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Thank you.

I have two further questions. Was it the case that Transport Scotland did, in fact, do some work that has not been made public in which some use of private finance was considered, but, by the time that the work came to fruition, the financial crisis had emerged and interest rates had risen, so that option no longer became applicable? If that was the case, can you share with us the document that shows what consideration has been given to all those matters?

I appreciate that that decision may not be for you and that it may be for the Scottish Government, because under FOI—FOI requests have been made to you on such things frequently—there is an exemption to cover ministers’ desire to have candour of internal discussions. That has been invoked in response to a FOI request about the A96 that I have seen recently, for example. Have you given advice to ministers on that? Will you share that with us? Have you considered the options that Mr Barn set out? Did you leave things too late because, by the time that you came up with the proposal, interest rates had risen, which made the finance package unaffordable? Can you share with us what work you have been doing over the past two and a half years on all of that?

It was too late.

I appreciate that it is all complex. I do not detract from what Mr Shackman says in any way, but I would like Transport Scotland to produce the documentation showing the exchange of views between it and the Scottish Government—submissions, emails and other documents—so that we can get to the bottom of it for the sake of the petitioner and all those who have lost their lives on the road over far too long.

I will incur the wrath of Mr Torrance, but I wonder whether we have done justice to the petitioners, who have said that they want specific restrictions on overnight parking. There is no doubt that it is a nuisance in the Highlands and also elsewhere. Camper vans are huge vehicles, so parking can cause some nuisance issues.

In order to ascertain whether the working group will consider any specific recommendations, perhaps we could write to the Government to ask whether the working group has looked at the issue and what its recommendations are. Could any measures be taken? For example, local byelaw provisions might enable Highland Council to tackle such things.

To be fair, the petitioners’ business is one of many that operates a caravan park, and it is a particular issue of nuisance for many residents along the North Coast 500, and perhaps in many other places, too. If you have a bloody great camper van parked somewhere that you need to go or that needs to be made available for safety vehicles, particularly on restricted narrow and single-track roads in places such as Skye, it is a serious issue, although perhaps not necessarily the one that was foremost in everybody’s minds as the frivolity and jollity proceeded unabated.

I have just been looking through the previous evidence and the points that Dr Allan has made about the desirability of having island residents on public bodies. I also looked at the specific recommendations of the three petitioners, who use HIAL as an example of a body where a place on the panel for selecting the chair could be reserved in this respect. The same could be done for every chair of every board such as CMAL and CalMac.

They also talk about assigning three seats on the HIAL board to people who live in island communities, one of which would be retained for a co-opted member, with at least one council—the Western Isles Council, Orkney Islands Council or Shetland Islands Council—allocated a place on the board.

The point that I am making is that the petitioners have made concrete and specific suggestions and they have not been responded to. I hope that I am not being unfair to the former minister, but my reading is that he replied with a lot of good will without responding to the petitioners’ specific suggestions.

In as much as we are the voice of the petitioner, irrespective of party issues, it seems to me that we have not got an answer from the former minister and we need to get an answer from the current minister as to whether those specific suggestions can be pursued. There are arguments for and against each suggestion but not to have had an answer of any sort means that your premature summation was absolutely correct, convener.

I thank the petitioner for setting out so comprehensively the sad series of unacceptable facts on this issue. I will not repeat what the petitioner has said but she has done a service for the people of the Highlands.

I want to focus on how we move forward and get dualling done as swiftly as possible. I have two areas of questioning for Mr Barn. The first is about the retendering of the Tomatin to Moy section and the second is about what he, as a representative of 80 per cent of the civil engineering sector in Scotland, which is the vast majority of the businesses that are involved in doing that work, thinks is the solution. What needs to change?

I will take Tomatin to Moy first. There was only one bidder and the bid was rejected because it was said not to offer value for money, which appears to mean that it was too high. Is that your understanding? That contract is being retendered, and in a late submission to the committee—it was submitted this morning or perhaps late yesterday—Transport Scotland said that it has engaged with you, Mr Barn, and others in the industry about changing the risk profile of Tomatin to Moy. Has it done that, and is there a risk that, when the Tomatin to Moy contract is retendered, which is supposed to be done by the end of this year, we might end up with an even higher price than the one that was rejected because it was deemed to be too high?

So, it could be even higher than the price that was deemed to be too high.

So, there is a precedent there.

I want to ask about the way in which Transport Scotland conducts the tender process. My understanding is that, once the process gets going, Transport Scotland ceases contact with the tendering companies. In the course of the timescale of the Tomatin to Moy tender process, I discovered that some supply companies in the quarrying sector had not been approached for estimates. I found information that indicated to me that it was unlikely that a particular company was going to submit a bid, because it had not bothered to get estimates from the company from which it normally gets estimates.

As I understand it—tell me if this is correct—Transport Scotland does not engage with the various contractors that are on the approved list to bid and therefore perhaps it was not really aware, until far later than it might have been had it pursued a more collaborative approach, that it might end up with only one bidder.

The companies in the framework contract would have guaranteed work, really, for that period of 10 years, so they would be able to recruit some retained staff more easily; have a long-term relationship with suppliers; perhaps get more keen prices for quarrying and other material; and have a guaranteed order book. That would instil confidence and retain employment in Scotland at a time when, as I understand it, many other opportunities exist in the UK for civil engineers to do work—down south, for example.