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Go-ahead fears for FBI-style campus |
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Monday, 11 February 2008 |
The Government is refusing to give a firm commitment to the future of the Gartcosh crime campus a month after Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini told Parliament the project will go ahead.
Originally set to open in 2010, Holyrood can reveal that the FBI-style
campus will not be ready until 2011 at the earliest and that the
Government has yet to even give the project final approval.
“It is too early to set an opening date for the crime campus. We are
currently working to a target completion date in 2011. However, this is
not based on any contractual programme so it is not yet possible to
firm up on
a final timetable.
“By the end of this year, the Scottish Government should be in a
position to make final decisions about the affordability of this
project,” said a Government spokesman.
In addition, the estimated cost of the project has risen from £40m to
£63m, according to the latest Government figures obtained by Holyrood,
leading to fears of a serious cost blow-out even if the project does
proceed as planned.
Announced by the former Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson in January last
year, the project, a key priority for former Scottish Crime and Drug
Enforcement Agency director-general Graeme Pearson, would bring the
SCDEA together with the Scottish branch of the UK-wide Serious and
Organised Crime Agency, HM Revenue and Customs and forensics service on
one state-of-the-art campus at Gartcosh in Lanarkshire.
In response to a direct question on the future of the project from
Labour justice spokesperson Pauline McNeill during the serious and
organised crime debate on January 9, Angiolini said: “The campus is an
important vision and it will be an important part of the development of
the collaborative working that is taking place between the agencies. As
I understand it, the funding is in place for Gartcosh. It is
continuing, and this week, or very shortly, we will advertise for the
design team that will take matters forward. The date for the completion
of construction is 2011.”
A senior source in the fight against organised crime has told Holyrood
that it is highly unlikely the project will go ahead in its initial
form, if at all: “There doesn’t seem to be the will or the momentum
there. If it does go ahead, I can see a watered down, or
‘Gartcosh-lite’ happening, which defeats the whole purpose of the
project, which was to bring all these agencies together under one roof
with the best equipment and kit in the world.”
McNeill says the revelations are disturbing and flatly contradict what
she had been told in Parliament by Angiolini: “I am quite alarmed by
this. I thought I had got an answer from the Lord Advocate during the
summing-up of the serious and organised crime debate and that appears
to have been unravelled. It is very worrying.
“You are either committed to something or you aren’t. I want an
absolute categorical assurance they will go ahead and fund this. We
cannot stop or let up for a moment in the fight against organised
crime.”
Newly appointed SCDEA director-general Gordon Meldrum says that the
project’s original vision must be carried through to ensure Scotland is
well-placed to tackle serious and organised crime.
“I sincerely hope it is [going ahead]. I was in the public gallery when
serious and organised crime was debated and there were clearly some
questions asked by a number of MSPs around Gartcosh and they were given
some assurances that Gartcosh is going to happen. And from my point of
view, I sincerely hope that it is.
“The way I would describe it is that we have pushed the boundaries of
our creativity and innovation within this compound. But to move to the
next level now, we need a state of the art facility like Gartcosh.”
One person has commented on this article. 1. Go-ahead fears for FBI-style campus
Big Yin, Unregistered I think it is disgraceful that the government is even thinking about building a campus for criminals!
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Last Updated ( Monday, 11 February 2008 )
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