 I welcome everyone to the seventh meeting in 2016 of the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee. Everyone present is reminded to turn off mobile phones as they affect the broadcasting system. As meeting papers are provided in digital format, you may see tablets being used during the meeting. We have received apologies from Siobhan McMahon. Agenda item one, subordinate legislation. The first item on the agenda is to take evidence on the draft procurement Scotland regulations 2016. I welcome Keith Brown, Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Investment and Cities, Alasdair Hamilton, policy manager, Scottish Procurement and Commercial Directorate, Susan Duncan, policy manager, Scottish Procurement and Commercial Directorate and Mark Richard, solicitor all at the Scottish Government. This instrument is laid under affirmative procedure, which means that the Parliament must approve it before the provisions can come into force. Following this evidence session, the committee will be invited at the next agenda item to consider a motion to approve the instrument. Alongside consideration of this instrument, the committee will also have an opportunity to hear from the cabinet secretary about the full package of subordinate legislation associated with procurement reform. Can I invite the cabinet secretary to make an opening statement introducing the instrument and other measures associated with public procurement reform? Thank you very much, convener, and thanks for the opportunity to discuss with the committee the changes being implemented. I know that there is a substantial raft of changes to public procurement legislation in Scotland. Today, of course, is mainly to look at the procurement Scotland regulations, although it is difficult to talk about that instrument without also touching on the other regulations that we have recently introduced. Those include the public contract regulations 2015, on which the committee has recently written to me, the utilities contract Scotland regulations 2016 and the concession contract regulations 2016, and which transpose new EU procurement directives, as well as, just to add to that, the new statutory guidance provided for in the 2014 procurement reform Scotland Act 2014. Between February and April last year, we consulted on our plans on how best to transpose those directives and how to implement the provisions of the act. When I appeared before the committee last June, convener, I stated that our intention was to ensure that changes would be as simple and as easy to follow as we could make them and that we were also seeking to avoid where possible one set of rules applying to larger value contracts and a different set of rules applying to lower value contracts. I also said that respondents to our consultation seemed, for the most part, to have agreed with our proposed way forward. The regulations that we have laid have therefore been drafted on that basis, very much following feedback from that consultation exercise. The responses have helped to shape the statutory guidance that arises from the reform act. Throughout 2015, we also engaged with a wide range of stakeholders to help to develop the content of that statutory guidance. I gave a commitment to fast-track the publication of statutory guidance that covered fair work practices and procurement, including the living wage. I published that on 6 October, with the changes coming to effect on 1 November. I am to publish the remainder of the suite of guidance by the end of February. The Procurement Scotland regulations 2016 that you have been considering on your committee implement the remaining provisions of the Procurement Reform Scotland Act 2014. They should help to ensure that procurement processes and procedures found in the public contract regulations and under the act will be broadly similar, which will allow for consistency and clarity. We received a number of requests to allow a reasonable period of time for the procurement community to make necessary changes to their internal processes and procedures. For that reason, although I am laying the regulations now, they will, for the most part, enter into force on 18 April two years after they were required to do so, or two years being paid in which they have to be done. That is the same date on which the regulations transposing the EU directives will enter into force. The gap between laying the regulations and them coming to force will allow time for changes and provide time to roll out training for purchasers on the changes to procurement rules. As part of the transitional arrangement, I have delayed the date that public bodies need comply with both the sustainable procurement duty and the community benefits obligation until 1 June. That recognises that those will be normally considered as part of a purchase of procurement strategy and that strategies may be devised some months in advance of the procurement starting. I have also delayed the date by which public bodies must publish their procurement strategies. Nobody will be required to produce a strategy before 31 December this year. I know that the committee has some questions on the treatment of tax in those regulations. I have seen comment to the effect that there is no reference to or substantial actions on tax dodging in those regulations. That is categorically not the case. The procurement Scotland regulations 2016, the public contract Scotland regulations, utility contracts Scotland regulations and the concessions contracts regulations all contain provision that can see businesses that have not paid their taxes excluded from the bidding process. For higher value contracts it will be a legal obligation on public bodies to exclude a business where the non-payment has been established by a judicial or administrative decision. Public bodies can still go further and exclude a supplier where the non-payment has been established by other appropriate means. Although the body in that instance will be able to reach a decision whether to exclude based upon all the relevant facts available to it, it will not be the case that the Scottish Government nor the guidance can anticipate what all those facts will be in advance and in every case. That provision is also the case for lower value contracts, that is those ones governed by the procurement Scotland regulations. Having said that, I will not go into further detail at this stage, but there are other issues where we have carefully weighed up the argument, such as on tackling blacklisting, reserving participation in competitions to mutuals or reserving participation in competitions to supported businesses, as now defined in the new EU directives, and how to ensure that contract award criteria can take account of social considerations. On those two last points I have written to the commission seeking clarification, and we still await a response from the commission. In conclusion, I welcome the opportunity to engage with the committee again, and I am happy to try to address any questions or concerns that you may have. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary, for that very helpful opening statement. The Scottish Government published its procurement policy note on 18 December of 2015, and, as you have already alluded to, the set of regulations seeks to transpose the EU procurement directive into Scots law. Given that Europe seems to be the dominant issue in the news at the moment, do you have any assessment of what the impact of what is commonly referred to as Brexit would be on the whole process of transposing EU procurement directives into Scots law? I must say that I did not expect that question, but perhaps I should have done it. It is perfectly topical and very relevant. The situation just now is that, obviously, those directives and a huge number of other directives bind us in what we do in public authorities in many respects. If we suddenly did not have to do that, you could maybe say in the one hand that we have all this new freedom to do as you would wish to do without those constraints. By and large, as my view, those constraints are there for a good purpose. That ensures that we go through a fair and transparent process in relation to procurement, and we take in, as far as we are able, to other considerations in terms of social and socioeconomic impacts, as well as making it a clean, as I say, fair process. To suddenly not have that or not be bound by that, I think, would be a very difficult situation. Also, if you think about the amount of training that is required, the amount of investment that is made by public bodies and ensuring that they comply with those regulations, it would undermine all that investment that has been made. I think that we benefit greatly from it. Of course, what it does is that if we make sure that our provisions are fair and transparent, it allows us to properly engage our suppliers and contractors in Scotland to properly engage with other parts of the EU. I am not sure that they would be so keen to allow us to do that if we were not complying with the same kind of rules that they were. I think that it would introduce an element of uncertainty and perhaps make much less level the playing field on which purchasing currently takes place, and I would suggest that we should not do that. That is very helpful, cabinet secretary. You said that there had been a period of about two years since the Procurement Reform Scotland act had been passed, the consultation exercise and the development of statutory guidance and the roll-out of that in terms of dates for its implementation. I am sure that there are very good reasons why there has been that delay. We do not want to say a little bit more about why it has taken this length of time. Presumably one of the issues that you mentioned about training for purchasers and getting that right is something that we would all be keen to see. You could have taken the approach that the UK Government has taken in relation to some of that and what is called just copying out the regulations as they come from the commission. We have taken a different approach when we have gone for substantial consultation. As you say, there are also other considerations that allow bodies to prepare themselves for this coming. Whether it is in relation to training on the changes to legislation, that is a key area. We have worked quite closely in partnership with stakeholders and have produced a comprehensive training package that covers all the main changes. It is also true to say that the material that is produced as a result of that is available free to anybody to use. Regarding suppliers, our activity has been informed by the procurement supplier group that has representative membership interests. We are working on a range of measures updating the advertising tools that are used by suppliers to bid for public contracts. The procurement journey, which is a web-based support tool, is also being updated. We are also working in partnership with the supplier development programme, a third-party organisation, in order to develop, going even further than the web-based materials and the other free materials, a series of roadshows that are planned for suppliers. In addition to that, we have had face-to-face training sessions in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness, and we are hoping to have events in Shetland and Orkney. I think that that underlines why it is why it takes some time to do this, to try to make sure that you bring stakeholders with you to have that consultation and through training and providing as much advance notice as possible to make sure that both suppliers and public bodies are as ready as they can be. I think that that vindicates taking the time that we have done. What do you think the key advantages will be all the different areas of reform that are being introduced? There are a number of changes from what has happened before. It is probably a whole host, but it helps to... In one sense, there is more regulation there, which is building on previous regulation, but some of it makes things more transparent, easier to understand. I mentioned an opening statement, the attempts that we have made to try to get consistency and clarity on those things, but right the way through there are a number of different things that would apply. For example, the change in terms of supported businesses making it a broader definition in relation to that is something that, if we treat it in the right way, is an advance on where we were before. I mentioned also an opening statement, some of the ways in which we can arm public bodies to take decisions. For example, if a supplier has not been paying tax or complying with environmental legislation or if it has been involved in blacklisting, I think that those things mark progress on where we are before. Right the way through the different provisions, I think that there are substantial new benefits, and that has not come out of the blue, the commission, whatever they are, sometimes accused of, do sit and ponder these things, and they also are approached both on the supplier side and also by public authorities. So, I think that what they have produced has been reflective of that, and we are just trying to see that through to make things a bit more clear and consistent. OK, thank you. I am going to hand over to Mike Mackenzie. Thank you, convener. I think that, cabinet secretary, good morning. I think that you have kind of anticipated the questions that I had in mind to ask, but I wonder if you just touched briefly on the different approach that the Scottish Government has taken compared to the rest of the UK and possibly also other parts of Europe. Could you just perhaps explain a wee bit more on that particular issue? I think that the most substantial difference, certainly between the Scottish Government and the UK Government, was this idea that we did not simply go to copy out, as it is called, just replicate the regulations as they came to us. We have taken the approach based on the Scottish model of procurement, and that seeks to balance out cost, quality and sustainability. I think that I am right in saying that, down south, you may very often be able to award contracts on the basis of price alone, whereas we have taken a different approach and made sure that quality is always part of that picture, although it varies the extent to which the balance is drawn. It is why the reform act introduces a sustainable procurement duty and a requirement to consider community benefits in major contracts. It is something that we have used for some time, but it takes it a stage further. Other member states have asked about them as well. They have national legislation on lower value procurement, but they have tended to simply extend the provisions in the EU directives. We have tried to introduce a more sensitive regime, but with a stronger focus on sustainability and organisational strategies for higher spending bodies and performance reporting. I will give another example to try to help the UK regulations, or, unlike the UK regulations, that we propose to make a requirement that any company that admits that it has blacklisted workers or has been found to have breached blacklisting legislation will be barred from bidding for public contracts. That is one example of who we have taken a different approach from, in this case, the UK. I am very glad in particular to hear you talk about community benefit as a consideration and quality as opposed to just price. I am sure that you will know and that many of us experience frequent complaints from suppliers and contractors who feel excluded by the current procurement process. It often strikes me that companies that miss out on procurement tend to be not those who are the worst suppliers or the best or the worst contractors, but sometimes those who are not best at procurement and how they engage with that. I am very pleased to hear you talking about training and going out to areas as far as I feel disorderly. Do you feel that it is a notoriously complex area? Do you feel that there is perhaps a degree of simplification, or will training allow smaller and more local suppliers and contractors the benefit of better understanding the procurement process and therefore not feeling as excluded as they do presently? First of all, you have to see whether the procurement regulations and the substantial body of regulations there now are there for a good purpose. I think that they are. If that is the case, then you are quite right to say that they can become quite complex. It can present a bigger challenge for a smaller company than it will for a larger company. I understand that. I do not think that that means that we should not have that body of procurement regulation that is there. The only way that you can remedy that is to give as much assistance as possible through training—I have mentioned face-to-face discussions as well. I also think that you have to be proportionate. Depending on the contract that you have, you have to make the procurement environment the context in which people bid proportionate to the size of the contract as possible. We are trying to do that—the division between higher-value contracts that I have mentioned and the lower-value contracts. You are right that the broader definition of sustainability has to be one that includes a healthy, small and medium enterprise sector. For a long time, under the old PFI regime, I was constantly being, as a local councillor, approached by bodies companies that felt that they had no chance to compete for those large PFI contracts because of all the different legal and financial expertise that was required. I think that, both through the regulations and through things such as the portal for applying for contracts—public contracts—we have tried to simplify that. I am sure that we are not at the end point of that. It will be a constant attempt to try to make it as easy as possible, as appropriate and as proportionate as possible to the contracts that we are doing. However, in large, it is right to have those regulations in place, and we should make it as easy as possible for people to comply with it. I wonder if you could share with the committee further details of the proposals for training and training meetings and so on, because I am sure that that would be of particular interest to suppliers across Scotland. I have mentioned what we have done and where we have done it. If you like, I am happy to provide the committee in writing with more detail about all that training that we have been doing. Do Orkney Shetland Ones are still not finalised, but perhaps as soon as we get that, I can share that with the committee in writing a letter to what we have been doing. Inevitably, there will be cost implications in dealing with and conforming to the new regulations. Where that relates to public bodies and third sector organisations, will they just have to absorb those extra costs? Is there any way in which they can be provided with some support to overcome the transition and the on-going costs? Going back to the answer, I have just given to Mike