Chamber and committees

I have two further questions. Was it the case that Transport Scotland did, in fact, do some work that has not been made public in which some use of private finance was considered, but, by the time that the work came to fruition, the financial crisis had emerged and interest rates had risen, so that option no longer became applicable? If that was the case, can you share with us the document that shows what consideration has been given to all those matters?

I appreciate that that decision may not be for you and that it may be for the Scottish Government, because under FOI—FOI requests have been made to you on such things frequently—there is an exemption to cover ministers’ desire to have candour of internal discussions. That has been invoked in response to a FOI request about the A96 that I have seen recently, for example. Have you given advice to ministers on that? Will you share that with us? Have you considered the options that Mr Barn set out? Did you leave things too late because, by the time that you came up with the proposal, interest rates had risen, which made the finance package unaffordable? Can you share with us what work you have been doing over the past two and a half years on all of that?

It was too late.

I appreciate that it is all complex. I do not detract from what Mr Shackman says in any way, but I would like Transport Scotland to produce the documentation showing the exchange of views between it and the Scottish Government—submissions, emails and other documents—so that we can get to the bottom of it for the sake of the petitioner and all those who have lost their lives on the road over far too long.

I will incur the wrath of Mr Torrance, but I wonder whether we have done justice to the petitioners, who have said that they want specific restrictions on overnight parking. There is no doubt that it is a nuisance in the Highlands and also elsewhere. Camper vans are huge vehicles, so parking can cause some nuisance issues.

In order to ascertain whether the working group will consider any specific recommendations, perhaps we could write to the Government to ask whether the working group has looked at the issue and what its recommendations are. Could any measures be taken? For example, local byelaw provisions might enable Highland Council to tackle such things.

To be fair, the petitioners’ business is one of many that operates a caravan park, and it is a particular issue of nuisance for many residents along the North Coast 500, and perhaps in many other places, too. If you have a bloody great camper van parked somewhere that you need to go or that needs to be made available for safety vehicles, particularly on restricted narrow and single-track roads in places such as Skye, it is a serious issue, although perhaps not necessarily the one that was foremost in everybody’s minds as the frivolity and jollity proceeded unabated.

I am sure that they will wait with due patience.

Which party was that?

The witnesses will have read the statement by Mr Barn and will have heard the evidence that he gave to the committee this morning. What he is saying is very clear. He praises the professionalism of Mr Shackman and his colleagues, and I endorse that, but the praise ends there. In his statement, he goes on to say that, from a civil engineering contractor’s point of view, Transport Scotland is the worst client in Britain.

That is not a personal comment; that is based on his assessment, which you have heard, that, as far as road building in Scotland is concerned, your form of contract, which passes all risk to the contractor, who has minimal margins of profit at 2 per cent, has resulted in the completely unacceptable outcome of there being only one bidder in two contracts—the Haudagain roundabout and the Tomatin to Moy section—despite the fact that the whole purpose of a tender process is to attract competitive bids. That has failed.

I am not trying to catch you out, but do you accept that the current procedure is just not fit for purpose and that, therefore, we now need to move on from that, without overly recriminating about the past, because we cannot do anything about that? Perhaps the committee can help in working out together how to solve the problem of getting a form of contract—a form of procurement—that, provided that the Scottish Government is willing to put up the money, which is not your responsibility but its responsibility, can deliver the swift completion of the project of dualling the A9, for all the reasons that the petitioner so eloquently and passionately set out in her opening statement.

Well, they do not really have much choice, do they?

Seriously, I want to ask one further question. As the petitioner rightly said, nine sections out of 11 have not been done. Only one of those has not had a design sorted out—essentially, the Dunkeld section. Three sections have had ministerial approval, but four have gone to what is called made orders, which means that they have gone through the legal process. The legal process for two of those four sections was completed well over a year ago—coming up for two years ago, I think.

Am I right in saying that absolutely nothing—apart from an unwillingness to devote sufficient funding—prevented the Scottish Government from progressing those four sections immediately after completion of the made orders, had there been a necessary will to implement the promised dualling of the A9? The made order means that you have sorted out compulsory purchase and ancillary roads orders; that you have gone through the process of consultation; that you have your design route; and that everything has been sorted out and is ready to roll—“shovel-ready” is the phrase. Given your knowledge of the practicalities about how those sorts of things work, is that an oversimplification or is it a fair comment and correct explanation?

I have just been refused some information—or, at least, information has been refused under FOI legislation—on the grounds of internal candour. That is the information about which I am talking. It is specifically about the interchange between you and the Scottish Government on value for money and the sufficiency of Scottish Government funding. As long as that information is not published, there will be unanswered questions, frustration, anger and irritation. That just will not go away so the sooner that the Scottish Government does what it did in the Holyrood inquiry in 2003, and the more recent Salmond inquiry, and publishes the available advice notes, the better for our work and, more important, the public interest.

I understand that those are all complex matters, and I know that you have been in regular dialogue with CECA, which you meet several times a year. What I do not understand—I do not say this to be recriminatory—is that you have admitted mea culpa, that the system is broken and that it is not fit for purpose, which is patently the case and has been obvious for quite a long time. Surely, therefore, particularly over the past couple of years of this parliamentary session, the advice about precisely how the contract should be changed—to perhaps some form of contract as set out by Mr Barn—so that risk sharing is used, should have been given back in 2021, at the latest. Why have we not made more progress more quickly? Mr Barn referred to glacial progress. Is he right about that as well?