Leader: We agree - security pavilion plan is ‘bonkers’

Published on Saturday 21 January 2012 12:16

AS FORMER presiding officers, Lord David Steel and George Reid between them have a considerable amount of experience of dealing with the problems which engulfed the planning and construction of the parliament at Holyrood.

They might not put it like this, but, as Tony Blair once said of his attempts at public sector reform, both probably still carry the scars on their backs from their efforts to get the building finished and constrain costs. So when Lord Steel and Mr Reid unite to cast doubt on the plans to erect a £5m so-called security “pavilion” at the front of Enric Miralles’s extravagant and still controversial building, they should be listened to. In a letter to this newspaper, Lord Steel describes the plan as “more than bonkers”. Mr Reid fears for the integrity of the design and is worried about cost.

You do not have to be an architectural expert, or an accountant, to accept they have a point. The extension looks like those cheap 1970s lean-to porches for growing tomatoes at the back door. Described, not inaccurately, as a “bothy”, it is ugly, out of keeping with Miralles’s flamboyant design and ridiculously expensive in these austere times. If there really is a threat to MSPs there must be a more attractive and cheaper way of providing them with enhanced security.

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