Mackenzie. I think that the training seeks to help to achieve that, to make it as easy as possible for contractors to do that. However, the procurement legislation on which the regulations are built have been in place for many years now. In fact, the first directive goes back to 1971, and it is now 10 years since we have had our own procurement legislation giving effect to the EU directives. The main instrument that we have introduced, which is the Public Contract Scotland Regulations, is the replacement for the Public Contract Scotland Regulations 2012. The 2016 one was replaced once from 2012 as well. Any cost implications for buyers and suppliers who are the object of your question under the new regime should not be any different to what they have had before. That does not mean that we should not always try to concentrate on how we can minimise them. In terms of the impact under the Reform Act, the aim has been to embed the use of systems and policies that have already been put in place. We are not trying to bring in new things and new requirements that require wholesale changes to what is currently there. A lot of that is building up on that. That has been taken account. Going back to my previous point, I think that, to be fair to the commission, I will also take that into account when it comes up with those proposals, what we are seeking to do is to try to build that through to what we are doing. Going back to the previous point, the contract opportunities that we want to try to make sure are available to companies. We want to make sure that they are transparent, readily accessible for SMEs and the third sector. That means that procurement, the idea of sustainable procurement in its broadest sense, can be achieved if we do that, so that we have a healthy mix and real competition. It is the case that there are costs attached to that. There is no doubt about that. It is probably also the case that we can continue to try to reduce the costs of that. I think that companies themselves will do that as they become more aware and more expert over time, and we can help with that in terms of the training that we have offered. You mentioned the time of being one of the themes that had come out in the consultation and the adaptations that you have made to the introduction and timing of it, but were there any other themes to emerge during the Government's consultation? Yes, a number. I think that some of which I would have mentioned at the previous meeting of the committee, but what surprised us is that the proposals that we made were, I think, in every case, bar 1 supported by the consultees around 80 to 90 per cent, sometimes 96 per cent of consultees accorded. Those were on things like allowing the maximum possible discretion for lower-value contracts. That was something where that was probably the predominant theme that came out, which was that the public bodies wanted to have the maximum amount of discretion. In some cases, in fact, in the vast majority of cases, we have agreed with that. In one case, I have mentioned blacklisting. We have gone further perhaps in consultees that we want to have done. However, I think that that would probably be the predominant theme. I do not know if one of the officials, in fact, somebody has never been to commit before, might want to say something about that. That is Susan Duncan. That would be the main theme, but do you want to say it? That is all right, convener. Having a secretary, yes, absolutely consistency and proportionality was very much the key theme, but from various sectors, local authorities, for example, were really keen that we did not add any new bureaucracy or additional burdens on them, which is why, through our legislation and statutory guidance, it was important that we took that proportionate approach to allow them to make the decisions that were relevant for their particular organisation in their area. NHS bodies, interestingly and generally, the theme there was about some more guidance on procedural rules. Again, that is where we have adapted a procurement journey as a tool to assist the buyers and also suppliers with regards to how the new rules apply in practice. An interesting third sector organisation and union representatives raised the issue of living wage, which, of course, we have been able to tackle quite significantly, really, through our legislation and our statutory guidance. That was a very comprehensive answer, thank you very much. Cabinet Secretary, you mentioned blacklisting and given that the convener opened the door in this issue earlier on, do you have any concerns about whether there was a Brexit, as it is called, and given the travel of the UK Government in relation to anti-trad union legislation, have you got concerns about what the impact would be for some of the protection that you have been able to put in place if the UK were to leave Europe? My main concern is that we know the situation and the way in which, over recent years, European regulations have allowed us to increasingly focus on those things, such as blacklisting. As Susan mentioned, in relation to the living wage as well, we cannot quite go. The last time that the committee discussed at some length the idea of whether we could impose a living wage, and the conclusion is certainly mine, I think that perhaps the committee's was that it is because we have the national minimum wage legislation in the UK that actually prevents us from imposing the living wage regulations. The interesting thing is that, if there was no national minimum wage, we could actually do that, because there is a national minimum wage set too low in our view for a living wage. We cannot do that. However, what you have seen over recent years is the EU trying to come to terms with those things. Now, some people will think that they should not be involved in that, and that is not right, and it is a constraint. We are very preoccupied on that issue of the living wage. Can we just be clear that that situation that you have outlined in relation to the restrictions that apply would be the case, regardless of whether the minimum wage was devolved or reserved? If there is, my understanding of the European legislation, if there is by a body, whether regional or national, as they would call it, stipulates a minimum wage, that does not allow you to separately set another constraint of a living wage as my understanding of it. In fact, there is a recent German ruling that points up that particular situation. However, to come back to the point, I think that we have moved towards that. If there was to be a Brexit, then it is just a lack of certainty that that would continue. I probably share your view that we do not have the same view on anti-trade union legislation that the UK Government has, and if we were at the mercy of the UK Government alone in relation to that, then I think that would be extremely worrying. Alex Rowley. We have heard about the consultation, but can you tell us a bit about how buyers and suppliers have reacted to the new rules as they have come forward? Basically, are they content with what has come forward? As I said before, the consultation process allowed us to talk also to suppliers, and I have mentioned the different forums in which we had that engagement. Throughout that process, we have engaged with them. It has included networked events, existing strategic forum meetings and individual meetings. They have made consistent references, as Susan was saying before, to the need for flexibility to consistency and proportionality. I think that we can agree with them on that. I can see the logic that we have regularly outwith the process, discussions with suppliers, and that is what they want to know. What is there is going to be there consistently. They want to know that what has been asked of them is proportionate to what they are undertaking. I understand that. I also want to have the maximum possible flexibility. Training has also been very important. We put in place measures to meet that demand for training. We are also in discussion with the supplier development programme to see what support we might be able to offer in respect of further training for suppliers. I think that we have been going with the grain of what suppliers have said. It is how we have approached the drafting of the regulations and the preparation of the statutory guidance. There are about to be things on which we disagree, but I think that we have worked with the grain of what they have asked for in this case. Good morning, cabinet secretary. I am particularly interested in the area of supported businesses. You mentioned them in your opening remarks. I recall when we were scrutinising the legislation two or three years back, there were quite a number of discussions about how best we can support supported businesses. A lot of public bodies did not go out of their way to do that. I was interested to note that you had some resistance to what you were proposing. Would you like to flesh that out a little bit for us and why you think that this is a step forward that you are taking in terms of support for supported businesses? I think that it is often the case that sometimes one person's opportunity is perceived as another person's threat. I think that what has happened in relation to moving to, for example, the definition of a disadvantaged person. Some people have seen the potential ambiguity in that as a potential threat. To be honest, I think that the bigger issue in my experience and outwith even this process is really a bit of awareness. Obviously, some companies would not like a situation where a process is ring-fence for only supported businesses. They would have a commercial interest, and they would not like to see that. That is bound to happen. We have seen some traffic in relation to that. They say that it is a missed potential opportunity for them. Much more than that, my impression is that so many businesses—and it is true also sometimes in public authorities—are unaware of the opportunities that they can access through supported businesses. The supported business sector has a job work to do to make sure that what it is able to offer is much more widely known. Perhaps the biggest issue was the perceived ambiguity of the move to having the need for 30 per cent of the workforce made up of disabled or disadvantaged people. Even that can be an ambiguous term, but people have a broad understanding of that disadvantage. It provides some more ambiguity and we have sought to address that in the regulations. That is probably the main gripe, if there has been one, about supported businesses or disadvantaged groups. In terms of evaluating the impact of the legislation, will you be able to do that in terms of the number of contracts that are awarded to supported businesses and the like? Has that something that can be monitored or does it go along? Yes, we do that. It then becomes a question of what you do if it is not having the design of the effect. I have a feeling that that will rest, as I have said, outwith what regulations you can bring in and much more to do with trying to proselytise with different organisations. I do not know if you want to say something else about that, Susan. Can you just add to that? Under the Scottish legislation under the Precurement Reform Scotland Act 2020, there are two areas there. There is the requirement for buying organisations to think about sustainable procurement duty. Part of that is how they can facilitate access to SMEs, third sector, but also supported businesses. There is a genuine requirement, but there is also a requirement for them to report annually as a result of the procurement strategy commitments and how they have met those obligations. It will provide an ideal opportunity for us to monitor compliance with that and whether we are increasing the use of supported businesses. I think that incidentally it is true to say that much of what we are proposing in the regulations are things that we would want to have a look at in due course in relation to whether it is blacklisting or whether it is in relation to some of the other tax avoidance issues. We do have opportunities to come back and revise that in the light of experience and we will be looking to do that, so to monitor all the different aspects of it, including the one that you have mentioned. David Cymru, you touched in your opening remarks, cabinet secretary, about tax avoidance and you obviously had looked at the official records last time round when I raised that particular point. Could you give the committee an estimate of how much money is lost in Scotland every year because of tax avoidance? No, we are not in that sense, we don't collect corporates and tax, we don't have that responsibility. I'm not aware of it, I don't know if any of the officials would have that information. You'd be familiar, of course, with the excellent campaign being ran by organisations such as Christian Aid, STUC and Unite Scotland. The figure that they've come up with for the UK is £25 billion that it lost per year, and a rough estimate would be around £2.5 billion in Scotland, an immense sum of money. Particularly with the new tax powers, has the Scottish Government applied techniques to try and estimate tax avoidance? It's obviously very difficult to work out how much you're not getting, but clearly you can do some estimates. That's something that you can look at, particularly with large organisations that have a global reach, which perhaps do an excellent job in Scotland like Amazon, but clearly there's been criticism about tax avoidance that they're paying. Is this something that the Scottish Government will look at in the future? It would be the responsibility of John Swinney to look at that, not my responsibility. I agree with what Mr Stewart says, that those huge companies that seem to manage to determine their own tax rates offend the public perception. It's a very serious issue, of course, that, again, will not be the responsibility of this Parliament any time soon in terms of corporation tax. What we've tried to do in terms of coming back to the regulations for a second is to give the opportunity for public bodies who are aware of certainly illegal activities to take action and preclude companies like that from competition if they're aware of that, if they have the evidence to suggest that. I think that that's an important step forward. In the last 12 months, could the cabinet secretary identify how many companies were excluded from public procurement because of tax avoidance? No, we don't keep records of every contract done by every public authority, so we wouldn't have that information. We provide the basis of the regulations and the environment, but we do not have the details of every public authority's contracts with different companies. You will know the Scottish Government procurement companies, though. You're responsible for the Scottish Government. How many Scottish Government contracts did you exclude companies because of tax avoidance? I would ask the officials if they've got any. I don't have any knowledge of that at all. I'm not aware that we routinely measure that information. We can certainly take it away and we can get it back to you. I will guess that would zero be close to the mark. I wouldn't much speculate. Could you provide that material to the committee? If the information is not being kept, could you suggest that the cabinet secretary is kept because clearly he can't monitor what you don't know? It's obviously a huge issue. Can you ask a few words of any? As we've said, we're asking the questions. I think that it's just important to identify. We have some information on that. I would just through the campaign, but I would be really interested if you could identify if the Scottish Government excluded any companies because of tax avoidance, because you mentioned rightly at the start that you had a strong philosophical opposition to this, and I appreciate that comments. But in the end of the day, it's actions that count, and it's clearly very important that we try to look at this. I would certainly appreciate the cabinet secretary if he could supply the committee with that information. My final point is looking at further reforms to come in the public procurement regime. Can I raise just one issue that, certainly, Mr Richard, I know is interested in? When I went to Brussels last year in the Marine division, they mentioned that the new procurement regulations—which, obviously, affect all European countries, particularly what's happening here in Scotland—are what they would call tackle-friendly. For those who have not come across that obscure regulation, it's basically the occasional opportunity for where public bodies can avoid procurement for very good reasons, which I won't bore the committee or witnesses with. The officials made it quite clear to me that the new regulations were tackle-friendly, in other words, that it made it easier for not just the Scottish Government, but local authorities as well. In the very rare, I appreciate opportunities when the tackle is apparent that these procurement regulations help. Is the cabinet secretary aware of that? If not, perhaps he could perhaps do a note back to the committee on whether the new regulations are more tackle-friendly than the previous regime? Yes, he will do that note. We are aware of the extent to which the regulations directly change that, although I do not think that it does change it to a substantial extent. However, just to come back to my previous point, and I will do it by, without making it a question, if that helps, I think that any individual or public body that has information on tax-evolving companies really should pass that information on. I would hope that anybody, especially somebody who is making that point, might have that information. We would pass it to the Government or the relevant public authorities so that we can take that information on board. I am happy to write to the committee on the points that were raised in the previous question and the relation to the question. I am not aware of any contract. Obviously, I do not have an encyclopediaic knowledge of all the contracts where that would have a material effect just now, but some of you want to bear in mind in the future. I am not expecting the cabinet secretary to have an encyclopediaic knowledge. That is why I asked if he could write back to the committee. I am merely making the point for going back to the previous question. I do not doubt the cabinet secretary's principal stance on tax avoidance. I am really saying that what is needed then is action. The first thing that he needs to do is have a system of recording that. I am not expecting the cabinet secretary to know what local authority contracts have been rejected because of tax avoidance, but I would expect the Scottish Government to make a note of tax avoidance exclusions for its own contracts. That is a reasonable point, perhaps not one for the cabinet secretary, but one in the corporate way through other members of the cabinet. That is a fair and reasonable point. Obviously, I do not have inside information