SCOTTISH ministers are being urged to remember their promise to party members over plans for a Scottish National Infrastructure Company.

Delegates at the SNP’s spring conference in 2018 voted overwhelmingly to create the body that would act as a public alternative to private sector involvement in the creation of major infrastructure projects.

Supporters say it would effectively design and manage the public projects ensuring high quality builds, rather than the corner-cutting and profiteering of Private Finance Initiative style deals.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced in the October of 2018 that she was tasking the Government’s independent Infrastructure Commission for Scotland (ICS) to look at the proposal.

However, in their final report published earlier this week, they said a national infrastructure company was unnecessary.

Instead, they urged the Government to create a new independent specialist body to provide strategic long-term infrastructure advice by early 2021.

But the SNP’s Common Weal Group said this wasn’t enough. They described the ISC report as “fundamentally flawed”.

National secretary of the group and Support SNIC campaign co-ordinator Rory Steel called on ministers to disregard the findings.

“The Scottish Government must push ahead with the creation of a Scottish National Infrastructure Company,” he said.

“The ISC report is fundamentally flawed as it tries to streamline a broken system. We need a new approach to public infrastructure that puts public need before private profit – especially in a post-Covid economy.

“Party members backed a SNIC in 2018 with an overwhelming majority. It also has the support of a number of elected representatives, the STUC, Unite and Unison. The Scottish Government must listen and act.

“The ISC report doesn’t even consider the public benefits of a SNIC which include sustainable builds and ending the profiteering of public infrastructure projects from PFI-style deals.

“We’ve seen what happens when large companies like Carillion collapse, taking thousands of jobs with them. Public accountability is needed to provide sustainable jobs and bring an end to the shoddy private sector builds that have gone up across Scotland.

“As per the Economic Recovery Group’s recommendations, infrastructure will be essential for Scotland’s economic prosperity. A SNIC can play a key role in a Green New Deal which will transform Scotland’s economy and environment.”

Common Weal’s head of policy and research, Dr Craig Dalzell, said the SNP Government needed to listen to SNP members.

“It’s disappointing that the ISC has used its far-too-narrow remit to reject SNIC. No amount of ‘streamlining, reforming and efficiency’ can save a fundamentally broken public infrastructure system,” he said.

Dalzell added: “Streamlining will just lead to even more secret contracts, reforming will mean changing one three-letter acronym – PFI – for another – NPD and then MIM – without fundamentally changing the procurement system underneath and efficiency will just mean even more efficient extraction of Scottish wealth into the hands of the companies winning these broken contracts.

“We need to urgently meet the scale of the challenges posed by the climate emergency and by Covid and build to those scales rather than retreat to a normality that wasn’t working even before then.”