Chamber and committees

I thank the petitioner for setting out so comprehensively the sad series of unacceptable facts on this issue. I will not repeat what the petitioner has said but she has done a service for the people of the Highlands.

I want to focus on how we move forward and get dualling done as swiftly as possible. I have two areas of questioning for Mr Barn. The first is about the retendering of the Tomatin to Moy section and the second is about what he, as a representative of 80 per cent of the civil engineering sector in Scotland, which is the vast majority of the businesses that are involved in doing that work, thinks is the solution. What needs to change?

I will take Tomatin to Moy first. There was only one bidder and the bid was rejected because it was said not to offer value for money, which appears to mean that it was too high. Is that your understanding? That contract is being retendered, and in a late submission to the committee—it was submitted this morning or perhaps late yesterday—Transport Scotland said that it has engaged with you, Mr Barn, and others in the industry about changing the risk profile of Tomatin to Moy. Has it done that, and is there a risk that, when the Tomatin to Moy contract is retendered, which is supposed to be done by the end of this year, we might end up with an even higher price than the one that was rejected because it was deemed to be too high?

So, it could be even higher than the price that was deemed to be too high.

So, there is a precedent there.

I want to ask about the way in which Transport Scotland conducts the tender process. My understanding is that, once the process gets going, Transport Scotland ceases contact with the tendering companies. In the course of the timescale of the Tomatin to Moy tender process, I discovered that some supply companies in the quarrying sector had not been approached for estimates. I found information that indicated to me that it was unlikely that a particular company was going to submit a bid, because it had not bothered to get estimates from the company from which it normally gets estimates.

As I understand it—tell me if this is correct—Transport Scotland does not engage with the various contractors that are on the approved list to bid and therefore perhaps it was not really aware, until far later than it might have been had it pursued a more collaborative approach, that it might end up with only one bidder.

The companies in the framework contract would have guaranteed work, really, for that period of 10 years, so they would be able to recruit some retained staff more easily; have a long-term relationship with suppliers; perhaps get more keen prices for quarrying and other material; and have a guaranteed order book. That would instil confidence and retain employment in Scotland at a time when, as I understand it, many other opportunities exist in the UK for civil engineers to do work—down south, for example.

If I may, convener, I will move on to the second area of questioning, which is on Mr Barn’s view about how this can best be sorted.

In the statement that you provided to the committee, Mr Barn, which is extremely helpful and succinct, you set out the ways in which you, as the voice of industry, believe that procurement can be changed in order to achieve the objective that the petitioner has set out—namely, the as-swift-as-possible completion of the A9 project. I believe that, yesterday, the First Minister said that the Government’s commitment to that is “cast-iron”. That is welcome, but how do we get it done? The petitioner has already said that, at the current rate of progress, we will not see the job done until 2050, and I think that I will be pushing up the daisies by then.

The issue before us is, how can we make the necessary changes in order to get the job done as swiftly as possible? I think that there are two or three options. I wonder whether it might be helpful, convener, if Mr Barn can set those out for us in his own words.

All the benefits would accrue.

I appreciate your time, convener; I would like to ask one further question.

Which party was that?

The witnesses will have read the statement by Mr Barn and will have heard the evidence that he gave to the committee this morning. What he is saying is very clear. He praises the professionalism of Mr Shackman and his colleagues, and I endorse that, but the praise ends there. In his statement, he goes on to say that, from a civil engineering contractor’s point of view, Transport Scotland is the worst client in Britain.

That is not a personal comment; that is based on his assessment, which you have heard, that, as far as road building in Scotland is concerned, your form of contract, which passes all risk to the contractor, who has minimal margins of profit at 2 per cent, has resulted in the completely unacceptable outcome of there being only one bidder in two contracts—the Haudagain roundabout and the Tomatin to Moy section—despite the fact that the whole purpose of a tender process is to attract competitive bids. That has failed.

I am not trying to catch you out, but do you accept that the current procedure is just not fit for purpose and that, therefore, we now need to move on from that, without overly recriminating about the past, because we cannot do anything about that? Perhaps the committee can help in working out together how to solve the problem of getting a form of contract—a form of procurement—that, provided that the Scottish Government is willing to put up the money, which is not your responsibility but its responsibility, can deliver the swift completion of the project of dualling the A9, for all the reasons that the petitioner so eloquently and passionately set out in her opening statement.

I suppose that it is relatively early in the life of the petition. Given the point that you have made, convener, it seems that, on the ground of equity, in some cases, looking at other evidence, such as continuous assessment and the progress that a pupil has made over the course of the period to which the examinations relate, would be helpful. We are all conscious that, for every pupil, the results of their examinations for qualifications can determine their future. There is a lot at stake, and it is a huge moment for those children and their families.

I noticed that the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills stated:

“Alternative evidence will not be needed for the Appeals service this year.”

That is a statement and an assertion. I wonder whether we might invite her to flesh that out and state with a bit more detail why that view should now be the case whereas previously it was not. Are there not circumstances, particularly where there are elements of difficulty, problems or trouble in the life of a child, such as an interruption to their education through ill health or other issues of that ilk, that may well merit the consideration of alternative evidence?

It may be that the system provides for that separately—I do not know; I am not an expert on it at all. However, I am sure that, over the years, we have all had cases in which the outcome of an examination has been very much out of line with the prediction and that, in turn, has led to lots of soul searching and problems in individual cases.

Given the importance of the issue to children in general, I would not want to close the petition now. I hope that I am putting this clearly, but I would rather seek from the cabinet secretary a much greater explication of why it is that alternative evidence would not appear to be relevant this year when, in principle, prima facie, there are surely many circumstances in which the consideration of alternative evidence is not only appropriate but essential.