EXCLUSIVE: First Minister John Swinney looks back at the troubled road to A9 Dualling saying he wanted to divert Edinburgh trams money to dual the A9
The SNP was being accused of spin and resorting to the “dark arts” by opposition MSPs unhappy with the drive towards A9 dualling.
One by one MSPs hit out at the Scottish Government over its conduct, seeming hesitancy about making progress and lack of a clear message on the project.
Amid it all one stood up in parliament and said: “There has been a great deal of talk about the A9, which is something that is dear to my heart and affects my constituency.”
But this was 2007, not 2024. The SNP were a minority government and its then transport programme was voted down by Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats.
A decade later the positions of opposition parties and government reversed: the SNP was being criticised for not doing what the opposition objected to back in 2007, by dualling the A9.
Having just signed The Inverness Courier’s Pledge to Dual the A9, Mr Swinney was asked about what happened and what went wrong in all the years leading up to 2023.
First Minister John Swinney says he was previously criticised for wanting to dual the A9 all along, evening wanting to divert money from the Edinburgh trams project to invest in the road: Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats favoured 18km of trams and track through the capital to dualling 134km of road connecting Inverness and Perth.
During a debate in May 2007, Liberal Democrat Alison McInnes described dualling as a “grand gesture” suggesting that “it is important to break the link between economic growth and transport growth”.
That is despite also arguing the trams would link “key employment centres” and the fact there is very little trade without transport – especially in the Highlands.
The trams began running in 2014 having cost £835.7 million or £46 million per kilometre – not including the £13 million 13 year-long inquiry into the project – and serving approximately 9.3 million people annually.
At today’s inflated prices dualling the A9 between Inverness and Perth is estimated to cost £3.7 billion, or £27 million per kilometre which includes bridges, junctions and other major engineering work to serve an estimated 51.8 million motorists a year.
Given dualling was a keynote SNP policy how did it go so badly wrong?
Kincraig to Dalraddy was completed in summer 2017 and in August 2021 Luncarty to Pass of Birnam was opened, and then – nothing; and for the entirety of the post-2014 Nicola Sturgeon-era Mr Swinney was Deputy First Minister.
In February 2023, no one was shocked when Jenny Gilruth confirmed that the Scottish Government would not in two years complete more dualling than it had in the previous 16.
The idea that this information only emerged a few months prior to the announcement convinced no one and helped spark the fury of people like Fergus Ewing.
Now, as First Minister, Mr Swinney told us: “There will always be discussions and debate about what is the right moment to set out the detail of complex projects, but the government will always be aiming to take these forward as quickly as it possibly could do.
“You publish infrastructure updates to parliament on a regular basis, that advise parliament about the progress of particular projects, the elements that are taking their course.
“So I think the government has been open about those challenges and has given a full statement to parliament about the times we expect to deliver it.”
But it wasn’t always “open”. There were issues in 2017, 2018, and 2019 and the programme could have been reordered long before it was to give a new completion date of 2030 - okay, five years later than previously promised, but still better than a 10-year delay surely?
Mr Swinney said: “Well, I think the issue that has to be considered there is the scale of capital investment projects, because capital investment projects don’t just relate to road transport infrastructure they relate to a whole host of other issues.
“We had to fulfil the implementation of the programmes of our predecessor government (and) if you go back to 2007 the government had to look carefully at how it could sustain broad support for its capital programme because it was operating as a minority government.”
He added: “So there has been a delay, but it is not through a lack of good effort by the government to take that forward. Now we have gone to parliament, we have set out a programme that I believe is realistic and tangible and the government is making its way through that now.”
The MSP who said the A9 dualling was “close to his heart” was in fact First Minister John Swinney. Users of the road will hope that whatever else happens it stays there.
