Report to the People
9th June 2003
The Price of Poor Planning
I
am sure that, as The Queen addressed the Scottish Parliament last week, a slight
edge crept into her voice when she reminded us that we will soon be neighbours.
Perhaps
she was gently making it clear that, when we arrive at our new home next to
It
seems, though, that she needn’t have any immediate worry.
The latest disgraceful revelations about the cost of the new Scottish
Parliament building mean that MSPs will not be decamping to Holyrood for a while
yet.
I knew something was wrong on
Thursday afternoon when, along with the other members of the Scottish
Parliamentary Corporate Body, I was summoned to the Presiding Officer’s room
at the back of the Chamber.
But I wasn’t expecting
this. Parliament officials, he told
us, had just received word that the cost of the new building is set to rise to
£375 million. This is £37 million
more than the already steep £338 million which, only four months ago, we were
promised was the final projected cost.
How this could be allowed to
happen is, frankly, beyond me. What
has happened in the last four months? Why
did no-one notice sooner? What,
exactly, do we pay “cost consultants” for?
These are just some of the
questions to which I will be demanding answers when the key members of the
design and construction team appear before the Corporate Body tomorrow.
Presiding Officer, George Reid, has already instructed them to produce a
full breakdown of the reported costs, which I am sure will make interesting
reading.
But we must also, I believe,
look beyond this particular problem. We
need to ask why this whole project was built on the shaky foundations of, shall
we say, debatable contracts. Why
did the public purse sustain so much risk? Where are the checks and balances? And why do we, the government, seem to be in such a
relatively weak position?
Serious questions have to be
asked about those who drew up this contract and about how contracts for public
building works are drawn up in the future. If government officials are not the best people to write,
monitor and enforce such contracts, then perhaps they should take a back seat
and leave the job to the professionals.
I
firmly believe that the new Scottish Parliament will be a building of which we
can truly be proud. But, unless we
learn lessons from its construction, that pride will, sadly, be tarnished.
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