Why building tunnels between our islands is key test that SNP simply cannot fail
“Our island communities face unique challenges, but also have the potential – and ambition – to capitalise on the skills, innovation and natural assets they hold in abundance.” Fine words this week from the First Minister, John Swinney, coming to Shetland for the Convention of the Highlands and Islands – but will they lead to action?
Potential and ambition are here in abundance in the Northern Isles. What is missing in our islands is not ambition but the ability to act upon it.
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Hide AdWe have seen too often over the years that the Scottish Government under the SNP pays lip service to island empowerment without delivering on it in any meaningful way. If John Swinney wants to change that perception then he surely has to start by engaging with the case for inter-island tunnels.
With the number of times I have written in these pages on the campaign for tunnels in Shetland in recent weeks – and the success of fixed links for our neighbours in the Faroe Islands – I begin to fear I might be accused of being a little myopic.
Even so, I will not apologise for my tunnel vision (yes, pun intended), because this issue really is the proof of the pudding over government paeans to decentralisation and the importance of rural and island communities.


Tunnels paying for themselves
I have always said that the Northern Isles are not looking for handouts. We shall, of course, always be happy to take whatever funding support that comes our way, but what we are really looking for is the political empowerment – separate from party and partisanship – to act on the priorities we have decided for ourselves.
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Hide AdAfter all, our cousins in Faroe did not, primarily, begin to fund their fixed links through lump sum cash grants – they did so by securing loans with a clear plan on how they would be paid back through tolls. Those tunnels have been constructed, the loans have been paid back one by one – and now many tunnels have had their tolls removed because their cost has already been repaid.
If that is not a model to emulate then I do not know what is – and the coming report on the case for tunnels in Shetland by Cowi, Stantec and Mott MacDonald will, I hope, lay out a concrete study of its feasibility in practice.
Local know-how
The argument here is, of course, not simply “give us tunnels”. Not every problem in the isles has a tunnel-shaped solution (if only politics were that simple). Instead it is that the key decisions which impact the future of our communities have to be informed by our communities, with government acting not as a dictator of our needs, but as an enabler of our choices.
For too long, whether on the west coast or in the Northern Isles, our island communities have had the services, the investment and the infrastructure that a Central Belt-dominated government thinks we need, rather than what we decide for ourselves. Now is the time for these matters to be driven by local know-how and local needs, with the people affected by decisions making those decisions – and accountable for them as well.
To borrow another well-worn phrase from the party of government – we have the energy, we just need the power.
Alistair Carmichael is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland
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