he gave is not the correct overall figure.
I understand that the overall figure for the fund is £50 million, of which £20 million is assigned for housing associations, £20 million is for councils, and £10 million is for innovation. I also recognise that there are other funding streams. Nonetheless, the way in which the money has been made available to housing providers is such that, in order to propose schemes, they typically need to propose to build not just social rented housing but other mid-market options as well. That therefore reduces the focus on where housing is more urgently required.
If the number of bids for funding is three or four times greater than the available funding, that could be presented as a measure of success, but it could also reflect the point that there are unmet opportunities, so the Government needs to think about how it can deliver more of the social rented housing that it wishes to deliver.
I would like to check something with the member. If the social rented sector were to get involved in mid-market rent and make a profit, then reinvest that in social housing, would the member welcome that? That is what the Scottish Government would like to happen.
Absolutely; that is the kind of model that I would welcome. However, I do not want to see the confusion, that appears to exist, between a commitment to social rented housing and a commitment to affordable housing that encompasses far more types of tenure and levels of rent. That is at least an ambiguity in the Government’s position, compared with the SNP’s position as it was presented at the election, so we need that ambiguity to be resolved.
The Scottish Futures Trust featured in Mr Neil’s opening remarks, and it offers a vehicle for delivering new projects. We recognise that NPD, like other public-private partnerships, can be an efficient way of procuring projects, as long as those projects are properly procured and well managed, so it is important that we can have confidence in that. It is also the case that those projects will require to be paid back over 30 years, so a £2.5 billion commitment on NPD projects in this term implies an annual revenue cost of perhaps £250 million into the 2040s. That is clearly significant and it raises issues about how certain ministers can be about the delivery of such projects.
I want to put a couple of issues on the table so that ministers can respond to them when they close the debate. NPD is planned for Borders rail, and we have seen three bidders for that project become one. I am interested in those bidders’ intentions and their certainty that they can deliver on that project. NPD is also the preferred funding model for the Aberdeen western peripheral route which, as ministers know, is mired in legal action. I would like the ministers to indicate whether that legal action has had any impact on the level of interest among potential private sector funding partners, and whether they will consider unbundling the other north-east transport projects that are currently bundled with the WPR.
I am afraid that you must finish now.
We support the proposition that there needs to be more affordable housing. We want a clearer focus on houses that people on the lowest incomes can afford. We would finally like to see an update of the infrastructure investment plan so that all Scotland can engage with forward priorities.
15:55
I welcome the cabinet secretary to his new responsibility. Although it was a great loss to those of us who had to sit through many a dull afternoon when he was promoted to ministerial office from his previous back-bench role as chief cheerleader for the Government, it was a great consolation to many of us, too. Given that he is not known as being one who has always been completely on the same wavelength as his leader, his promotion to front-line office is—how can I put this?—an inspiration to us all.
When I heard his collection of responsibilities, I thought that it rather sounded as if his was the ministry for avoiding potential banana skins, because among the many things on that list are areas in which Mr Neil’s safe pair of hands is being banked on by the Government to steer a steady course. From his first speech in ministerial office, I can see that we are in for a few jolly afternoons as we debate the various responsibilities within his remit.
I congratulate the Government, because I think that the completion on budget and on time of the M74—even if the cars “transgress” it, now that it has been opened—is something about which the Government can be pleased. It is also a fine tribute to our former colleague Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, who in his time as a minister played a key role in ensuring that that project would eventually be completed. We must hope that it and not the Edinburgh trams project is the model for the new Forth crossing, the construction of which is under way and which, in terms of capital expenditure, is the single biggest project for which the minister and the chamber, collectively, have responsibility for ensuring completion on budget and on time.
All that said, there are some legacy issues from the previous session of Parliament, the lack of progress on which members should be concerned about. Some of those fall within the transport responsibility. Where on earth is the Government’s ferries review? Last session’s Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee began a consultation on it as far back as 2008, and we were forever making provision in our work schedule for the anticipated conclusion of the Government’s report on the matter. With some optimism, the clerks told us that space would be cleared in the successor committee’s work programme to deal with it early in the present session, only for someone to mutter from the background that it might not be until late in the winter that we will hear what is forthcoming. That will be far too late. After all, public subsidy for ferries has increased from some £40 million to more than £80 million, and the new Gourock to Dunoon ferry has, in bringing about a saving of some £1.5 million annually in public subsidy, demonstrated the value of the independent sector, when its use is properly consolidated. Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd is desperate for a new model that will allow it to renew an ageing fleet. I hope that the Government is not holding back on coming to a conclusion for reasons of convenience—in other words, because of its nervous anxiety about following the mutualisation route, which might be the way forward for the Scottish ferries.
The other great project for which space was cleared in the committee work programme was the bill on water, news of which we await with interest. It will finally unveil, in terms of specific policies and responsibilities, all the poetry of the First Minister’s extremely elaborate statement to the chamber. We look forward to that, but I understand that the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee should not expect to be detained by consideration of that bill in the early years of this session.
I flag up the issue of winter resilience. Had we not had an election between last winter and the coming one, I think that Parliament would probably have wanted to ensure that we dealt with the issue in the high days of summer, which might be the point at which one is least likely to think about the winter ahead. As a Parliament, we have a duty to ensure that the recommendations of the review that I know the Government will publish after the summer are implemented so that, in the event that we experience another severe winter, we are not found floundering, because I think that the public would find it an unforgivable misjudgment on the part of all politicians were that to be the case.
At this morning’s meeting of the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee and in the debate, the minister has suggested something of a Wilkins Micawber approach to his responsibility—that is to say that, from having no money, he intends to borrow as much as he can to finance this, that and the next initiative. There is a role for all of that, but I hope that the minister does not max out the Scottish Parliament’s credit card but instead uses his responsibility and his ability sensibly, because we know from last year’s report by the Institution of Civil Engineers that our roads network is in a serious state of disrepair and needs proper investment if it is not to collapse completely.
