Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee 19 February 2025
I am pleased that the Inverness Courier, in its wisdom, has chosen to lodge the petition. I thank it for doing so and for championing the issue, which is of massive concern to everyone in Nairn as well as the wider north-east. In one way, it is quite a modest ask. It is not demanding that the whole project be completed by a certain time. It is simply asking for the Government to publish a clear timeline for the dualling of the A96 between Inverness and Nairn, and for the construction of a bypass for Nairn.
You have outlined the sad history of the work to dual the A96 by 2030. Thus far, £90 million has been spent on preparatory work for the dualling of the A96, but not one centimetre of tarmac has been laid. Many people, including me, find that almost incomprehensible.
In the Government response in defence of the lack of a timeline, a number of points are made, which I will cover briefly, in the hope that the cabinet secretary might appear before us to give evidence on that and other transport measures, as we might have mooted before. I hope that that will give her some indication of the issues with which she will be concerned and which will certainly be put to her.
The first point is on the made orders, which are an important milestone in the statutory process to determine which properties require to be compulsorily purchased and which ancillary roads need to be adjusted to fit in with the new road. Those are the two main made orders, although there are subsidiary ones. The response says that they were made on 12 March 2024, which is quite true.
There is something that the response does not say, however. I have a document here—I believe that we are not allowed to brandish documents, otherwise I would do so right now—from Transport Scotland. It is a 2016 document, which states that the made orders were expected to be published later that year. Well, that was 2016; we then got to 2024. What happened?
It used to be that draft made orders were displayed on the Transport Scotland website. They were displayed in draft, and they were ready for ages in draft. The year in the provisional date on this draft was 2-0-1-blank. In other words, it was planned that this work would be done nearly a decade ago. It was also promised in the 2011 manifesto and slightly before that by Alex Salmond.
The first point that I want to make is that no explanation has ever been given as to why there was a delay of eight years, which is the longest delay ever in respect of reaching this important stage of the proceedings. That is point 1.
The Cabinet Secretary for Transport has a personal enthusiasm for taking the issue on, to be fair to her. She is the fourth transport minister that we have had in four years, which is not terrific. Setting that aside, the submission says that the reason for the delay is that
“It is fundamental that ... authorities allow sufficient time to properly consider the range of procurement routes available”.
How much more time do they need? I do not want to be too political, but the Government has had four years of this parliamentary session, and I have raised the issue, as members will appreciate, fairly frequently during those four years. That is point 2.
There are two final points that I want to make. I do not want to go on forever, convener—I have a habit of doing that.