on contract awards. I am merely making the point that we are taking evidence from you. I was merely asking that you responded to that. I welcome your comments on the technical exemption. My information came from the European Commission, but clearly you have a view on that as well. I can also just say that there are a couple of contracts, more recent contracts, which have come up on the issue of tax avoidance evasion. It is when a company will be doing something that is illegal, when that issue has been raised—I am not naming the contract just now, but that issue has been raised—and we have investigated that and found that there is no legal activity that has not taken place. Of course, it is important that we keep an eye on that. We take that into account and we will write back to the committee with any instances that we can dig up to confirm that. My final point to the cabinet secretary is from the campaign group that I mentioned earlier, which makes the understandable point that companies who wish to benefit from the public purse should pay their fair share of tax. Do you share the campaign's views? Absolutely, but I would say that, if we are trying to come back to the reason that I am here today with the regulations, it is also true to say what the intention is. I think that what those campaign groups would also say is that the best result in those circumstances is to have the tax paid. I think that that underlies the approach that we have taken in relation to some of those provisions. If there is somebody who is transgressive, there is also an obligation under those regulations to mitigate or make reparations for what they have done or have not done previously, whether we like it or not, we have to take that into account. Obviously, the intent has to be to make sure that everybody pays their fair share of tax, and I think that those regulations help us to achieve that. I think that we share the same objective that what we need is behaviour change by large companies who are clearly using their global reach to avoid paying tax in individual countries, which hits the public purse in Scotland, as it does England and the rest of the UK. If we can get behaviour change, in other words, to pay their fair share of tax, then they have got their fair share of procurement contracts. If they are not paying the fair share of tax, they should not be getting public contracts for the Scottish Government or local government, in my view, across Scotland. If everyone pays their fair share of tax, there are likely to be more contracts and more business. Alex Shrouda. I was just going to say that I am not entirely convinced that either the question or the minister during the past 10 minutes has been truly honest about the distinction between tax avoidance and tax evasion. I am left extremely confused about what we have been talking about. Mr Johnson, I do not think that anybody in this committee is deliberately dishonest. I am not suggesting that that is the case. I am suggesting that perhaps there has been a misunderstanding over the past 10 minutes of what the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is. Therefore, I do not understand what we have been discussing. Do you want to elaborate on that point? Well, the fact that tax avoidance is an accounting practice, which is entirely legal, and tax evasion is an illegal activity that takes money out of the public purse that should not be pursued through the courts. We have, unhelpfully, blurred the distinction quite blatantly over the past 10 minutes. I have tried to point out, perhaps not that explicitly, that there is a distinction between the two. I mentioned both the terms there. I tried to point out, by saying that where public authorities can take action on this is where there has been a finding by something that accompanies the law. That goes exactly to that distinction. It will not be held up before the courts, essentially, for tax avoidance. It can be held up for the court for tax evasion. I tried to draw that distinction. I was not intended to be dishonest. I have to answer the questions that I have asked. I cannot, as has been pointed out to me, ask my own questions. However, I understand the distinction that is made there. That is very much evident in the regulations. Those authorities will not, by and large, be able to take action on such things that are not illegal. That is laid out in the regulations. I think that, just for clarity, the committee welcomes ministers and cabinet secretaries asking questions as part of a constructive dialogue, so we will not be too strict on that one. Adam, do you have a supplementary question? Yes. I would like to commend the Government, obviously, for introducing these procurement reforms, particularly the desire to drive up standards from companies who are awarded public contracts. You have obviously mentioned the issue of blacklisting or the living wage. I am just wondering to what extent employment practices in general would come under the scrutiny, if you like, for the awarding of public contracts. We are all aware that there are some employers who are better than others. We have a range of employment tribunal decisions, and we have other instances with regard to redundancy practices in that type of thing. Is that something that you have an intention of doing as part of this process is to raise standards in companies of how they employ their people and the like? Is that something that is in your minds when you are introducing those regulations? It is in our minds, and even before those regulations, it has been very prominent in our thinking. We now have more discretion to capture those concerns as the procurement process goes forward, so I mentioned the living wage. It tends to be termed in a different way when it goes through the procurement process. It is probably fair and clear and to be absolutely honest that what is procurement is not the best tool to deal with those things. Employment law is the best deal and we have no powers in terms of employment law that is reserved, but there is a great deal that you can achieve. For example, the biggest contract that we let is the one for ScotRail services around £8 billion. We managed to achieve a great deal in relation to that in terms of redundancies, in terms of living wage. Living wage is not just for directly employed people under that contract, but also for subcontractors. You can achieve a great deal—much easier to achieve those things if you have control over employment law, though. Maybe I am in the case that I have not mentioned that. There are two areas where the new legislation supporting statutory guidance assists with employment practice. By way of social, environmental and labour law, those are now exclusion grounds, so there is an expectation naturally that suppliers are complying with the law. However, to go further than that, what we did through the statutory guidance that was published earlier that the cabinet secretary fast-tracked is statutory guidance on fair work practices, including living wage. It is identifying how the way a supplier engages with their staff genuinely can have an impact on the quality of the goods, works or services that are being procured, so recognising that there is a correlation between the two and what that guidance does is go further and set out exactly how buying organisations can factor those issues in as part of the procurement process. We are seeing that coming through now in some of the contracts that have been awarded, including the one that the cabinet secretary refers to. I think that it is also true to say to come back to this overarching approach of a sustainable procurement. Procurement is not sustainable if a contract is one on the basis of third world employment conditions. It is not going to work, so I think that that probably generally I could not point to a specific part of the procurement regulations that says that is what we will do, but the other points that have been mentioned allow us to say to somebody, and it is not true of all contracts, but the vast bulk, what you are proposing here, it is terrible conditions for the staff, even if they are complying with the law. The conditions are so bad that the contract itself does not seem to us to be viable, but increasingly we are able to take that into account. However, as I say, that is coming at it from, if you like, the side. The best way to deal with that is through employment law. Do members have any final questions for the cabinet secretary? Cabinet secretary, do you have any final comments that you would like to make? In that case, I thank the cabinet secretary and his officials for their very helpful evidence this morning. Cabinet secretary, I thank you for your commitment to furnish the committee with some further information. Agenda item 2 is the formal consideration of motion S4M15451, calling for the committee to recommend approval of the draft procurement Scotland regulations 2016. I invite the cabinet secretary to speak to and move motion S4M15451. Thank you, cabinet secretary. I invite any further comments and questions from members. There are none. In that case, the question is that motion S4M15451, in the name of Keith Brown, be approved. Are we all agreed? In that case, that is agreed. That concludes the consideration of this affirmative instrument. We will report the outcome of our consideration to the Parliament. I now suspend briefly for a witness handover. I am just waiting for one of our members to return. Good morning, everyone. I now resume this meeting of the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee. At agenda item 3, the committee will take oral evidence on its inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the closure of the fourth road bridge from the Minister for Transport and Islands. I welcome Derek Mackay, Minister for Transport and Islands at the Scottish Government, Roy Brannan, chief executive Mike Baxter, director for finance and analytical services and Wayne Hindshaw, chief bridge engineer all at Transport Scotland. I invite the minister to make a short opening statement. I thank you for the opportunity to attend this important inquiry as I set out the Scottish Government's position on the matter. I welcome the inquiry as I have always encouraged transparency on the matter. I fully recognise the impact of the closure that it had on the travelling public, local and national business, and in particular those in the haulage industry, who were inconvenienced and I remain grateful for their patience and support. As indicated in my parliamentary statement on 8 December, I believe that the available evidence and expert opinion provided demonstrates that the trust end link defect could not have been foreseen. I hope that we can agree that the decision to close the bridge was appropriate, reflecting the paramount importance of safety. As the bridge expert said, I agree too that the subsequent response has been a remarkable achievement. Like other organisations with asset management responsibilities, FETA's use of a long-term programme allowed for certain projects to be prioritised for funding, reflecting the urgency of the work required and how it would impact on the integrity of the structure. FETA's system of general and principal inspections were developed to reflect the fourth road bridge's unique characteristics. Inspections were based on good industry practice with an enhanced methodology, developed by FETA using a risk-based approach, meaning a more rigorous inspection regime that exceeded DFT guidelines. Amy has continued to use the same well-tested FETA procedures with the same experienced staff. The early identification of the defect was as a direct result of this competent regime. The familiarity of the staff had with the bridge and the structure and a credit to those involved. Prior to its dissolution, FETA had full responsibility for all operation and maintenance aspects of the fourth road bridge, including the prioritisation of its work programme. FETA's governance was such that the work programmes were approved by its board. When tolls were removed and FETA became reliant on Scottish Government funding, it was required to bid for funding through the spending review process and it is clear that FETA had to adapt to new ways of working. Notwithstanding that, the Scottish Government ensured that funding was provided to meet FETA's committed spend and that capital maintenance was delivered on a prioritised needs basis. Funding for safety critical work was never refused by the Scottish Government and FETA considered issues such as the trust end links to be manageable. FETA operated independently and employed its own hierarchy of risk, while the bridge master's board papers were referred generally to trust end links. The associated works was not considered a significant risk, nor accorded a safety critical or high priority. The inquiry has also heard about Amy's response, the strengths that the new operating company demonstrated, a direct outcome of Transport Scotland's thorough assessment of the contract procurement process and the skills and experience of Amy and its partners, which the committee has had sight of and has proved extremely efficient. At the protections afforded to FETA staff and the ministerial commitment on staff pensions, both welcomed unanimously by the FETA board, management and staff in trade unions played an important part in providing continuity of experience during the crucial mobilisation period, ensuring that all FETA staff in post in May 2015 transferred to Amy, including the bridge master. Since 2007, FETA undertook major works, including main cable investigation, cable band bolt replacement, anchorage investigation, viaduct bearing replacement, improvements to deck half joints, dehumidification system and a number of other schemes. FETA deemed virtually all as more pressing than the postponed and unrelated full replacement of the trust end links. A total of £107.8 million has therefore been spent on the bridge in that period, equating to more than £110 million, including reserves. That is not a record of under-investment. In summary, I believe that the evidence presented to the committee, often from witnesses with quite different perspectives, has demonstrated that the structure has been well maintained using good industry practice, that the defect that resulted in the bridge closure was unforeseen and unforeseeable, and that Minister's approval of Amy's proposal to close the bridge for a short period of time to carry out essential repairs was both appropriate and necessary. Members will be aware that the bridge is now fully operational, and I would again like to pay tribute to all the staff involved for the swift and dedicated actions undertaken in often very challenging circumstances, and I now welcome any questions from the committee. Thank you very much, Minister. I am going to hand over to David Stewart to kick off our questions today. Thank you, convener, and good morning, Minister. I am sure that, on behalf of the committee, we would like to echo the words that you have made about all the work of the staff. As you know, a number of the committee members went to the bridge and we met some of the staff involved, so perhaps you could relay our comments to all the staff involved. Can I talk to you about decision making around the closure of the bridge? As you will be aware, most of the closures outwith the current emergency are because of high winds. Can you identify what the decision making around the bridge closure is? In other words, who makes decisions and what the chain of command is as far as that is concerned in the current regime? In terms of separate to individual closure, more generally, that is correct. Based on forecasts and the information available, David Stewart will be very well aware that there is specific monitoring equipment to more exposed structures in Scotland, such as bridges. That informs, for example, whether particularly high winds and if it hits levels that are predetermined. That leads to warnings and a hierarchy of closure and restrictions to different types of vehicles crossing the bridge. That is conveyed to the public through variable message signs, as well as Twitter and Traffic Scotland and other broadcast media processes in place. It is almost automated now because of the criteria that is set in ultimately decisions in terms of who makes the decision, via the local information through Transport Scotland, but the data from the bridge itself on the high winds that have been experienced on the structure, as well as the wider weather warnings? Thanks for that. I am trying to identify the specific individuals. Is it the bridge master? Is it the head of Transport Scotland? Is it yourself as minister? Is it the cabinet secretary? Is it the First Minister? Who is ultimately responsible for a closure in a high wind scenario? I can just add to what the minister said. Ultimately, it is the organisation that is responsible for the bridge. In the case of our other long-spam bridges across the country, it is the operating company. In the case of Fort Bridge, before the dissolution of Feta, it would have been Feta and Barry. After 1 June, it was Amy. Well-documented procedures that Feta had previously followed through into the new operating company contract, the Fort Bridge contract, and it is Amy that triggered those thresholds based on the weather forecast. If it was, for example, a high wind 70 miles an hour beyond, the head official in Amy on the bridge would be the responsible person who would make the decision to closure and obviously copy in the minister. There is a whole procedure in place of things that they need to do when that threshold is reached. That individual makes a number of calls to ourselves to Wayne as the chief bridge engineer, and everybody is aware at that point of what is happening. However, the key important part of all of it is communicating to the public. I appreciate that. That is helpful and clear. Can we perhaps go back in history to clarify assumptions that I have, which might be correct or incorrect? If we look at the fact that there are really two periods of Feta, there was Feta when they had tolls and Feta after tolls in terms of decision making. Am I right in thinking, minister, that decisions to close the bridge when Feta was responsible during the tolling regime would have been the bridge master effectively alone? We would have had the power to close the bridge. The bridge master would have made up the decision, yes. That was my understanding, but I just wanted to clarify for that. Post-tolls obviously was a change and, as you know, we have had evidence from Feta about that. In your scenario of high winds or whatever, who was then responsible? Was it still Feta? Or was it still the bridge master, in fact, in conjunction with Transport Scotland, or was it Feta bridge master alone? Feta bridge master alone would have been the bridge master alone. It was Feta's responsibility up until the day they were dissolved. They would have made that decision, but they worked closely with Traffic