Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you, convener, and thank you for bringing me in. I wonder whether you can shed any light on this rather curious issue that I raised with the earlier witnesses. I am just looking for the exact reference.

A Government-initiated question was lodged on Monday afternoon in the name of Jim Fairlie MSP:

“To ask the Scottish Government when the new procurement for the dualling of the A9 between Tomatin and Moy will commence.”

As I am sure you are aware, the purpose of a Government-initiated question is to allow a statement to be made to Parliament, so such questions are lodged only when the statement is ready. Curiously, in this case—I have never come across this before—the question was not answered and it was withdrawn this morning, which is rather extraordinary. Can you shed any light on that?

Presumably, the process is that you publish a tender document, and then you have to wait for responses for a period.

But, clearly, the clock is ticking when it comes to getting the contract awarded by the end of the year, as was promised to the Parliament.

That helps with understanding the context, although we knew on Monday, when the question was lodged, that we did not have a transport minister. That is a matter for the Scottish Government; perhaps the committee can pursue that separately.

Can I follow up with the other question that I put to Mr Barn? We have gone through two new transport ministers, but when Jenny Gilruth was transport minister, she told Parliament at the beginning of the year that she hoped to make an announcement about the award of a contract for the Tomatin to Moy section by the end of this year. Mr Barn told us that, given the likely timescale, six months to award such a contract would be very tight. Are you in a position to tell us any more about the procurement process for that section?

Right. To go back to the conversation that we have just had with Mr Ewing about the type of contract, are you proceeding on the basis of the existing contract, or are you looking to adjust that for the Tomatin to Moy section?

Can you give us any indication of when you expect that to be done?

It sounds as though there is still a lot of work to be done before you put it out to tender.

Thank you, convener. I am particularly obliged to you for letting me in as I am not a member of the committee. I want to put a particular point to Mr Barn in this area. The petitioner made what I thought was a powerful comment earlier about the Tomatin to Moy section and the young man from Moray who tragically lost his life at Dalmagarry, just two weeks ago. We can only speculate what might have happened had progress been made on dualling that section instead of it being a single carriageway.

I just noticed that a Government-initiated question was lodged on Monday afternoon, in the name of Jim Fairlie. It reads:

“To ask the Scottish Government when the new procurement for the dualling of the A9 between Tomatin and Moy will commence”.

As you know, convener, a Government-initiated question is lodged when the Government wants to make an announcement to Parliament and it asks a back bencher to lodge a question that enables that to be done. Curiously, however, this question was not answered on Monday, and it has now been withdrawn, which suggests that an announcement might be imminent, but for some reason it is not yet ready to be made. That is a very curious issue, which perhaps we can explore further with Transport Scotland when it appears before the committee. However, as Mr Barn is here, I wanted to ask him whether he is aware of any moves by Government to advance the bidding process on that particular section, given that something appears to be happening in the background.

I have one follow-up question to that. If the intention was to award the contract by the end of this year, what is the reasonable last date at which a contract could have been put out to bid?