PLANS for a new Forth Road Bridge have almost unanimous backing from Scotland's politicians as a vital project crucial to the country's economic well-being. But what should be a flagship scheme, possibly even a source of national pride, has been turned into a political football before anyone has even picked up a spade.
The question of how to fund such a massive project was always likely to prove controversial, but the row which has erupted over the past few days has pitched the Scottish and UK governments into one of their most serious conflicts since the SNP came
to power.
And it not only casts a shadow over what would otherwise be seen as an extremely prestigious project, it also raises uncertainties over other unrelated schemes all over Scotland.
Finance Minister John Swinney took most people by surprise when he announced last month that the Scottish Government planned to pay for the new bridge – halved in cost from £4 billion to £2bn – by drawing in advance on its capital budgets for the next 20 years.
Mr Swinney had not got the agreement of the UK Government to this approach, but insisted the bridge would go ahead anyway, even if it meant funding it entirely from each year's capital budget as the project progressed, at the expense of all sorts of other schemes elsewhere. "If we are unable to secure the Treasury's agreement, then we will simply have to make choices about our capital programme," he said.
Now it has emerged the SNP government had only put its plan to the Treasury on November 27 – less than a fortnight before Mr Swinney announced it in parliament – despite having 18 months to work out a funding scheme.
And, perhaps predictably, the UK Government has indeed now rejected the proposal. A letter from Treasury Minister Yvette Cooper at the end of last week said the SNP's scheme "unfortunately cannot provide a credible option for this funding need".
She acknowledged the UK Government had brought forward some capital spending from 2011 as part of its stimulus package to revive the economy. But she told Mr Swinney: "Your request is very different, focusing as it does on a specific spending commitment, and being over a much longer period for which budgets for the Scottish Executive do not yet exist."
First Minister Alex Salmond insisted what the SNP had proposed was "thoroughly sensible, thoroughly credible" and said he was "not taking no for an answer".
But Chancellor Alistair Darling said: "That particular scheme, where basically they were asking to borrow money from budgets that had yet to be allocated over an extremely long period, that's something that we just don't do. I think they ought to have been aware of that."
Labour finance spokesman Andy Kerr joined the fray, saying it was "outrageous" that Mr Swinney had made his announcement on the new bridge without any funding agreed and claiming the SNP's "financial incompetence" was putting badly needed schools, hospitals and transport projects across Scotland at risk.
The SNP hit back, with Mid-Scotland and Fife MSP Tricia Marwick claiming Labour wanted to bring back tolls to help pay for the bridge.
The issue is now to be debated in the Scottish Parliament next Thursday afternoon, which will no doubt provide more opportunity for political point-scoring.
The SNP narrowed its options for financing the new crossing by its decision to scrap bridge tolls, its opposition to the Private Finance Initiative and its failure to establish the Scottish Futures Trust as an alternative funding mechanism.
However, tolls would probably only ever have been able to pay part of the cost, and because of a change in the rules, PFI schemes no longer offer the advantage of not being counted as public expenditure. The chances are a Labour-Lib Dem administration would also have faced problems in deciding how to pay for the new bridge, though it would almost certainly have approached the Treasury in a different way.
One Labour insider says: "The SNP has known for months the Scottish Futures Trust was not going to work. We would have instigated talks with the Treasury at a much earlier stage. If the SNP had made its approach in a more serious way, the Treasury might have been more open to bending the rules."
The Tories, hoping they will be the next UK government, offered the SNP talks on the funding of the new bridge, but were snubbed. Shadow Scottish Secretary David Mundell remarked: "The SNP is more interested in picking fights than building bridges."
Meanwhile, Edinburgh West Liberal Democrat MSP Margaret Smith, whose constituency includes South Queensferry, is exasperated at the way the project has become a political football.
She says: "To be at this stage in such an important project and not have a means of funding it is breathtaking."
And she accuses the SNP of trying to shift the blame on to the UK Government. "They are seeking to embarrass Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling that they are not willing to find a major transport project affecting their constituencies.
"It's a political ploy to get them out of a hole they have dug for themselves.
"The UK Government doesn't come out of it in a great light either – in other parts of the UK they are making sure the investment is there for major projects, so this response is not exactly being helpful."
In time, the new crossing could become as iconic as the two existing bridges it will sit alongside. But at the moment, the project looks more likely to go down in history for a political conflict – the Battle of the Forth Road Bridge.