Scotland and Transport Scotland. There was a seamless interface to ensure that that information was publicised and passed out. There are five wind thresholds if the committee wants to know about them. The bridge is closed to all vehicles at 80mph. If the bridge is closed, which is what you are talking about, that information is shared with Transport Scotland. Our permission was not sought, nor was it necessary to seek our permission, but we were informed so that we could put the standard incident diversion routes into plan and publicise that. It is important that, as part of the process of transfer, Barry and the team and the board were particularly concerned about operational and maintenance issues moving away from themselves to Transport Scotland and, indeed, the corporate governance. They sought assurance from the minister at the time and they got that. Operational and maintenance issues and corporate governance remain with Barry and the chief bridge engineer. Could you just clarify to Elm Minister if I got this correct? There was a period where there was a change and the bridge was designated a trunk road, am I correct in that assumption, during the transfer between FETTA or was it always designated a trunk road in terms of transport regulations? If I may add, the bridge was trunked when FETTA was dissolved on that day. It was not a trunk road before that and it remained under the FETTA Act. It was the Rhodes Authority under the Rhodes Scotland Act. Once it was trunked on 1 minute past midnight on 1 June, it became the responsibility of the Scottish Government. My assumption was right then that there was a trunk road designation effectively on 1 June last year. That's correct. Thank you. That's useful to get those practical points confirmed. Can I move to the current situation of the closure and, again, I'm talking to the minister about decision making if I could just run through this? I don't know the answer to this question. The decision to close one carriageway of the fourth bridge was made on 1 December. That full discussion between AME and Transport Scotland, and the decision to close the bridge till Trafford from midnight on 3 December, followed our recommendation by AME at 4 o'clock, 4 p.m. that day. Just confirm if that's… No. The exact timeline that you were right to begin with, in terms of a fault being identified on the first of December, led to some restrictions, as you have described, on the closure of a carriageway. There was further inspection, further study of the issue and engagement of consultants as well, monitoring of the failed link member, leading to the third of December, those on-going meetings. Transport Scotland and AME were obviously closely engaged. The point of decisions, the only inaccuracy that you have given Mr Stewart, that's where we come to a meeting of ministers in the evening of the third of December, which was around 8 o'clock, half past eight. It was about half past eight, I think, which involved the First Minister, Deputy First Minister, Cabinet Secretary and myself. Information presented, recommendation presented at that point to ministers for the first time. Within minutes of ministerial agreement that the bridge should be closed, that was then conveyed to the media, so it's not the case that a decision was taken earlier in the afternoon and conveyed later. It was within minutes in the evening. I think that perhaps it was because I didn't quite finish my sentence, but I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, Minister. About what the point it was going to make, but did not take effect until after a meeting with the First Minister, and what I was getting at in line with my previous questions, and I appreciate that this was an emergency situation, not a standard high wind closure. However, in the case of the closure on the third, it was effectively the decision taken by the First Minister, the Cabinet Secretary yourself or by Amy, and that scenario, where did the backstop? Recommendation came from officials and the operating company Amy to ministers, and we were all agreed that it was unanimous across the operating company, Transport Scotland, advisers and ministers to close the bridge and then embark on the next course of action. I'm sure that you'll appreciate it, and we may get on to this. We realised that this wasn't just a question of closing on the bridge, and that's it. There was much more to be done around contingencies, conveying the message to the public, and then repairing the bridge and getting a full understanding of what had happened. Can I just move on? You kindly invited the committee and officials to attend a technical brief, which the convener, myself and Mr Johnston, our officials, attended. Again, that was very helpful and very useful. In response to a question from my colleague Mr Johnston, the question was, as you recall, when the bridge reopens, will it be restricted or unrestricted? The answer that Mr Johnston can clarify was that, when it reopens, it will be unrestricted. Can you explain why it was going to be unrestricted in December and then was restricted when it opened? Why was there a confidence to us in December that it wasn't there in January? As repairs have been undertaken and further investigation and a deeper understanding of essentially what went wrong on the bridge, with those further inspections and monitoring equipment on the bridge, monitoring equipment that wasn't there before, such as the strain gauges and the tilt metres, which inform our understanding of the bridge, with all that in place, with that deeper understanding, you can make even better informed decisions around what went wrong, how you remediate and what you do going forward. Of course, for the purpose of clarity, the bridge is now fully operational as it was before the closure, and there are no such restrictions, but during that period where we returned general traffic over the bridge other than HDVs, that was over 90 per cent of traffic on 23 December, about 90-91 per cent. The reason HDVs essentially couldn't go over, although they are only about 9 per cent of the traffic, they are about 30 per cent of the weight load. When the repairs were being carried out, there was further monitoring, further examination, deeper understanding because of the monitoring equipment. It suggested, and this is something that I was able to outline at a further technical briefing, that, as we all now know, the issue relates to a pin that wasn't rotating that put stress on the member. We had inspected the other pins to find that two other pins were not rotating as we would like. That could put pressure and stress on those members, and therefore it was good precaution to complete all the repairs to satisfactory allow HDVs over the bridge. It was an incremental return. The pressure was certainly on to get all traffic over as quickly as possible, whilst never compromising on safety. However, as we learned more about the fall, the nature of the fall, the stress and pressures on the bridge, the fact that two other pins hadn't been rotating, we took that precautionary approach as to not cause any further damage to the bridge and safely allow all traffic to cross and then HDVs to return in good times. It was all a well informed approach, precautionary, completing the repairs, strengthening the bridge to the point that we were satisfied that no further damage would be caused. We could go into even more detail on our understanding of that based on the strain gauge and the acceptable parameters and the load testing and the model case scenarios that I am happy to go into. I am sure that Wayne will very enthusiastically join me in going into the detail of that, but that essentially is the answer. We understood more about what required to be done as we applied more technology to the bridge, had a deeper understanding of the nature that was unforeseen of the fall and therefore what was the right thing to do to go forward to protect the structural integrity of the bridge. The bridge is fully open to HDVs. My memory serves me right that the maximum weight is around 44 tonnes of an HDV. When we were given the technical proof, we were told those occasions where abnormal loads such as perhaps a turbine that has been moved might be up to 150 tonnes. Has there been any discussions with your technical officials whether there might be some restrictions to abnormal loads? In other words, loads that are above the weight limit for HDVs. Mr Stewart raises a valid point. I think that there was one example of such an abnormal load in the last few years crossing the bridge and potentially still could be by arrangement, but it would be by arrangement. That was the case before the bridge closure and could be the case after, Wayne. If I could add that to the minister, yes. In February 2015, the bridge master introduced a weight limit on abnormal loads of 150 tonnes. He would not permit vehicles over 150 tonnes and that was because of concerns that he had about the strength of the brackets and the welds in the towers that support part of the trust and link mechanism. That is the works that FETA trialled and the AME have completed. We are back in a situation now with the bridge as we were before 1 December. Abnormal loads up to 150 tonnes can apply to be moved and can be moved across the fourth road bridge. Abnormal loads go well beyond that into the several hundreds of tonnes and it is those types of loads. It is not that the bridge may not be able to take them, but they may have to be specifically analysed for and then traffic arrangements put in place whereby they are led across the bridge under what we would call caution whereby there is no other traffic on the bridge. Winds would need to be low, moderate temperatures, but to put you in mind of the usage by such loads on the fourth road bridge they do not tend to follow the fourth valley passage, they tend to go via sterling and the heaviest load we had was 140 tonnes in 2013. The impact on the heavy haulage industry is very limited, but like all loads the heavy haulage industry can apply to move loads and if necessary the bridge can be analysed to check if it can accommodate them. Is the limit still 150 tonnes? It is 150 tonnes at the moment. Are you satisfied, Mr Stewart, with the answer on why the difference between opening to other traffic and over 90 per cent of traffic at the end of December and why there was that further period where we could not allow HGVs over? Are you satisfied with that? I think it was useful to get the clarification because you do accept that we were there when we were told that there was not going to be restriction and then suddenly we realized that there was. Can I expand further and put it a different way? The assumption that was well informed was that there was the crack as related to the pin that was not rotating in one part of the structure. When we identified that two further pins were not rotating we wanted to ensure that the same precautionary works were carried out there so that we had satisfaction that it would not put any further stress on the bridge and that is the difference here, but we concluded all those works. We strengthened the bridge so that we were satisfied that it would not overstress any of the elements, all of which was informed by the new technology on the bridge. Is that more helpful? Thank you for that. One final thing, convener, is just on the weight issue. There is no restrictions to HGVs, which we welcome and have had representations from the haulage industry. Are there any restrictions on numbers of HGVs going over at one time? Because the engineers have explained to us that they are not causing difficulties. No restrictions of that nature. There was during that temporary pilot period where I was phasing the reintroduction of HGVs to the bridge for the reason that I have given around acceptable parameters of stress levels on the bridge until the works were complete but there is now no such restriction and no requirement for any such restriction. Okay, thank you, if I can just move on, convener. Could you perhaps clarify, minister, exactly where the phase 1 repairs, the splint repairs, have been installed? The phase 1 splint repairs were started off, of course, on the broken member then carried out on the others. The splint, as you will recall from the technical briefing, was to essentially strengthen it to kind of chew it in the crack and give it that strengthening. So first on the northeast tower and then carried out on the other towers. Can you then clarify the phase 2 installation? Was that on four locations? On a number of locations it's the four main span areas and phase 2 to begin with and then a further four. Phase 2 was on four locations and that's obviously all being completed. Yeah, if I can just add what minister said, yeah. So the four internal parts of the tower, so the suspended span section, that's what's being done in phase 2 today and then the four external need to be completed as well so, but they're not critical for traffic running on the bridge. And just on the technical briefing, minister, it's perhaps one through Mr Rannan on yourself. We've been told, is it accurate to say that the pin on the north west corner of the main span is operating correctly? It's probably one for way to answer, but it's showing through the strain gauges, it's showing no signs of stress that the other pins were showing, so yes, it's operating sufficiently to allow no further work required on that particular element. Okay, thank you convener, that's on my question. Thank you. Minister, I'm very keen obviously to get as much factual information on the record to assist with our inquiry, which I think is the reason why David Stewart has taken a bit of time to try and establish some of that. As a few other additional points, I'd like to to get in the record if I may, perhaps from officials rather than from yourself, but can you provide the committee with information on the additional problems with seas pins that were found and announced on 5 February and which further delayed the opening to heavy good vehicles beyond mid-Febru, when they were found, where they were located and what repairs to them have been carried out. Okay, can I just preface that with the good news is having identified that and undertaken the works, they're now not the issue that they were at that point because we were undertaking the works anyway, so I wouldn't want the impression that it's an on-going problem because the repairs that have been undertaken has addressed that to the point that we can satisfactorily allow vehicles or vehicles back across the bridge, but Wayne? Yeah, if I can add to that, we started before Christmas installing structural monitoring equipment, data acquisition units, fibre optic cabling and electrical feeds, and that was all in place at the north-east trust end link before load testing took place and that informed us on the stresses and strains that were going on. We then decided that we would install that at the other locations, particularly in the main span where we considered that because we had one seized pin there was a possibility that we could have problems elsewhere. At that time, we had done a further analysis which had proven that whether the pins were seized or not seized, this wasn't an issue for the side spans, that the splint strengthened members could take the induced bending stress and technically could live with that, although that was not how they were originally designed to behave. As a result of this, a lot of pressure was put on to put the data analysis, basically the box computers in the towers at the south-east tower in the south-west. We were able to rig the data acquisition unit in the north-east tower to monitor what was happening at the link at the north-west. That showed from strain gauges and movement graphs that that pin was rotating and not generating the stress in that link. To answer the specific question convener, it would be early January, the second weekend in, when we got the data acquisition unit in the south-east tower, which we, in layman's language, jury rigged to measure the south-west as well before we got that acquisition unit from Germany, that gave us the information that sadly we would rather have not had that both the pins on the main span at the south-west and southeast link were displaying high levels of friction, if not higher levels of friction, than that that had been displaced at the north-east pin. At that time, we realised that we were going to have to implement the phase 2 repairs to those links. That is very helpful. The bridge reopened fully to HGVs on 20 February. That is earlier than the anticipated date of mid-March, which had previously been advised and which was announced on 5 February. What were the factors that allowed for an earlier opening? Although there were severe weather impacts, there was one successive storm after another. In any event, weather impacts led to restrictions to other bridges, incidentally, but the weather impacted on the repairs programme, on the works, because you cannot have staff working on the bridge in dangerous conditions. When it was particularly windy, staff may have to come off the bridge in a safe fashion. However, that was a 24-7 operation. Staff teams were programmed to be on the bridge as much as possible and to carry out the work in quite challenging circumstances. A 24-7 operation to get the bridge repaired was accelerated as much as possible. As it happens, after setting the new timescale, the weather improved, I set out that there was time for contingency. I said it publicly at the press conference and in the release that there was time for contingency built-in. We would not want to identify any new faults, but the weather impacted very positively following the amended date to mid-March. There was better weather, more favourable weather. However, the other issue is the 24-7 working real dedication to get the job done as quickly as possible with confidence. However, there are different ways of working. Amy was putting pressure on her suppliers to get supplies as quickly as possible. There was work carried out in the workshops rather than on-site at the bridge. For example, the accelerated programme. The programme was reordered with some of that in mind to accelerate everything. We were all pleasantly surprised that it would come in ahead of the publicly stated timescale of mid-March. Those are the three key elements. The dedication of 24-7 working real dedication to get the job done. We did not down-tools other than for the weather. The weather was more favourable. With pressure on suppliers and work going on in workshops, the degree of re-engineering that has been described allowed far more effective execution of the repair. Thank you. I will ask you about the costs of permanently repairing the bridge. When Transport Scotland officials appeared before this committee on 20 January, they offered to provide additional information on the cost of the four-throwed bridges structural monitoring system, the cost of the next phase, phase 2 of repairs and the cost to replace