Lib Dems: Don't let politicians run transport

Published on Thursday 9 October 2008 21:53

ALL major transport decisions should be taken out of the hands of politicians and made instead by an independent panel, Tavish Scott, the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, suggested yesterday.

Launching a coruscating attack on the SNP for favouring its own areas, Mr Scott said transport projects had become too political.

He made a thinly veiled claim that the SNP only wanted to dual the A9 from Perth to Inverness because it went through an SNP constituency, and claimed the future economy of the country was too important to rest on such political decisions by ministers.

Mr Scott said: "We should take the politics out of big transport projects. Instead of government ministers, SNP ministers, making short-term decisions on the basis of constituencies they are either trying to win or hold at the next election, we should establish a five-man board called something like the Infrastructure Investment Board which would scrutinise the proposals brought forward by government in relation to the future transport needs of the country.

"They would then make a rational, objective and utterly transparent assessment and rank those projects, then submit a report to government, to parliament as well, and say this is what we believe are the necessary transport improvements for the future of the country."

He added: "A simple political stitch-up because a road ran through Fergus Ewing's constituency (Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber] wouldn't be a good enough reason."

Mr Scott denied that he would simply be creating a new quango at a time when he was also calling for a cutback in the quango state. He said the new transport body would be a simple board, serviced by one civil servant.

The Scottish Lib Dem leader accepted that some previous decisions – notably the Borders rail link, which was done following demands from the Lib Dems – might not have gone ahead if his plan had been in place earlier.

He also denied suggestions that he was just attacking the A9 dualling. "I think the dualling of the A9 would be helped if we had an independent assessment of its value to the Scottish economy. What I don't think will help future investment of transport infrastructure in the country is if it's an announcement made by Alex Salmond, probably in Inverness, in the run-up to a future general election," he said.

Mr Scott's call comes two years after the Royal Geographic Society criticised some transport projects for the political way in which they had been chosen.

Academic experts in the society said schemes such as the Borders rail line and the Aberdeen bypass had been given the green light because of the "fuzzy" appraisal process which could be manipulated to justify marginal projects. They warned against the "politicisation of the decision-making process".

Projects that appeared geared towards favouring ruling party's constituents

THE Borders rail link – the Waverley Line – runs through constituencies that were held by the Liberal Democrats when the decision was taken to push ahead with this project.

It was backed by the Liberal Democrats – particularly those in Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale and Roxburgh and Berwickshire, the two seats with most to gain from reopening the line.

The Partnership Agreement between Labour and the Liberal Democrats after the 2003 election confirmed the Scottish Executive's commitment to the scheme, despite reservations from Labour. Since then, supporters of the line have had to defend the project against claims that it was party-political and done simply to help the Liberal Democrats in the Borders.

THE Aberdeen bypass has been a politically sensitive subject since it was first mooted. Liberal Democrats Tavish Scott and Nicol Stephen were in favour of the proposal, and they were in government when the crucial decisions were taken. But there was no agreement on the route, with several of the options going through Mr Stephen's constituency. In the end Mr Scott, then the transport minister, decided on the preferred route – one which had not been on the list of possible options.

The SNP is also very strong in the North-east and, after coming to power, the Nationalists decided that the bypass would definitely go ahead and that the public inquiry was on the controversial southern section of the route, not the principle of the road itself.

THE M74 extension was finally given the go-ahead in 2005 by a Liberal Democrat transport minister, Nicol Stephen, but it was always seen as a pro-Labour project.

The 500 million scheme is designed to create just five miles of six-lane motorway, linking the M74 through the south of Glasgow, an area surrounded by Labour constituencies. Along with the Borders rail link, the M74 extension was agreed by Labour and the Liberal Democrats in the wake of the 2003 election.

The M74 extension was seen as the Labour project and the Waverley Line as the Liberal Democrat project. There was almost a tacit agreement on each side not to criticise the other party's project too much, regardless of the merits of the case.

THE A9 between Perth and Inverness runs through two SNP-held constituencies – North Tayside and Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber. Dualling this road north was never a priority for the Labour-Liberal Executive between 1999 and 2007. Indeed, it hardly ever got even a mention in any long-term list of transport priorities. It was hardly a surprise when the SNP transport minister, Stewart Stevenson, announced his plans to dual the road within days of taking office last year. The problem for the Sc