Meeting of the Parliament 21 January 2026
I will start again, Deputy Presiding Officer—thank you.
I thank all those members who will be speaking in the debate. Some might be wondering why, a few months out from a critical election, I am in the chamber talking about bridges. The truth is that each trip that we make, whether we are walking, going by car or on a bus or train, we will probably go over a bridge, often many bridges—sometimes without knowing. While many gaze at the wonder of the Forth bridges as they come into Edinburgh, few probably take a moment to recognise the many road bridges that connect us with our communities every day.
In truth, this is a debate about connectivity, how we keep communities together and how we ensure that, just because critical infrastructure is getting old and is costly to fix, the Parliament and the Government do not use that as a reason to ignore it. While the subject of bridges might not dominate the evening news, it is absolutely vital to the daily lives of people in rural—and for that matter, urban—Scotland.
On 14 December last year, residents of Moray, including me, woke up to what we thought was a joke: artificial intelligence photos of a deeply popular 19th-century iron bridge connecting Spey Bay and Garmouth—the Spey viaduct—torn in two and lying twisted in the river. What seemed unlikely very quickly became reality. It was no joke—a popular bridge was no more. It formed part of the historic Moray coast railway and later became an important part of the national cycle network next to the Speyside way.
I can guarantee that, the day before, many people, including young children on bikes, would have been crossing it. I am thankful that, at the time when the bridge collapsed, no one was on it. Early engineering inspections suggest that scour soil erosion around the bridge’s foundations—a slow process that undermines even our most enduring bridges—was likely a cause.
Some want to play the blame game; I want the bridge fixed. That iconic structure is now closed, with no immediate solution to reopen it, pending specialist inspections and—crucially—funding for either repair or replacement. I commend the communities of Garmouth and Spey Bay, particularly the Speyside Coffee Roasting Company and the WDC Scottish Dolphin Centre, for their strong support to see the bridge repaired.
Meanwhile, Cloddach bridge, which was built in 1905, has stood for more than a century as part of the River Lossie crossing near Birnie in Elgin. It was closed to motor vehicles in February 2022 after inspections showed that its condition had deteriorated to the point at which it could no longer safely carry heavy traffic. Weight restrictions had been progressively tightened over the years before its closure, and it remains open only to pedestrians and cyclists. However, without significant investment to replace or repair it, the bridge risks being lost entirely, with the communities that it serves left divided.