all linkages. We have received that information and it comes with a figure for permanently repairing the bridge of around £19.7 million. Can I give you the opportunity to place on the record the various phases of the proposed repair work and the associated costs for each of those? I am happy to do that, convener, but can I once again caveat that with not all the costs are settled and there may be other variables here, but I can certainly give you what I have at the moment. That figure remains the same, but I will detail it as you have requested. My understanding is that, for phase 1, splint repairs, the cost is up to £3 million. For phase 2 repairs, the cost is £2.65 million for the four that I have mentioned with a further four, as Mr Stewart has asked about, so that further four is a further £2.65 million. For the phase 3 work, which is still to be worked up and fully designed, for the end implementation, there is more detail. The four main spans are £5.7 million, and the side spans work in a similar order of £5 million. That is right, and that takes you, convener, to the £19.7 million. The strain gauge is the structural health monitoring system that is in the region of £1 million to £1.5 million. Those are the figures that I think we have shared, but I have to attach that caveat that they are not settled figures. That anticipates my next question, of course. Clearly, you do not consider this to be the final definitive cost of the repair work. Could it be less? Could it be more in the future? I am hoping, convener, that it is in that region, but, yes, that is right, that is not settled. As part of the spending review in 2011, how did Transport Scotland assess the indicative capital plan prepared by FETA and determine the level of capital grant that was to be provided for the years 2012-13 to 2014-15? That would have been a two-way process between FETA and Transport Scotland in view of the UK spending review, which had a significant impact on the Scottish Government's budget. There would have been an exchange, but I assure you that what would have been expressed to FETA at the time is that there should be a degree of prioritisation that committed projects would be seen through in terms of what was committed. Anything that was critical in terms of the health of the bridge would have been funded. The reprioritisation that FETA would have undertaken would have been in the light that the Scottish Government through Transport Scotland would expect a tiered approach, beginning with actions that do not diminish the structural integrity of the bridge. It is a tiered approach of what is necessary to maintain the structural integrity of the bridge. It is on-going maintenance and operation. Therefore, it would be taken in that light. Yes, there were financial pressures that everyone in public life faced, but the on-going careful management of the bridge would have been expected. There would have been that on-going dialogue between Transport Scotland and FETA, but I have seen the evidence that you have also seen, which is that I think that all appreciate that if any critical repairs had been identified, they would have been funded. There was some evidence that said that the revenue from the tolls had been critical to the capital programme for the bridge. In the years that the tolls were in operation, FETA had accumulated quite high reserves in those years. At one point, the reserves were sitting at £18.6 million. Can you give us an indication of what you think about the levels of reserves and how close are they to the budgets for bridges in Scotland? If I can relate that back to the question of the capital plan, many members are aware of local government and other public sectors. Capital plans list a number of things. They are not always completed in one year. It might be a long-term capital plan, and they might relate to other things. It is not the perception that the capital plan in relation to the fourth road bridge through FETA was all about the structural maintenance of the bridge or critical repairs. I could reference a £1.4 million plan for tower painting or landscaping works at £40,000 or vehicle replacement at £70,000, so I am giving some of the nature of the capital plan around that. The capital plan appears to have been taken in isolation, separate from initially the indicative capital plan from the spending review process and the resources that are available. I am supposed to answer your question that even with their own indicative capital plan, and this is without criticism, you are right on the toll income that I am looking at the toll income, which for FETA was £11.99 million in 2006-07 or £10.299 million in 2007-08, or £10.1 million in 2008-09. There is an example of the toll income, which would have served both revenue and capital at the time, and there were substantial surplices or monies held in reserve. I am not here to criticise spending decisions of FETA, but to put into context, FETA replaced the toll collection equipment in 2005-06 at a cost of £8.5 million. On the abolition of tolls in 2008, it cost £2 million to remodel the plaza area to allow free flowing traffic, so that helps to inform your understanding of the capital plan. When we move from the tolls into Government grant, I have given you figures ranging from £12 million across to £10 million—that was the toll income—in terms of then moving into Government grant. For example, in 2012-13, it was £11.38 million, so that is £5.1 million in revenue and £6.28 million in capital. Yes, there was the use of FETA reserves as well, so I would challenge any suggestion that the bridge was underfunded. Thank you, minister, for clarification. Obviously, the decisions that were taken, the indicative capital plan, has been in place for a number of years, but trust and link replacement have been part of that. What difference did the decision to build the fourth crossing have on the decisions about asking for a re-look at that capital plan going forward? I think that my understanding from FETA is that FETA considers the prospect of the fourth replacement crossing coming and would clearly re-order and re-profile works as a result. What is required earlier on and what is required could be deferred until later, in view of potential disruption. That is always an issue when it comes to bridge maintenance and potential bridge closures. Available resources and what can take place once the new as it is called the Queensferry crossing is built. FETA understood that and re-ordered some of their own works. Incidentally, the reprioritisation of FETA's capital programme was a matter for that independent organisation. The dialogue between Scottish Government through Transport Scotland and FETA was around finance with a clear understanding that FETA should do nothing that undermines the structural integrity of the bridge and approach the Government if there was a requirement for any critical repairs. Incidentally, it did. I will give you an example. In 2012, a request for more resources for cable-band bolts was accepted by Transport Scotland and I think that around £2 million paid out. I have heard suggestion that some elements of FETA were frightened to ask the Scottish Government for money because the answer would have been no. That is not normal in Scottish public life. I have to say that folk are not normally frightened to ask for more resources if it is required. In this instance, there is a clear example of identified works of a more critical nature that is brought to Scottish Government and delivered with agreement. It was not already in the Scottish Government's programme, so there is a £2 million of example if asked and the case was made. It was granted. I think that the committee should be aware of that because it contradicts some of the unsubstantiated evidence that was presented with earlier. In relation to a board paper 20 February 2009, it makes reference to the fact that the announcement of a form commitment by the Scottish Government to a definitive programme for the construction of the fourth replacement crossing has allowed for a review of the authority's maintenance programme to be carried out. One of the schemes that were reviewed at that time was the main expansion joints on the bridge. Barry and the team had taken forward a very innovative and creative scheme to replace those joints, which required temporary ramps to take traffic up above the bridge deck and then down again to allow traffic to continue to use the bridge, but those temporary ramps were valued at £6 million. When certainty came around with the new bridge coming along, Barry looked at that again and put in another innovative and creative scheme to manage those joints. That is what is in place today. A saving to the public purse by looking very closely at what could be deferred on the basis that the new replacement crossing would be programmed and guaranteed. What was the value of the replacement crossing project? The value in terms of cost and estimated costs is eye-watering but well worth while of 1.4. The current range that we have is 1.325 to 1.35 billion in total. Consider my investment in the infrastructure, I would say. I think that some people have asked me what is the contingency in the future to the fourth road bridge. If well maintained, the fourth road bridge can continue to our satisfaction, but I think that we will have a rather substantial contingency right next door to the fourth road bridge, the Queensferry crossing. They both act as a contingency for each other and that gives us more flexibility and options for the future for any work that is required on either bridge. Thank you minister. I would like to say on record that from all the evidence from the experts that have been into a stunning achievement to get the bridge back up and running in the timescales, and it is to be commended. You speak on behalf of the whole committee. Minister, we received expert evidence from a range of witnesses, including former chief bridge master Barry Colford. He said in evidence to the committee on the 27th of January and I quote, as I said, that FETA was in a position whereby we had the governance but not the funding. He went on to say that we prepared the capital programme, the board approved the capital programme or plan and then we had to ensure that we got the money for that capital programme or plan, that involved negotiation and discussion with Transport Scotland. You have given us a little bit of an insight into that process of negotiation and discussion, but is there anything else that you would like to say? Yes, convener. I would simply want to go on and complete his evidence there. He also pointed out that he enjoyed a good relationship with the Scottish Government through Transport Scotland, and that was a mature relationship where issues would have been identified and there would have been a dialogue with technical understanding and a financial understanding to address any issues that would need to have been addressed. I gave you one example of, even after the financial agreement had not been reached, that further funds were allowed for cableband bolts in 2012. I think that the relationship was very important and the process was important. Even if FETA had continued, it would have been relying on the total income, which I have given you the examples of the Scottish Government grant income, the use of surplices, as well as what was funded when it was provided through the toll. Even in the days of FETA pre-towl abolition, it could only have spent what it could raise. I simply make the point that it was never the case that capital plans could always be delivered immediately in full, so it was a matter of financial availability. With the dialogue and relationship that was enjoyed between FETA and the Scottish Government, it ensured a mature relationship. Prioritisation was a matter for FETA, independent of the Scottish Government, but anything that had been critical would have been funded and there was some wrong awareness of that. Thank you minister, you have said already that capital spending was on a needs prioritised basis and you have just repeated again that if there were any critical repairs, they would have been funded, but surely the point about prioritisation of projects is that prioritisation by FETA only happened after the budget had been confirmed in 2011. The indicative programme would have covered a number of matters and I gave you some other examples of painting and other aspects of an indicative capital programme. Within that, the FETA prioritised its work on the advice of its experts on the bridgemaster and there is the understanding that all actions would have been undertaken in a way that does not affect negatively the structural integrity of the bridge. The expectation from Government post-spending review, or spending review beyond, was that there is a tiered approach to work up the capital programme based on what is required to protect and maintain the structural integrity of the bridge. There are some other elements of what would be nice to do, what would be good additions and they clearly weren't a priority and incidentally, since we are talking about it. My point is that that re-prioritisation of projects within the capital programme only happened after the budget had been confirmed in 2011, that is the case. That is the case, yes, that their prioritisation was in light of the spending review, so indicative capital plan and then financial dialogue and then leading to what they would be able to proceed with, so that was a matter for FETA to prioritise, that's right. I think that the point of the public would be interested in knowing that had the budget not been reprofiled to use that phrase in the way that it had, that the larger piece of work to replace the trust-send links could have taken place? I think that we are conflating two different things between the specific decision around that and separately how a capital plan relates to the available resource, but is he, Mike, desperate? Yes, I think that the other point around the timing of this, in 2010-11 and 2011-12, when the breaks came on in terms of available capital, we used, or transport has gone at that time, we used flexibility to effectively protect FETA's capital spending, so in 2010-11, that's a matter of record from their annual accounts, £1.4 million was advanced into 10-11 to effectively support their programme, and then, in 2011-12, there was £3.2 million advanced into 11-12. Effectively, that gave them the benefit of increasing their reserves, which were then available for spending in future years. In that case, when we took evidence, we heard that, within the capital programme, there was an estimated piece of work to replace the trust-send links at an estimated cost of £10 million to £15 million. Are you saying that the money was there to do that? No, that's not what I'm saying. Maybe I'll tell you what the FETA report says. In December 16, 2011, a review of capital projects table 2 ranked the priority of the trust-send links scheme as 5 out of 13 of reported schemes and not noted as safety critical. Section 3.9 of the report states that, given the cost and difficulty in replacing those elements and the potential disruption to bridge users, further examination of the probability of certain combinations of load occurring and further structural analysis has been carried out as a result of that work, there is now the potential to upgrade the existing links rather than carry out a full replacement. Therefore, what that's showing, convener, is that FETA themselves—this is a matter for FETA to explain and that's who you've probed quite rightly on this—began with a view that, let's look at the whole trust-send links assembly, the whole section. Within that, there were concerns about the trust-send, but not where the fault has occurred, not where the unforeseen fault has occurred, there were more concerned about the bracket at the top. Some people say that they get the wrong end of the stick, some people quite genuinely have got the wrong end of the truss, that where the pressure was was at the weld at the top of the bracket. That's where there was some concern, not where the unforeseen fault has occurred at the bottom. There was one early concept to replace the whole, as I understand it, the whole trust-send assembly. FETA themselves concluded for the reasons that I've given that they could rescope the works, there would be potentially less disruption. By rescoping that and addressing where the problem actually was, that's what they progressed with, that's what stayed in the capital programme, what they didn't proceed with—we have to get this right, convener—wasn't a commission to do all these detailed works because there was no design to replace the whole trust-send assembly. All they had done was tender for a consultant to come and look at the potential of that piece of work, that's all they tendered for, that's what they didn't proceed with and what stayed in the capital programme with a lesser priority was that element of trust-send link work at the top, not the bottom. Incidentally, that's what Amy inherited following pilot work in May of last year and was proceeding with. Is that accurate? The spending, the indicative capital plan in 2008, identified trust-send link work at 500,000 in 2010 and 11. The indicative capital plan in 2011 and February 2011 moved to £1.5 million in 2013-14 and £1.5 million in 2014-15. I can't find an indicative capital plan that states £10 to £15 million in the forward programme. At the minute, the indicative capital plan in February 11 showed £1.5 million in 2013-14 and £1.5 million in 2014-15. We clearly heard in evidence that the replacement of the trust-send links would have been in the region of £10 million to £15 million. We had an extensive discussion at committee on that. I think that that brings back to the point that there wasn't a scheme actually sitting there costed. A range of estimates were probably put in the capital plan and considered in more generality when talking about the trust-send links. Dave Stewart is anxious to come in on this point. You will recall, minister, from the evidence that I put to FETTA, that the advertised for consultants, which I should know, is normal. In normal events, as your officials am sure will testify, the engineer consultant would go away, prepare a report and come back with an action plan for work to be carried out. In my experience, it could be wrong, it's kind of unusual to advertise for consultants and then pull the advert, the advert went out and then that was ceased. We don't know who the consultants would be, we don't know what the consultants would have said. In one sense, we are looking into our crystal ball to predict what would the consultant have recommended, because a consultant would go away and have done detailed works on the bridge and come back and said to FETTA, this is what I want to carry out within that. This will be the budget range, you've given me an estimate of 10 to 15, as the convener said, but that was pulled, that is factual, isn't it? The advert went out for