Speech in the Scottish Parliament

5 February 2009

Investment in Schools (North Highland)

For the second time today, I find myself reflecting on my time at Highland Council.

I served on the council, as Jamie Stone did, and then as a Scottish Executive minister with responsibility for education and finance.

Over that time—25 years—I have had many interactions with the school building programme.

In the process of reflecting on those times, I hope to answer some of Rob Gibson's questions on why schools in the Highlands got into the condition they are in.

As I said in this morning's debate on borrowing powers for the Scottish Parliament, when I was a councillor our borrowing consents were extremely strictly controlled.

I watched, as did Jamie Stone and others on the council, the condition of our school stock decline faster than we could improve the schools.

We knew that it was happening, which is why we pleaded with the Government of the day—to no avail—for an increase in investment in schools that would have allowed us to undertake projects such as Wick high school, Farr high school and Thurso high school, which are still waiting in the queue.

We did not make the progress that we wanted to make, which left schools in a dreadful and declining condition.

A decade ago, Wick high school was by no means the worst, which demonstrates how bad the others were.

The visit that I and others paid to Wick last year illustrated that the physical condition of the school is appallingly poor.

It is among the worst that I have visited, although Farr high school is not far behind.

That is a dreadful legacy.

When I was Deputy Minister for Children and Education in the first session of the Parliament and, subsequently, Minister for Education and Young People, as well as when I was a finance minister, I had both the motivation and the opportunity to do something about the situation, because of my experience of watching the decline of the school estate in the Highlands.

I am proud of the fact that we created more than £5 billion-worth of investment in the period of our Administration.

Hundreds of schools were improved.

There are spanking new schools of the highest quality in Dingwall and Portree, and the primary schools in the Black Isle are of a similar standard.

The tragedy is that there are still schools of the condition of Wick, Farr and Thurso, to which Jamie Stone referred.

We can see the contrast between what was possible when we had a funding mechanism and what is not possible now, when we are struggling to find one.

Today, I calculated that in the past decade Highland Council had close to £200 million to spend on its school estate, compared with about £24 million in the equivalent period before that.

We have made progress.

We also provided more grant, rather than borrowing.

The prudential powers to which Jamie Stone and others have referred were designed to give councils more flexibility.

However, the funding that we provided was never going to be enough to overcome the legacy of decline, which is why the building programme needed to continue.

As the motion suggests, it is tragic to see the policy failure that the Scottish Futures Trust has been to date.

I sincerely hope that the trust will move forward, although I am sceptical about its ability to do so.

It is interesting to note that, if it is to move forward, it will do so on a PPP basis.

I am sorry that it has taken the Government so long to recognise that the Scottish Futures Trust is public-private partnership and to swallow that pill.

I do not care whether the trust uses the non-profit-distributing model—we approved the first such project.

The non-profit-distributing model is PPP and is no cheaper than other forms of PPP.

The important point is that we should make progress on the physical fabric of our schools, to provide the physical improvement that Wick and the other communities in the Highlands so desperately need.

I encourage the minister and her colleagues to redouble their efforts to bring that about.