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A9 (Dualling) (PE1992)
Good morning, and welcome to the second meeting of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee in 2026. This is an additional meeting, in recognition of the fact that the parliamentary session does not have much life left in it and there are very few meetings of the committee left. As of this morning, 68 active petitions were still before the committee. We have to be careful as to how we proceed.
The meeting is largely being held to consider the outstanding new petitions that we have before us, but agenda item 1 is to consider continued petitions. The only continued petition is PE1992, which was lodged by Laura Hansler, on dualling the A9 and improving road safety. The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to deliver on the commitment that it made in 2011 and address safety concerns on the A9 by publishing a revised timetable and detailed plan for dualling each section, completing the dualling work by 2025 and creating a memorial to those who have lost their lives in road traffic incidents on the A9.
We previously considered the petition on 4 October 2023, when we heard evidence from Alex Neil, former Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment. The committee agreed to undertake an inquiry into the A9 dualling project, and we took evidence over a number of evidence sessions as part of that work.
We published the inquiry report on 1 November 2024, and we received a Scottish Government response on 9 January last year. Members then had an opportunity on 16 January last year—almost a year ago to the day—to debate a committee motion on the issues that were raised.
In its response to the report, the Government indicated that it expected to make a decision late last year on whether to complete the A9 dualling programme using the resource-funded mutual investment model contracts or whether to adopt an alternative approach.
Following publication of the draft budget for 2026-27, Fiona Hyslop, the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, provided an update to Parliament last week, in which she stated that the Government’s updated financial modelling indicated that the cost of MIM contracts was about 28 per cent higher than the cost of equivalent capital-funded contracts, which represents an increase from the 16 per cent difference that it estimated in 2023. The Government has therefore concluded that, as MIM contracts provide poorer value for money, it will progress the A9 dualling programme to completion using capital-funded contracts.
Alongside that update from the cabinet secretary, the Scottish Government published its 2026 A9 dualling delivery plan. That is based on the establishment of a framework agreement, under which five contracts are to be procured in order to deliver the remaining projects that have not yet reached procurement. The Government also indicated that all the milestones that were set out in its 2023 plan were delivered as per that plan.
On the third ask of the petition, the Government’s response to the inquiry report states that, although it sympathises with everyone who is affected by road fatalities, it is unable to be directly involved in a proposal for or decision on a memorial, which it considers should be
“a matter for communities and private individuals to progress with landowners and appropriate planning authorities”.
The dualling of the A9 will undoubtedly continue to dominate the national agenda in the next session of Parliament—and, indeed, in the session after that, given the completion date of 2035. However, the committee must consider whether there is anything more that we can practicably do in the time remaining, given everything that we can rightly claim to have achieved in relation to the progress that the Government has announced to date, in light of the inquiry that we held.
Before I invite colleagues to comment, I welcome David Torrance, who is joining us online, rather than being here with us in the committee room. Do colleagues have any comments or suggestions?
I think that we should close the petition. However, in saying that, I am mindful that Laura Hansler, as the petitioner, has achieved an extraordinary number of things, and that shows the committee’s value in our Parliament as a voice for ordinary people to come here with something that they wish to see achieved.
In paying tribute to Laura Hansler, I want to run through some of the things that are unlikely to have happened were it not for the work that she—and she alone—instituted. First, she paved the way for evidence to be heard from Mr Grahame Barn of the Civil Engineering Contractors Association Scotland, which is the representative body of most of the civil engineering companies—or the large ones, at least. He said that Transport Scotland was
“the worst client to work for in the UK.”
Mr Barn also pointed out, in a forensic display of knowledge of procurement policy, that the particular mode of procurement employed by Transport Scotland had the effect of deterring bidders, which meant that the Tomatin to Moy tender was abortive because there was only one bidder, which was rejected because its bid was too high, at £170 million. Then, later, Transport Scotland retendered that, and I believe that the total cost is £308 million. It may be that the Auditor General for Scotland will wish to examine that, and it may be that I will be inviting him to do so.
It is clear that Transport Scotland then changed its contract to the new engineering contract, which Mr Barn referred to in his evidence—I think that that was in January, early in the inquiry. The evidence that the committee took and Laura Hansler’s efforts led to a major change in Transport Scotland’s procurement policy. Transport Scotland might say that it would have done that anyway, but if it did, I am not sure that I would be too quick to believe it and swallow that.
Secondly, when the committee began the investigation, which became a formal inquiry, there was no revised timetable. However, due to the pressure that was in part exerted by the committee, time after time, meeting after meeting, a revised timetable was produced in December 2023.
The Beatles wrote the song “The Long and Winding Road”, and the A9 is the long and winding road of the Highlands. It has been a long and winding tale, which was supposed to have been concluded by 2025 but will now not be concluded until 2035—and many of us doubt whether it will be concluded by then. Be that as it may, the revised timetable was extracted only because of the work that this committee has done.
The petitioner has pressed for a memorial garden, and she informed me informally that she had had discussions with one of the contractors, which was willing to carry out that work. It is abundantly clear that Transport Scotland has blocked that. I have no doubt that it will redact and conceal the advice that it has given to ministers, as it has frequently done, but the truth will out eventually, and I think that that will have been the case. It is ludicrous for the minister to say that it is up to the community, because the community has not got assets to carry out a contract of hundreds of thousands of pounds—that is for the birds. That issue will have to be revisited.
Lastly, the committee suggested in its report, and I think that this was substantially your idea, convener, that one of the problems since 2011, when Alex Neil first made the promise—he gave a very effective statement of his evidence, as the late Alex Salmond did in his last public appearance in the Parliament before he died—has been slippage. The scrutiny by the Parliament has been sporadic, intermittent and insufficient. That is why I hope that the committee—if it agrees with the convener’s suggestion and with the one that I am repeating now—will write to the incoming Presiding Officer of the next parliamentary session to suggest that there should be a bespoke committee, given the scale and importance of the contract. Its scale is bigger than that of any previous construction contract ever in Scotland. Such a committee would mean that the scrutiny was not sporadic and intermittent; it would be consistent, thorough and forensic, and there would be no hiding place.
I have a personal interest, because I hope to be around for some more terms yet as the representative of the good people of Inverness and Nairn, if they feel that that is a good idea. I am determined to be there at the cutting of the red tape ribbon when the dualled A9 opens. I would prefer that to be in the next session than in the one thereafter.
Mr Ewing, the long and winding road, as ever, leads us to your door. Thank you for your contribution on the petition. Are you making a formal proposal to close the petition and to establish in practice the criteria that we might indicate as the basis for its closure?
I am happy to do that. Laura Hansler might well be back before us in the next parliamentary session.
Do colleagues agree to close the petition on that basis and to note and accept Mr Ewing’s suggestion that we, within our competences, have a posthumous letter on our recommendation ready for the next Presiding Officer of the Parliament, if only to ensure that the issue does not recur as a running sore thereafter and that there is an opportunity for our recommendation to be factored into the proper scrutiny of the project by the colleagues who will have the responsibility to monitor it in the next parliamentary session?
Members indicated agreement.
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