Meeting of the Parliament 13 November 2024
I, too, congratulate Douglas Lumsden on securing the debate and on his excellent opening speech, in which he looked at both trunk roads and smaller rural roads. I will do the same.
First, I will look at my home area of Moray. Moray Council is responsible for approximately 1,000 miles of roads throughout the county. The budget for that is always under pressure—as council budgets are, after years of cuts from the SNP Scottish Government. That means that, when issues are raised, sometimes we do not have the funding to make changes immediately to improve the safety on some of those roads. Ahead of the budget later this year, we have to consider the allocation of funding to councils to make improvements to roads with potholes, as we heard earlier, and to improve safety. A number of serious accidents occurred on the A941 between Lossie and Elgin this year alone, with fatalities—tragically, young lives were lost on that road earlier this year.
Another issue that has not been spoken about much tonight, but which affects all our communities, is speeding on many of those roads. Every time I go to my surgery in Roseisle, I raise issues with the police, the council and others, as I have constituents who end up with cars literally in their garden because of the speed at which traffic goes through the town. There has been an increase in the number of speeding vehicles going through Thomshill, too, which is very close to where I stay. We need action from the local authority and the police to try to deal with the problem.
I want to focus on the A96. I raised the issue with the Cabinet Secretary for Transport recently, as it continues to be at the top of the agenda politically, with businesses and individual constituents in Moray, the Highlands and the north-east.
On Monday, the Inverness Courier launched a petition, which I signed—and I urge constituents to do the same—that asks the Scottish Government to set out
“a clear timeline for the dualling of the A96 between Inverness and Nairn and the construction of a bypass for Nairn”
by the end of this year. I hope that, in summing up, the minister will outline how she plans to respond to that petition, which has already gathered hundreds of supporters, and which I expect to gather more. The petition asks for a “clear timeline” by the end of this year, so that we can know for sure when that part of the A96 will be dualled and the bypass for Nairn constructed. That is crucial.
I know that Fergus Ewing is not here, but he states in his support—I hope that he does not mind me saying this on his behalf—that it is absolutely vital that the petition is understood and accepted by the Scottish Government, so that it does not try to kick the project into the long grass
“for another year and a half until the next Holyrood election.”
Fergus Ewing is absolutely right on that point, and I would be grateful to hear the cabinet secretary’s response to the Inverness Courier petition.
I want to look at the rest of the A96, because, also on Monday, another tragedy happened on the A96. A 27-year-old woman lost her life in a collision with a lorry between Brodie and Forres, and my sympathies go to her, her family and her friends. It is yet another fatality on that road. When speaking about the A96, the cabinet secretary—I have heard the First Minister do it as well—always speaks about the road from Inverness to Nairn. That is important, but the A96 goes far further: it goes through Moray—we have never had that bypass for Elgin or Keith—and then through Aberdeenshire, all the way to Aberdeen.
We need a commitment from the Scottish Government to finally do what it promised and what it asked people to vote for, which is to fully dual the A96 in its entirety from Aberdeen to Inverness. I hope that fatalities on that road, such as the one that happened on Monday, become a thing of the past, because too many lives have been lost already.
18:38