Another item re the Scottish Parliament-surely Europe's most expensive building. The local interest is the MSP for East Lothian connection. He is also the local Laird. The article is from
The Scotsman
If Dewar was alive he would take blame, says McConnell HAMISH MACDONELL SCOTTISH POLITICAL EDITOR
DONALD Dewar would have accepted the blame for the mistakes made during the crucial early stages of the Holyrood project, Jack McConnell insisted yesterday. The First Minister told MSPs his predecessor would have "accepted responsibility" for the decisions he made as Scottish secretary and first minister before his death in 2000. Mr McConnell said Mr Dewar had been an honourable man and he added: "If Donald Dewar was here he would indeed have accepted responsibility, perhaps far more than he should have." The extent of Mr Dewar's culpability in the problems which have plagued the Holyrood project has been brought into sharp focus this week by the publication of Lord Fraser's report into the spiralling costs and delays to the parliament building. The Tory peer found that Mr Dewar was perfectly entitled to take the decision to choose the Holyrood site, to choose enrich Miralles as the architect and agree to a construction route which placed all the risk on the taxpayer. But Lord Fraser added that the former Scottish secretary had been wrong to take the decisions when it would have been "democratically correct" for him to have left these matters to MSPs. He also stressed that Mr Dewar's determination to get the building finished as soon as possible was based on the misguided fear that the Tories might win the 2001 election and repeal devolution, when there was not the slightest chance of this happening. These early decisions which shaped the Holyrood project, combined with the urgency Mr Dewar injected into the process, have been blamed by many for setting the parliament building on a downward spiral from which it has never recovered. David McLetchie, the Tory leader, raised this issue during First Minister's questions yesterday and demanded to know why ministers had failed to take responsibility for their actions. In a thinly-disguised reference to Mr Dewar, Mr McLetchie said ministers were ultimately to blame for taking "the crucial political decisions" on the site and the architect, for failing to ask the right questions of their civil servants and for continuing "to sign the blank cheques". He asked: "Will the First Minister therefore accept, given this litany of failure, the ministerial and collective responsibility of his party and his colleagues for these disastrous political decision?" Mr McConnell hit back, saying: "I think it is easy - I wouldn't go so far as to say cheap - it is easy to criticise someone who is not here to answer for themselves. But I think if Donald Dewar was here he would indeed have accepted responsibility, perhaps far more than he should have." He added that all four main political parties - Labour, the SNP, the Tories and the Lib Dems - had to accept their share of responsibility for the fiasco because all four parties had been on the Scottish Parliament Corporate Body - Holyrood's business team - since June 1999 when responsibility for the project passed from the former Scottish Office. Mr McConnell announced that he was prepared to accept his share of the blame and challenged his opponents to do likewise. "I am prepared to accept, have been all along, my share of that responsibility as an individual MSP," he said. "I accept fully my responsibility as First Minister to make sure this never happens again and to make sure Scotland can now move forward. "But Mr McLetchie, you and the Nationalists should accept your responsibilities. We were all involved in the decisions on this and we should all therefore learn the lessons from it." A spokeswoman for the Executive later tried to play down Mr McConnell's references to Mr Dewar, claiming the First Minister had been talking about "politicians generally". But this failed to deflect attention from Mr McConnells remarks because this is the first time - in public at least - that a senior Labour politician has appeared to lay any blame at Mr Dewar's door for the spiralling costs and delays which have bedeviled the project since its inception. However, party political members of the Holyrood Progress Group (HPG), who were heavily criticised by Lord Fraser, refused to follow Mr McConnell's advice and accept their share of the blame for any wrongdoing yesterday. Labour's
John Home Robertson, the convener of the HPG, said he hoped it was time to move on from the Holyrood saga and said the only thing he would apologise for was ensuring that the more expensive Scottish, rather than the cheaper Portuguese, granite was used to clad the building. One of his colleagues, Linda Fabiani, from the SNP, claimed the Holyrood project was already heading for disaster before the MSPs took over. She said: "The report is quite clear that the failure of the Holyrood project flows from flawed decisions while the project was under the control of the Scottish Office. "Lord Fraser is entirely right to conclude that by the time the project transferred to the parliament the wheels were already off and the project was out of control." She added: "The report confirms what has long been known - that the parliament was misled into accepting a project that had been pre-disastered
I am sure that Mr HR is right in saying that it is time to move on from the Holyrood Saga. Huttonian respectfully suggests that it might also appropriate not to embark upon another saga-that of affordable housing in the wrong place and quite likely not for the right people. It would be most unfortunate if the local community is to be 'misled into accepting a project that had been 'pre-disastered' **To echo and to Mersifie * Ms Fabiani's memorable phrase.
* Mersifie is not a proper word. Blog Ed.
** How about 'predisastered' then? Blog sub-ed
