Chamber and committees

The Tories built them well, to be fair.

Sorry, I said that those were my last questions, but the answer has stimulated a teensy-weensy one more. What proportion of projects are delivered on time and on budget?

Parties err on the side of optimism because voters do not want to hear that things arenae really going to get much better for the next five years, which is effectively what you are saying. There is a real issue with trust and delivery and with whether everyone can say what they need to say.

One thing that shocked me is something that we have discussed before to some extent and that is stark in the figures that you have set out. When writing about social security and adult disability payment in paragraph 3.19 you say:

“We estimate the number of people receiving … ADP has increased from 320,000 in 2021-22 to 475,000 in 2024-25. The percentage of working age adults in Scotland reporting a disability rose from 19 per cent in 2020-21 to 28 per cent in 2023-24.”

That figure is still rising and you go on to say that you anticipate

“that the total number of people receiving disability payments in Scotland will exceed one million by 2030-31.”

I know that adult disability payment is not means tested, which means that people who are working can also be on that payment. People often get that payment for life, although it can be reviewed every two to five years. Why are so many people on that payment? Are so many people in society really suffering from a disability?

We are still talking about big numbers in potential changes to the Scottish budget, whether they are up or down. It is very difficult to plan long term with that lack of stability.

We talk about how productivity is looking fairly bleak, but are there any models in a devolved context overseas that we could look to, to see what others are doing for productivity? I am not talking about Singapore, which is a country with no resources, which is independent and which has increased its per capita income some sixtyfold over the past 60 years, whereas Scotland has managed a threefold increase in the same period—which sounds ludicrous until we look at the figures. There are some countries that have done remarkably well from a poor base, but there are others, in Europe, that are in the same situation as us, as you have said. Germany is having real difficulties economically, for example. Where can we look to find somewhere that is managing its economy effectively at a substate level?

The next item on our agenda is an evidence session on the Scottish Government’s “Infrastructure Delivery Pipeline” for 2026 to 2030, which was published last month. We are joined by Ian Hughes, the engagement director for Scotland from the Construction Industry Training Board, and Peter Reekie, the chief executive of the Scottish Futures Trust. I welcome you both to the meeting; we are grateful to you for participating. We invited some other bodies, which declined to participate, so your presence is particularly welcome. We will move straight to questions.

The first thing that I will ask is taken from the magnificent 143-page tome, known as “Long-term infrastructure Scotland: supporting a sustainable and thriving future”, which the SFT published in January of this year. You touch on the 30-year infrastructure needs assessment and the Infrastructure Commission for Scotland and you also talk about how the

“Needs Assessment aligns with Scotland’s revised infrastructure investment framework to inform Scottish Government’s draft 10-year Infrastructure Strategy (2026/27–2036/37).”

To kick off, can you touch on where we are with this? It seems that an awful lot of work has gone on and it seems to be quite a crowded space. Where are we in terms of the delivery of Scottish infrastructure?

What is the balance between the work that SMEs do in the private sector and the work that they do in the public sector?

I think that, from a layperson’s perspective, what people see when it comes to infrastructure projects is an awful lot going into planning and a lot less going into delivery than perhaps should be the case. I do not think that you will be desperately keen to talk about specific projects—and that is not necessarily what we want to do—but I remember the now Lord Cameron, when he was an MSP, asking about the consultancy fees with regard to the Rest and Be Thankful project, and the amount being something like £18 million. A lot of people, like me, were shocked by that and thought, “Was some guy getting paid £1,000 a day or something?”

That might sound simplistic, but it seems like a huge amount of money is going into planning, and projects are not being delivered as fast as they should be. You touched, rightly, on the issue of maintenance and delivery of projects, but in the previous session—which I know that you sat through—we talked about the fact that there always seem to be cost overruns and delays in delivering infrastructure in Scotland. Given that Scotland is going to have at least a 5 per cent real-terms reduction in capital available over the next five years, we will need more, not less, bang for our buck.

Moreover—and I am probably asking too many questions at the same time, but this is a bee in my bonnet—why is procurement so much more expensive in Scotland and the United Kingdom than it is in comparable European countries? I see you smiling, Peter, but you know that it is true.

That is only right if you accept that procurement costs are reasonable. I do not think they are reasonable, because—

I will come back to one or two of those things, but first it is important that Ian Hughes has an opportunity to say a few things. Ian, we can talk about building this or that, but without the workforce we cannot really build anything. The role of the Construction Industry Training Board and, indeed, the whole sector in producing a skilled workforce is absolutely critical. In your submission, you said:

“In 2024/25 over 6,500 people started a Construction related Modern Apprenticeship, more than a quarter of all new starts. Over 13,000 apprentices were in training, and the industry achieved a 78% completion rate.”

That is all very positive news. Scotland is experiencing a record-low birth rate, which will feed through to the workforce soon. Are you confident that we will be able to provide the number of people to the construction sector—either young people or folk who are a bit older who are switching careers—to enable it to have a workforce with the range of skills that are required in the years ahead?

If it is erratic.