We support the minister and the Government in their objectives for broadband, which we will have the opportunity to debate at greater length.
As we go forward, I hope that the £250 million that we are saving on the Forth crossing project will not be squandered on the election flim-flam that was in the SNP’s manifesto, but will instead be directed to specific capital investment projects that will benefit the country.
We move to the open debate. Speeches are to be of a maximum of four minutes—the debate is short.
16:00
Maureen Watt (Aberdeen South and North Kincardine) (SNP)
I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate. I, too, welcome the cabinet secretary and the minister to their posts. I am delighted with my appointment as the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee’s convener and I look forward to working with them and holding them to account, when necessary, in my new role. I am sure that that role will present many opportunities to speak—whether in relation to committee reports, bills that are allocated to the committee or issues in our remit.
I thank the cabinet secretary for appearing before the committee this morning and giving us his views on matters that are in his portfolio, which helped us to develop our work programme. As I will have many opportunities to speak in my role as convener, I will today highlight important infrastructure issues for Aberdeen and the wider north-east.
No one should underestimate the importance of the oil and gas sector not just to the Scottish economy but to the UK economy. Aberdeen is Europe’s oil capital. It is an important hub for service companies that have located themselves there, and it is important to keep those companies there as their markets expand globally and they focus less on North Sea oil and gas opportunities, although much potential is still there and people are switching from using their expertise in oil and gas to using it in renewables.
Infrastructure is key to keeping such companies in the north-east. The infrastructure debate has been dominated by the Aberdeen western peripheral route. The cabinet secretary said that the M74 project was first mooted 50 years ago; the Aberdeen western peripheral route was first mooted in the 1950s. The route was all ready for the off in 1996 under Grampian Regional Council, of which I had the privilege of being a member, but subsequent local authorities and transport ministers messed about with it. As Lewis Macdonald said, the project is now mired in legal challenge by a very few local protesters, who are backed by environmentalists who are mostly from outwith the AB postcode area. That frustrates the vast majority of people in the north-east and was a major issue on doorsteps during the election campaign. Does the cabinet secretary have any idea when the inquiry reporter will let us know the findings of his inquiry? It is completely unacceptable that it has gone on for months. Should a time limit or deadline for concluding such inquiries apply?
The cabinet secretary will know that I wrote to him about the possibility of including in the tender for the Aberdeen western peripheral route a community benefit clause. Given the project’s scale, it presents an opportunity for the Scottish Government and its partners to secure additional economic benefits. The inclusion of a community benefit clause that would require the successful contractor and its subcontractors to undertake targeted recruitment and training to help to reduce unemployment—and youth unemployment—in target areas is one additional benefit that could be secured.
Maureen Watt should by now have received a letter to confirm that we will include a community benefit clause in the contract.
I thank the cabinet secretary very much for taking that forward.
On that happy note, Maureen Watt must close.
I look forward to discussing the proposal in detail. I will close there, Presiding Officer.
16:04
I join other contributors to the debate in congratulating everyone who has been involved in delivering the extension of the M74 ahead of schedule and under budget. I also congratulate the cabinet secretary on attaining his new post. I suspect that I will be the bane of his life on a number of matters, just as I was when he was minister. I look forward to working with him. I extend my best wishes to Keith Brown on the continuation of his appointment and I look forward to working with him, too.
Now that the management team has finalised the task of the M74, perhaps the Scottish Government will consider the possibility of bringing the team to Edinburgh to tackle the Edinburgh trams project. I watched Gordon Brewer on “Newsnight” last night and noted the comments about transport policy in Scotland. My constituents have expressed their anger that only the voices of Edinburgh citizens are being heard on the Edinburgh trams. It reminds all of us sharply that taxpayers from throughout Scotland should be part of the debate on whether the trams project continues.
The First Minister, the cabinet secretary and the transport minister should initiate an emergency task force of the best brains that they can muster to attack what is now a catastrophic situation. There is no doubt that there is a management and funding crisis.
Will the member give way?
I do not have much time.
I was pleased when the cabinet secretary spoke about the need to involve European funding. I warmly welcome that. I would like the civil service and ministers to put much more effort into considering European funding. For example, in 2007 to 2020, trans-Europe network funding throughout the European Union is worth £500 billion. In the UK, it is worth £5 billion. Scotland has funding from the TEN for priority axis 14—the west coast mainline. We have had funding for the Edinburgh airport rail link project, which received £2 million from the TEN programme in the 2005 bidding round. We have also had funding of about £150 million from the European Investment Bank for Stepps and Haggs on the M80. The money is there, but civil servants and ministers have to get a grip and work really hard to get it. I am pleased that the cabinet secretary has said that that will be done.
Returning to the trams, I say that this is not the time for anyone in Scotland to take comfort in the failings of Edinburgh City Council or the project management. It is not a time for the blame game; it is a time to stop the Edinburgh trams from continuing to be the laughing stock of the world. We are not just talking about the reputation of a few people who are close to the delivery of the trams project, but the reputation of every Scot in the land. We are and we should be a nation of can-doers and not a nation that tries to identify who to blame and who to litigate against.
On a separate matter, I want to talk about a more local issue—the replacement Forth crossing. I feel sure that Keith Brown, the transport minister, has not deliberately failed to answer a letter that I wrote to him on 30 May. I had to do a chase-up just over ten days ago and got my first acknowledgement but still no reply, and here we are—tomorrow is 30 June.
My letter asked for a meeting with the minister for my constituents from Park Lea in Rosyth. As he may know, over the years there have been a variety of consultations on the Forth crossing. I have been a big advocate of the new crossing. Various documents have said that my constituents need not worry as there would be no impact on them. As the minister can imagine, my constituents are bewildered to find that, at a time of financial austerity, they will have a £150,000 gantry on their doorstep. The gantry was not in the plans. I ask the minister to address the issue.
