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Ian Blackford, the SNP’s Westminster leader, has lashed out at Boris Johnson after he ditches a proposal to build a bridge or tunnel to connect Northern Ireland to Scotland. Mr Blackford has called on Boris Johnson to give Scotland “its fair share” of £20 billion for scrapping these plans even though he described the proposals as “daft”.<\/p>\n
Boris Johnson has long been a supporter of building a fixed link between Scotland and Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
The PM asked Sir Peter Hendy, the Network Rail chairman, to investigate upgrading connectivity across the Union.<\/p>\n
Sir Hendy’s review (the Union Connectivity Review) is expected to be published soon, but a Government source has let slip that a bridge or tunnel connecting Scotland and Northern Ireland has been ruled out.<\/p>\n
Part of the review looked at whether the building of a bridge or tunnel across the North Channel between Stranraer and Larne would be feasible.<\/p>\n
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According to the Telegraph, a Government source said such a project “would be technically very challenging at the moment”.<\/p>\n
They added: “That’s not to say it won’t become viable at some point in the future, but at the moment it would be very, very difficult and expensive.”<\/p>\n
Sir Hendy’s forecasted costs and the engineering challenges that would come with such a huge project, has forced the PM to ditch this plan.<\/p>\n
In response to reports the project will be scrapped, Mr Blackford has demanded that Westminster should hand over a staggering £20billion to devolved governments so they can spend the money themselves on “transport and connectivity projects”.<\/p>\n
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Mr Blackford said: “Boris Johnson’s plans were daft but the funding suggested can and should be made available.<\/p>\n
“It could then be spent on transport and connectivity projects that are worthwhile and deliverable and not spent over the heads of the devolved governments.”<\/p>\n
He then tweeted: “Another broken promise from Westminster. If the bridge isn’t going ahead, Scotland should get its fair share of the £20billion investment we were promised, so we can spend it on worthwhile and deliverable transport projects in communities across Scotland.”<\/p>\n
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The ditching of these plans comes as no surprise, as the Government was forced to officially shelve the eastern leg of the HS2 high-speed rail project last week.<\/p>\n
Building a bridge or tunnel between Northern Ireland and Scotland would be fraught with costly engineering challenges.<\/p>\n
According to the Times, engineers said building a tunnel connecting the two would be a “non-starter”, as it would take too long for emergency services to arrive if a crash occurred in the middle of the tunnel.<\/p>\n
One issue is that the Channel is far too deep. It reaches 300m deep in places; building support towers at this level would be prohibitively expensive.<\/p>\n
The Channel was also used as an ammunition dump in the Second World War, so building the bridge could be dangerous.<\/p>\n
The strong gales across the Channel could mean the bridge may be shut frequently, making the project unviable.<\/p>\n
In response to these leaked reports, the Department for Transport told the BBC: “We don’t comment on speculation. The Union Connectivity Review will be published shortly.”<\/p>\n