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| Reluctant Hero |
Final costs of Parliament to be revealedParliament costs to be unveiledThe final cost of the controversial Scottish Parliament building is set to be revealed. MSPs will be given a final report on what has become known as the "Holyrood Project". Presiding Officer George Reid will also formally declare the project completed, ending a saga which haunted politicians and the construction industry. Building costs were recently put at £430.5m, but Mr Reid said he hoped the final figure would be below that. The episode was blamed by critics for giving devolution a bad name in its formative years. A White Paper published shortly after Labour's 1997 general election victory initially put the construction cost of a Scottish Parliament building at between £10m and £40m. Costs rose The following year, Holyrood was named as the site of the new parliament and the search began for a designer. By this stage, the cost had gone up to £50m. The same year also saw a decision to use the "construction management" method for the building, in which the client has full control but also carries all the risk. After the first Holyrood election in 1999, the then Scottish Office handed responsibility for the project over to the Scottish Parliament Corporate Body of senior MSPs. The newly-elected parliament voted by 64 to 61 to continue with the project after First Minister Donald Dewar put the cost at £109m. Systemic failures Costs rose, timetables were extended, MSPs came and went in the 2003 election, and still the building at the bottom of the Royal Mile was unfinished. Tory peer Lord Fraser conducted an inquiry into the saga, and found systemic failures but no single "villain of the piece". His inquiry cost £1m and sat for more than 43 days. MSPs finally moved into the new building in September 2004 and it was opened by the Queen the following month. By then it was three years late and had cost about 10 times the original price tag. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6382177.stm |
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| IF Convenor |
Re: Final costs of Parliament to be revealed
This is a very important point. Every decision regarding the site, the architect, the management structure was made before the Scottish Parliament even existed. Too many people blame the Parliament for the cost overruns, etc. but those problems were the result of decisions made in Whitehall. The Parliament itself is far from blameless in the whole fiasco, but the bulk of the blame lies elsewhere. |
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