Queensferry Crossing debacle tells an all-too familiar tale of SNP failure – Gordon Lindhurst

As we hurtle towards the 2021 Scottish Parliamentary elections, I am delighted to have secured a new role as part of Jackson Carlaw’s team.

Working as the Shadow Minister for Business, Infrastructure and Transport is a huge privilege and I am looking forward to holding this failing SNP Government to account together with Shadow Cabinet colleague Dean Lockhart.

The situation of the Queensferry Crossing alone shows how the SNP Government has failed to manage large-scale projects in the right manner.

It is quite extraordinary to see how Nationalists, particularly online, come charging to the defence of this bridge with such passion as soon as motorists are unable to cross over it. If only they were as passionate about the failure to open the sick children’s hospital in this city for eight years, or the fact that the SNP Government continues to cut Edinburgh City Council’s budget, or the soaring drug deaths this country has seen over the last ten years.

Many motorists, myself included, were affected by the recent closure of the Queensferry Crossing, including a long detour. Although storm conditions played their part, the SNP Transport Secretary had the audacity to claim these sort of weather events were extremely rare in Scotland as he dithered and delayed about the installation of ice sensors on the crossing. Not a government focused on delivering infrastructure, but a government that has taken it’s eye well off the ball on a £1 billion project.

Look elsewhere across Scotland and it is the now familiar story of delays, cancellations and ongoing problems with infrastructure projects. Users of the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route wouldn’t hold back in telling you the delays they faced in its opening.

Under this SNP Government, Scotland’s economy has become sluggish and lacking in ambition. High-tax policies are hardly favourable to those wishing to come and set up business here and invest in jobs across our city.

The SNP talk a good game and are always keen on big announcements in relation to growth and business, but the reality of a £500 million growth scheme was that only £40m-worth of loans were delivered in the first two years. The same could be said of the digital growth fund, a most vital aspect of our industry supporting our infrastructure going forward. Yet the SNP only started releasing money for this scheme in June 2018, over 15 months after it was announced by the First Minister.

And the SNP Government continue to cut our councils to the bone. Edinburgh City Council alone has earmarked £88m-worth of cuts over the next three years, backed up by a proposed council tax rise this year of almost five per cent. This is no way to support councils or their vital role in providing the basic infrastructure we as a nation need.

Scotland needs better. We can have better. But the current government is failing. Failing at national and local level. Nowhere can that be more felt than on vital infrastructure projects right here in Lothian.

Gordon Lindhurst is a Conservative MSP for Lothian region