I call Chic Brodie, to be followed by Malcolm Chisholm. A very tight four minutes, please.
16:09
Like Helen Eadie, I, too, welcome the cabinet secretary and the minister and offer my congratulations on the M74 extension. I suspect, however, from some of the remarks, that we are about to see a selective rewriting of history as far as the Edinburgh trams are concerned.
As the cabinet secretary said, many of the projects that we have talked about are designed to improve the homes and living conditions of many of our fellow citizens and to improve the productivity of the nation by making planned improvements in the physical and digital connectivity between our centres of living and commerce. That is right and important.
In my contribution, I return without apology to elements of my maiden speech to re-emphasise the need for improvements not only in our internal infrastructure, but in those elements of it that will serve to increase and expand Scotland’s internationalisation, global reach and achievement of its goals as a forerunner in the drive to attain our climate change aims, renewable targets and export goals.
In my maiden speech, I suggested that we export or die. I emphasised the need to develop our key international ports to open the doors to and from Scotland that will secure the aforementioned goals. Since I made that speech, I have had several conversations, not least with leaders in the renewables industry. It is a key tenet and strong personal belief of mine that the renewables revolution provides us with the opportunity not just to be at the cutting edge of that industry, but to underpin the historic and current worldwide recognition of our manufacturing and engineering skills. If those are disposed properly, we can be a world leader in support, products and services to the renewables industry worldwide—the modern-day equivalent of the industrial revolution. However, those conversations revealed an inadequacy in our port facilities to support that vision. Bluntly put, as it was to me, we have to upgrade our sea and airport facilities, not just for renewables but for export and tourism. Otherwise, we shall struggle to compete globally.
The previous SNP Government reacted positively by investing in support to some of our ports, and that was welcome. To use a housing analogy, we have laid the foundations. However, to create the windows and doors on the world, which is the vision for the port authorities, with support from our Government, we should embrace the future opportunities that the enhanced and developed port facilities will bring to shareholders, employees and communities alike. I seek that we send a message to them and the planners alike that such port developments will provide financial and jobs opportunities in the sectors that I alluded to. Improvement and action are urgently required.
Thank you; I appreciate your short contribution.
16:12
In my last speech on capital expenditure before the election, I said that housing should be our number 1 priority for capital expenditure. I hope that the cabinet secretary will argue for that in the forthcoming spending review. Unfortunately, that will not be the case for this year’s budget.
I am particularly concerned about the declining number of social rented houses that will be built in this and subsequent years if the current trend continues. In Edinburgh, for example, according to the council we require 1,600 new social rented houses a year in order to meet the demand for such accommodation. In the last financial year, 600 such houses were built and the prediction this year is that only 300 will be built. Apart from the general budget cuts, the main reason for that is the restriction on the housing association grant to £40,000 per property. The result is that the mix in any new development is changing. In the past, typically 70 per cent of housing might have been social rented and 30 per cent mid market. Now in Edinburgh, it will have to be 50 per cent mid market and 50 per cent social rented. In fact, I was told by the director of a housing association that if the trend continues, he will not be able to build any social rented houses in a few years’ time because he will have to borrow so much more because of the reduced HAG levels.
I fully acknowledge that mid-market housing is important for Edinburgh, but social rented housing is even more crucial for the thousands on waiting lists who cannot afford home ownership, shared equity or mid-market housing. In the discussions on the spending review, I hope that the cabinet secretary will make the case for housing in general, but for social rented housing in particular. It is a matter of great concern that the SNP commitment in its election manifesto to build 6,000 social rented houses has now become 6,000 affordable houses.
In the spirit of consensus, will the member welcome the City of Edinburgh Council project for 3,000 social rented council homes thanks to changes to the legislative environment made by an SNP Administration?
I welcome any form of social rented housing in Edinburgh. I welcome the council houses that are already planned, but my last point on housing is to make a plea to the minister to support the bid from Edinburgh to the £20 million council house part of the innovation and investment fund. The main part of Edinburgh’s bid is for the demolition and rebuilding of Fort house in my constituency, which has had enormous problems attached to it for some time. We desperately need it to be rebuilt on the current site, so I hope that the minister will look sympathetically on the bid.
I have one remaining minute, and how can I talk about the tram in one minute? The whole debate on the tram is coming to a head this week, so I want to say four things—if I have time. First, I support the call for a public inquiry that my colleague Kezia Dugdale made last week. I think that, as far as possible, we should suspend the blame game. I know that that will not be totally possible, but I think that we should do that as far as possible and let the public inquiry determine who is to blame for what.
Secondly, there has been a debate in the Edinburgh Evening News every night this week on whether we should go on with the trams or cancel the project. What the public are not hearing is the cost of cancellation, which is enormous. Cancelling the project would cost £700 million overall, and we cannot borrow to cover a shortfall for cancellation. Therefore, cancellation in the short run will be a lot more expensive than going ahead with the project.
I am glad that the Government agrees with that point. One of my constituents received a letter today from Transport Scotland, which states:
“Given the significant level of public investment to date, it would be unacceptable to leave the tram project unfinished.”
That view was also expressed by John Swinney when I last questioned him about it before the election. I hope that the Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment can take the same position today.
Finally, let us work together to find solutions, financial and otherwise, that benefit the environment and economy of Edinburgh and Scotland, and let us not do irreparable and expensive damage to Edinburgh and Scotland by cancelling the tram project.
16:16
It is amazing what a kicking at the polls does to focus the mind on issues. I must be honest: I am sorry, but calls for us to suspend the blame game when the Labour Party, the Tories, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens bear the responsibility for the tram project frankly stink somewhat.
Will the member give way?
Will the member give way?
No, thank you—not at this moment.