consultants. Yes, FETTA, did you decide that? Yes, that's correct. The key question is, why was it pulled? Because the explanation that I've given you is that FETTA understood that where there was a view, where there was a concern about the trust end link was at the top of the member, not the bottom, where the bracket was, where the world was, that's where there was suspected to be a problem in overstressing. FETTA has looked at that, and again we're speculating on what FETTA has decided. They had a broad range, a cost estimate of between £10 million and £15 million for replacing that, but it was just a cost estimate, there was no design, there was no work ready to go, there was no comprehensive capital plan design function ready to go, and they viewed, again, their languages, disruption to bridge users, re-scoping the scheme, cost and affordability, all of those other factors, they could maintain the structure of the bridge and the area of concern by doing a different piece of work, and that's what they proceeded to do. Even that, clearly, by their actions wasn't top priority in the state in the capital programme, which Amy have inherited, which Amy were undertaking, so that re-scoping of the work was for FETTA. Now, if they wanted to proceed, for example, as you've described quite helpfully, Mr Stewart, if they wanted to proceed with the appointment of those consultants, they could have done, the resources were there to do that, they could have proceeded with that, and, again, we are speculating, but a consultant may have come along and said, why are you proposing to replace the whole trust-send assembly when your identified problem is in one part, which, of course, was separate to where the fault turned out, actually occurred? I don't know if that's more helpful. Back in the end, convener, you'll recall that I asked that very question to the previous bridgemaster, and the basic point you came back with was that he had the government's but not the capital programme, and that effectively what was being suggested was that they went to Transport Scotland and that budget wasn't allowed the green light to go ahead with for the consultants to be employed, who could therefore have gone and looked in more detail at the time. No, Mr Stewart, that is not correct. The decision to proceed or not to proceed on the consultants and the tendering of the consultants for that work was a matter for FETA, and it is not the case that the Scottish Government said not to proceed with that at the point. The time they had governance but not the capital programme, would you agree with that? There was a different regime at that stage. They weren't masters of their own destiny at that stage. Well, as I've said, the Scottish Government, through Transport Scotland, had discussion and dialogue with FETA on the resources that would be available. The point that I would make again is that if a piece of work was determined to be critical, it would have been funded, and I've given you an example of how that would have been the case and how generally the capital programme would have been delivered. I should also add that the capital programme that was devised by FETA and inherited by the Scottish Government is being delivered as well. Barry Calford also said that the repair was unforeseen and unforeseeable. I don't think that we should lose sight of that. He didn't anticipate this fault occurring, so he wasn't proposing to fix something that had been identified because it hadn't been identified at that point. I would go back merely to the point that we don't know what the consultants were to come up with, because the consultants weren't pointed, and what I'm interested in is just the decision making process for it. Did Transport Scotland have any role in saying to FETA after all it had advertised why this late change was a unanimous decision by FETA Board? Was it a unanimous decision of FETA Board to go ahead and advertise? We were told it was. The answer that I was trying to give was that the value of the consultancy tender was £150,000 to £500,000. FETA could have funded that from the run for it. If they wished to proceed with that consultancy, they could have done it. Transport Scotland was not involved in that consultancy piece of work being withdrawn. I'm just trying to be clear in my mind that I've got this correct. Am I correct in saying that it was a unanimous decision of FETA to go ahead and advertise for the consultants? David Shure is asking us if a board at which we were not a question for FETA. Mr Stewart wants to ask a question. You can answer it in any way you see. I'm answering it by saying that you're asking us if a vote at a meeting was unanimous. You can ask that. In fairness, you've been quite good at quoting FETA Minutes back to me. I'm merely asking if you were aware of that. The answer to the question is yes, it was unanimous. We had that on evidence in front of us, so in that decision to go ahead and advertise, we don't know what the consultants we could come up with. That consultant report may well have led to further works. We don't know the answer to that question, is the point I made. Are you saying then that Transport Scotland had no role over FETA about not to proceed with the work of the consultant? I think that I've said repeatedly that FETA was an independent organisation in the capital programme. If they wanted to proceed with the appointment of consultants, that would have been a matter for them. Was there any role over Transport Scotland in terms of emails, telephone conversations or memos to suggest to FETA that they should not proceed with this because the capital problem was not going to be available? That's the 10 to 15 million. Not proceed with the attendering and appointment of consultants? Is there any evidence? I've reviewed the papers and I find no evidence of either my former colleagues interfering in what is a matter for FETA. As Roy Brannan has said, FETA could have afforded to go ahead with the consultancy and got the answer to the question that we would have all liked to have seen. Also, dependent on the value of the works going out, the bridge master had his own fiscal limits of works that he could place with consultants and he did do so and carry on doing work with Ferhuss and Acom thereafter. All I can tell you is that, insofar as the evidence I have seen and reviewed, there is no evidence that my former colleagues interfered with FETA's or influenced FETA's decision making in this matter. That was a matter for them and them alone and, yes, they could have taken forward the consultancy contract or they could have pursued the work in another manner, which they did with Ferhuss in a slightly smaller scale. However, if I could just fight finishes by saying that it should not be presumed that a more extensive, less cost-effective scheme would have been pursued, a consultant would probably have looked at providing best value for money as part of any optioneering that he did. When looking at the conceptual design that came out of the workshop, it was a conceptual design and it was not a finalised design. I guess that what has happened since has been evidenced by FETA's downsizing of the scheme. I think that it is oversimplifying the case to consider that a full replacement would have taken place. The last supplementary report, Ferhurst in 2014, focuses entirely on the tower brackets and wells and not the trust end link post and pin joints, which were noted as not being overstressed. In the evolution of the process over many reports by Ferhursts, they arrived at a situation providing advice to the FETA board as to the work that they needed to do. I think that we will be interested to compare and contrast what you just said on the record with what Mr Colford said previously in evidence. Well, convener, you also have to have a deeper understanding. I think that sometimes some members just need to look at the detail of what piece of work are we talking about, what piece of contractual obligation, revenue and capital budgets important as well, because I have described how the overall settlement was reached and I have described how FETA, where there is an expectation, would have a tiered approach to their capital programme. Taking an example of this, I would imagine that the appointment of consultants would probably have come from revenue, potentially rather than capital, and that is a matter that FETA would be able to explain, the records at the time anyway. Having checked through the records, I can only find the first time that Barry reports to the board that there is a reduced scheme in December 2011. I cannot find a record of Barry reporting to the board that the tender for the consultancy has been withdrawn. That might well be there, we might not have a complete set of records, but that is our finding. At the minute, December 11, that is the first time that a refocused scheme has been brought to the board. The committee has attempted to obtain from both Transport Scotland and former FETA officials any documentation that might show the process of dialogue and discussion between the two bodies with regard to FETA's indicative capital plan and the allocation of funding by the Scottish Government following the 2011 spending review. Minister, can you say whether such documentation exists and, if so, is it the intention to provide the committee with further information? Yes, I believe that we can provide you with more information and I will do that this afternoon. Okay, thank you. I am going to move on and I am going to ask Alex Johnson to... Thank you very much, convener. Just looking at the way things are now, could you tell us who is now responsible for preparing the capital plan, setting out necessary future work on the bridge? Again, that would be a matter between the operating company that we have and Transport Scotland, so identifying works that are required, available resources, what is our priority, what will ensure the on-going operation of the bridge to our satisfaction, not undermine the structural integrity of the bridge and have that on-going dialogue. As Mike is largely responsible for this, I will ask Mike to explain a bit more of the mechanism. Yes, certainly. With the abolition of FETA in 2015-16, we effectively inherited a capital plan and the draft budget that is in front of Parliament at the moment for 2016-17 reflects the content of that plan. There is £9.1 million in terms of capital. FETA's capital plan, when you inherited it. First of all, have you made any changes to that? You have been in that position for over half a year now. Have there been any changes to the plan? The overall quantum of the plan has not changed, but with any capital plan there is a constant reassessment of priority within that for the maintenance of any asset that will be leaving aside the issues that have been the subject of spend since December. That is a constant review process that AME would go through in conjunction with colleagues in Transport Scotland. The interface with the budget process is about making sure that the on-going review of what makes up that plan, understanding the priorities, is then fed through into the spending review process. That is an on-going process that we take across business within Transport Scotland, not just in this matter. I am interested in the process of how you prioritise within the process. I wonder if I could assist and help on that one. Just to go back, the 15-16 FETA capital programme was reviewed and adopted during the six months mobilisation. It was a contract obligation of AME, our new provider, and FETA were part of the mobilisation process. During that period it was reviewed in detail. There were some slight changes and additions to it. You must understand that the new 4th Bridges unit now includes the short length of trunk road motorway that previously was part of another unit. As part of our plan, we have some pavement works, safety barrier upgrades and all the things that go with maintaining a section of motorway in there. However, the bulk of the structural work to the 4th Road bridge remains as programmed and prioritised by FETA. With regard to how that programme comes about, FETA themselves on the bridge inspect and maintain, and they inspect and rank the defects in accordance with the 4th Road bridge engineering manual, which, as I say, has been developed over a number of years to reflect best practice, originally written by the designers. It has been changed over the years. Within there, there is a ranking system. That ranking system is not dissimilar to what we use in national standards across the rest of the trunk road network. That sets out to rank defects in a rating, with safety critical ones being ranked four or five and then going down to three, two and one on the FETA system and three, two and one on the design manual for roads and bridges and national standards. The systems align quite closely. Within that, that will advise you from your different work streams that you are taking forward, because not everything will fall into a structural ranking. You may be doing some work to a building as well that you have to consider, and those then sit within a programme. Overarching that, what we have introduced as part of our system is something that we do for the rest of the trunk road network, and that includes the Keswick bridge that Mr Stewart has an interest in and the Erskine bridge. That is a tool that we have developed, which is a value management tool that flows out of work done by the London bridge engineering group, which was adopted and developed by the highways agency. We took it on some years ago and revised it for Scotland. I will not call it a sausage machine where you pour everything into the top turn handle and it comes out, but that, rather than a risk management tool, allows us to take on economic other sensitivities that might influence where things sit in our programmes that are not simply related to structural safety or structural integrity. As part of that process, we come up with our own indicative capital programmes. Under the fourth bridges unit contract, the function of doing that will fall to Amy, but it will be closely scrutinised and looked at by my staff. At that critical point, is it the case that the level of capital grant for repairs is determined by the needs of the capital plan, or are the works determined by the level of funding available? It is fair to say that it is a two-way process, but you have certain principles that what you are committing to financially does not ever undermine the structural integrity of the bridge. It could be said that, in 1617, the Government is hardly flush with cash, but there is an increase for the fourth road bridge, so the budget announced for 1617. Of course, we will be voting on. There is £5.1 million revenue and £9 million capital maintenance budget, which is an increase from £4 million last year. There is an example of it that does not necessarily reflect normal trends and available resource, but what is necessary, as Wayne has described. There is an example of budget impact. In terms of the question around capital spend on the bridge, of course, there has been more capital spend on the bridge and was anticipated as a result of the closure. You could argue that the £1.5 million for the structural monitoring equipment is spent on the bridge. In addition to the already approved capital programme, in no sense of the works that we have undertaken as a consequence of the closure going to impact on the capital plan, it is not compromised. That is additional resource. I will add a couple of points to that. The way that the budget is calculated for the fourth bridge is no different than any other part of Transport Scotland. We have a long-term financial plan that is developed from a bottom-up approach, so the needs are identified and aggregated up in terms of an overall financial plan. There is then a discussion around relative priorities, as has been described, and what needs to go ahead with the available resource that is available, but that process is built up from a base. It is not simply saying, here is not the money, what can you do with it? Because of the nature of asset management and capital planning generally, we do not tend to have flat lines or straight lines in terms of spend on assets that will depend on what the maintenance regime or programme tends to be, and I can fluctuate quite a bit, so that is all part of the financial planning process that we apply within Transport Scotland generally. Would it also be the case that the list of priorities and the funding available, if something was near the top of that list of priorities, it would have an impact on capital funding decisions, whereas something that was lower on the list would be less likely to have an impact on capital funding decisions? There. So, individual projects or potential projects would have different, as their priority was determined, their priority and the budgeting would be the same as well. All things are not treated equally, that is what I am saying. No, I think that what I have tried to describe and when maybe added to it as part of an asset management approach, you would not look at everything in the same light, you would look at a ranking and a risk-based approach to what you need to spend your money on. That would be a matter of course, regardless of whether you had 5, 10, 15, 20 million. You would still look at it and that priority, just in terms of delivering value for money and spending on the right things. If I may add to what Mike said, the prioritised indicative capital programmes that we come in for all our operating companies and for the fourth bridges unit, they determine utopian budget requirements, in a sense, because they will often be looking many years ahead. However, as Richard Fish, one of your independent experts, says when he was managing the Tamar, he lived in the real world as well as living in the engineer's world, and I do as well. I have very close working relationships with Mike and my asset management college to identify the high priority schemes that are required to be taken forward. That informs the level of budget to be allocated against a broad basket of other cross-disciplinary functions in Transport Scotland. To go back to your original question and answer it, which I think the minister already—it is a two-way process, and we do our best to satisfy the work's priorities within the budget availability and also seeking additional budget when it becomes available by having schemes that we can deliver rapidly. Transport Scotland does have a good record of having shovel-ready schemes and delivering them and having them ready, and that is part of our remit. Within that indicative capital programme, below the red line on the page that indicates above which that is the budget that you have, you always need to keep a cadre of schemes ready to deliver should, for some reason, additional budget become available, and we can deliver those priorities ahead of schedule. The economic impact of the closure has been quite considerable. In the era prior to December