Chamber and committees

As an aside, I note that, against the wishes of the Government that you and I were both part of, the Parliament choosing the trams had implications for other aspects of the capital programme at that time.

All of the projects that you have spoken about were necessary and important. As a relatively new driver, I have only recently driven across some of those projects—I drove on the A9 for the first time just a couple of weeks ago. The projects were all important, but I do not think that that is the point that you are making.

It is not the case that we inappropriately prioritised the Queensferry crossing, the M74 improvements or the Borders railway. However, I suppose that my short answer to your question would be yes—although we ran into the difficulties that I have been speaking about, I certainly hope and expect that the Government now prioritises completing the A9.

The programme that has been set out, with timescales, will still face challenges along the way—I would be astonished if it did not. To me, it looks like a programme that will succeed, and it is essential that it is given the priority to ensure that it does.

No, not as far as I am aware. I think that you were in government during most of that time, Fergus, so you would be aware of any decisions taken there. You will remember as well as I do some of the difficult discussions that we had around the Cabinet table about budgets; as is the nature of budgetary processes, we had to balance the competing priorities. At different times, different projects will have greater immediate priority than others, but it is always about trying to balance and achieve the objectives that we have set.

That is an excellent observation. I know that we are talking about the A9, but that point is one of the things that is quite difficult conceptually for people to get their heads round, including people in Government at the time, but also very real across a whole range of issues. In the national health service, for example, the period in which elective treatment was shut down had a significant multiplier effect in terms of what it takes to recover that position.

On everything else, including the A9 project, it takes more time to catch up with such things than the period of the pause, for a variety of reasons. It is not that people are sitting round and not trying to get back on top of things; it is just the way that such things work. On a whole range of things and in many walks of life, the recovery period from the Covid experience will be much longer than the two years-plus of Covid.

Again, I am happy to set that out in more detail. My written submission covered the period when I was the Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Investment and Cities, not First Minister. I am not asking for more requests for information but, if it would be helpful to set a bit more of that down in writing, I will do that for the committee.

In summary, as First Minister, you have an overview. The day-to-day responsibility for making sure that things are being done as they should be on any project, as is the case on the A9 project, is with the relevant cabinet secretary. As First Minister, although I was not copied into everything, I was copied into significant briefings or submissions on things, and I would ask questions and get more involved in periods when I thought that there was a need for it. That is how these things generally work.

The A9 would have featured from time to time in Cabinet discussions—Fergus Ewing quoted from a Cabinet minute a wee while ago—and, at particular moments, the cabinet secretary would have brought things to Cabinet. I do not have all the papers in front of me, so I cannot say exactly when that would have happened with the A9, but I would be happy to provide more information on that if it is appropriate.

As I look at this from the perspective that I have now, some of the questions that the committee is posing are reasonable. That does not mean that there is anything sinister there. As a Government, we were desperately trying to find a path to meet a 2025 target. Obviously, the prospect and chances of doing that were diminishing with every month and year that passed, but we had not given up on doing so.

The 2014 date is significant because of the Office for National Statistics issue with the classification of NPD. That was not the point at which we had to consider a private finance option, as that was always a requirement; it was the point at which we had to effectively scrap the one that would have been the option and try to find another one, which took considerable work and time.

Then there was the period around 2018. As I think I said in response to the convener, if I look at the issue now, in hindsight, that is a point at which it is reasonable to at least pose the question about whether we should have been airing a bit more of this publicly. If I remember correctly, the original estimate for construction was about six years. By 2018, you are getting to the point at which, even if you have the finance procurement route settled, you are starting to get tight for a 2025 target.

If I was to go back to relive that period, I do not think that I have read anything that would make me think that there is something that we could have done to change things and to hit that target, but I would say that we should perhaps have been airing a lot more of the difficulties that we were in or the challenges that we were facing at that point a bit more openly. However, that is me applying hindsight.

I think that it is for the reasons that I have spoken about. Again, I say this with hindsight—that is one of the features of exercises such as this; we look at all these things from a different perspective. The 2025 target was always a massive mountain to climb, and to get to the summit by 2025 was going to require everything to go our way.

We then had certain things that did not go our way, such as the 2014 ONS issue, and austerity—I am not making a party-political point there; austerity put huge pressure on budgets. There was also Covid, which I have just spoken about. Those things were over and above the inherent complexities of the project around design, route selection, public consultation and environmental assessment—the project runs through a national park, and there are sites of historical significance. When we add on some unforeseen complexities, that is the reason why we are sitting here.