I spoke recently in the chamber about the Liberal Democrats going on the road to Damascus on minimum pricing. I appreciate that Kezia Dugdale has had a similar journey on the issue of the trams, and I welcome her turning to the call for a public inquiry. It is a great pity that it has required the pouring of £700 million into a hole in the ground for other parties to realise the folly of supporting the project in the first place.
In this public forum, does the member, on behalf of his party, accept the fact that Scottish National Party councillors in the City of Edinburgh signed the contract for the trams?
Dear, oh dear. If that is the best that we are going to get, we are in for a long five years. I want to move on from that. At the end of the day, this Government was forced by the Opposition parties to allocate to the tram project £0.5 billion that could have been put to much more worthwhile capital investment projects in Scotland. Those parties will have to reckon with that, as they reckoned on polling day when the electorate delivered their verdict. That is why Malcolm Chisholm, to his great credit, is the last man standing for Labour in the city of Edinburgh, while the rest of the Labour Party candidates were given a good kicking at the polls.
Will the member take an intervention?
No, thank you. I have only four minutes, and I have taken an intervention already.
Let us look at a couple of issues in relation to the Aberdeen western peripheral route, which was spoken about earlier. I welcome the cabinet secretary’s confirmation that community benefit clauses will be included in the contract. They are extremely worth while, and it is great that my colleague Maureen Watt raised them and ensured that they are part of the contract.
I echo Maureen Watt’s concerns about the protracted nature of the legal case that is taking place. I do not believe for one second that protesters should not have the opportunity to have their concerns heard, but there comes a point at any stage when people have to accept that their concerns have been given a proper airing. That was the stage at the public inquiry: people were given the opportunity to put across their views to the inquiry reporter, who then approved the project to continue. If we were talking about a sentencing taking as long as it is taking for a decision to be made in the judicial review, there would rightly be a public outcry on all sides of the chamber. We must ensure that major projects are not held up for an indeterminate time on that basis.
I want to deal briefly with the bundling argument that Lewis Macdonald made. If we were to go ahead with the Haudagain roundabout project before the AWPR, we would create traffic chaos in Aberdeen. As the traffic displacement modelling shows, the AWPR requires to be in place before the Haudagain work proceeds.
Will the member give way?
I am sorry—I do not have time.
Decoupling the roundabout from the project would not save any money; in fact, it would lead to further costs. Furthermore, because the AWPR needs to be in place before we can proceed with the roundabout, such a move would not benefit the traffic situation in the north-east.
On housing, I very much welcome the abolition of the right to buy, as it redresses the housing balance in Scotland. For too long, we have been obsessed with private home ownership. There is undoubtedly a place for such ownership, but not to the extent that we lose social housing as a result, and I welcome the focus in that respect.
Just for you, Presiding Officer, I will finish in less than my four minutes.
16:20
I welcome the opportunity to participate in this afternoon’s debate as the Lib Dem spokesman on housing and transport and, of course, I welcome Alex Neil to his new post and Keith Brown on his return to his previous post.
These portfolios are huge and there is plenty for the new cabinet secretary to get his teeth into. I am sure that one objective will be the delivery on budget and on time of the Forth replacement crossing. However, as a south of Scotland member, I share the concern expressed by many of my constituents about the future of the Waverley line project. As Lewis Macdonald pointed out, earlier this month—and just seven months after the new Borders railway consortium removed itself from consideration—the IMCD consortium withdrew from the bidding process, leaving only one group in the running for the contract to deliver a project of huge significance to the people of the Scottish Borders, Midlothian and Edinburgh. Every time a consortium has egressed, there have been claims about governance issues with Transport Scotland, and I hope that the alleged burden of regulation and contractual wrangling over this project is not a surreptitious attempt by the Government to kick the project into the long grass. As a result, I request that the cabinet secretary this afternoon tells us that we will see trains in Tweedbank in 2014 and seek Government assurances that it is actively encouraging other groups to throw their hat in the ring for the contract.
Under his wide remit, the cabinet secretary is also responsible for ferry services and I imagine that hauliers throughout Scotland will be watching with interest his actions with regard to the Rosyth to Zeebrugge service. After all, the freight service between those two ports is vital for many businesses in Scotland in expanding and maintaining their European operations. That said, questions remain over the commitment of DFDS Seaways to the service, following the removal of the passenger element and the reduction from four to three sailings per week. In his answers to my parliamentary questions about the service, the minister Keith Brown referred to that as
“a commercial matter for DFDS” —[Official Report, Written Answers, 24 June 2011 ; S4W-00897]
This morning, the cabinet secretary stated to the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee that the Government’s approach would be “ambitious” but that cannot be achieved simply by washing one’s hands of an issue and watching from the sidelines as DFDS keeps downgrading Scotland’s only ferry link to mainland Europe. The Government must take the initiative and not only seek assurances from DFDS over its long-term commitment to Rosyth but encourage the restoration of passenger sailings from Scotland.
Does the member agree that the cabinet secretary should look into the issue of the grant funding available from Europe for moving freight from roads on to sea routes? In that regard, I totally support Mr Hume’s remarks.
I fully agree with the member.
With more than a quarter of a million households in Scotland on waiting lists, the Government needs to concentrate on the issue of housing. Although fully aware of its budget, it has committed itself to the target of building 6,000 social rented homes a year; however, as we have heard, the SFHA believes that that commitment will be jeopardised without “more investment”, Shelter Scotland has urged the Government to “reflect again” on its capital investment priorities and the Chartered Institute of Housing in Scotland has expressed doubts about the suitability of the national housing trust as the vehicle for meeting that target. Given that only a quarter of those homes will be for social rent with the rest comprising equity and shared equity properties and houses for mid-market rent, the cabinet secretary clearly has difficult questions to answer in relation to one of the Government’s flagship policies and he needs to be clear about the number of social rented homes that the Government will make available annually.
I look forward to the cabinet secretary responding to my points to help take Scotland forward.
