A9 dualling delay caused by change in government priorities, says Salmond

Former first minister Alex Salmond has told MSPs he believes a change in government priorities after 2014 resulted in the delay to the A9 dualling project.

Mr Salmond told a Holyrood committee that when he was first minister, he considered the project “challenging but achievable”.

During Mr Salmond’s time in the post, from which he resigned following the 2014 independence referendum, the Scottish Government committed to fully dualling the stretch by 2025.

In December 2023, ministers admitted this was not achievable, saying it would be 2035 before the work could be completed.

Mr Salmond on Wednesday appeared before the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee, which is probing delays to upgrade the A9 from Perth to Inverness.

The committee has previously heard from Alex Neil, who was infrastructure and capital investment secretary when the plan to dual the road was announced in 2011.

Mr Salmond, now leader of the Alba Party, was asked by David Torrance, SNP MSP for Kirkcaldy, what he understood by officials saying the 2025 completion date was challenging.

He said: “I think that’s from a ministerial briefing of April 2012 and the phrase, if I remember right, is challenging but achievable.

“I would expect it to be challenging because if you take it as a whole it’s the biggest construction project in Scottish history, so clearly that’s challenging.

“Also Mr Neil was setting the pace so it would be ambitious but achievable because as Mr Neil told you in evidence, he took the precaution of saying to the officials what is the best possible date that is achievable and coming up with the 2025 date. So challenging and achievable, I would expect it to be challenging and I would expect it to be achievable.”

Mr Torrance asked: “Were you ever advised that this date could not be met by any officials?”

Mr Salmond replied: “No, I was not.”

The former first minister said the project was on schedule between 2011 and 2014.

He said: “Everything was on schedule. I know because Alex Neil would have told me if it was not on schedule.”

Conservative MSP for North East Scotland Maurice Golden asked Mr Salmond what he thinks are the reasons for the delay.

Mr Salmond said if the committee was considering a two-year delay it would be acceptable to attribute it to the pandemic, but that other excuses are “pathetic”.

He said: “I think we can eliminate the various excuses that have been made – transport inflation, contractors’ inflation, I’m afraid that’s part of the slings and arrows of doing anything, that happens, that’s life. I don’t think war is an acceptable reason, but again that’s part of the impact on inflation.

“I think basically what you are talking about is priority. What you’re left with is at some point after 2014, I suspect after 2016 when John Swinney stopped being finance secretary, but certainly after 2014, that other priorities became somehow more important.”

He said he does not know what these priorities were, but “somewhere the language of priority changed after 2014 and it became less of an overriding commitment”.

He added: “I’m not saying people wouldn’t want to do it, but other things must have impinged on the capital budget.”

He said in the case of the A9, the Scottish Greens do not bear a “heavy burden of responsibility” for the delay given that they were not in government until comparatively recently.

Mr Salmond also suggested bringing Mr Neil back as “some sort of tsar” to get transport projects he initiated back on course.

He said he hopes that now John Swinney is First Minister he will feel “duty and honour bound” to see the project through as he was “so intricately involved” in setting the commitments.