Hansard

I endorse what Rhoda Grant said. If she does not mind my saying so, if rock falls on the A890 have been a problem since she was at school, the issue did not arise yesterday. I can put it no more candidly than that. To be serious, this is a Highland problem, and it has been highlighted very well. The community councils have replied. Plockton community council has pointed out that, when the road is closed, there is a 130-mile diversion. Who in the central belt would put up with that? The community council also refers to the closures because of rock landslides, which Rhoda Grant has referred to today, and the fact that the road surface is “an embarrassment” with “potholes that look like World War 1 shell craters”. I do like unvarnished prose, uncluttered by euphemism and Government jargon. However, the serious point is that, although Transport Scotland has said that the road does not meet the criteria, it has not said why it does not. It has listed the criteria, and, as Rhoda Grant said, some of the criteria appear absolutely to apply. The road links remote communities and key tourist areas—those two criteria are clearly met. Deploying said Government-style prose, Transport Scotland says: “Although there is linkage in relation to the A890 with some of these criteria, it is our assessment that the A890 does not sufficiently meet the criteria to be incorporated into the strategic motorway and trunk road network”. However, it does not say why. I think that our job is to tease out why it does not sufficiently meet those criteria. As I said before, Highland Council covers an area larger than Belgium and 20 per cent larger than Wales and has a far larger road network than any other local authority—even Scottish Borders Council, which has a substantial one. The burden of maintenance of those local roads is massive. If the A890 is designated as a national trunk road, which I believe it should be, that would at least diminish the impossible burden that Highland Council’s roads department bears in relation to dealing with the pothole situation across the network. I strongly endorse what Rhoda Grant has argued for today, and I think that we need to pursue this issue further. It might be difficult to do so but, at the end of the day, Transport Scotland has got to show that it understands and is sympathetic to the interests of the Highlands. At the moment, the strong feeling in the Highlands is that that is not the case on the part of that Glasgow-based quango.