Chamber and committees

Community groups are frustrated and I know, from questions that I have submitted, that you have not met any of them. Is there a reason why you will not meet the community groups that are concerned about the amount of infrastructure that is being built across much of Scotland?

A few years ago, £100 million was committed to the emerging energy technologies fund. Has that now been scrapped?

Last year, the cabinet secretary stated that offshore wind support had been prioritised over hydrogen funding. Is that still the case?

Do you only see that money being spent on the Scottish cluster once it has track status and not on the supply chain or on getting ourselves ready for carbon capture, even though the cluster did not have track status when the money was announced back in 2022?

I believe that Biffa is suing the Scottish Government for £166 million over the deposit return scheme. If that is successful, would the money have to come out of the waste budget or is there provision elsewhere for that?

I congratulate Ash Regan on securing today’s debate and commend her for the wording of the motion, which provides something for everyone in terms of location, by mentioning Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, and in terms of connectivity, by including road, rail and air while also highlighting how important connectivity is to our economy and communities.

That infrastructure is just as important as energy infrastructure, which is why it is disappointing that the Government does not bring those topics forward for debate in Government time. I can understand why the Government did not want to talk about subjects such as air travel and roads when it was shackled to the Greens, but the anti-growth, anti-aircraft, anti-car extremists have been ditched from Government, so those subjects should be at the top of the agenda again.

Infrastructure connections are the veins of our economy, spreading life and jobs to all corners of Scotland and allowing all areas to grow and prosper. That was known by the devolved SNP Government of the past, but the situation has changed completely and I am not sure why. Fergus Ewing pointed out that the Government used to do that but that the situation has changed completely in the past four years.

Let us take Aberdeen as an example. We have seen a huge private investment of £300 million in Aberdeen south harbour. It is a brilliant deepwater facility, but the planned infrastructure improvements to the city have not kept pace to maximise its economic potential. The SNP promised that £200 million would be spent on rail improvements to reduce journey times between the city and the central belt by 2026, and that project was backed by the Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce because it would boost economic growth. However, the SNP abandoned that pledge and has supplied only 8 per cent of the funding. We have improved port facilities at Fraserburgh and Peterhead, and there was an SNP promise to dual the roads from Aberdeen to those places, but that project has also been dropped. Fraserburgh and Peterhead have no rail links, so they deserve decent road infrastructure.

There is to be a freeport on the Cromarty Firth to support the renewables sector, and much of the supply chain and skills for that will be in Aberdeen. The A96 was meant to be dualled by 2030, which would help to maximise the economic potential of the freeport, but that is another broken promise from this SNP Government. As has been said, the A9 was meant to be dualled by this year, but that improvement will now be at least 10 years late, which is another broken promise that means that more economic benefit will be lost. People in North East Scotland have had enough of the SNP’s spin and broken promises. They want to see commitments being delivered.

We are in budget season, and improvements to road, rail and air hardly get a mention, but connectivity is important to the economic growth that will create jobs and deliver increased revenue for us all to spend on public services.

Ash Regan was right to highlight the lack of integrated travel. It is an embarrassment that Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen airports are not connected to the rail network—something that is even more frustrating when we consider how close to those airports the railway lines are.

I have a final point to make about airports. Some years ago, the Scottish Government was looking to get air passenger duty devolved but seemed to bottle it when the Greens started pulling the strings. The devolution of APD would surely be a great opportunity to make Scottish airports more competitive and would be a lever that we could use to boost economic growth.

I thank Ash Regan for securing a debate on a topic that is vital to Scotland’s future prosperity, and I urge the Government again to allocate Government parliamentary time to transport and energy infrastructure, so that we can debate those topics fully.

As I mentioned in my speech, the devolution of air passenger duty could be a way of boosting economic numbers and growth and making our airports more attractive. Is the Scottish Government still considering the devolution of air passenger duty?

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

I want to ask the cabinet secretary about the 200 jobs in Aberdeen that GB Energy has announced. Has GB Energy provided you with any more information on what those jobs will be?

So, components have had to be changed, even though they have not been used, because they are obsolete already.