Many Scots will be scratching their heads over how building a new prison can possibly cost as much as £1 billion.
But that’s likely to be the final bill for the long-awaited replacement for the crumbling Barlinnie nick in Glasgow. The new jail is due to open in 2028 and will be 10 times as expensive as the first estimate that was floated to MSPs back in 2014.
It’s only the latest example of the SNP Government failing to keep costs down on a major public project. By far the most notorious example remains the two CalMac car ferries ordered in 2015 and supposed to be delivered by 2018.
One of the boats, Glen Sannox, finally began taking passengers last month on the route from Ayrshire to Arran. The other, Glen Rosa, remains at Fergusons shipyard in Port Glasgow. It’s due to be handed over in September – but shipyard bosses told MSPs yesterday that the deadline may have to be extended yet again.
The final bill for these two modest ferries is nearing £400m. They were supposed to cost a total of £97m.
SNP MSPs often bristle with irritation when the ferries are raised by opposition parties. There seems to be little interest among senior Government figures in admitting things went very wrong under their watch.
But a devil-may-care attitude to public spending has come to define the devolution era. One of the first acts of the SNP Government in 2007 was to try and get the Edinburgh Trams project scrapped, despite it being at an advanced stage.
When this failed, Alex Salmond’s administration told councillors they couldn’t rely on expert help from Transport Scotland. The end result was an expensive fiasco. But the trams have at least proved popular in the long-term.
Reforming public services is tricky, time-consuming and likely to upset vested interests. Chucking money at the problem is much more straightforward.
The NHS in Scotland will receive more than £21 billion in the next financial year alone. Will waiting times be reduced significantly as a result? We’ll see.
The Scottish Parliament building is a monument in itself to the extravagant spending of taxpayers’ money. Scottish Labour, when it still held power, foolishly tried to pretend it could be constructed for as little as £40m. In the end it cost £414m.
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