Chamber and committees

We thank the petitioner, who will, I hope, understand why we have acted as we have, given the options that are available to us.

That concludes the public part of the meeting. Our next meeting will take place on 5 February.

The only question in my mind is the time that is left to us in this parliamentary session. I am slightly concerned that it could be another six to nine months before we consider the petition again, which would then leave us up against the dissolution of Parliament. To give the petition some chance of life, I think that we would be better making the referral to the NZET Committee now so that the committee has some headroom within the life of the parliamentary session to advance the petition’s aims and objectives. That is just one thought.

I congratulate my good friend David Torrance on securing tonight’s debate. I, too, welcome all the showpeople representatives who are in the public gallery. It is fantastic to see the weight and glitter of their sparkling chains. I love the showpeople for all sorts of reasons, not least because they run family businesses—second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh or eighth-generation family businesses in many instances. They have contributed so much to public life and the entertainment of so many over a great many years.

Who does not remember, as a child, experiencing the thrill and excitement of the fair or the carnival that they went to, wherever it was? In Glasgow, it was the Kelvin hall carnival when I was young. Whether it was the big dipper, the ghost train, the waltzer or any other rides, scooping up rubber ducks or shooting at unpopular people, it was a thrill. I remember one particular occasion on the dodgems, when my mother was wearing a wig. We crashed into her and her wig went flying off her head and landed somewhere on the concourse. Nobody was very helpful in retrieving it. In fact, every time I got near it, somebody flung it further away. It was a very sad-looking wig by the end of the occasion.

We are all full of memories, are we not? Even as adults, when we pass by a funfair or carnival, nostalgia enthuses us. As David Torrance said, it is not just the sights; it is the sounds, the smells and everything that went with the occasion that we very much enjoyed.

I absolutely agree with that. I thought that I was old, but I did not realise that Mr Sweeney had been around in 1190—it is encouraging to know that he was there.

It is a great pleasure to see Richard Lyle, our former parliamentary colleague, sitting in the public gallery. Richard, who had a voice like a fairground attendant and was known to bark “Yes” or “No” from his party’s benches, was fundamental to ensuring that the work of the Showmen’s Guild was properly represented.

Let me sound a slightly discordant note. I think that the Parliament betrayed Scottish showpeople. Richard Lyle had a member’s bill that unfortunately fell because of Covid. That bill sought to correct the huge injustice in Scotland whereby local authorities charge variable rates, as David Torrance said, from £21 up to thousands of pounds for these family businesses to operate in our communities. Those charges are not applied in England and do not exist there—they are a purely Scottish phenomenon. In this, the week when Donald Trump has returned to the White House and signed so many executive orders, I say to the cabinet secretary that he should sign an executive order to correct that injustice. If he cannot do that, he should explain why, given that Richard Lyle’s bill fell because of a lack of time as a result of Covid, the Scottish Government has not picked up the matter to correct that injustice.

I want that injustice to be corrected and, using the vernacular of the time, I want to make showmen great again. Let us make the showmen great again and let us back them—not just by welcoming them to Scotland today, but by doing something that will help generations to come to enjoy fabulous funfairs and support a community that does so much for Scotland, such as paying taxes that send our kids to schools and all those things. Given the tradition of Scottish family businesses going back generations, let us get behind those people and correct that injustice once and for all.

Of course, the previous pandemic of any significance was the Spanish flu pandemic 100 years before, so it is perfectly possible that we will all be dead and gone by the time of the next one. Notwithstanding that cheery thought, institutional memory is a fickle thing, and it is perfectly possible that there will be no first-hand memory to draw on. Therefore, is the Deputy First Minister certain that the processes and procedures that are being put in place will survive the test of time?

One of the frustrations of opening a debate on behalf of the committee is that I cannot freewheel in my usual style; I have to adhere to a text, which is very frustrating.

The subject of the debate will be familiar to many colleagues across the chamber. However, I was not directly involved in it prior to convening the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee’s inquiry into the A9 dualling programme, other than as a semi-regular user of the road.

