Slim chance of Swinney support for tram expansion plan

John Swinney said dualling the A9 is so far behind schedule because £500 million was spent on Edinburgh’s tramsJohn Swinney said dualling the A9 is so far behind schedule because £500 million was spent on Edinburgh’s trams
John Swinney said dualling the A9 is so far behind schedule because £500 million was spent on Edinburgh’s trams
Our First Minister John Swinney has a long memory, and although 17 years is a long time to harbour a grudge, the scars of the Edinburgh tram project run deep.

He won’t need to go far to find sympathy in Edinburgh for the view that the scheme has been a massively expensive white elephant, but less so the argument he put up at First Minister’s Questions last week that the A9 dualling is so far behind because £500 million was spent on the Edinburgh trams.

Those awful Tory, Labour and Lib Dem MSPs ganged up on him back in 2007 when he was finance secretary in the minority SNP administration to force him to spend the money on trams when, he says, it was earmarked for the Highland highway, so it’s all their fault.

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He can honestly say he did not support the tram project back then – he told me as much at the time – and there was a strong argument that the now long forgotten Edinburgh Airport Rail Link was better value for money, but that’s politics.

What he conveniently forgot as he sought to deflect criticism last week, was that in recent years no party has been more enthusiastic about squandering millions more on expanding the capital’s light rail network than his own.

Throughout my time on Edinburgh City Council, the SNP’s support for the tram was unwavering, fully supported by their Labour administration colleagues, pressing ahead with the completion of the York Place-Newhaven line at a cost of at least £207m, not including the money already spent on preparatory works, the rolling stock and all the hardware.

It’s pushing it to claim that failure to upgrade a major trunk road is because of a one-off spending vote 17 years ago, and it’s as relevant to look at other spending choices the SNP has made in that time.

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Take the £900m a year it costs to cover university tuition fees for Scottish students, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies. Yes, the education budget is separate from transport, but nonetheless it’s as valid to ask what other choices the SNP could have made with approximately £14 billion ─ the cost of free tuition fees since the old graduate endowment system was scrapped in 2008 ─ as it is to blame current problems on historic decisions.

Whatever, but Mr Swinney’s attitude to Edinburgh trams is not just of academic interest, because to take the plan for a new line from Granton to the Bioquarter any further – which a brief report to next week’s transport company shows is still very much the council’s intention – will require the Scottish Government, through Transport Scotland, to put up £44m just to produce a final business case.

The council does not have the money, and a report in February this year accepted that financial constraints might get in the way. Having just overseen a £500m cut from his budgets, the chances of Mr Swinney allowing £44m to be spent on plans for a system he has never supported must be slim to non-existent.

On Monday some councillors may well talk about how important expanding the tram is for the city’s future, but how can spending upwards of £2bn Edinburgh doesn’t have, to shift people from excellent bus services, possibly be justified?

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