last year, did the Scottish Government take into account when it assessed those priorities any broader economic impact that may be as a result of significant closure such as this one? Can I maybe clarify the question, Mr Johnson? Do you mean in relation to closure or before closure? I mean in more general terms, but the closure last year is an extremely good example and one that we can use as an example, that the broad economic impact was very significant. Was that taken into account by the Government in prioritising work on the bridge prior to the closure last year? Of course, that is why we are building a £1.3 billion replacement crossing immediately beside the fourth road bridge while we continue to invest in the fourth road bridge. That is an example of how you consider economic impact in your capital spend. We are maintaining what we have got and we are building the replacement crossing because of its criticalities, the transport network and the impact in the area. Of course, economic consideration plays a part in that when your objective is to ensure the structural integrity of the bridge. We are not just doing that, so we have a structure that is there, so it is fit for purpose and its purpose is to allow transport over it. Of course, that is part of the mix and the political considerations of what are priorities. The Queensford crossing is one such capital priority. To add to that, the second part of your question was about the closure itself. In recognition of the impact that necessary closure, because of safety being paramount, would have on the community, that is why we enacted the comprehensive travel action plan and ensured that there was more bus and train provision and more information out there working with our partners, as well as the key priority to get the bridge to reopen as quickly as possible. We could have spent less money, we could have taken more time, but we might not have commissioned people to put in the effort that they did to get the bridge to reopen as quickly as possible. Exactly because of the impact on the area on people's lives, businesses and local communities, we made it the number one priority to reopen the bridge as quickly as possible and safely with confidence and committed the resources that you have heard about to do that. Economic impact features in capital spend decisions and how we respond. For a bit of generality on how transport Scotland looks after its asset on structural road maintenance schemes, there is an asset management hierarchy across all of the trunk road network, which takes into account social economic impacts, safety and functionality. That is used in the volume management process of prioritising road structural maintenance schemes on a yearly basis. Experience of December last year and the period since has had a substantial impact and it has been a difficulty for the Government to have to deal with that. Has it taught you anything? Has it changed the way that you will react to similar incidents in future? It is fair to say that that was unforeseen. There are various incident plans and contingency plans in place in the event of disruption, but the nature of that fall and therefore the necessary closure was unforeseen. All of the contingency plans were scaled up to meet the circumstance that we faced. That was diversion routes, traffic management, bridge control, policing, how we engage with local authorities. I think that there are always lessons that can be learned and how we deal with partners and the public. I think that we moved very quickly before being praised for getting the bridge open so quickly. Transport Scotland was quite rightly and all our stakeholders and partners were praised for the travel action plan that was put in place. That was within hours of the decision to close the bridge and the preparations for that for people going back to work on Monday. That involved extra rail rolling stock, buses and a great deal of co-ordination. A further lesson learned is for everyone to keep working in partnership in the event of a major issue such as that, because it was critical to the country's transport system. During the smaller lessons learned how to engineer works, I gave the example of how we were able to accelerate the works on the repair, so our operating companies have learned something about doing more work in the workshops rather than on site because it is of the weather factor. I think that there are a number of different lessons learned in operating and responding to incidents. From a political perspective, I think that it has been the right thing to do to be transparent. What I mean by that is the statement to Parliament, the technical briefings that were offered to members. Many chose to involve themselves in those technical briefings. Therefore, I think that degree of transparency has been very healthy as well, but the response that was sought was to focus on getting the bridge reopened fully as quickly as possible, and that is where our energies were centred on. I have been involved in leading transport resilience since the Glasgow airport attack, and we have dealt with many incidents across the network, whether it is pandemic flu, flooding, avi, volcanic ash or landslides. You learn on every occasion, and we will do the same here. Wayne has already got in motion a series of debriefs with a whole range of individuals and stakeholders to make sure that we improve our resilience. We have already touched on the estimated total cost of phases 1 to phase 3 repairs to the bridge following the recent closure, and those are clearly not insignificant at £19.7 million. The enforced closure also caused significant and on-going travel and economic disruption, which we have talked about. Minister, would you wish to comment on whether, with the benefit of hindsight, it might have been preferable for FETA—I accept that it is FETA's decision, not your decision—but it would have been preferable for FETA to have taken forward its trust-end link replacement proposals, as set out in that 2010 capital plan, in a planned and managed way, thus avoiding the high repair costs and the unplanned disruption, which you rightly said could not have been foreseen? I think that it is fair to say, convener, that we just do not know, because we have been asked to speculate on the decision of another organisation and the factors that were in play at the time. Fundamentally, that thought was unforeseen and unforeseeable. I think that there is a great deal of consensus around that. It is hard to say what if FETA had proceeded with consultants, what would that consultant have recommended, what would the available resources have been at the time, when that work could have been profile profiled, would the pins have seized up before then? There are so many unknowns. It would be unfair of me to make a judgment on whether FETA got it right or known with all those unknowns. I say again that this was an unforeseeable fault. The pressure point that existed that was identified was being pursued and repaired. Ironically, that is not what caused the current fault or the current closure. I think that we all have to bear that in mind. When I say current fault and current closure, it is the current closure that we were discussing. There is now no closure of the fourth road bridge. Of course, it is a historic closure now. We have heard in evidence that the nature of the fault was, as you say, unforeseen and unforeseeable. The committee understands that, but I think that what the public wants to know is could this have been avoided if that decision had been taken by FETA to replace the trust end links as part of the 2010 capital plan? Was it something that could have been avoided, is the question that the public will have? We genuinely do not know because we do not know what FETA would not have known. That is what I am describing, what their commission would have led to in the end, what timescale that would have taken and what it would have concluded. I think that Wayne has very helpfully said that a consultant worth their salary might have come back and said, what is the problem, what are you trying to fix and how do you get there and might have concluded that you do not need to replace the full trust end assembly, the whole section. You can identify the points and it would be more cost effective to identify the points that are being overstressed and fix that. Ultimately, that is what FETA embarked upon based on the information that they had at the time. We do not know whether FETA would be able to proceed or not, but for the purpose of clarity, since there was a lot of political noise about that, I was asked on a radio interview if full replacement of the whole assembly went ahead, would that have captured the bit that was broken by chance? It might have done, but it is all ifs and we do not know because if FETA had proceeded to decided to replace the whole assembly by accident, by chance, the bit that became the fault might have been replaced, but it would have been by chance, it was not because it was identified and that was not a programme that they embarked upon anyway. What they did was, again, to be fair, proportionate and in view of the advice and the assessments that they had at the time, but they rescope to their work in light of what I have described. Does that help, convener? It all helps. Do you members have any points? Scott said in the earlier evidence that he had gone around the table and asked all the witnesses at that point whether that was the right decision. It was the right decision by Barry and the team at that time to take forward the reduced scheme and to look at the area that was impacted because they just did not know about any other fault on the trust and link assembly. Royce Brown has just said that there seems to be an implication that FETA did nothing that they did not. FETA carried on a close working relationship with a consultant and looked at a number of different options. If those reports are read sequentially, there is a good technical trail in there, showing where they were leading to and where they arrived at in 2014. Pass to the committee. They were part of the original evidence pack that was submitted before we came. It is clear that there is further information that is going to be coming. No, you have these. The point that I am making is that I am not expecting everyone to sit down and read them as bedtime reading, but there is a logical thought trail that runs through them that says, here is where we got to at a workshop and here is where we got to in 2014. We were asked by yourself and I thought that that was a proportionate and as a former consulting engineer of over 21 years in the private sector. I did work for the original designers of this bridge. I thought that it was a proportionate way to take it forward. Your question was also if FETA had taken a certain decision to do a certain thing and see that through. Would there have been cost and disruption? Yes, there would. Of course, there would to execute the works. There would also been disruption and there would also have been cost, which had not been fully quantified to follow. My question was that that would have been done in a planned and managed way. That, by its very nature, could have minimised the disruption so that the work was done at weekends? It would be hard. I would imagine, and I am not the engineer, that to replace the full assembly would come with some disruption and some significant cost, but because the works were never actually fully designed, never fully costed, never put out to tender for that full assembly replacement. The honest answer is that I do not know, but we are as being as helpful as we possibly can. Once the Queensford crossing has opened later this year, the traffic on the fourth road bridge will reduce significantly. What works will then be carried out, which has been delayed, so as not to disrupt the traffic across the bridge? What works do you seem to have the impression of being delayed? The priority has been to reopen the bridge. I am not sure how that relates to the Queensford crossing, because there has been no impact on the works on the fourth road bridge on the Queensford crossing that I am aware of. The Queensford crossing works are progressing as they were on the fourth road bridge, as well as repairing it. We have also taken the opportunity to accelerate other works rather than delay them, so I am not sure why there is any perception of delay. Adam, you have some questions. Thank you, convener. I could ask some questions about the arrangements for inspection at the bridge. How is the contract inspect the fourth road bridge that has been managed and paid for? Is it a lump-sum payment to carry out a pre-defined series of inspections that were not quite clear on the inspection regime as is now? I will say one thing about the inspection regime and then I will ask Wayne to give you more detail. The current inspection regime is very much what was inherited from FETA. That is informed by the very construction of the fourth road bridge and learning over a number of years, and international learning as well. The level of inspections that was inherited, and it is a live document of the bridge manual itself. It is the history of the bridge. It is the on-going nature of it. The inspections were inherited. I am sure that it has been explained how the fault was identified on inspection and the regime that was inherited. It is fair to say now that, with even more understanding of the bridge and the new monitoring equipment, that will add to the inspection regime. It is even more robust with the new technology that we have on the bridge with that deeper understanding. That is some confidence around the inspection regime. That fault had only occurred within weeks and was identified. Then we moved on to the remedial work and repairs. There is the more forensic inspection. I think that this is important for the committee to learn. We have taken the opportunity during the bridge closure to do a painstaking thorough investigation of the bridge. There are no new substantial defects, no substantial faults. There are some smaller issues that get picked up in the address as a matter, of course. However, we took the opportunity of the full bridge closure to carry out a more comprehensive inspection in any event, in addition to the already programmed inspections. Wayne can say a bit more about the payment regime between operating company and Government. The bridge inspections, just to put it into context, have continued under Amy, using the same staff and the same procedures that were developed, tried and tested and used by FETTA. All the bridge inspections, well, we know about the two pair arrangements. Everyone went over. I understand that one of the inspectors has retired just due to the natural course of things, but, apart from that, it is the same staff. The fourth road bridge inspections are undertaken in accordance with the fourth road bridge engineering manual, which I touched upon earlier. That has been updated and developed over the years to reflect best practice. I think that that has been stead before, so I will not say it again. It is a live document. The process is kept under constant review to ensure that it aligns with best practice. To put you in the picture, during the development of the fourth bridge unit contract, the people that developed the contract for us are a company that we are now called CH2M. They were called CH2M Hill or Halkrow, you may have heard of, and they engaged one of the country's foremost bridge specialists, Flinton Neil. It was a Neil McFadden, who is one of their senior staff, to do a review of the fourth road bridge engineering manual to give us the confidence as Scottish Government and Transport Scotland represented Scottish Government that what was in that manual reflected best practice. There are a number of high-level consultants you have heard of, but Flinton Neil, for whom one of your independent experts, John Evans, was a former senior partner, are recognised as a world leader in this event and have experience on a number of these types of bridges around the world, mainly Severn, but also Westgate in Melbourne. To put it simply, there were very few changes made, but it brought to my staff's attention what needed to be done. I will not talk any more about the generalities of the inspection manuals, but the very simple answer is, in line with our other operating companies, the inspections, those predefined inspections that are well specified, well defined and well laid down for the fourth bridges operating companies are paid for as a series of monthly lump sums. Any additional inspections that arise out of that or special inspections that arise out of that are paid for separately, usually out of the term that we call professional service rates, or if we need to bring in an outside expert at the costs associated with bringing in that outside expert. It is not the case that, if we find something during inspections, we expect Amy to absorb those costs within that lump sum. If we need to go out and do well testing, or if we need to bring a company-in-like strain stall, as we did, to assist, or whomever, that is paid for in addition. Part of our budget is set aside to do that, and we tend always to have an on-going series of, I will call them special investigations, that arise out of the principle and general inspection programme, the tackling issues that occur there. I hope that that is helpful. You mentioned that best practice is constantly evolving and, presumably, standards reflect that. I think that somebody mentioned earlier on that all over the world people will be looking at pins and their suspension bridges now. However, how are all those developments as they happen? How are they incorporated in the inspection regime going forward? Whilst it is a live document, there are opportunities to introduce changes through the contract-to-contract change mechanism. If anything substantial would have come forward that we felt needed introducing today, tomorrow, that would be done. However, as I have explained, as part of the development of the contract, a full review has taken place. Within a couple of years' time, as part of the development of the next phase of the contract, the same process will be gone through. It is formally and contractually, but that is not strictly true. Feta, as a Rhodes authority at the time, was responsible for setting its own inspection standards. Clearly, it reflected the best practice developed over the years by the Department for Transport and its long-spam structures around Britain, and it sat on a number of what you might call national, international and UK forums. Transport Scotland, myself and my immediate colleagues below me, I and they sit on a number of UK forums to review, share, disseminate and collaborate on developments of best practice, the key ones of which, and Feta sat on these groups, and I know Barry Colford very well from this. The UK Rhodes liaison group was sat upon by Roy Brannan for a number of years, and now Donald Morrison. I sit on the bridge