That does not make it easy or acceptable from the perspective of the Highlands, but nor does it equate to a situation in which the Government simply did not bother trying to progress the A9 project. We had significant commitment and drive behind it, but we encountered very significant challenges along the way.

This is where I will be candid with the committee. I have looked again—as you would expect me to do in advance of being here—at all the papers that I would have seen, and some that I did not, which I would not, as First Minister, routinely have seen at the time.

Before I say what I am about to say, I think that it is important not to sit here and say that there is nothing that we could have done to speed it up. It is important that there are processes to enable us to look back and really ask those hard questions. There will undoubtedly be points at which different decisions might have speeded things up to some extent.

Do I think that there is anything, in the context that we were, and that we came to be, dealing with, that we could have done that would have meant that the 2025 target turned out to be deliverable? My honest answer is no, I do not, because of the nature of the challenges with which we were confronted.

If I was First Minister then, is there something that I think that I could have done to meet that target? I genuinely do not. If I was First Minister now, which is not a prospect that I really like to contemplate, I would, I think, be confident—with all the caveats that one always has to add around major infrastructure projects—in the programme and the timeline that the Government has now set out.

I think it can be squared pretty easily, actually, drawing on what I have just said. I do not know how many of the papers you would have seen personally at the time, but at that point, we were not in a position where we had decided whether we would definitely use private finance, because we did not have a clear private finance route, or opt for publicly funded straight capital provision.

The situation at that point was that, had we gone down a private finance route, the 2025 target would not have been capable of being met, but we had not closed the door to the design build capital funded option. If memory serves me correctly, it was only at the end of 2022 or thereabouts that it became clear that there was no route to a 2025 target being met. With any kind of target, as you get closer to it, there is a diminishing prospect of it being met, but, until that point, there was, at least in theory, a route to meeting the 2025 target. That closed off around the end of 2022 or 2023. Clearly, there were other factors at play around then as well.

Let me try to answer that as best I can, perhaps in a general sense. On any particular points, I am more than happy to look at the paperwork after this meeting and come back with specific answers in writing, if that would be helpful to the committee.

I will say two things in general. First, it is not the case that the issues with the A9 were down to the Greens’ involvement in the Government. People can read the Bute house agreement for themselves to see that the commitment to the A9 was not affected by that agreement. As First Minister during that time, I can say that that was not the case.

With the caveat that I will look again to see whether I can throw some light on other issues, my second point is that we are talking about a period when our revenue and capital budgets were under significant and growing pressure. Members of the Parliament have heard statements that various finance secretaries have made during recent times about the need for savings and the need to reprioritise. We all know the reasons for that. The overarching reason is the funding challenges that we have been confronted with in relation to the on-going work to try to find ways to make progress on sections of the road through either direct capital or a private finance model. In my view, the funding challenges are the overarching reason. However, as I said, I am happy to go away to see whether there are further comments that might be helpful.

Having very recently reread all of that paperwork, I think that that is a fair point to draw out, but I do not necessarily agree that underneath that was a sign of something going wrong. I think that that is a reflection of what was under consideration at that point.

I think this point has been made to the committee, but it is worth repeating. Under the Scottish public finance manual, in projects of this nature, consideration of private finance options is required. Therefore, such consideration was necessary. In 2014, the NPD model became unavailable to us, in effect, because of its reclassification as public rather than private finance. That was followed by a period of consideration of a different potential private finance route, should the Government have decided to take such a route. There was no obvious alternative for a period. It has taken until very recently to settle on the mutual investment model that the current cabinet secretary has announced and spoken about. Therefore, I think that that simply reflects the very technical nature of the work that was being undertaken in the period from 2018 onwards.

Having reread that paperwork, there is another observation that I would make. Again, it is not a conclusion but a question that I think it is perfectly reasonable for the committee to at least ask. At that point—from 2018 and certainly for the couple of years after that—should we have been a bit more open about the work that was going on? The search for a viable private finance model was under way, but we had not abandoned the prospect of a design and build, capital-funded option as well. That was the option that was still theoretically possible—I use that phrase deliberately—in a 2025 timescale; the private one would not have been. We were still grappling with many of those issues at that point, in good faith, and the work was being done internally. The question—which I think is a reasonable one—is, should some of that have been aired a bit more publicly?