Chamber and committees

Okay.

I will try to keep my question short. It is specifically about a road that goes through my area, the A77. You mentioned that we have just had the Maybole bypass put in, which is great. It has a couple of passing points, but it is not a dual carriageway. The A77 is a main route from Scotland to Northern Ireland and it is a single carriageway for the majority of the way from Ayr down to Cairnryan, with the exception now of a few passing places on the Maybole bypass. When you are deciding on major capital projects, what consideration is given to spreading the allocation of funding around the country—to south-west Scotland, for example—with environmental targets having an impact on road investment?

You talked about reviewing work that is being carried out. How often are those reviews carried out? At the moment, the A77 at the Carlock wall is not even a single carriageway—it is down to one lane, and there are traffic lights that have been there for nearly three years.

How often do you review the projects? The Carlock wall scheme has now been going on for three years, and a main transport route is down to a single lane.

When you found out that it was not going to give you the builders refund guarantee, which was part of the tendering process, why did you not cancel the contract at that point and go back to the tendering process? In the communication that you have sent through, that seemed to be your preferred choice.

At the time, were you happy to go forward with the contract, or did you feel that you were being forced into it?

In some of the further evidence that we got, we spoke to Roy Brannen. He said:

“Transport Scotland did not have a role in the contract—it was between CMAL as the buyer and FMEL as the builder. CMAL had to satisfy itself that it was able to enter into that contract and resolve whatever issues were apparent.”—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 26 May 2022; c 12.]

Roy Brannen is saying that the decision was not to do with ministers and it was not to do with Transport Scotland; the decision was for CMAL.

That is fair. That is me for now but I might come back in later, convener.

We all want to see a resolution to the situation in Northern Ireland. It is in the interests of all parties, all four nations of the UK and the EU that we come together to address the issues with the Northern Ireland protocol that have become apparent.

In its current state, the protocol is stifling trade, has caused major issues around the supply of essential medicines and is an active problem in resolving the delicate matter of power sharing at Stormont. That threatens to destabilise the Good Friday agreement, which is one of the very things that the protocol was created to protect.

Sorry, but I will not.

There are also political considerations. Both parties to the agreement pledged to uphold the Good Friday agreement. With the breakdown of power sharing at Stormont and the threat of a hard border in the island of Ireland, it is fair to say that the Good Friday agreement is under strain.

The UK Government maintains that the amendments that it proposes to the protocol will support all three strands of the Belfast agreement, and it is clear that they are in need of support. Strand 1, relating to the Northern Ireland Assembly, remains unresolved. Strand 2, which fosters co-operation between the north and south, is under pressure. It is clear that the third strand, which deals with east-west relations, is also strained. For the proposed changes to be implemented, the agreement of both the UK and the EU is required.

Northern Ireland urgently needs a Government. The people of Northern Ireland require stability and certainty, and the UK and the EU have a duty to uphold their prior obligations in the form of the Belfast agreement. Those should be our common goals going forward. I hope that an acceptable compromise is reached that addresses the many concerns that have arisen on both sides regarding the protocol .

No—sorry.

The bill that has been introduced addresses many of those issues. Practical measures such as a green lane-red lane system, which would create a two-tier regulatory system, are proposals that should, and will, be considered by the EU.

As Donald Cameron alluded, retailers who have no stores in the Republic of Ireland are still required to meet EU standards just to ship their goods to Belfast for sale exclusively in Northern Ireland. That is clearly unworkable in the long term.

The same can be said for the transport of medicines. My region of South Scotland is home to the major ferry port at Cairnryan, which is Scotland’s largest export point for goods to Northern Ireland. If the protocol is not amended, it will continue to affect exporters in the constituencies of every MSP in the chamber. Therefore, it is in all our interests to support a re-evaluation of the deal’s implementation.