John Cooper
Main Page: John Cooper (Conservative - Dumfries and Galloway)Department Debates - View all John Cooper's debates with the HM Treasury
(1 day, 18 hours ago)
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Darren Jones
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the challenges that I learned on coming into government is that the last Government did not even ask what the maintenance backlog was in certain Departments. There was not a clear set of data that told us which assets the Government own and the quality or state of them, so we have some pretty basic work to be getting on with through NISTA as we allocate the money, which will go directly to the schools, hospitals and other public sector buildings that have been ignored for many, many years.
John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
The creation of another new authority will be met with an eye-rolling sigh in Scotland, because although it is called the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority—a very shiny title—the reality is that it will have little oversight in Scotland. The plan announced today will generate Barnett formula money, which will go to Holyrood and disappear—it will go into ferries that do not float and things like that. In my constituency the A75 road is a piece of critical national infrastructure. It services the ferry ports to Northern Ireland, and it is vital for all the countries that make up the United Kingdom. Will we see any money coming for that road through today’s innovation, or will the money once again disappear into the coffers in Holyrood?