16:24
Paul Wheelhouse (South Scotland) (SNP)
As Jim Hume said, transport will be crucial to the economic development of the south of Scotland. I very much welcome the national delivery plan model of investment in the Borders railway. I welcome the commitment that the Government gave recently in answer to a parliamentary question that the railway would be completed in December 2014. I hope that its completion will help to regenerate communities along its route. I also hope that it will be a success and lead to extension of the route to Hawick and beyond.
I take issue with Jim Hume in one respect, in that the project that we inherited in 2007, after his party had been in power, had no capacity for freight and no funding commitment. Indeed, the projected journey time for the route was one hour and 10 minutes, and it was only the work of Stewart Stevenson and Keith Brown—
Funding was committed to the project in the Lib Dem-Labour coalition agreement.
I may stand corrected, but my understanding was that no firm commitment was given on funding and that it had not been identified.
The Scottish National Party Government has reduced the projected journey time to 55 minutes in the procurement proposals. The project is much better than the one that we inherited, and I hope that it will be much more successful than it otherwise would have been.
We can only wonder, of course, what might have been possible in Scotland today if, like Norway, we had had an oil fund since 1995. I looked at the value of Norway’s oil fund in April this year and found that it was worth £341 billion. The Norwegians allow themselves to use only 4 per cent of the fund annually, not only to protect its value but to avoid causing inflation in their economy by dumping too much cash into it in any one year. However, Norway could afford to spend £13 billion this year on whatever projects it chose.
The south of Scotland has a list of demands for the cabinet secretary for the A7, the A1, the Borders railway, the potential reopening of railway stations at Reston and East Linton on the east coast main line, and the A75. All those projects would be deliverable with the kind of money that would be available from an oil fund. In some ways, the debate that we are having today is perhaps a false one. If Scotland had had control of its resources over the period to which I referred, we would have been in a much more favourable position to fund all those capital projects in the south of the country.
The cabinet secretary’s portfolio extends to housing, too. Like some other members, I was at the SFHA presentation last night, where I met a number of members of housing associations from the south of Scotland who raised concerns about the HAG funding and other issues. In particular, they raised a matter that is within the power of another place, which is the charging of VAT on shared services and other areas. I know that a number of local housing associations in the Borders are keen to collaborate to save money, share services and release funding for further capital development. In summing up, perhaps the minister could refer to any efforts that have been made to remove that VAT anomaly and allow housing associations to make better use of their constrained resources in the current year.
I share Jim Hume’s view that we must recognise that housing and transport are the two key issues in the south of Scotland.
16:28
I thank the cabinet secretary for his opening remarks and congratulate him and the minister on their promotion. I welcome Lewis Macdonald to his new role.
In April this year, the charity Shelter stated that 160,000 people in Scotland are waiting for local authority homes. Members will agree that that is a truly shocking figure. Housing is a basic economic need. Without decent housing, a child’s life chances diminish alarmingly. At present, one in five children in Scotland lives in houses that have either condensation or dampness, or both, which increases their risk of suffering from asthma and other respiratory illnesses. One in 10 children in Scotland lives in housing that is overcrowded. How can a child study for an exam or complete homework when they live in such disadvantaged circumstances?
I ask the new cabinet secretary why that issue has been overlooked by the Government and always left at the bottom of the policy agenda, when it is vital to so many people in Scotland.
Will the member take an intervention?
I do not have time.
In the previous session, housing was in the health portfolio; now it is shoehorned into transport. The Government has continuously pushed housing further down the agenda. Scotland needs new houses, yet with a 20.8 per cent decline in the housing and regeneration budget, the Government seems loth to provide them.
The Chartered Institute of Housing in Scotland believes that the Scottish Government may already be suppressing next year’s housing budget by reducing the number of approvals for new housing to be built for social landlords. That action would result in default shrinkage in the housing and regeneration budget. Can the cabinet secretary confirm that the budget for housing and regeneration will not diminish?
In North Ayrshire, where I am still a councillor, a recent assessment found a 2,700 shortfall in the number of houses that are needed in that council area. The Labour-held council has taken steps to tackle that. We have created a new housing development investment programme that is designed specifically to target support to the most vulnerable people in the area. We have also developed our housing revenue account business plan, which will guarantee that 1 per cent of the rent increase will go directly into the building of new council houses. That will translate into 50 new houses a year for the next decade. Those are real solutions to real housing need.
Despite the difficult circumstances in which we find ourselves due to year-on-year cuts to the affordable housing investment programme, Labour is working to ensure that we see more investment in social housing.
Will the member take an intervention?
I am sorry, but I do not have time.
There are even areas in which we are working with the Scottish Government. For example, there has been massive investment to regenerate Vineburgh, in Irvine. That project shows how councils, community housing associations and the Scottish Government can work together to improve the life chances of tenants through transforming communities. However, although the Scottish Government provided housing association grant for the first two phases of the development, I would like an assurance from the cabinet secretary that the funding will be made available for phase 3 to allow the project to be completed.
During my time in the Scottish Parliament, housing will be my priority. I urge the Scottish Government to make housing its priority, too.
16:33
I am grateful for the chance to speak in the debate. Part of its appeal was the opportunity to see at first hand what the cabinet secretary’s new title entails and to hear his opening speech. I looked at his title and wondered what it meant; now I have an indication. I recently used a phrase from Gordon Brown’s jaw-clenching language: unreconstructed neo-Keynesian macroeconomic demand stimulus. Alex Neil appears to be the cabinet secretary for that, which I welcome.
We have not talked so much about the value of capital investment in directly stimulating the economy although that was a constant thread during the previous Administration and should perhaps not be lost sight of. In the related area of debt financing and using the borrowing power to stimulate growth in these difficult times, I would be interested to know whether the Scottish Government would still like to investigate the opportunity of bond financing subject to the Scotland Bill conferring the relevant powers in the short term.
