Meeting of the Parliament 13 November 2024
I congratulate my colleague Douglas Lumsden on bringing this debate on the importance of rural roads infrastructure to the chamber.
It feels a bit like déjà vu, because I seem to have spoken on the topic ever since I came into the Parliament, nearly nine years ago. The reality is that we have a crisis in our rural communities. We have migration from rural communities to urban ones, which is an issue that the Scottish Government does not really want to talk about. The Scottish Government’s continual abandonment of rural constituents no longer leaves areas such as the south-west simply as a forgotten part of Scotland; given the many times that the issue has been raised by my colleagues and I in the chamber, the south-west and other rural communities are now the ignored part of Scotland.
As my colleagues and I have said many times, over the past decade, the amount of money that has been spent on south-west rural infrastructure has been a mere 0.4 per cent of the total transport budget. If we want businesses to come into rural areas, they need to be able to get their goods in and out.
As Colin Smyth mentioned, one of the busiest ports in Britain, at Cairnryan, is serviced by the A77 and the A75, which have been promised an upgrade for many years. First, when he opened the port at Cairnryan, Alex Salmond said that one of the things that he would do urgently was upgrade those roads. In 2011, Alex Neil said that it was a disgrace that the previous Labour Government had not upgraded the roads. Subsequent transport ministers, including Humza Yousaf, Jenny Gilruth and Michael Matheson, came down to the south-west and listened. In fact, I remember that, when Michael Matheson came down, he was late to the meeting because there had been an accident on the A77 and there was a delay—I think that Mr Carson will remember that, too.
Like my colleague Liam Kerr, I have taken the opportunity to get into one of those 44-tonne lorries and drive down the A77—rather, I have been driven down it; it would have been scary had I been driving—and it was quite frightening. It is hard enough to go down those roads in a car. When we have £1.2 billion-worth of goods going through the port of Cairnryan in those 44-tonne vehicles, that is a significant amount of traffic.
That situation is replicated across all of Scotland’s rural communities. Without new businesses, services, schools, education and community facilities, migration out of our rural communities is hurried along. Why would the next generation stay in rural communities when there are fewer and fewer jobs available and fewer and fewer services and activities to participate in?
Supporting our rural communities means enabling them to attract people to jobs in their area. To get goods in and out, we need good-quality roads—and, to be fair, an upgrade to our rail services. We are waiting for STPR2, which has been kicking around for seven years or so now. Even though it gets diluted every time that it comes out, we still do not have a plan to deliver on STPR2. We have a rail link down to Stranraer, which, if there was a spur-off into Cairnryan, could take some goods off the roads. That would have a positive impact on the A77, but, although that is in STPR2, nothing has been said about it.
The Scottish Government does not seem to understand rural issues. If it did, it would not keep making and breaking transport infrastructure promises. It is time to recognise the issues that our rural communities face and the solutions that are required. Once again, I thank Douglas Lumsden for giving me the opportunity to speak about the issue in the chamber.
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