OWNERSHIP of Scotland's motorways and major roads will remain in Government hands even although those south of the Border face the prospect of a multibillion-pound sell-off, ministers have said.
Reacting to the semi-privatisation of England's trunk roads proposed by David Cameron yesterday, Transport Scotland, which owns and operates Scotland's trunk roads on behalf of ministers, said there were "no plans" to follow.
The Prime Minister said private-sector funding, including sovereign wealth funds and pension funds, could be tapped for investment in the upkeep of English roads, with a regulator created along the lines of Ofwat, which oversees water and sewerage providers, to maintain standards.
He has ruled out the possibility of road charging being used for the existing network but said new tolls could be introduced to pay for improvements. Money would be diverted from Vehicle Excise Duty to pay for the scheme.
Announcing a feasibility study by the Treasury and Department for Transport, Mr Cameron said England was "falling behind" in essen- tial infrastructure investments. He added: "There is now an urgent need to repair the decades-long degradation of our national infrastructure and to build for the future with as much confidence and ambition as the Victorians once did."
However, despite the road network in Scotland being in a worse condition than south of the Border, there appears to be less appetite to consider such a radical shake-up of ownership.
The spokeswoman for Transport Scotland said: "Scotland's trunk road network is devolved. The UK Government's plans would not apply to Scotland and the Scottish Government has no plans to privatise the road network."
Its stance was supported by Scottish Labour, whose spokeswoman for transport, Elaine Murray MSP, said the privatisation plans showed the Conservatives were "out of touch".
"It would be un-workable and unthinkable for the SNP to implement a similar scheme in Scotland, but the beauty of devolution is that we don't have to," she said.
A report by Audit Scotland last year found the cost of restoring Scotland's dilapidated roads to an acceptable condition would be £40,000 per kilometre.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article