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I will be very careful what I say there.

Again, I will be slightly light-hearted here—I sometimes hear descriptions of how Mr Salmond’s Cabinet operated, and I wonder whether I was part of the same one.

I think that that would be an unfair characterisation of his position. I do not recall a particular occasion when he came to me and said, “First Minister, we’ve got a big problem with the A9.” However, we were always looking at progress and at the issues that we were grappling with.

It is important that we are not overly binary about this. Of course, we had, by 2017-18, realised that there were significant hurdles to completion on target, but it was only by late 2022 or early 2023 that it was clear that there was no viable route to 2025. That was a funding issue.

Again, a lot of the necessary work to get sections of the project into construction was being and had been done, and things were progressing and moving along. It was not some binary matter of our finding ourselves one day with none of the work done and our not having enough years left to do it; it was an on-going process in which we were determined to try to find a route to 2025. It was a diminishing prospect as we got closer—obviously, that stands to reason—and we reached a point at which it became clear that there was no such viable route.

I might turn that question back and suggest that a criticism that could be made, perhaps, is that we were so determined to try to find a route that we did not tell ourselves quickly enough that it was not there. If that is a valid criticism, it arises not from a lack of priority or determination but perhaps from the opposite—that is, our desperately wanting to get to a position where we could deliver the target.

At the risk of being accused of trying to curry favour with the convener, I say that that suggestion is eminently more sensible than the one that you just asked me about. The A9 was always going to be a multisession project. You know the differences—the Queensferry crossing process was different because of the legislative requirements that were in place around it versus those in place around the A9. That is why there was a parliamentary committee in one process and not in the other.

The suggestion should be considered. I keep saying, “We should consider”—obviously, I am not in government any more, but it is for Parliament, too, to consider that built-in parliamentary oversight process, with ���˿��� who in effect become specialists. If a project covers multiple parliamentary sessions, that can be a way of carrying forward the institutional memory, as you put it. That should be given serious consideration.

The impact of Covid on the A9 project would have been multifaceted, as it was on every aspect of Government priorities outside what was required to manage Covid. It would have impacted civil service time and wider industry engagement. Everything associated with a big project would have been and was impacted by Covid.

Again, I am using shorthand here, which is probably always a bit dangerous, but, effectively, outside what we needed to do to deal with Covid—this applied not just here but everywhere—the rest of Government shut down to some extent. That, of course, impacted on the A9 project, as it did on many other things.

I do not particularly want to think about climbing—sorry. [Laughter.]

I would be supportive of that proposal. It would be appropriate. We tend to have memorials to disastrous tragedies that lead to a significant loss of life in a single incident, which is entirely appropriate, but we do not do the same with loss of life over longer periods in situations such as the one that we are speaking about, and we should.

My views on that have possibly been strengthened by the Covid experience. I know from talking to bereaved families, because of my close involvement in that experience, how important it is to have recognition and somewhere that people can go to reflect, remember and come to terms with their grief. The importance of that cannot be overstated. Therefore, the proposal would and does have my general support.

On the process, I again draw from the experience of Covid to some extent. It would be wrong and inappropriate for Government to decide what that should be. The starting point in any such process should be engagement with people who have lost loved ones or who live on the route of the A9—those with, to use the term, lived experience of the loss that we seek to commemorate—and the process should work from there.

Memorials take many different forms. As you said, we all have particular images in our minds when we talk about memorials, but there are lots of Covid memorials that are open spaces, gardens and places where people simply go to reflect. Therefore, it would be important to properly understand what would be meaningful for people who have lost loved ones on the A9.

No—I think that we have covered everything that I expected us to cover. There were a couple of moments when I rather rashly offered to provide more written information. It would be good if the committee could remind me of those, as I no longer have an army of civil servants sitting behind me to remind me later.

This is probably a classic politician’s answer—I am trying not to give those—but, if it is possible, it is both. It is absolutely fair for people in the Highlands to say that the A9 should have been prioritised above the other demands on the capital budget. If I was living in the Highlands, there is no doubt that I would have that view, so I am not in any way suggesting that that is somehow an unfair view for Highlanders to hold.

The other side of it relates to the way that you posed that question to me. I understand why you did it—you are speaking on behalf of your constituents, so I am not criticising that in any way—but you were in the Government for many years, so you know that to point to a big budget when speaking about a particular project that is small, relative to the size of the budget, and say, “Well, why couldn’t that have been done?” does not fully encapsulate the budgeting process.

For most, if not all, of the time that I was in the Government, the demands on the capital budget exceeded the quantum of it. Fergus Ewing knows that as well as I do, because of his time in the Government. Within that, there is a legitimate question about the relative priority that is given to different projects, but in the process of budgeting we try to balance all of those things to progress everything that we want to do, and that will inevitably lead to supporters of different projects feeling, at times, that their project is not getting the priority that it needs.

However, it is not a fair characterisation of how such things work to simply point to the size of the budget and the cost of the A9 and somehow say that there was no problem with funding through our capital programme.

As an aside, I note that, against the wishes of the Government that you and I were both part of, the Parliament choosing the trams had implications for other aspects of the capital programme at that time.

All of the projects that you have spoken about were necessary and important. As a relatively new driver, I have only recently driven across some of those projects—I drove on the A9 for the first time just a couple of weeks ago. The projects were all important, but I do not think that that is the point that you are making.

It is not the case that we inappropriately prioritised the Queensferry crossing, the M74 improvements or the Borders railway. However, I suppose that my short answer to your question would be yes—although we ran into the difficulties that I have been speaking about, I certainly hope and expect that the Government now prioritises completing the A9.

The programme that has been set out, with timescales, will still face challenges along the way—I would be astonished if it did not. To me, it looks like a programme that will succeed, and it is essential that it is given the priority to ensure that it does.