More broadly, I will speak about public transport. As a non-driver, I am all too aware of how public transport can sometimes be seen to be left out in debate although certainly not in funding, having received record funding from the previous Administration.
I recognise that these are years of short corn, but we in Edinburgh have the darkly amusing prospect that it seems to be increasingly possible to get out of Edinburgh by public transport, whether it is to the Borders, to the north—through the recast timetables—and to Glasgow via either Bathgate or Falkirk. Instead of indulging my paranoia, I will assume that those developments are intended to bring people to Edinburgh. In any case, the developments are to be welcomed.
However, as members may guess, not all public transport projects are created equal. Any conversation on transport with an Edinburgh MSP—like any conversation with a taxi driver in Edinburgh—has to turn to the trams. It was rich of Opposition members to talk about getting away from the blame game. Frankly, I think that they did so because they expect to lose it.
Almost exactly four years to the day, the Labour Party, the Conservative party, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens sat here and voted through the trams project. A little bit of humility in accepting that would certainly be welcome.
My SNP colleague Steve Cardownie, who is the deputy leader of the City of Edinburgh Council, will tomorrow propose that there should be a referendum for the people of Edinburgh. I take Helen Eadie’s point that the people of Scotland deserve to have the chance to give their view on whether public money is spent on the Edinburgh trams, but I do not accept that the people of Edinburgh have already had sufficient chance to give their view on the trams. We are talking about a potential £225 million of borrowing to complete the line to St Andrew Square, as the Liberal Democrats propose. Now, £225 million is not trivial in the context of the Scottish Government; in the context of the City of Edinburgh Council, we are in selling-your-granny territory.
Does the member acknowledge that cancelling the project would be more expensive, because it would still cost £700 million and there would be £100 million that could not be borrowed, which would have to come straight out of the City of Edinburgh Council’s budget very quickly? It would cost far more to cancel the project, aside from the other disadvantages of doing so.
As well as giving the people of Edinburgh a say, I would be interested in giving the people of Edinburgh sight of the contract that the Labour Party negotiated, which includes secrecy clauses that mean that the breakdown of the cancellation cost has never been made public.
I very much support the new portfolio, as we should not shy away from innovation but should embrace it in delivery and in its economic role.
I call Patrick Harvie, who has three minutes.
16:37
I realised that this would be a depressing debate for a Green to take part in. Thankfully, my pain will last for only three minutes instead of four.
I welcome the cabinet secretary to his new role much more enthusiastically than I welcome his transgression yesterday. I point out the tragic irony for Alex Neil in taking on this role at this time. He has been required to continue the nonsense of having a 1960s mentality to road building at a time when more enlightened cities around the world are tearing down such infrastructure, because they recognise that that is the better way to serve the economic, social and environmental needs of the urban environment.
I can well understand how fans of Dr Beeching in the 1960s could, while public transport infrastructure that we would value today was being ripped from the ground, delude themselves with the vision of mile after mile of gleaming tarmac, which would never fill up, never clog up and never cause any social, environmental or economic problems associated with congestion, as they simply thought that it was the way to go, but how tragic it is that we are continuing that thinking when we are supposed to be building infrastructure for the 21st century.
Let me point out a couple of more enlightened cities around the world. A few years ago, Seoul removed one of its major freeways, which had carried 168,000 vehicles a day into the city. One of the key planners in the project that removed that piece of infrastructure said:
“As soon as we destroyed the road, the cars just disappeared and drivers changed their habits”—
I see that Jackson Carlaw is laughing—and
“A lot of people just gave up their cars.”
They found from 2002 onwards that a lot of people gave up their cars and others found a different route for driving. In some cases they kept their cars but changed their routes. The highway’s removal made room for the restoration of an urban park and a stream, which is now a focal point and a matter of pride for the city.
In New Orleans in the 1950s, decades before hurricane Katrina, the construction of interstate 10 precipitated Tremé’s decline from one of the wealthiest African-American communities in the city to an area of high poverty and vacancy. The number of businesses in the area fell 75 per cent between 1960 and 2000. New Orleans is another enlightened city that is removing such infrastructure and finding economic, social and environmental benefits from doing so.
Let us imagine the public transport system that Glasgow could have had for the £650 million that has been spent on the M74. It could have had crossrail, the Glasgow airport rail link, a new subway or a new fleet of buses, with a properly regulated service and an Oyster card system to make it all easier to use. Instead we got 5 miles of tarmac.
I call Alex Johnstone to begin the closing speeches. You have four minutes.
16:40
So much to say, so little time. I will try to keep my speech short.
Since the SNP assumed power, its housing policy has been an attempt to face in two different directions. On one hand, it is politically mired in the unworkable 19th century socialism that instinctively rails against the private sector; on the other, it recognises that the only way forward for housing, which brings massive benefits to communities and the economy, is closer engagement with the private sector and the free market economy.
Alex Neil’s flagship policy, the national housing trust, has failed to inspire confidence. Only 12 of the 32 local authorities have signed up and, by March this year, only six of the 12 had submitted proposals, with the matter under consideration in a further two. We are promised 1,200 homes under the first round of NHT, but we will be lucky to see 800. The tragedy is that ordinary families will pay the price of the failure.
There is a glimmer of hope. The Scottish Government, bereft of direction, threw in the towel and set up the innovation and investment fund, asking developers, councils and registered social landlords for ideas. The fund is massively oversubscribed and demonstrates that developers and RSLs are willing to engage and deliver homes in new and innovative ways. The SNP has at last realised that, as the Scottish Conservatives have been saying for years, a plodding, simplistic method of housing subsidy is unsustainable and the developer-led model demonstrates that landlords invest, make a return and—this is crucial—reinvest in more housing stock. The Scottish Conservatives think that mixed funding will deliver cost-effective housing outcomes. I urge stakeholders to embrace the idea and move forward with it.
