FERGUS EWING: Lack of info on A96 dualling is not good enough
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Tomorrow morning Alex Salmond will give evidence to the Petitions Committee at Holyrood on the dualling of the A9. And what went wrong.
His evidence will be followed at the end of May by that of Nicola Sturgeon, who of course took over the reins as First Minister in 2014.
Now that John Swinney is to be the new First Minister, my first priority will be, as constituency MSP for Inverness and Nairn to press him for a timetable for the dualling of the A96 from Inverness to Nairn including the bypass. This must set out when the work will be completed.
There is really no excuse for the delay that has occurred. The whole of the A96 was to be dualled by 2030, and the A9 by 2025. Neither will happen. Both are big projects yes, but will increase road safety. The Green MSP Lorna Slater caused some consternation last week, when she called for the A96 dualling to be scrapped altogether in the interest of safety, she said.
Yet, what she did not say is that dualling makes roads safer - for the very simple and understandable reason that the chances of head-on collisions is vastly reduced by the presence of the central barrier or reservation. There is now an outline plan for the A9 dualling but no information regards the first section of the A96 dualling project.
Three years into this session of parliament, and we are still waiting. This is not good enough.
See you later, Harvie and Slater
The removal of the Greens from office was a happy day for me, as many of the policies which have caused so much division and wasted tens of millions of pounds originated from the deal with that party.
My concern though is that whilst the green tail was wagging the dog, and that tail has been “docked”, it nonetheless reappears as a kind of phantom limb. We shall see.
Here in the Highlands I worked with MSP colleagues Ed Mountain (Tory) and Rhoda Grant (Labour) in the successful campaign to restore the removal of final funding of about £500,000 needed to complete the refurbishment of the Grantown Health Centre.
Almost all of the letters of thanks I received said the same thing: it was so good to see politicians of different parties work together. The Greens were posted missing from that campaign. But it shows that the main parties can work together at local level. Why not at national level too?
SNP leadership
I strongly supported my parliamentary neighbour Kate Forbes to be the new First Minister and believe that she would have been the best choice for Scotland.
Polls showed that the public agreed. We would also have had the first Highland First Minister.
Kate is, with her largest majority of any MSP in Scotland, the most popular politician in the land, and her personal qualities and Christian faith would in my book have served us all well.
Others took a different view, however. I found that deeply troubling.
Wood-burning stoves
I have tabled some written questions in Holyrood to test whether the change in First Minister means a change in policy.
One asks for a very simple change to start. This would be to lift the ridiculous ban on wood-burning stoves for new houses.
Local wood-burning stove companies are rightly concerned this ban was brought in, under the Greens, and without proper warning or consultation. It was a right muddle. When I find out, Courier readers will be the first to know.
