Audio in mp3 format and ogg-vorbis on Imc Scotland.
Duration 11 minutes and 8 seconds.

Transcript:

Interview with Mark Ballard, Green Party, MSP

Q: About the Dalkeith Park Bypass, how did this all come about?

A: The Dalkeith Bypass is something that has been talked about for a long time. There is a major congestion problem in the centre of Dalkeith.
The A68 at the moment goes right through the middle of the town.
There have been a series of deaths on the road, there is a real pollution problem. As usual the suggestion was, that there should be a bypass.
When the new parliament started out in 1999, one of the first acts the new transport minister did, was to look at the Dalkeith Bypass proposal. And she put the Bypass proposal on the backburner because she wasn't convinced that that would be actually the solution the people in Dalkeith needed.
In particular, she wanted a proper study, looking at the effects of building new railway lines, upgrading the A1, potentially limiting straight traffic on the A68, whether these would actually do more to tackle polution than spending millions of pounds on a new motorway.

So that was it.
We all thought we weren't going to hear anything about the Dalkeith Park Bypass for a while. Then, suddenly, from nowhere, the transport minister decided to give the go-ahead to the Dalkeith Bypass in June of this year.
None of the studies, that were supposed to have been taken place since the 1999 decision to mothball the bypass, had actually been done.
There hasn't been a public enquiry since the idea was first mooded back in the early 1990ies. So, it was a bizarre decision to take. The rumour is – and I have no way of knowing whether this is true or not, that the Scottish Executive wanted to maintain road building capacity. And, after the M74 was delayed because of the legal challenge, they decided that they had to build a road somewhere in a hurry, and decided on the A68 northern bypass.
Now, I don't know whether this is true or not, but i do get the sense, that the Bypass was very much decided at the last minute without proper thought.

And that's how we got where we are today:
A Bypass when we see major transport improvements; the A7 upgrade, the A1 upgrade, the Waverly railway line going out to Dalkeith, major upgrades, yet none of this seems to have been infacted in. And suddenly, we have a Bypass, that wasn't good enough in 1999 being fasttracked at high-speed for delivery, costing many millions of pounds.

Q: So, the Bypass is supposed to go through the Dalkeith Country Park which was compulsary purchased by the Scottish Executive.
When was that happening?

A: This all happened in the 1990ies, compulsary purchase orders were put in place for the proposed bypass, that was planned in the 1992, and 1995 I think it was, public enquiries.
No development took place on that basis. So parts of the land are purchased, but some of the planning permissions, have, so I understand it, lapsed, it is not clear whether the proper thought has been put into it, but this is being hurried through at top speed at the moment.

Q: Has there been any legal challenge at all against the Dalkeith Bypass?

A: There is a legal challenge against the M74 motorway. And as the M74 campaigners will tell you, it costs a huge amount of money to put together that kind of legal challenge. And they are talking at least £25 000 for the legal challenge in the M74. But they have known the M74 was coming for years. The people in Dalkeith, which is one of the poorer communities in Scotland, are faced with a huge bill for a legal challenge.
They don't know whether that legal challenge will succeed or not and they have a very short window of time to put that in place.
So there is a lot of support for a legal challenge, but the legal system we have here in Scotland is designed, so that only the wealthy can mount legal challenges and it is very difficult for poor communities like Dalkeith to actually mount the kind of challenge required.

The Dalkeith Country Park is such a valuable resource, it is a really important bit of green space to the community of Dalkeith, and so many people are horrified that anybody can think of building a massive road through it.

Q: There is the Save Dalkeith Park citizen campaign and there are at the moment the treesitters and what else is going on as a resistance against the Bypass?

A: One of the reasons why the Scottish Executive, as i understand it, wanted to build this road when they needed to build a road in a hurry, was that they thought there would be very little opposition to it. They thought that it was a few odd environmentalists, but nothing they should worry about.
But we have seen a massive coalition, that includes the Save Dalkeith Park campaign, which includes lots of people who are only now hearing about it for the first time, we are seeing Direct Action coming in, working together with the Save Dalkeith Park campaign, and what surprises me, is the unlikely coalition in the parliament against it.
Lord James Douglas Hamilton, who is an old-school Tory, and myself have both been campaigning hard in the parliament in this case for the community campaign against this road.
So there is a growing coalition against this road, which has really surprised those in Midlothian Council who thought they would steamroller through this road with very little opposition.
The opposition is really going and coming from all kinds of unlikely sources.

