The A75 - Vital to the UK and especially Dumfries and Galloway - must have action from both the UK Government and the Scottish Government.
May I congratulate my right honourable friend, the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk for securing this important debate.
I was a teenage newspaper reporter when I first was confronted with the horrific reality of a collision between a car and an articulated lorry. A senior policeman told me there had been 4 fatalities when a lorry and car crashed on the A75 road just outside my hometown of Stranraer in what is now my Dumfries and Galloway constituency.
The policeman added, "I know there's four dead only because I can see four right feet."
40 years later, that same A75 continues to exact an awful toll for the total traffic volumes it carries are much bigger, and the artics are themselves larger too.
Tragically, there have been 2 more recent fatalities, when cars and lorries collided on the A75 in September and again in November.
Chair, the A75 is gloriously titled the 'Euroroute' but set aside any notions of a multi-laned ribbon of shining asphalt. It's largely 2 lanes, it's filled with dangerous bends, blind dips, adverse camber and grains through villages which should have been bypassed decades ago. It even has a light controlled cattle crossing. This despite the fact that the A75 services the key port of Cairnryan and carries estimates vary but perhaps as much as 60% of Northern Ireland's goods in and out.
Transport is devolved to the Scottish Government, so why on earth are we here in this place discussing this road? Well, this will be used for the minister, but the previous Conservative administration undertook a review of UK connectivity and identified the A75 as being of national significance. It's the key traffic artery running right through Dumfries and Galloway, yes. But it's also the critical link between Northern Ireland, Scotland and England.
It's screaming out for improvements, yet the road is treated with supreme indifference by the Scottish Government. They complained that the UK Government even looking at the A75 was a power grab, alleging we were trampling on devolution by even launching a connectivity review. Officials were ordered not to cooperate with that review by Sir Peter, now Lord Hendy. It meant that he had to drive the full length of the A75, inch by painful inch, using only Google Streetview.
Since my election, I have been trying to find out what is happening with money earmarked for improvements to the A75 under the last Conservative Government. I've established that the money has not been swallowed up by the questionable fiscal black hole the Chancellor blames for all ills. But with the Department of Transport here convinced the issue sits in Edinburgh and Edinburgh inscrutable at best, we have an impasse.
Chair, the First Minister of Scotland, motivated no doubt by looming Hollywood parliamentary elections, has deigned to visit the A75 to see for himself how overwhelmed it truly is. Labour boasts about a reset of relations with the Scottish Government, yet sadly the Secretary of State for Scotland was unable to take up my suggestion that given the supposed love-in between Dover House and Bute House, he should share a car with the First Minister, John Swinney on that visit. Mr Swinney says he now understands the depth of feeling about the A75. Empty words which leave those on both sides of the North Channel frustrated by the state of this vital cross-border road.
Chair, will the Minister give my constituents an update on where the UK taxpayers' money for this road has gone and will she press the case for the UK Department of Transport to accept it has a stake in seeing a rolling programme of improvements on the A75 on both safety and economic grounds?
The current mode of this Government is to devolve and forget, to throw block grant up North to Edinburgh and to then wash their hands of the matter. This is not what devolution is about.
The A75 is a classic example of where the UK Government ought to act in the best interests of the people of Britain and not allow devolution to be an excuse for inaction.
Livelihoods and indeed lives are truly at risk here.