£800m to be spent on A9 before third section is even finished

To date, the Scottish Government has spent more than £520 million on the A9 dualling scheme, with a further £300 million planned over the next two years.

Despite this, only two of the 11 sections have been completed, and the third section, Tomatin to Moy, which was planned for completion in 2027, is now not expected until at least spring 2028.

Construction has yet to begin for the remaining eight sections.

The SNP first committed to fully dualling the A9 in 2011, with a completion date set for 2025. However, ministers abandoned that target in December 2023 and admitted dualling would be delayed by a decade.

Conservative MSP Sue Webber, her party’s transport spokeswoman, said the lack of progress is “Scotland’s national shame”, and accused SNP ministers of squandering taxpayers’ money.

She said: “The SNP’s ongoing failure to dual the A9 is Scotland's national shame. They’ve managed to squander £800 million of taxpayers’ money and still not even a third of the A9 is dualled.

“The SNP first promised to dual this road 14 years ago but have shamefully betrayed communities who rely on this lifeline road. They shamefully abandoned their initial target, only to put the completion date back another decade.

“Successive transport ministers should apologise to Scots for wasting this eye-watering amount of money. As costs soar and progress stalls, more and more lives are being lost on the A9.”

She added: “Unlike the SNP, we would make dualling the A9 a top priority. We would cut the bureaucracy slowing this project down by passing emergency legislation to finally get the job done and deliver what was promised.”

Transport Scotland was contacted for comment.

Former SNP minister Fergus Ewing has been a vocal critic of the Government’s failure to meet its targets for dualling the road. In June, he announced his intention to run as an independent in Inverness and Nairn, citing the broken promises as a key issue.