A WIDE range of organisations and individuals have signed an open letter calling on Economy Secretary Keith Brown to establish a Scottish National Infrastructure Company (SNIC).
You can click here for our full report on the message, organised by pro-indy think tank Common Weal, and below is the full text of the letter, along with a parallel one sent by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland.
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DEAR Cabinet Secretary Keith Brown,
We are writing to you in your capacity as the Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work to ask that you consider the creation of a publicly owned Scottish National Infrastructure Company (SNIC).
The collapse of Carillion has exposed just how much risk the public faces because of the way we outsource infrastructure-building and service delivery. With a focus on private profit instead of the public good, the way we currently finance and build infrastructure is putting jobs and construction projects at risk.
The failings of Public-Finance Initiatives (PFI) and other Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) have been exposed by poor construction quality (such as collapsing school buildings) and a huge cost to the taxpayers in repayments to PPP consortiums worth up to five or six times the value of the asset.
Payments for privately-financed projects will have cost Scotland about £40 billion by the time the current contracts are completed in 2040. If the SNIC model, financed by a Scottish National Investment Bank had been adopted instead, Scotland could have saved up to £26 Billion.
To quote the First Minister’s reference to developing a National Energy Company: “No shareholders to worry about. No corporate bonuses to consider”. With a SNIC, the emphasis would go back into quality and achieving real value for money; not maximising profits that could otherwise be spent on design, construction and fair wages.
The SNIC would replace Public-Private Partnerships with ‘Public-Public Partnerships’: it would find and package the finance, and work with public bodies to create the best possible infrastructure for the best possible value to the public. There would also be a renewed focus on the transparency of public procurement and a commitment to the values of fair work.
The Scottish National Infrastructure Company is an idea whose time has come and we, the signatories, of this letter urge you to commit to investigating its creation.
Signed:
Common Weal
Scottish Trade Union Congress (STUC)
Unison Scotland
Unite the union Scotland
Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA union)
New Economics Foundation (NEF)
Global Justice Now
Business for Scotland
Radical Independence
People’s Health Movement
The People Versus PFI
The European Services Strategy Unit (ESSU)
Young Scots for Independence (YSI)
SNP Students
Professor Christine Cooper
Professor Richard Murphy
Dr Helen Mercer
Dexter Whitfield
Campbell Martin (creator of The Only Game in Town documentary)
George Kerevan
Christopher McEleny (SNP deputy leader candidate)
Rona Mackay MSP
Ronnie Cowan MP
Architects: Robin Webster OBE RSA FRIAS RIBA FRSA
Helen Lucas RIAS
Professor Christopher Platt FRIAS
Angus Kerr FRIAS
Gillies Macphail RIAS
Robin Livingstone RIAS
Malcolm Fraser FRIAS
Peter Johnson RIAS
Lesley Robertson RIAS
Jude Barber RIAS
Ros Love RIAS
Tim Gray RIAS
Neil Dargie, architect
Andy Summers, architect
Mark Philip RIAS
Peter Caunt RIAS
Anne Duff RIAS
Kieran Gaffney RIAS
Paul Barham RIAS
Gillian Hanley RIAS
Jim Johnson RIAS
Kerr Robertson RIAS
Gordon Duffy FRIAS
Raffa Esposito, architect
Christopher Stewart RIAS
Sandy Halliday MCIBSE CEng FRSA
Robin Sutherland RIAS
David Seel, architect
Rory Flyn RIAS
Calum Duncan RIAS
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Dear Cabinet Secretary,
We are writing to you in your capacity as the Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work on behalf of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland’s (RIAS), to back the call for a publicly owned Scottish National Infrastructure Company.
We understand that members the Scottish National Party are debating and voting on the merits of this policy at the national conference on June 8th. If this policy is adopted, we would encourage you to meet with the Incorporation and the Common Weal think-tank to explore the creation of this institution.
It is vital that Scotland moves towards a more sustainable form of finance for public procurement projects and we believe the proposals for a Scottish National Infrastructure Company are worthy of further investigation.
Yours faithfully,
Stewart Henderson PRIAS
President
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