Labour not blameless on questions of cost

Sir, – Last week Lesley Laird, Scottish Labour deputy leader, condemned Nicola Sturgeon for forgetting the cost of establishing an independent Scotland.

As Fife Council’s deputy leader, at the full council meeting on April 3 2014, Ms Laird asserted the alternative site proposed for relocating Madras College (on the university’s North Haugh, versus the council’s choice of Pipeland green-belt) would incur “costs of £18 million before a brick was laid”, from the authority’s total budget of £40 million.

That was arrant nonsense, but probably convinced some councillors to support Pipeland.

In March 2016, the Inner House of the Court of Session ruled the Council’s Pipeland decision “unlawful” (albeit not for cost reasons). So Fife Council re-opened its failed discussions from 2010/11 with the university, and now proposes relocating Madras to its site next to North Haugh, with the earliest possible completion being January 2021, for a current budget of £50 million.

The original Pipeland decision was made in December 2012 by the then leader of Fife Council Alex Rowley, Ms Laird’s predecessor as Scottish Labour deputy leader.

The mills of local authorities grind slowly and expensively when unwise decisions are made – to the detriment in this case of a whole generation of North-East Fife’s secondary school pupils. John Birkett. Horseleys Park, St. Andrews.

Picture: George Mcluskie. Scottish Labour deputy leader Lesley Laird has come under fire for her comments on the Madras College budget.