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Meeting of the Parliament 20 February 2013

20 Feb 2013 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Capital Projects

Brown, Gavin Con Lothian Watch on SPTV

It has never been denied from this side of the chamber that, over the course of the spending review, the Scottish Government budget has been reduced in real terms. However, as we all know, next year it goes up in cash terms.

The SNP is determined to discuss anything but the NPD programme; it wants to talk about anything and everything, except areas for which it is responsible.

Let us look at the facts. At the time of the 2011 spending review, the Government said that its capital spending would be between £50 million and £150 million in 2011-12, £353 million in 2012-13 and £686 million in 2013-14. What happened on the ground in 2011-12 was precisely nothing; the spending in 2012-13, we are told, will be £20 million, instead of £353 million; and the latest spend projections for the next financial year are £338 million instead of £686 million.

The Parliament and the country deserve an explanation. Initially, when it was clear that the Government had overpromised and underdelivered, its strategy was simply not to mention it in the budget or anywhere else. It said in the budget that it was accelerating the NPD pipeline; it did not admit that it was being decelerated. It said that the pipeline was so good that everyone else around the world wanted to copy what it was doing.

They also said that the figures were different because of a variance. However, when a Government says that it will spend £353 million and only delivers £20 million, that is stretching the definition of variance to quite a degree.

Since the Government has finally had to confront the issue, we have had numerous excuses for it. At First Minister’s question time, the First Minister—at least twice—said that it was the fault of the Aberdeen western peripheral route. However, when we got the Government’s official document about the forecast profile, it was clear that money was not projected to be spent on the Aberdeen western peripheral route until 2013-14. That does not explain the situation in 2011-12 or 2012-13, even by a penny.

Then it was the fault of the Edinburgh sick kids hospital, which the Government said was a big project that had been delayed for a number of reasons. However, when we got the Government’s official paper, money was not projected to be spent on that until 2014-15. That does not explain the position either.

Then we had a partially true excuse: the Government said that it was all down to the Borders rail link, because that project is worth more than £300 million and that explains the difference. However, when we got the Government’s official paperwork, we saw that there was no spend on the Borders rail link in 2011-12 and that it accounts for £39 million out of the £353 million in the current financial year. None of those excuses explains the situation at all.

We move then from the incorrect to the inept. When the Scottish Government was asked for a list of projects that had been delivered, the First Minister stood up in the chamber and reeled off a list of 20 projects that had not been delivered—in most cases they had not even been started.

We heard from the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Investment and Cities at topical question time the reason given for the delays:

“These are large, complex projects that are being procured by a wide range of procuring authorities.”

Those were always “large, complex projects”; they were always

“being procured by a wide range of procuring authorities.”

We also heard from the Deputy First Minister that they are delayed because time was taken up on

“the preparation and design stages”.—[Official Report, 5 February 2013; c 16357.]

That was always going to be the case: with any construction project in the history of the world, there is a preparation and a design stage.

We now know which broad areas were held up. We know that the areas in which there were delays and in which projects failed to happen this year—to which none of the excuses that have previously been given apply—were community health, to the tune of £84 million; colleges, to the tune of £65 million; schools, to the tune of £119 million; and roads, to the tune of £27 million.

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Meeting of the Parliament 20 February 2013

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