During questions on Mr Swinney’s statement before this debate, I was interested to hear that Alex Neil has been leading for the Government on work with the Scottish Futures Trust on ways to exploit the capital base of public sector organisations. We heard that the Government will rise to the challenge and find ways of making better use of the public asset base. As I listened, the words “Scottish Water” were going through my mind. The way in which the Government is turning its back on the opportunity to realise the value of its assets and ensure that it uses its money for best effect can be demonstrated no better than by the Government’s reluctance to look at mutualising Scottish Water as an option in the longer term. The Government seems to be prepared to exploit borrowing powers that it does not yet have, so that it can invest without having to confront or deal with the opportunities on which it has turned its back for purely political reasons.
Will the member give way?
I must finish my speech in a short time.
Let us look further at the options that the Government is taking. We heard at some length about the use of the non-profit-distributing model to fund projects. I think that as many as four years ago I said in the Parliament that I thought that the Scottish Futures Trust would begin to deliver when it used a method that was indistinguishable from the public-private partnership model. The non-profit-distributing model that is currently being used is private finance initiative mark 3 and we have reached a point at which it is effective and will deliver. We now have PPPs—they are perhaps under a different and tighter management structure, but they are PPPs nonetheless. I am delighted that we have made progress on that.
16:45
I, too, welcome the cabinet secretary and the minister to their new posts.
Infrastructure is the backdrop from which other things that we do grow. We need infrastructure to access services and grow our economy. It is for the Government to provide and manage the provision of infrastructure through its own funding and through the planning system. Where private development puts pressure on infrastructure or requires infrastructure upgrades, it is for the planning system to ensure that that requirement is met and obligations are placed on developers. Where private developers do not find the development of infrastructure to be economically viable, the Government must step in. That is why this wide-ranging debate is so important.
I want to touch on some topics that have been raised. Many members have emphasised the importance of housing. In his opening speech, Lewis Macdonald talked about the SNP’s promise in its manifesto to have 6,000 socially rented houses. I hope that the SNP will take the opportunity that is provided by the debate to emphasise that it will stick to that target. If it will not do so, will it say what its target is? Malcolm Chisholm said that he has been told locally that that target will not be met and, indeed, that there will be cuts in socially rented housing development in his area. Paul Wheelhouse also touched briefly on the matter. He used his time to talk about reserved issues, but he also talked about the housing association grant, which has been halved in recent years. That will not help the Government to meet its targets.
We need good-quality housing, because housing impacts on people’s health. Margaret McDougall made that point. How can we meet such targets if there is a 30 per cent drop in the housing budget? Not only does investment in housing bring economic benefits; it brings jobs and apprenticeships and boosts local economies. Investment in good-quality housing delivers health and wellbeing for those who live in it.
In his opening remarks, the cabinet secretary said that the funding that has been put aside has already been oversubscribed. That is worrying. We understand that housing associations used to be front funded for new developments, but that has changed, and they are now end funded. That means that there was a peak in housing development last year, but it leaves us with problems for the future. How will that budget be managed without end-year flexibility? If housing development is back funded, how can we be sure when the development will be complete and when the funding will be drawn down? The Government needs to think about those issues and how it will manage housing budgets in the future.
I welcome the Government’s adoption of our first foot scheme for first-time buyers, which is an indemnity insurance that allows first-time buyers to put down a smaller deposit to buy a home. We fought for that in the election campaign, and I am pleased that the Government has adopted that policy.
Chic Brodie and Maureen Watt touched on the huge issues of energy and investment in piers and harbours. How can we meet the Government’s renewables targets if we do not have piers and harbours that are able to deal with the traffic that will go through them to support that industry and its infrastructure? How will the Government provide funding for the necessary expansion and development of harbours? How will it consider transmission routes? There have been huge delays in the Beauly to Denny transmission line due to planning. I understand that we need further transmission routes if we are going to meet the 100 per cent target for electricity generated from renewable sources. It is not for the Government to provide those, but it is for the Government to provide the backdrop to enable that provision to happen quickly.
Roads are another huge infrastructure issue. Very little has been said about roads, apart from about transgressing the M74. That joke has been done to death, but I wanted to use it again. Something that is not very funny is the quote from the transport minister, Keith Brown, in today’s Press and Journal, in which he says that it could take “decades” to upgrade the A9. Can we have a timeframe for it? People believed that it was going to come an awful lot sooner and, if we do not have a timeframe to debunk the “decades” comment, they will be left to believe that the north of Scotland has again been ignored with regard to infrastructure.
There are many other issues that we must deal with, but I notice that I am running out of time. One such issue is water. Will a water bill be introduced? Will Scottish Water remain in public ownership? How will its borrowing powers be delivered, and how can it operate with a funding freeze? We need to look at how we progress capital funding mechanisms while allowing organisations to progress renewables in their own areas.
Ferries are another huge issue. We need to see the outcome of the ferries review, but we also need to look at the Rosyth to Zeebrugge route, which Jim Hume and Helen Eadie mentioned.
A number of members spoke about the trams. Mark McDonald and Marco Biagi were strident in their criticism, but I say to them gently—
I would be grateful if you would close, please.
I say to them that the mark of a good Government is not what it promises but what it delivers. I ask the Government to look at the trams project clearly and see whether it can deliver it.
We need to emphasise housing, which fits with today’s Christie commission recommendations in that it can provide health benefits as well as homes and jobs.
16:51
It is a mark of the importance that the Government attaches to this area that it has appointed Alex Neil as Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment. It is important in any Government but, at a time like this, when capital is so constrained, it is very important that we look at different ways of trying to attract more capital. I congratulate all the spokespeople who have been appointed to shadow Alex Neil and me.
It would be difficult to answer all the questions that have been asked, as there are quite a number of them, but I will try as best I can. I will first tackle the issue that Lewis Macdonald raised in relation to the target for social homes. The Government’s position is clear enough. I have already stated publicly—and the Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment said at committee this morning—that we aim to deliver 30,000 affordable homes, which is an average of 6,000 per year, over the next five years. That is despite the tightest budget settlement since devolution.
