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Transport and the Environment Committee, 22 Nov 2000

22 Nov 2000 · S1 · Transport and the Environment Committee

Item of business

Transport (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Tosh, Murray Con South of Scotland Watch on SPTV

The case that has been made is that the Executive requires these powers to change its existing policy and its contract with the operators of the Skye bridge. I do not think that anyone would want the Parliament, the Executive or the body politic of Scotland not to be in a position to renegotiate contracts. However, I would have thought that the Executive would have had the ability—as exercised in the decision of a couple of years ago to renegotiate the financial arrangements and to take into account discounts and so on—to renegotiate the contract and buy it out if it so wished. I cannot understand what these proposed legislative powers would add to the process.

Nor can I understand how the introduction of a compensation clause could establish a basis for compensation at less than that which exists under the present contractual arrangements. That would be a denial of the rights of that organisation to achieve the agreed level of compensation in the event of the contract being dissolved. I am therefore not aware of the reason why that should be pursued legislatively, as I understand that legally, politically and financially it could be done if the Scottish Executive so wished.

I read in The Herald, last Wednesday, that these amendments had failed, so it might be that lodging them is more a political ploy than a legal one. I should be interested to hear the minister discuss the legal position as it stands.

I appreciate the fact that Bruce Crawford did not want to talk statistics, but he introduced one himself when he said that the tourist trade had declined by 20 per cent in Skye this year. We have to be careful when we bandy about such figures. I was in Skye this summer and the one before. This summer was not particularly good—the weather was rotten and everything was against Skye. When I was there the year before, there was not a bed left on the island. Of course, the same tolls applied in both years. Whatever we attribute the level of tourism to in Skye, it would be folly to attribute it to the level of tolls. Skye booms in the right conditions and suffers—along with the rest of the Highlands and Scotland—in the wrong conditions. If Bruce Crawford wants to make a case based on the fact that the tourist trade is down 20 per cent this year, he will have to show that there is a different level of toll this year from last, otherwise there is no logic in what he is saying.

Access to Skye has improved enormously as a result of the bridge and the secular trends of access across that bridge have been upwards. The committee has played a constructive role in the pursuit of a number of issues relating to concessions and discounts, to create a sense of greater fairness in Skye about the existence of the bridge. I am not convinced that there is any substantive reason behind the amendments that have been proposed today.

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Transport and the Environment Committee, 22 Nov 2000

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