owners forum, the UK bridges board, the Scots bridges group. I am a member of IABSI, which is the international association of bridge and structural engineering. Part of my task is to review, absorb, and determine and discuss with Roy and the other senior managers if things are arising in the industry that we need to take cognisance of to build into our contracts. We also now sit on the long-spam bridges group, which is a UK forum of which Barry was a member, and that is Seven, Humber, Tamar, Dartford. You must understand, as well, that Transport Scotland is a Scottish trunk road authority. It is the overseeing organisation for all structural standards and design approvals on all trunk roads in the whole of Scotland. Given that that is a key part of our work, a key part of my section's work is to keep up to date on what is going on on these UK organisations. It can be a bit of a Sisyphus task at times, pushing the stone uphill all the time, but it is a key part of what we do. Individual engineers within my section have individual portfolios for which they are the point of contact and are responsible for, whether it is bridge strike prevention group, concrete bridge development, which Dr Hazel MacDonald sits on, the recent ongoing work on BIM, building information modelling, which is a department for transport initiative to take us all forward. You have seen the flowering results of that through Amy of some of their beautiful schematics and computer-generated graphics. Another key piece of work that we are working on is deterioration modelling. Another one after some tunnel collapses is safety critical fixings and the key one that has been implemented this year is the new bridge inspector competency course to train future bridge inspections. We have a role at the heart of these organisations and it does not necessarily make us experts, it just means that we are better informed than most. I just want to say that, as well as that, all the expertise and understanding about the bridge was seamlessly transferred over from FETA to Amy. Within that expertise, within Government and Transport Scotland, we did rely on Amy as well on the international connections to be able to execute the repairs in the way that we have been able to do as well, because it is clearly a big organisation in part of a bigger organisation. That resilience, that shared understanding, I think, has also helped to be fair. We had some of the best people in the world, as far as I am concerned, in forming our thinking on the repair and the modelling. Also rest assured that the understanding is documented, so it is not just with individuals that it is there on record to understand the behaviour, as it is described, of the bridge. Of course, there are comparisons that I made around the world. Interestingly, we are not aware of any similar fall with the mechanism that could have alerted us to this happening on the fourth road bridge. I would just like to add to what the minister said. It is a matter of interest that Barry Colford, in his latest venture, is working on a structure called the Walt Whitman bridge in North America, which has a truss-end link system on it. I am not aware that they have problems with that. They are not common, because they vary on the bridge type, but they are not unknown. I am reassured that Transport Scotland is on the ball, but we have also heard throughout this whole inquiry about structural health monitoring and various bits of kit that can be used nowadays to monitor the performance of elements of the bridge on-going. I think that I was correct in hearing that we have spent a million to a million and a half on monitoring the pins now, the eight pin joints. Is that correct? Is there anything more that any other information you can provide on this? Do you intend to install any more equipment on the bridge going forward, or is that sufficient? I think that where we are at the moment is having more technology on the bridge than ever before. Some of its latest technology is designed for what was identified as the issues on the fourth-road bridge. In terms of what has been installed, it includes sensors, strain gauges, tiltmeters, temperature gauges, fibre optic lines, electrical feeds and data acquisition units to ensure that we have the best information. What is testing the stress limits on the bridge? That is what informed the decisions as to what traffic we could allow over working with the modelling. There is the modelling of what is happening in the bridge, then there is the actual live load testing, where we were able to run gritters over the bridge. You can do modelling, then you can do the live testing. Through the monitoring equipment that we have, Mr Ingram, we can see the impact that is having on the behaviour of the bridge, as well as the other indicators. Humans are actually quite important, too. The inspections are important because some of that is not just about the high technology, but about actual visual inspection, even noise and what can be seen. We will continue to use the range of different methods to inspect the bridge, but with even more technology on it, we will have a deeper understanding of the behaviour of the bridge and I think that new equipment has been helpful. It is what has given us the confidence to assess what can be allowed over the bridge, which right now is fully operational and we can know in good time what the stresses are on the individual members. When looking at what was the fault, what was the crack, metallurgists have suggested that it was fatigue, and the stress on the member can now be assessed by this equipment. That is more information than we would have had before in light of what has happened. Before that, it was unforeseeable, but knowing the history and what has happened, we have more technology and we have put in precautionary repairs and strengthened the bridge in a way that you would expect us to. There are no further plans for any additional equipment, but each piece of equipment has been appropriate to the issue and the circumstances. I recall a statement to Parliament on the answer to a question around the dehumidification system and the acoustic monitoring, which was because of the concern around the cables at the time. It just shows that we are responding to each issue. We will try to predict, but I am not mystic meg. I do not have a crystal ball. I do not know what the unforeseen is, but we will certainly do what we can to predict and to prepare and to have the contingencies in place, but that is substantial investment. I would also like to add in terms of lessons learned from Mr Ingram, in terms of new technology. Mr Johnston, in terms of wider lessons learned, I think that it is now reasonable to say what level of equipment would we have on the Queensferry crossing to understand the behaviour of that bridge as well. I think that it is very helpful for us now to have that expertise that has been established and we will commit to that in the Queensferry crossing. The Queensferry crossing will be the first bridge in the UK with a SHM built in from scratch, so it has heavily instrumented new control room built into the federal offices to allow that to be monitored remotely. I apologise if you would like me not to say this, but you did ask the question about what we are doing in the future, and the minister answered very good. However, I have asked for a feasibility study here to look and review and to assess and give advice on future locations and next locations on a bridge, where funding permitting and depending on what the structural health monitoring will tell us, where we can install strain gauges, tilt meters and measurements, and some of these remote monitoring locations may perhaps be the expansion joints and divide-up movement joints, so that we can get an accurate record of just exactly what they are doing during the day and the night. However, the point that I think also needs making is that we also have quite a lot of structural health monitoring on the bridge. It has been said by others that we have got acoustic monitoring of the cables, dehumidification, geospatial sensors on the bridge, monitored remotely from Nottingham University that are telling us that it is moving four and a half metres up and down and seven and a half metres laterally, which came as a surprise to some of us, but it is, and the plots are very interesting. However, there was a very valuable point made by Barry Colford, and whilst he did not say that visual inspection remains our primary method of inspecting things and the ability to put your fingernail into a crack and get up close and personal, we have to be careful with structural health monitoring that it is a very new thing that we do not end up with data overload whereby we have a great deal of information coming at us and no idea what to do with it, so we will be in learning mode for quite a while. Right. That was a fairly comprehensive answer to my question. Ministers know Donald Rumsfeld then with his no-none, no-none, no-none, no-none, no-none. Now, I am no doubt relieved of that. I will pass now. Michael O'Mae. Most people do not refer to me as questions to Michael O'Mae but as Mike O'Mae. I was spared the name tag. Just before we leave this fascinating discussion about structural health monitoring, can I ask Minister if there was any consideration given for this ond oedd dwygen i'r williamhau sydd wedi'u glwstwil iawn o'r llwyffordd o'r brwyng o'r hollu llwyffordd o'r hollu llwyffordd o'r hollu llwyffordd o'r hollu llwyffordd o'r hollu llwyffordd o'r hollwllwil I'm not aware of any discussion to that effect because the concerns were around other parts of the bridge like the cables, as I've discussed and there we had the acoustic monitoring or where there was an identified problem was at the bracket and there was I was an identified programme of works to take that forward so I'm not aware of any, I'm not aware of any previous discussion on installing these mechanisms. Bear in mind that some of this technology has been made to measure for the fourth road bridge in light of incidents and that's appropriate. Thank you. I think that we've covered that pretty exhaustively in that subject. Mr Colford explained to the committee that when he was the bridge master, he was a member of the international cable supported bridge operators association and therefore he was able to learn from good practice across the world. I wonder if there's any continuing arrangement whereby that good practice from across the world could be tapped into? Yes, we're still involved and as Wayne quite exhaustively describes the local, regional, national and international forums in terms of intelligence on bridge structures so there's still that deep understanding, yes. Incidentally, just for completeness, bridge masters still do talk to each other and share that expertise so that's very helpful too. Thank you. And we'd heard in the course of the inquiry that the Humber bridge has a maintenance regime that's based on a 60 year plan. Given that there's a, you know, there will be a reduction in the traffic utilising this bridge when the new bridge opens, what's the expected continuing lifespan of this bridge? Ongoing strong maintenance of the bridge, you can see the bridge continue as long as we want. Essentially, if you keep reinvesting in it, if you keep maintaining it and replacing it as required, the bridge can continue for the timescale that we want as long as you keep maintaining it and investing in it. Previous lifespans have been issued between 50 and 70 years but these are all estimates. If you keep investing in it, renewing it, maintaining it, it can last as long as we want, is the advice that I've been given. Thank you. I'm just moving on to a slightly different subject. We've heard a lot in the course of the inquiry about the disruptive effect of the bridge closure and so on. Has there been any upside to that at all in terms of commuter behaviour or whatever? We obviously want modal shift from the car into public transport. I, as transport minister, would particularly want to encourage that. In our travel plan, during the period of closure, we saw a clear shift into public transport, which is welcomed. More so rail than in bus actually, even though there was a bus priority lane as well as the goods priority lane as well. However, there was certainly far more use of public transport. That's welcomed. There was extra rolling stock provided to the area and enhanced staffing at public transport points. One of the advantages, just as a walk for, was an earlier train put on in the morning. ScotRail has maintained that service because it's turned out to have on-going demand. There's a public transport benefit, which is welcomed. It encouraged a lot of people to use public transport, who maybe weren't using it before. If we want to achieve modal shift, people need to get out of their cars and into public transport. I do appreciate the forbearance and the patience of the public and businesses in the local area during the period of disruption. However, yes, there were public transport benefits such as now an improved rail timetable. More people were used to using public transport. We are actually undertaking an evaluation exercise. It won't be in time for the committee, I don't think. It's not central to your inquiry in any event, but an understanding of how people responded themselves to disruption. I'm happy to share that if the committee is interested in how people responded to disruption. For example, how they got to work in use of public transport, but it showed a significant shift during the period and there are on-going benefits. That sounds interesting. My final question now, convener. When we heard from the panel of independent experts, there were lavish in their praise for the whole bridge team and everybody involved in this process in terms of getting the problem identified and remedial action undertaken very quickly indeed. I think that you yourself, minister, have had a very hands-on involvement in the whole process and you touched on the initial decision, but could you perhaps describe for the committee what your involvement has been as the story is unfolded and come to the happy conclusion that it has? I think that it's fair to say that transport ministers have a very particular experience during winter. This was unforeseen but quite intense. I think that when we looked at the record over 20 ministerial calls or engagements. Of course, I'm sometimes including Cabinet Secretary, First Minister, Deputy First Minister, with lead responsibility and resilience. A number of site visits and very frequent reports to make sure that we were on top of this issue. I was left under no illusion that the priority was to ensure public safety but to get the bridge reopened as quickly as possible and that's where all the energies have been. We've also taken advantage, in a sense, of the closure. We've accelerated. That's why I was somewhat thrown by a question of delay. We've supported works to the Queensferry crossing that have taken place with less disruption because they've taken place during the fourth road bridge closure and works associated with the fourth road bridge themselves, such as the carriageways and other works that might have required future disruption. Actually, we tried to do as much as we could during the closure, whilst fixing the bridge because the bridge was closed. I remember repeated calls, can we not let pedestrians and cyclists across the fourth road bridge during closure? As much as we would have liked to have done that, we couldn't compromise public safety because it was a live work site and there are issues that you understand about the fall on the bridge. The positives are that there are always lessons to be learned. We upscaled the contingency plans. There was strengthened public transport. There is now more monitoring equipment on the fourth road bridge with better understanding and even better understanding of its behaviour. I had a degree of vindication that building the new Queensferry crossing was the right thing to do. It is a substantial contingency for the fourth road bridge and vice versa. There are choices for the future on the role of the fourth road bridge. It was in the act what its use would be. It could be for a future Government to consider looking at what its role should be. Queensferry crossing was to be a replacement bridge but there might be options for the future of the fourth road bridge as well maintained. I am happy to write to the committee convener with the extra works that we were able to undertake to give that sense of what we were able to do during the period of closure that makes my point go into the detail around carriageway improvement, landscaping, work, structural. I think that is what I was alluding to later on. Rather than being a delay in no sense caused delay, it was acceleration and much better timing of the works, which reduced the need for further disruption or closure or anything else. We thought that it was fit and appropriate to do that whilst repairing the bridge where clearly was our number one priority. I thank Mike McKenzie for his praise but the people who deserve the praise are the staff who worked in all weathers to repair the bridge. They knew that this was a priority for Scotland, not just for the Scottish Government. I would like to thank them all. I am aware that we have had a very comprehensive session, but do members have any final closing questions? Is there anything further that you would like to say, Minister? I think that I have covered my answers as fully as I possibly can, but there will be that information that you requested coming this afternoon by way of engagement. If you require anything else, please raise it with me because I think that it is important in this issue. As I said throughout the bridge closure, when engineers and experts were exposed to Parliament, everyone would be filled with confidence that the Government and our agencies interventions have been right, proportionate, appropriate, putting public safety first and working to repair the bridge as quickly as possible. I think that we are left in a much stronger position as a result. On behalf of the committee, I thank you for your commitment and for your comprehensive evidence this morning and willingness to engage in a constructive and positive way with the committee. I particularly thank Transport Scotland officials for their experience and expertise in making that available to the committee, not just today but throughout this inquiry. On that note of thanks, I suspend briefly to allow the witnesses to leave the room. The committee will now consider any issues that it wishes to raise in reporting to the Parliament on the instruments. Members should note that no motions to annul have been received in relation to the instruments, and I invite comments from members. There are no comments from members. Has the committee agreed that it does not wish to make any recommendation in relation to the instruments? We are agreed. That is agreed. I now move the meeting into private session.