As convener of the committee, I put on record again my thanks to Laura Hansler. Every petition has its origin in a member of the public who comes to us with an issue that they wish us to pursue. We do so without fear or favour, with no manifesto underpinning our work but to challenge and represent the petitioner’s concern.

Laura Hansler joins us in the public gallery, and I thank her for lodging the petition calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to fulfil its 2011 promise to dual the A9 between Perth and Inverness, which provided the catalyst for our inquiry. I commend her for her commitment to the issue over a long number of years, including through the forthright and powerful evidence that she provided directly to the committee, as well as by faithfully attending meetings to observe the evidence that we heard from past and present Scottish Government ministers and officials, about which I will say more shortly.

The petition was lodged in December 2022 and it includes a call for completion of the dualling work by 2025. As members will be aware, before we had the opportunity to even consider the petition, the then Minister for Transport, Jenny Gilruth, announced that the 2025 completion date was “simply no longer achievable”. That announcement in February 2023 and the initial evidence that we gathered from the petitioner, the Civil Engineering Contractors Association and Transport Scotland led to the committee taking the unusual step of elevating its consideration of the petition to the level of an inquiry.

Throughout the inquiry, the committee sought to explore the circumstances that led to the 2025 completion date becoming unachievable, as well as to consider on-going challenges that might impact on the successful dualling of the A9 by the Scottish Government’s new target completion date of 2035. In doing so, we gathered evidence from people with technical and industry expertise, from people and businesses that were affected by issues along that arterial route, and from those who held the highest positions in the Government.

The committee is grateful to all who have contributed to our consideration of the matter, whether in person or in writing, including the former First Ministers Humza Yousaf, Nicola Sturgeon and the late Alex Salmond, whose final appearance before the Parliament was at our committee. I thank the many political parties that sought to give evidence to the committee during its inquiry, which I must say excludes the Scottish Greens. I also thank the clerks and all parliamentary staff who supported the committee throughout the process, as well as Transport Scotland officials for the volume of evidence that was made available to the committee when we requested various documents relating to the A9 dualling programme.

I note the commitment to come forward with a statement following the consideration of matters at the end of this year. The commitment is to bring forward a statement not necessarily this year, but potentially into next year. There is a concern that, at that point, the Parliament will be maturing. Is the cabinet secretary certain that we will be able to have proper scrutiny of any decision that comes forward at that late stage?

I hope to say more about that, and I am quite sure that Fergus Ewing will not miss the opportunity to do so himself.

Like me, Fergus Ewing will have been slightly surprised when the documents that we received from Transport Scotland turned out to be about 18 inches thick. There was quite a bit of reading and digesting, even if quite a lot of the documents turned out to be redacted.

Special thanks should also be offered to Edward Mountain, who attended many of the evidence sessions and contributed to our deliberations in his role as reporter from the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee.

Although the extensive evidence that we considered did not uncover, in the parlance of the day, a smoking gun that suggested that the Government had acted in any way maliciously—it did not suggest that at all—it became clear to the committee that a lack of clarity over the availability of funding resulted in a failure to deliver the project on time. It was clear, too, that the unwillingness of the Scottish Government and Transport Scotland to be open and transparent about the challenges that were being faced has damaged public trust in the Government’s ability to deliver the dualling programme.

Our committee is no stranger to public concerns about the Government’s approach to major road projects, which we continue to examine as part of our consideration of a number of petitions. Transparency in relation to Transport Scotland’s decision-making processes is a recurring theme. Although we look forward to inviting the cabinet secretary to the committee in due course to discuss several petitions that relate to road projects that are in hibernation in different parts of Scotland, it might be worth reflecting on how past experiences, such as the lack of open, external discussion of delays and drift on the A9 dualling programme, have negatively impacted public perceptions of Transport Scotland.

As our report makes clear, the delays that have been experienced are, frankly, unacceptable for people who live and work in the north of Scotland. Although a revised date for completion of the project has been announced, the news of a delay to the expected completion of the Tomatin to Moy section leaves the committee unconvinced that the lessons of the past have been learned.