We have indicated that, in addition to or within that, we intend to facilitate the building of 5,000 new council houses during this session of Parliament, but we have not set an overall target for council and housing association homes for social rent.
Will the member give way?
I will make some progress first, as there is quite a lot to get through. In addition, within the total affordable approvals, homes will be provided through the innovation and investment fund, the transfer of management of development funding programmes for Glasgow and Edinburgh and the shared equity schemes; by Glasgow Housing Association, the national housing trust initiative and the home owners support fund; and through mortgage-to-rent and mortgage-to-shared-equity schemes.
The target of 5,000 new council houses can be compared with the number that were built previously. It has been said before, but it is worth saying again that the previous Administration, going right the way back to the 1990s, built a total of six homes, all in Shetland. Our target shows a substantial commitment to social housing.
I will take Lewis Macdonald’s intervention.
Will the minister confirm, while he echoes the commitment to grow the wider affordable sector, that the manifesto on which his party was recently re-elected specifically states:
“our aim is to build over 6,000 new socially-rented houses each year”?
Is he telling us today that that is not now the Government’s intention?
As I said, I have stated in the public domain and the cabinet secretary has made clear—and I have just made clear again—that our priority is 30,000 affordable homes, or around 6,000 per year, over the next five years. That will not be easy to achieve because of the budget cuts.
There are a number of other issues, so I will move on. Jackson Carlaw mentioned the ferries review, on which we intend to consult further following the first informal consultation. The point was made at the end of the debate about the importance of harbours and ports, which are very capital intensive, and the ferries themselves are of course very expensive. We are keen to get that right, so it is right that we take time over it.
Lewis Macdonald made a point about unbundling in relation to the AWPR, as did others. We have to await the outcome of the legal process. That perhaps addresses a point that Maureen Watt raised. It is not for Government ministers to challenge any courts, so we will not do that. It is important that we respect the legal process. I know that the delay that it has caused has been frustrating for many people. Only after the process comes to an end can we look at how we can proceed. The cabinet secretary said that it would be worth looking at unbundling again at the appropriate time, but not in advance of then.
The cabinet secretary answered a question from Maureen Watt about including a community benefit clause in relation to the AWPR. We have done that in previous schemes and we would be very happy to do it for the AWPR.
Helen Eadie asked about European funding, which I think the cabinet secretary addressed when he spoke first of all. We are trying to look at every single penny that is available from Europe. We have always done that. If Helen Eadie is aware of any funds that we are not accessing, we are happy to hear what she thinks we can do. She said that she had not had a response to her letter yet; I am more than happy to meet her to discuss her constituents’ concerns about the Forth crossing.
Malcolm Chisholm made a number of points. We are freeing up money for social rented housing. We published targeted guidance in March which, if adopted by social landlords, could save up to £1 billion against the already-budgeted amount to meet the cost of the Scottish quality housing standard. It is worth pointing out that the 1,273 local authority homes started in 2010-11 was the highest number in a single financial year since 1987-88 and that the 583 local authority homes completed was the highest number in a single financial year since 1994-95. Real progress is being made in that respect. As I indicated in relation to the targets that we have set, we intend to go further.
Jim Hume raised a concern about having a single bidder for the Borders railway. It is our intention to see through the project and our 2014 target remains in place. There are issues to address, but the M74, which many members have mentioned as a positive example, also had a single bidder. Certain things have to be taken into account and we have to have discussions to ensure that the process is rigorous, but it is still possible to see through the project and we will do that.
On the Rosyth to Zeebrugge route, there is no difference between the point that I made that the decision is a commercial matter for the company involved and the point that Alex Neil made, which I understand was in a completely different context, that we should be ambitious in that respect. Of course we have always wanted to see a passenger service on that route, but we understand the commercial pressures on the company concerned.
Paul Wheelhouse made a good point about the Norwegian oil fund. Would it not be fantastic to have a job like this if we had £300-plus billion of which we could access £13 billion in any given year to do some of the things that we would like to do? That just shows the folly of having squandered the oil wealth of this country. He was right to say that no provision was made by the previous Labour-Lib Dem Government for funding the Borders rail link. It is this Government that has driven the rail link forward and we will continue to do so.
Margaret McDougall made a series of points about council housing, but she did not seem to recognise the fact that the 36 per cent cuts to our budget—crucially, our capital budget—by Alistair Darling, which were subsequently supported by George Osborne, might have something to do with the cuts that we are having to wrestle with. That is the kind of thing that we are having to look at.
As a general rule, I genuinely think that it is important that we look at any good ideas that come from other parties on these issues, because the cabinet secretary has a role in looking at innovative ways of drawing in new funding. However, we can only take such suggestions seriously if members say where the money should come from. At the previous election, it was shown that the idea that one can demand more money for everything and expect to get it is finished.
On that note, where will the money come from for the upgrading of the A9? Will it take decades?
It is certainly not our intention that it should take decades. I point out that we are the first Government ever to commit to dualling the A9. Unlike some other parties, we put it in our manifesto. There is a question about funding, but if we were not facing massive cuts in capital funding, it would be much easier to dual the A9 much more quickly. We have made progress already, with £50 million spent, and we will continue to make progress, despite the fact that we are not helped by the cuts from Westminster.
I say to Patrick Harvie that I think that he is completely wrong on the M74—he will not be surprised to hear me say that. The opening was immensely popular. There were queues waiting to get on to it last night, with saltires flying in the first cars to go down the road. There was even a group of hell’s angels who seemed to enjoy the road very much.
This morning, both the M8 in the area and the M74 were running very freely, and I hope that that will continue to be the case into the future. The new motorway is very popular, and it is a huge boon for Glasgow and the west of Scotland. It is exactly the kind of project that the Government has championed in the past and will continue to champion in the future.