Hansard

I thank the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee for its thorough report. The committee not only took evidence on the petition but included a reporter from the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee. It then went on to undertake an in-depth inquiry, resulting in evidence from a wide range of Government ministers, starting with Derek Mackay and finishing with Màiri McAllan. We owe the committee thanks for the robustness of its scrutiny, its determination to get to the bottom of the saga and its commitment to exposing the failings and mistakes that have left us so far behind progress.

The committee’s report arose from a petition called “Dual the A9 and improve road safety”, which was submitted by Laura Hansler and supported by the A9 dual action group. The petition, which was first brought before the committee in 2022, is clearly driven by safety concerns and expresses frustration at the delays in progress. It highlights the commitment to dual the A9 that was made in 2011 and calls for the completion of the work by 2025.

As we start 2025 and the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee secures this debate, we all recognise the petitioners’ continuing disappointment over the timescale for the completion of the project. The petitioner wanted to highlight the exponential rate of fatalities on the road, arguing that the road is now barely fit for purpose, with an unsustainable influx of traffic on the infrastructure. Between 2011 and September 2022, there were 52 fatalities, and there have been more since. We regularly hear the passion and anger from MSPs in the chamber about the lack of progress and the lives that are being lost. With every road fatality, families and lives are devastated, and the poor reputation of the A9 is reflected in those figures. A recent freedom of information request showed that there have been 313 collisions between vehicles on the A9, with almost 200 of those on the single carriageway. Such collisions often cause fatalities, injuries, delays to travel and road closures, which have an impact on communities and businesses.

There is always a debate about the behaviour of road users and the state of the road, but the Scottish Government made its decision on that debate when it committed to dualling the A9 from Perth to Inverness, and that debate should not be a distraction from its failure to deliver on a key infrastructure programme. The commitment to dual recognises the A9 as a key arterial route—referred to as Scotland’s spine—that provides a link from the Highlands to the rest of the country. It is a key route for many businesses and is of vital economic importance to Scotland.

The committee’s report meticulously details the timeline and decision-making aspects of the project. It identifies the lack of leadership at project and ministerial levels as being problematic. In comparing the A9 project with the Queensferry crossing, it argues that the A9 project would have benefited from the appointment of a project director who was solely responsible for it. The director of major projects who was involved had overseen several major infrastructure sites, which led to the committee’s being unclear about the extent to which the A9 work had been prioritised and whether other transport projects had detracted from progress there.

Furthermore, the committee raised concerns about the lack of ministerial continuity in that five different ministers had been responsible for the A9 project in a period of just over 10 years, while the responsibility for transport had frequently been moved between ministerial portfolios and levels. Although the former Transport Scotland chief executive defended ministers’ engagement, no one minister has been tasked with seeing the project through from beginning to end.

The committee also identified concerns over future funding for the project. The decision to reclassify the non-profit distribution model in 2014 left a vacuum for a new private finance model. It was delay in addressing that aspect that led to Transport Scotland telling ministers, in 2018, that the 2025 target was unachievable. Although evidence to the committee argued that that was not clear advice and that, until late 2022, it was still possible that capital funding could fund the project, the committee sounded unconvinced by that argument and concluded that delays to the decision contributed to a 2025 completion date being unachievable. The committee’s proposal for the introduction of a duty of candour is one that ministers should listen to.

The petitioner submitted her petition in 2022 in the belief that 2025 was still the completion date. It is concerning that, by then, ministers were increasingly aware that that target was not deliverable. They also raised important points about the procurement model used by Transport Scotland, which was unattractive to contractors and resulted in there being only single bidders. The whole sorry saga has had a negative impact on public confidence in Transport Scotland and in the Scottish Government’s ability to deliver major infrastructure projects.

As the committee shifts its focus to the 2035 target, although changes to procurement and funding are welcome, concerns remain over poor risk management and transparency of decision making and information sharing. There will always be factors that are outwith the control of the Government; the test is how effectively it responds to those. Although we can see improvements in communication and ministerial direction, those do not detract from the Scottish Government’s failures on the project, the broken promises to constituents from Perth to Inverness on its projected completion, and the lives that have been lost while progress has stalled.

Earlier this week, Transport Scotland published its response to the committee’s request to accelerate dualling, saying that to do so would mean risking the 2035 end date. For the communities who have waited so many years and who were promised that dualling would be completed this year, that response will be another disappointment. The cabinet secretary has said that the current timetable is “robust and practical”, but what faith can those communities have, given that there has been such slow progress to this point? Each delay puts drivers at risk and deprives communities of safe and reliable transport links. There must be a guarantee that the latest timescale will not slip further.

This is a serious issue, which the committee has robustly scrutinised, and the Scottish Government has been shown to have come up short. The delay and dither have not only damaged Scotland’s economy and hindered growth, as well as having a negative impact on communities’ wellbeing; they have led directly to loss of life and to despair and anguish for too many families.