We are particularly grateful for the candid evidence that was provided to us by the Civil Engineering Contractors Association, which told us that its members regarded Transport Scotland

“as the worst client to work for in the UK.”

It is possible that that opinion might have softened as a result of a change in Transport Scotland’s approach to procurement contracts, which means that there will now be a greater balancing of risk between the Scottish Government and contractors. CECA Scotland praised Transport Scotland for taking the “large leap” of changing its procurement approach, with the number of bids received for the Tomatin to Moy section being an encouraging indication that contractors are content with the new form of contract.

It is to be hoped that contractors now have a more positive view of working with Transport Scotland, as it became increasingly clear to the committee that, due to the scale of the civil engineering work that is planned for Scotland—specifically, the north of Scotland—over the next decade, it will be not only the availability of funding that determines whether the Scottish Government can deliver on its commitment on the A9 but the availability of a workforce to carry out the construction of the remaining sections as competition among members of the industry to undertake the projects continues to rise.

To put that into context, we heard that the north of Scotland can expect to see about £20 billion-worth of investment from SSE in the next five years, and that a further £20 billion to £30 billion will be invested by Scottish Power, Network Rail and others in major projects across Scotland over the next decade. Those organisations need the road to be completed in order to fulfil their obligations to those projects, but those projects will be competing for the same workforce as we require to complete the A9.

The Scottish Government has told us that it considered market capacity when it developed the updated A9 delivery plan. There are those who would like the Government to take a more flexible and responsive approach to market capacity, with a view to accelerating the dualling programme, should the capacity exist in the construction and engineering sector to do so. That is why the committee is a little disappointed by the Government’s recent rejection of any plans to accelerate the current programme.

During her evidence to the committee, Nicola Sturgeon reflected on whether the Government was

“as candid as we should have been with ourselves, as well as with the public, about just how challenging it would always have been”—[Official Report, Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee, 29 May 2024; c 7-8.]

to meet the 2025 target. We know from our work on the inquiry that there are people who feel that the Government should have been more candid about progress, or the lack thereof, on dualling the A9. Laura Hansler commented that part of the reason for lodging her petition was to challenge the very people responsible for the “unforgivable lack of transparency” surrounding the non-delivery of the dualling programme. Perhaps the cabinet secretary could respond to those who feel that there has been a lack of transparency up to now and set out what steps are in hand to change that.

In a previous parliamentary session, I had the pleasure of serving as convener of the Forth Crossing Bill Committee, which colleagues might recall was established to examine the construction of what we now refer to as the Queensferry crossing. During the A9 inquiry, I invited reflections from others, including former First Ministers and ministers, on how the existence of a cross-party parliamentary committee that was tasked with looking at a major project provided an impetus and helped to uncover solutions to difficult issues that might otherwise have led to drift.

That was a legislative requirement for the Queensferry crossing. It is for Parliament to decide whether that is a route to look to in the future, but I think that the existence of the Forth Crossing Bill Committee undoubtedly helped to maintain a focus on a project that, after all, was eventually delivered on budget and on time. Our report suggests that taking the step of establishing such a committee would support the rebuilding of public trust and confidence that the commitment to fully dual the A9 between Perth and Inverness will be delivered.

The whole Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee has had an opportunity to consider the Government’s response, and we are slightly disappointed. We feel that the Government had an opportunity to reflect, to reset, to reboot and to restore public confidence, so that MSPs do not end up having the same debate in Parliament in 2035, having had another inquiry into why the A9 had still not been completed. I therefore encourage the cabinet secretary to seize the moment and the opportunity of the committee’s report and to do all that she can to ensure that public confidence is there and that the road is delivered.

I move,

That the Parliament notes the conclusions and recommendations of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee’s 2nd Report, 2024 (Session 6), Inquiry into the A9 Dualling Programme (SP Paper 669), including the recommendation that a dedicated committee should be established to provide oversight and maintain momentum on scrutiny of long-running, multi-session infrastructure projects, such as the A9 dualling programme.

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

I think it was Mr Macpherson—but I heard another voice that sounded female. Was Ms Grahame trying to come in as well? I will take the intervention from Mr Macpherson.