Chamber and committees

Perhaps it is not a triumph, but it is certainly unusual. However, it is, of course, just a referral.

I agree with Mr Torrance for the reason that my understanding is that the lead committee is still considering the issue as live and is unlikely to cease doing so. It has the bit between its teeth, it has been considering the matter in detail, and it would be wrong for us to start to take on any serious consideration of a matter to which a lead committee has devoted a huge amount of time and effort. I do not know whether the issue is still live, but there is certainly still public debate about it.

Most recently, the UK Government suggested 2026 and not 2025. I believe that the minister has resisted that.

All those matters will almost certainly be raised by members of the lead committee, so it would be otiose for us to stick our neb in. The petitioner is quite entitled to go to the lead committee and make representations to his MSP to that effect. They would be the more appropriate vehicle to raise these issues with.

I worked with Mr Golden and other members on the matter, and I would be interested to hear what he thinks. However, that is my honest view, despite the fact that I would very much like to question the minister. Perhaps that is for another time and another day.

I back up what Mr Torrance has said. I perhaps owe the petitioner an apology because, in my remarks when we last considered the petition, I specifically suggested that we look at the rural tourism infrastructure fund. The reason why I suggested that was that I knew, from experience as a minister, that that was a practical way of providing funding for something. However, in the petitioner’s response, he made the fair point that that was a red herring or a cul-de-sac—whatever you want to call it—and that he was concerned about the basic human right of having a public convenience. I wish to state on the record that I did not mean, in any way, to show disrespect to the petitioner.

However, for the reasons that Mr Torrance has described, it is plain that, although we admire and respect the principle that the petitioner is pursuing, we cannot take the petition any further. I want to make that clear to the petitioner, because I fear that he did not understand what I was trying to do, which was to be helpful in a pragmatic way.

What we might want to do, because seven months is not a long time and it might well be that the meat of the negotiation is being conducted right now—my point is that we might miss a chance—

I very much support what Mr Torrance has recommended, but perhaps I can supplement it by asking that, when we do write that letter, we draw specific attention to the useful material that the clerks have provided in paragraph 9 of their paper. The paper mentions the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse in England and Wales, which published its final report in October 2022. The paper then refers to recommendations 2, 9, 13 and 19 of that inquiry report, all of which appear to have relevance. In his reply, Mr Swinney says that the on-going inquiry might well consider the issues that are of relevance here, but he does not really go into any specifics; however, at least four of those specifics have been drawn out by the clerks, and there might be others, too.

The point that I am making is that it would be useful to give the Deputy First Minister a steer on this and suggest that, as well as the general points that Mr Torrance has made, it would be useful to hear whether the existing inquiry will specifically consider all the pertinent and relevant recommendations made by the English inquiry. If we are to accept the Government approach, we can do so only on the basis that it will cover all the relevant issues, albeit in a different way—and even, perhaps, unsatisfactorily, given that we have not heard evidence et cetera.

I just wanted to make that specific point, convener.

I have just been looking through the previous evidence and the points that Dr Allan has made about the desirability of having island residents on public bodies. I also looked at the specific recommendations of the three petitioners, who use HIAL as an example of a body where a place on the panel for selecting the chair could be reserved in this respect. The same could be done for every chair of every board such as CMAL and CalMac.

They also talk about assigning three seats on the HIAL board to people who live in island communities, one of which would be retained for a co-opted member, with at least one council—the Western Isles Council, Orkney Islands Council or Shetland Islands Council—allocated a place on the board.

The point that I am making is that the petitioners have made concrete and specific suggestions and they have not been responded to. I hope that I am not being unfair to the former minister, but my reading is that he replied with a lot of good will without responding to the petitioners’ specific suggestions.

In as much as we are the voice of the petitioner, irrespective of party issues, it seems to me that we have not got an answer from the former minister and we need to get an answer from the current minister as to whether those specific suggestions can be pursued. There are arguments for and against each suggestion but not to have had an answer of any sort means that your premature summation was absolutely correct, convener.

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.