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Meeting of the Parliament 06 November 2013

06 Nov 2013 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Glasgow Airport Rail Link

Johnstone, Alex Con North East Scotland Watch on SPTV

I would be very interested to have that information. As I have said, I would like to see all the facts laid out.

In looking at those facts, however, we should take one or two things into account. First, I would be a little reticent in accepting the SNP amendment’s description of the GARL project as “ill-conceived”. When it came forward, the scheme itself seemed very reasonable. Indeed, it seemed so reasonable that I think every party in the Parliament supported it. Who would not? It was a simple means of providing a valuable service. However, as the minister has pointed out, the estimated costs of work on the campus of the airport rose from £7.8 million to £16 million and then to £70 million. That should have set alarm bells ringing all over the place, especially with the Government. When the estimated costs of the whole project doubled and then doubled again, alarm bells should certainly have been ringing. When grave concerns emerged about not only the likely outcome but the reasons for the increase in prices, I believe that the Government did the right thing and called a halt to the project.

That said, that does not solve the problem that we still have: there is still no rail link to Glasgow airport. That is why I chose to lodge what many might describe as a naive little amendment, and one that I do not expect to survive to be voted on. We simply encourage the Scottish Government

“to explore options for the future provision of a low-cost rail link that will connect Glasgow Airport to the national rail network.”

I have already heard some encouragement from the Government. In spite of the fact that there is continuing reluctance by the transport minister to become involved in a Government-sponsored project, he has spoken about the possibility of achieving that through private sector investment. As a Conservative, I believe that private sector investment has a great deal to be said for it. First, it will control the project costs, and, secondly, it will deliver a link that does what it is supposed to do and nothing else. There will be no bells or whistles—the expensive options that we see in some of the other transport projects around.

We should not take from the debate the negative—the arguing that will go on between the SNP Government and the Labour Party Opposition and the petty political point scoring that is inevitable in such situations. Perhaps we may have turned around and be facing in a different direction at the end of the debate. We may have decided that, instead of arguing about the past, we can look forward to the future, when we might eventually be able to catch a train to Glasgow airport.

I move amendment S4M-08173.1, to leave out from “deplores” to end and insert:

“encourages the Scottish Government to explore options for the future provision of a low-cost rail link that will connect Glasgow Airport to the national rail network.”

15:01

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Meeting of the Parliament 06 November 2013

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