Speech in the Scottish Parliament

26 May 2010

David Stewart : As a member of the Forth Crossing Bill Committee, I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate.

I echo the comments of Jackson Carlaw and thank the other committee members, the minister, the committee clerks and the witnesses for their help and insight.

On a personal level, I was particularly struck by the professionalism of the community councils, business groups and private individuals who submitted well-researched and polished evidence.

Not least of those individuals were Mary Mulligan and Margaret Smith, who are with us today. I welcome representatives of local interest groups to the public gallery.

The bill is history in the making.

If Parliament approves it, it will result in the largest public sector infrastructure project since devolution.

As we have heard, if we take into account risk allowance and optimism bias, the cost is near enough £2 billion—not £2 million as we perhaps heard earlier.

Some might ask what optimism bias is, and that is a good question.

I had a look at Wikipedia earlier, which defines optimism bias as :

"the demonstrated systematic tendency for people to be over-optimistic about the outcome of planned actions.

"This includes over-estimating the likelihood of positive events and under-estimating the likelihood of negative events."

The minister will be able to relate to those comments.

Wikipedia continues:

"Excessive optimism can result in cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and delays when plans are implemented or expensive projects are built.

"In extreme cases these can result in defeats in military conflicts, ultimate failure of a project or economic bubbles such as market crashes."

This project throws up a series of policy questions about development versus environment and national projects versus local communities—a little bit like Scotland in miniature.

As we have heard from other members of the bill committee, much of the evidence was about the effect on local communities from noise, disruption and traffic management.

We also heard about the human rights aspect, which some see as being about Big Brother government versus local communities.

We heard about the role of the new crossing in economic development and the Confederation of British Industry's view on that.

We also heard about the effect on the environment from issues such as the embedded carbon in the bridge and the loss of benthic habitats.

We heard evidence on the effectiveness of traffic modelling and the question of how successful public transport strategies will be in generating real modal shift—I understand that Napoleon once said that strategies never survive the first sound of gunfire.

In the brief time available, I will focus on two aspects in more detail: consultation and public rights, and finance.

On consultation, like other members, I was struck by the strength of feeling among local residents about the variable quality of consultation.

In fairness, various private bills have been criticised on that aspect.

Is there a bigger-picture problem about how consultation can be improved?

The scheme, as an amalgamation of different paths, appears not to be well understood. Could things have been explained in a better way?

The bill has to comply with the European convention on human rights, but several witnesses have argued that the consultation process did not follow the Aarhus convention in respect of consultation and the accessing of environmental information, as George Foulkes mentioned in an intervention.

George Foulkes: I am concerned. I have seen some very aggressive objectors in my time, but these objectors are well informed and powerful but polite. However, they still feel that their points have not properly been taken account of. Could my noble friend—[Interruption.] I am thinking ahead. Could my honourable friend try at stage 2 to find a way of hearing from the objectors in more detail and perhaps more informally, so that the objections that they are still writing to me about can properly be considered?

David Stewart: I thank Lord Foulkes for his comments.

Of course, the dissolution honours list will be up at the end of this week, so I thank him for his advance warning.

It is important that some of the changes that we recommended will be in force at stage 2.

I think that the minister hinted at that.

I agree with Lord Foulkes.

As far as finance is concerned, we have heard already that the crossing will be a conventional capital-funded project rather than a PPP project.

Some members have debated whether a replacement crossing is necessary and, if so, whether a tunnel would be more appropriate.

I was interested in the points that were made by the ForthRight Alliance, which argued that the new bridge will represent 20 per cent of total Scottish Government capital budget spending at its peak in 2014-15.

Perhaps, in winding up, the minister will outline the effect on other capital budgets such as health and local government.

What will be the role of the Scottish Futures Trust, the Government's agent for capital projects?

How competitive will the final successful tender be, given that there are only two bidders, albeit that they are made up of two consortia?

How justifiable is the unsuccessful bidder premium of up to £5 million?

How realistic is it that cost overruns will stay within 3 to 4 per cent?

Will the minister perhaps look again at applying for EU trans-European transport network—TEN-T—funding under priority axis 13?

I understand that the route from Belgium via the Rosyth ferry and the Forth road bridge would be an eligible route.

Grants are up to €1.5 million, so the funding is not to be underestimated.

Notwithstanding my above comments, I recommend that the principles of the bill be agreed to and that the bill proceed as a hybrid bill.