Chamber and committees

I will answer the question quite carefully and seriously, because people will have heard me during my time as First Minister readily apologise for things that I think merit an apology. I also think it is important not to reduce the value of an apology by saying these things simply to get out of a tight spot. I am sorry that we will not have dualled the A9 by 2025. I regret that, and I think that people in the Highlands have every right to feel the way that they do about it, not just because the target was set and not met, but because the nature of the project and the reasons for making the commitment to dualling the A9 were so serious and involved safety. The loss of life on the A9 is a matter of deep regret for everybody. I think that those feelings are justified.

I want to be clear, though, that I do not accept that we failed to meet that target because we just did not bother and we were not trying to meet it. The 2025 target was set for the right reasons and we were committed to it. I was Deputy First Minister at the time that the target was set by Government, so I am not trying to escape responsibility. Then, I had no direct involvement in the A9. However, when I look at it now, I would ask myself whether we were as candid as we should have been with ourselves, as well as with the public, about just how challenging it would always have been to meet the target, even with the fairest of winds.

My second point, which I have made already, is that a number of things happened subsequently that were not foreseen or even, in some cases, foreseeable, which meant that it was even more difficult to meet the target. I will be careful in what I say here: I am not sitting here saying that I am sorry that we messed up because we just did not bother trying to do this. I am sorry that a whole range of circumstances, many of which were beyond our control, meant that we were not able to deliver on that target.

I absolutely understand the feelings of people in the Highlands about that. I am no longer in government, but that is why I think it is now so important that the project is completed according to the revised timescales that have been set.

I will be very careful what I say there.

Again, I will be slightly light-hearted here—I sometimes hear descriptions of how Mr Salmond’s Cabinet operated, and I wonder whether I was part of the same one.

I think that that would be an unfair characterisation of his position. I do not recall a particular occasion when he came to me and said, “First Minister, we’ve got a big problem with the A9.” However, we were always looking at progress and at the issues that we were grappling with.

It is important that we are not overly binary about this. Of course, we had, by 2017-18, realised that there were significant hurdles to completion on target, but it was only by late 2022 or early 2023 that it was clear that there was no viable route to 2025. That was a funding issue.

Again, a lot of the necessary work to get sections of the project into construction was being and had been done, and things were progressing and moving along. It was not some binary matter of our finding ourselves one day with none of the work done and our not having enough years left to do it; it was an on-going process in which we were determined to try to find a route to 2025. It was a diminishing prospect as we got closer—obviously, that stands to reason—and we reached a point at which it became clear that there was no such viable route.

I might turn that question back and suggest that a criticism that could be made, perhaps, is that we were so determined to try to find a route that we did not tell ourselves quickly enough that it was not there. If that is a valid criticism, it arises not from a lack of priority or determination but perhaps from the opposite—that is, our desperately wanting to get to a position where we could deliver the target.

At the risk of being accused of trying to curry favour with the convener, I say that that suggestion is eminently more sensible than the one that you just asked me about. The A9 was always going to be a multisession project. You know the differences—the Queensferry crossing process was different because of the legislative requirements that were in place around it versus those in place around the A9. That is why there was a parliamentary committee in one process and not in the other.

The suggestion should be considered. I keep saying, “We should consider”—obviously, I am not in government any more, but it is for Parliament, too, to consider that built-in parliamentary oversight process, with MSPs who in effect become specialists. If a project covers multiple parliamentary sessions, that can be a way of carrying forward the institutional memory, as you put it. That should be given serious consideration.

I do not recall our having a discussion at the time about whether we should be airing more of it publicly, not because we were trying to hide it but because the work was still being done. The work was not at a point of conclusion, and therefore we would not have been at the point of making a ministerial statement about the end result.

As First Minister, you have an overview of every aspect of Government policy, and from time to time, you will be much more closely involved in certain aspects. As we got into 2020, I was consumed by something else rather large, but I would have been aware of the work that was under way, and certainly aware of the issues, because they were not peculiar to transport projects. We were aware of and concerned about the reclassification of NPD, because it had a potential knock-on effect on our capital programme.

I was obviously very aware—and this is pertinent to the A9—that we had no clear and obvious funding route for a period because of the NPD issue and because of the, frankly, very significant constraints on our capital budget. Those were issues that we were grappling with and trying to resolve. Inevitably, that takes you into a period in which a lot of the work seems to be internal to Government as we try to find the solutions. What it does not, in my view, equate to is a lack of focus and drive; it is just that we had a problem that we were desperately trying to find the solutions to, but the solutions were not easy to find.

I do not want to repeat everything that I have already said, but we ran into a period when we did not have obvious funding procurement routes, and much of the work that was being done was to resolve that.

On a more open point, given the considerable slippage in the 2025 timescale—which is what the committee is considering, in part, right now—it is important for the Government to look back, at an appropriate point, for the purpose of learning lessons for future projects, of whatever scale. Notwithstanding everything that I have said about the very real reasons that we were confronted with, which led to the delays that we are talking about, it is important to look back and ask ourselves, or for the Government to ask itself, whether there were points at which different decisions could have accelerated other sections of the route going into procurement more quickly. My saying that is not me sitting here saying that the answer to that is yes, but it would be reasonable to do an exercise—it would perhaps be unreasonable not to do it—that openly asked those questions so that we can learn appropriate lessons.

Having very recently reread all of that paperwork, I think that that is a fair point to draw out, but I do not necessarily agree that underneath that was a sign of something going wrong. I think that that is a reflection of what was under consideration at that point.

I think this point has been made to the committee, but it is worth repeating. Under the Scottish public finance manual, in projects of this nature, consideration of private finance options is required. Therefore, such consideration was necessary. In 2014, the NPD model became unavailable to us, in effect, because of its reclassification as public rather than private finance. That was followed by a period of consideration of a different potential private finance route, should the Government have decided to take such a route. There was no obvious alternative for a period. It has taken until very recently to settle on the mutual investment model that the current cabinet secretary has announced and spoken about. Therefore, I think that that simply reflects the very technical nature of the work that was being undertaken in the period from 2018 onwards.

Having reread that paperwork, there is another observation that I would make. Again, it is not a conclusion but a question that I think it is perfectly reasonable for the committee to at least ask. At that point—from 2018 and certainly for the couple of years after that—should we have been a bit more open about the work that was going on? The search for a viable private finance model was under way, but we had not abandoned the prospect of a design and build, capital-funded option as well. That was the option that was still theoretically possible—I use that phrase deliberately—in a 2025 timescale; the private one would not have been. We were still grappling with many of those issues at that point, in good faith, and the work was being done internally. The question—which I think is a reasonable one—is, should some of that have been aired a bit more publicly?

Similar to what? I am not sure what you mean.

Yes.