Chamber and committees

I think that my reputation—it is for others to decide whether this is accurate—is that I was possibly more of a hands-on micromanager than my predecessor.

I have already made both the points that I would make in response to that question, so you will forgive me if I repeat myself.

First, until that point, the advice to Government was that there was a viable route to 2025. That was the advice, but that viable route depended on capital provision being made available, which was a significant challenge. It is not the case that we were, as you say, just being dishonest.

My second point is one that I made in my first answer to the convener. When I look back on that period, I think that we should perhaps have been airing this more publicly. I certainly think that that is a reasonable question to pose, but if we were guilty of anything at that point, it was of trying our hardest to find the route to 2025, and—I am happy to concede—perhaps taking too long to accept that that was not possible. If that is the case, it happened for the best of reasons.

My condolences and heart go out to every single person who has lost someone on the A9 or who knows someone in that position. The dualling of the A9 has been a priority for the Scottish Government. It has encountered significant challenges; it was always going to, but there were some additional ones. I do not believe that we are sitting here today because Government did not give the issue enough priority, but there is absolutely no doubt that priority must be attached to it until the commitment is met. To go back to Fergus Ewing’s question, I am absolutely of the view that the Government has an obligation to ensure that the revised timetable is now met—and met in full.

I will just leave that there.

Where he is absolutely right is that, in the period around the financial crash and after that, infrastructure was a central priority of the Government. Infrastructure is always a priority of the Government but, in terms of the economic situation that we were facing, trying to drive economic activity through infrastructure projects was absolutely a central focus, and Alex was absolutely pushing that.

As I say, I think that my reputation is probably that I was more of a hands-on micromanager than my predecessor was. I would be involved in issues that needed to be resolved or pushed on. Cabinet secretaries would come to me and I would go to cabinet secretaries where there were issues or where I thought that things were not moving fast enough. That is the nature of how Government works on a day-to-day basis.

Where I would take issue with how you have characterised it is that a lot of the work was on-going at that point. Much of the preparatory work, to use that catch-all phrase, was on-going. We are now in a position where, with the exception of one of the sections of the route, all the orders are in place, so it is not the case that none of that was progressing.

The six-year estimate, of course, was made way back—it was an estimate of the construction period. The significant barrier that we were grappling with at that point was around funding options, in terms of coming up with a private finance possibility versus the pressure on our capital programme. You can have everything else in place—you can have all the preparatory work done—but you need to have routes to funding and procurement. That was the aspect that was the most significant challenge.

I do not think that that would add anything to where we are right now. In fact, I am concerned that, if somebody came in and decided to take a fresh look at everything, that would slow things down. The Government is now in a strong place with funding, the reassessment of the order of the routes and the timescale of the project, so it should be able to get on with that work and be held to account for it. Therefore, that suggestion would hinder rather than help.

If that is practical, yes, I would agree. I have not been in government for more than a year, so it would not be fair of me to comment on whether, if we take all the different factors into account, it is practical. However, if it is, the Government should try to accelerate the timescale. John Swinney’s constituency is on the route of the A9. I am certain that, if it was practical to bring forward completion, he would be very open to doing it, but it is important that I not try to speak for the Government or the First Minister, given that I am not at all close to the detail of those things in the way that I once was.

Indeed.

That is a really good question, and I think that it is an important question when we are considering any roads projects. We could talk about this in a lot more detail but, in respect of the A9 generally, no, I do not think that it did. The A9 was effectively excluded from the Bute house agreement—I am using shorthand here—but the commitment to it continued because of the important reasons for the dualling of the A9. It is not about providing extra road capacity for more cars; it is fundamentally about safety, so it is a roads project that is important to complete.

More generally, the climate cannot be divorced from the consideration of road projects in this day and age; it is an important part of any deliberation. However, I would argue strongly that the reason why we are sitting here talking about delays to the dualling of the A9 is not about the Greens being in government or because we downgraded the priority of it for some consideration of climate and emissions targets.

The impact of Covid on the A9 project would have been multifaceted, as it was on every aspect of Government priorities outside what was required to manage Covid. It would have impacted civil service time and wider industry engagement. Everything associated with a big project would have been and was impacted by Covid.

Again, I am using shorthand here, which is probably always a bit dangerous, but, effectively, outside what we needed to do to deal with Covid—this applied not just here but everywhere—the rest of Government shut down to some extent. That, of course, impacted on the A9 project, as it did on many other things.

I do not particularly want to think about climbing—sorry. [Laughter.]