Hansard

I congratulate Tim Eagle on securing time for the debate and thank him for his attention on this issue. I hope that he, and colleagues across the chamber, would agree that I am quite keen in general on building bridges.

I have genuinely always had a real soft spot for bridges—so much so that, when I was in primary 7 and the kids in my class were told that we could do a project on anything we wanted, I chose bridges. I drew the Kessock bridge, the Golden Gate bridge and a little wooden bridge that crosses a burn near my house in Alness. I wrote about the complex maths that goes into their design and their different uses, and how the Kessock bridge connected my home of Alness, in Ross-shire, to the big city of Inverness.

While the overall improvements to journeys are welcome, the fact that my train home from Edinburgh no longer goes over the Forth rail bridge is a matter of deep regret to me, because I would always pause to admire the engineering and the scale of those incredible structures. Scotland should be more proud of our bridges and our story, from Thomas Telford to the Queensferry crossing, and we should be taking better care of the bridges that currently join up our communities but are too often taken for granted.

My family, and some of my teachers, were genuinely disappointed when I diverted to politics instead of engineering. When I first got elected to the Parliament, I joked that I might spend a session arguing for some bridges and tunnels and then go and help to build them. Scotland can do better if we are better connected. Our island communities, parts of cities separated by rivers or wide roads, and out-of-town universities or workplaces that were built without care for how folk were going to get there could all, with some bridges, see a boost in their opportunities and potential.

Thomas Telford and the Governments that commissioned his work understood that bridges—which are, on the face of it, about transport and connectivity—could be strong drivers for tackling poverty and depopulation. Many of the bridges that have prompted today’s debate and are mentioned in the motion, and which come up in various other conversations across the country, were built in Telford’s era, in areas that are still facing those challenges. Tim Eagle and I represent some of the communities that are most affected by depopulation, and we are both listing crucial bridges in those areas that are falling apart. Depopulation challenges will get worse if we do not protect what we have as well as building what we do not have.

Talk of managed decline is deeply concerning to me, because I do not simply picture a bridge crumbling and declining. I know that we are talking about the managed decline of beloved walks, of commutes to work, of heavily photographed tourist hotspots and—sadly—of whole communities.

I want to see more bridges, so my heart breaks a bit when I see coverage of the regular Infirmary bridge closures in Inverness over the years, or, this week, the very concerning closure of the Jubilee bridge in Nairn due to a sinkhole.

Yesterday in the chamber, we were debating positive destinations and routes to work. The bridge in Nairn is a literal path to education for small children. It is a safer route to school for many in Nairn—it is a cherished walk and a busy crossing that is used and relied on every single day.

We know that crisis management is more expensive and more disruptive to people than proactive maintenance. This is a national issue that is as much about attitude as finances, but I think that we need to see a change in both of those areas and agree that our bridges are worth protecting.

I look forward to hearing from the Cabinet Secretary for Transport and I hope that the Scottish Government shares some of the passion for bridges that we have heard so far in the debate. If we can build something as beautiful, complex and record breaking as the Queensferry crossing, we can look after Telford’s bridges, and we can even build more to connect the Highlands and Islands.