By Bill Heaney
How’s your car faring in this cold and very wet winter? Have the potholes on West Dunbartonshire’s roads done for you with tyre punctures and even expensive to repair or replace wheels?
The SNP’s “contempt for, and betrayal of, motorists” is laid bare in “staggering” new research showing a 95-per-cent drop in spending on major road projects in the last six years.
Some of the worst road conditions are to be found on the Erskine Bridge, the A82 Glasgow-Loch Lomondside road through West Dunbartonshire into Argyll and Bute and the road to Stirling through Gartocharn going north.
Figures obtained by the Scottish Conservatives via a Freedom of Information request, reveal that Scottish Government investment on such projects fell from £502 million in 2016/17 to just £26 million in 2022/23.
The massive – and almost uninterrupted – erosion in spending on road infrastructure coincides with the period of SNP-Green collaboration, first with a ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement and then, after the Bute House Agreement, with a formal partnership.
The Nationalist coalition are coming under increasing criticism for their failure to upgrade key trunk routes, including the A9 and A96, and shadow transport minister Graham Simpson says the spending figures help explain these “pitiful delays”.
He insists the drastic reduction in road investment is proof that SNP policies are increasingly being dictated by the extremist agenda of their Green colleagues, who are expressly against the expansion of Scotland’s road capacity.
Graham Simpson, right, said: “The SNP have presided over a quite staggering fall in investment which indicates their complete contempt for, and betrayal of, Scotland’s motorists.
“They have abandoned all pretence of keeping their promises on upgrading vital routes, and instead pandered to the anti-car agenda of their extremist Green colleagues.
“These appalling figures explain the SNP’s pitiful delays in dualling the A9 and A96, which have so enraged people in rural Scotland who rely on these key trunk routes.
“Humza Yousaf had the cheek to claim in March that he was ‘baffled’ as to why the Nairn bypass had not been completed, when his government have decimated road spending.
“Their failure to provide the necessary investment in our roads betrays local communities, undermines Scotland’s future connectivity and endangers lives.
“And, as usual with this government, it’s rural and remote Scotland that suffers disproportionately from their failings.”
- The Scottish Government reduced major road project spending from £502,293,793.18 to £26,260,821.13 between 2016-17 and 2022-23.
What we are experiencing is UK decline.
It’s nonsense to say that everything is the SNP government’s fault. That treats the voters like morons.
The subsidiary Scottish Parliament is just that, subsidiary.
Britain is Bust. The elites have sucked it dry. Get used to it