I am grateful to the committee for giving me the opportunity to speak, and I am grateful to Derek Noble for pursuing PE1974.
I share the committee’s disappointment at the cabinet secretary’s response, because it repeats what has been said before. It takes no notice of the fact that residents on the other side of the Stromeferry bypass need to cross the bypass for hospital care and secondary education and to support the economy of the area. That is a major issue on the road. The alternative route takes six hours, and that cuts off the area’s economy. It means that someone would get to Glasgow and Edinburgh sooner than they would get to their local hospital. It is a 130-mile detour. You have to go all the way back to the east coast to come back west again. The Scottish Government’s response is so disappointing, because it just seems to be saying no, despite the evidence, and there is no right of appeal.
In a way, the response adds insult to injury by talking about priority bus routes and cycle lanes, because there are no buses other than the school buses, and a cycle lane would take up the total width of the road. There is no option to put those things in place. Money is available for that, but there is no money available for the very basics.
I have some figures from 2017. The costs varied from £37 million to £129 million. Using the Scottish Parliament information centre’s inflator, I note that those costs would now be £46 million to £159 million, but we know that the costs of roads and inflation are much greater than that. Even if we took the figure of £159 million, Highland Council received £33.6 million of capital funding this year. How many years using its full capital budget allocation would it take for it to fix the road? It is absolutely not feasible.
The Scottish Government’s response has basically said to those communities that it is tough, that Highland Council cannot afford to do the work because the Government does not fund it adequately and that it is washing its hands of the whole situation. That is not a sustainable position.
I ask the committee not to close the petition but to look at another option to appeal to the Scottish Government to work with Highland Council to try to find a funding option that would allow the road to be improved. It will take the Scottish Government to provide Highland Council with that funding or ways of accessing it.
The Government might also want to involve Network Rail. We are talking about the road, but the rail line is just beside the road. The road saved the rail line, to an extent, after the most recent major rockfalls. In fact, the rail line was used as a temporary road to avoid the long detour. However, if the Government is washing its hands of this, it is only a matter of time. When there is a big rockfall, the road will close and there will be nothing to protect the rail line. We could lose both the road and the rail connection. I do not know whether the committee has spoken to Network Rail to see whether it has similar concerns. Could that help with some of the capital funding?
Highland Council provides some capital funding. I know that it is struggling at the moment, but all three bodies could look at the problem. If we are looking to Highland Council to sort it out, it would take its capital funding for the best part of a decade. That is just not going to happen.