The SPT chair, Alistair Watson, warned in a letter to Tavish Scott, the Minister for Transport, that SPT was starting to incur significant additional costs as a result of the delays that the Scottish Executive was imposing.In January 2006, the minister envisaged a 2009-10 completion date. In March this year, in a statement to the Parliament, he claimed that the link was on target, at a cost of £170 million to £210 million, and cited the end of 2010 as the completion date.