I agreed ‘pig deal’ with £363m of taxpayers’ cash, admits tram boss

A BUSINESSMAN hired to salvage the failing Edinburgh tram project has admitted council negotiators were forced into striking a so-called ‘pig deal’ to get the work finished.

Vic Emery told an inquiry that walking away without agreeing a price with feuding contractors would have caused too much ‘political damage’.

He instead agreed to pay £362.5million of public money towards the project during a mediation meeting at the Mar Hall Hotel in Renfrewshire.

But Mr Emery, who was chairman of council-owned firm Transport Initiatives Edinburgh (TIE), said the amount agreed was half of the £750million consortium Infraco had demanded in March 2011 to complete the network between the city’s airport and St Andrew Square.

An inquiry is being held in Edinburgh to determine why the project, originally costed at £375million, ended up being delivered three years late at a cost of £1billion.

Giving evidence yesterday, Mr Emery said of the mediation deal: ‘Generally the team thought it was not good value but on the basis we wanted to get to a resolution, a number was agreed.

‘You either said yes to this deal or you walked away. It’s called a pig deal.’

Mr Emery, former chairman of the Scottish Police Authority, said one member of his team, Richard Jeffrey, even said ‘we are being done over’.

Mr Emery was TIE’s chairman from February to July 2011, and was brought in as a result of a ‘toxic’ feud between TIE and contractors, which saw work come to a halt.

As part of the mediation, Mr Emery said he had three options, which involved either continuing the work with contractor Infraco, paying the firm off at a cost of £750million and starting again, or ploughing on under the ‘stalemate’.

Mr Emery said: ‘I can only assume that in terms of politi-