Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill: Stage 3 3 February 2010

Point of Order

Charlie Gordon (Glasgow Cathcart) (Lab): On a point of order, Presiding Officer. The Glasgow airport rail link project was approved by the Glasgow Airport Rail Link Act 2007, with an accompanying financial memorandum giving project costs as £160 million at 2004 prices. Expenditure on GARL in the current financial year was approved by Parliament last year.

In his ministerial statement of 17 September 2009, John Swinney announced the cancellation of GARL, and subsequent parliamentary answers have confirmed the cancellation of works on the GARL programme for the current financial year. In December, I asked John Swinney:

"By what authority has the Scottish Government cancelled current-year expenditure on the GARL branch line to Glasgow airport, given that the project was approved by an act of Parliament and that the current spend was approved last year by the Parliament?"

John Swinney replied:
"The Government has taken decisions in the context of the budget that we have available, which gives a capability to spend to certain maximums under particular budget headings. If any change is to be made, it can be made either at the autumn budget revisions, which have now been approved by Parliament, or at the spring budget revisions, which have yet to be considered by Parliament."—[Official Report, 17 December 2009; c 22348.]

However, Mr Swinney did not seek approval to alter GARL expenditure through the autumn budget revision procedure. Is it in order for the Scottish Executive to cancel project expenditure that has been expressly approved by the Parliament prior to seeking the approval of the Parliament?

The Presiding Officer (Alex Fergusson): I am grateful to Mr Gordon for giving me prior notice of his point of order. That is courteous and welcome—thank you for that. I confirm that this is a genuine point of order. I point out, however, that transport and works private bills provide only parliamentary authority for the building of such projects; it is up to the promoter and/or the Government to decide whether to proceed. Therefore, the actions that were carried out by the Government were in order in that instance.

16:11
Charlie Gordon (Glasgow Cathcart) (Lab): Four times a month, I have what I call my reality check when I hold my surgery. I meet people and listen to them. At the moment, what comes up time and again is that people are worried about their jobs and their homes. I am not putting myself above any other MSP, but I try to keep those things at the front of my mind when I come to the Parliament, to see whether I can do something to address people's concerns.

Col 23400
On the atmosphere in the chamber today, too many games are being played by too many MSPs who are thinking about the forthcoming Westminster general election. I want to return to the theme of jobs and homes. What can we do to address those issues? Others have said what they think we should do on the homes front. I want to concentrate on how we can support existing jobs and perhaps create some new ones.

It seems to me that two of the best things that the public sector can do on the jobs agenda are to develop skills and to develop infrastructure. Labour in the Scottish Parliament has an honourable track record in moving forward the skills agenda. When it comes to infrastructure, I would argue that transport is particularly significant in economic development. I do not think that the budget that is before us is a particularly good one for transport. Under quite a few headings there is a standstill sum or a reduction. My experience has been that politicians of all stripes buy into transport investment in principle, but when it comes to practice, especially if they perceive that money is tight, other priorities sometimes elbow transport to one side.

The Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change (Stewart Stevenson): Does the member welcome in particular the double-figure numbers of apprentices who have been employed on the M74 and M80 projects and the consistent use of projects to draw new people in and create new skills as a positive way in which to create jobs for the future?

Charlie Gordon: The minister makes my point for me. One reason why I believe that transport infrastructure should be pushed forward is precisely that it can bring those wider benefits. I have seen them, and I have taken my hat off, on the record, to John Swinney for committing to the completion of the M74, for example, so it is not a case of not giving credit where it is due.

However, transport is long term, it is strategic, it is linked to land use, and it has to be supported by coherent arrangements, such as Scottish transport appraisal guidance appraisals to assess project ideas. We have a list of strategic transport projects and the national planning framework. The 14 projects, which include the Glasgow airport rail link, are so significant to Scotland that the Scottish Government will deal with them under special planning arrangements. So we should hear no more talk of GARL, for example, being a purely parochial concern. In changing transport priorities, we must respect those processes and Parliament itself. We should not take short-termist decisions on transport without making information and the criteria used available.

Patrick Harvie: Will the member give way?
Col 23401
Charlie Gordon: No, I have already taken an intervention. I want to move on.
GARL is not simply a Labour shibboleth. Derek Brownlee, clearly daunted by the prospect of finding £11 million a year for GARL for 30 years out of a budget of £35 billion—in other words, 0.03 per cent of the budget—tried to sow some parochial seeds. In fact, he expressed some anti-Glasgow sentiment by suggesting that, given the chance, Labour would somehow do away with Aberdeen western peripheral route and the Borders rail link. That is a red herring; Labour supports those projects.

Derek Brownlee: Will the member give way?
Charlie Gordon: No. The member would not take my intervention.
Too many members have suggested that GARL is purely a Glasgow project. I am not a Glasgow parochialist, but I plead guilty to being a Glasgow patriot. Moving on from the debate about the country's interests—and I repeat that GARL is a national project—I think that other Glasgow MSPs should emulate Kenny Gibson MSP. I am talking not about his contribution to today's debate but about the principled stand that he took some years ago on another extremely controversial measure—the Glasgow housing stock transfer. I believe that I am right in saying that, at the time, Mr Gibson was the SNP housing spokesperson—he was certainly a Glasgow list MSP—and he said, rightly, that the stock transfer was a good thing for the city. For that, he was punished by some in his own party.

Sometimes we have to stop playing games in this chamber and refocus on ordinary people's concerns, which, as I said, are about their homes and their jobs. We have to do the right thing. There is no doubt about it: as far as the jobs agenda is concerned, the Government's own established methodologies show that one of the best things that we can do for Scotland is to reinstate GARL.