Meeting of the Parliament 13 November 2024
I thank my colleague Douglas Lumsden for bringing this important debate to the chamber. I will take a bit of a risk. I have a four-minute speech prepared, but I will go completely off piste, because when it comes to knowing a subject inside out in the Parliament, I know that of the A75 like the back of my hand.
I declare an interest in that I have been living next to that road for nearly every day of my 57 years of life—I know that most members will be surprised that I am as old as that. I declare an interest, because three of my family members have been killed on the A75 over the years. Indeed, my great auntie was the first person to be killed by a motor car in Scotland. She was killed literally a yard from my front door, when she was only six, by a car driven by the local doctor; that was more than 100 years ago.
The A75 is an everyday part of life, not just for me, as the member for Galloway and West Dumfries, but for nearly every single person who lives and works in the south of Scotland or Dumfries and Galloway. There is no way of avoiding it, for getting to work or school, as it is the main artery that runs through the region.
However, the A75 is important not just for the people who live in Dumfries and Galloway. The A77 and A75 carry a whopping £67 million-worth of goods every single day—close to £9 billion annually—with 400,000 freight vehicles travelling along the 95-mile route between Gretna and the ports at Cairnryan.
We heard from Brian Whittle about the repeated commitments from the SNP Government, with Alex Salmond talking about the three Rs of rail, roads and regeneration—none of those has been delivered in Dumfries and Galloway. We have seen no rail or road improvements in that time. More recently, to back up Aileen McLeod’s failed election campaign in 2016, the then Deputy First Minister—now the First Minister—pledged to improve journey times on the A75. That is one of many pledges that have been put to one side.
Emma Harper, Colin Smyth, Brian Whittle and I repeatedly stand here and ask for improvements. For years, we were promised that news on upgrades would be delivered through the strategic transport projects review 2, but that was much delayed. Although the A75 is mentioned, it is the only project in the STPR2 that does not have a timeline attached to it. It still does not have a timeline or a budget attached to it. Perhaps the cabinet secretary can tell us whether a timetable to start work on the A75 has been established.
Under the previous UK Conservative Government, the Sir Peter Hendy review highlighted the importance of the A75. Eventually, the SNP Government put its constitutional grievance to one side and sat around the table, because it appreciated the importance of the route. Sadly, the £8 million that was committed by the Tory Government has been reduced to £5 million. However, that should be enough money to do the feasibility study, and it puts a bit of pressure on the Scottish Government, which is responsible for investing the money that has been promised decade after decade for improvements on the road.
The people of Crocketford and Springholm are tired of the talk and hearing the commitments while they are still seeing HGVs pass within feet of their door. Recently, we have had, I think, nine complete road closures due to accidents, and there have also been complete road closures due to upgrades, because the carriageway is not wide enough to safely carry out maintenance. That is quite incredible, given that closures result, in many cases, in a 96-mile diversion on roads that are certainly not fit for those HGVs.
Safety is of paramount importance, and I would like to have seen a bit of movement on the use of average-speed cameras, rather than relying on speed vans that sit in predictable places on the road and that do not come out at night. As soon as the police activity has disappeared for the day, speeding continues right through the night.
I am delighted that the First Minister has accepted my invitation to come to the south-west to witness at first hand the problems, particularly in Crocketford and Springholm, and to meet concerned parties. Perhaps, if the investment had taken place earlier, we might not be inheriting the major safety and reliability issues that we have on the road today, which are putting strains on rural life.
18:43