Q: There seems to be a bit of hesitance or resistance of some people, so why is that? Are they kind of funded by the Scottish Executive or what is the problem that people kind of fear of speaking out – apart from you, of course.

A: I think that there is a major issue. The Scottish Executive appears to be putting pressure on a lot of people not to speak out against this development and this is a very worrying trend, because that means you can not have a proper discussion. I have heard from back consultants off the record, because they are not prepared to go public, who get a lot of work from the Scottish Executive, that they are not to talk to the Dalkeith Park Campaign.
Because they are not prepared to go on the record, I can not actually proof anything, but it makes it impossible to have any kind of rational debatte about this development, if the Scottish Executive are nobbling all the experts so that they can not give unbiased opinions to actually contribute to the general public debate, and that is a very unhealthy development.
And I think it shows how scared the Scottish Executive is about this road development, because they know that it is much less popular than they thought, they know they are doing it in a hurry and they know that there isn't really a strong case for it.
And that is why we are seeing this kind of political developments.

But what will stop this road, ultimately, is not the bat experts, it is not the politicians, it is the fact that people in Dalkeith are coming out to say they don't want it.

Q: So are you trying to organise a demo through Dalkeith then?

A: As ever, I think, the appropriate thing is, if the local community organises a demo through Dalkeith, I will come along and do everything I can to suppport community action, because, that I think, is the role of a Green MSP like myself to support and encourage community action, but not to assume that I can, as one person living in North Edinburgh, I can lead a campaign in Dalkeith.
But people in Dalkeith are mobilising, and I am sure they will be working out lots of ways to get me working on their behalf in the parliament and getting everybody else working on their behalf, to stop this monsterous, daft road being built through the Park.

Q: So today is the climate change day, the individual transport and the emissions are one of the main sources for climate change?

A: Transport is one of the fastest growing areas of climate change. Traditionally it has been energy and heating that has been the main contributor to climate change, but as we build more motorways, as people start driving massive gas guzzling SUVs and most of all, as they fly ever increasing distances, transport is becoming more and more of a problem.

And you hear the Scottish Executive in that building behind us there, the Scottish Parliament, talk about how much they would care about the environment.

But they are spending ½ a billion pounds on the new M74 motorway in Glasgow, they are spending hundreds of millions of pounds on a massive, massive bypass round Aberdeen, and they are spending up to 100 million pounds on a bypass through Dalkeith.
Those are not the actions of somebody who cares a damn about the climate change.
These are actions of people who care a damn about children with asthma, children facing air pollution problems, cause these motorways will not solve the real problems, the real congestion problems, the real safety on the road problems faced by people in often poor communities like Dalkeith.

And only a sustainable community owned, community managed public transport system can actually be the solution for this people.

Q: Who is kind of responsible, if i want to go and heckle somebody?
Who is responsible for pushing through the bypass and persuing the eviction of the people and stuff like that?

A: The usual suspects, Jack McConnell, Tavish Scott – he is minister for roads and most of all Midlothian Council, which is one of the least democratic councils in Scotland, that has been pushing new road schemes whether it is the A68 bypass, or the A701 Realignment in the misguided belief, that roads will benefit the local community, when it is often being the local communities that have been saying: “We don't want the roads” ,
Midlothian Council, Champions of unsustainable development in Scotland.

Q: How is Midlothian Council one of the least democratic ones, and why is it said to be one of the least democratic ones?

A: Midlothian Council has, if i have got it right, 15 councillors, of which at the last election 14 were Labour, and one was a liberal democrat.
The Labour Party got well less than half of the vote, yet they end up with 14, 15 of the councillors.
They paid no account of the vast majority of the population and that has been seen at the last byelection in Midlothian, where there was a massive vote against the former leader of the councillor.
Everybody backed the nearest challenger, the SNP, whether they were Tories, Socialists, Greens, everybody wanted to get out the Labour councillor.

It is one of the most undemocratic councils in Scotland.

Q: How do you think are the chances that there will be actually more or less an eviction in the Dalkeith Park?

A: As ever, by the time you have to climb a tree, to try to stop people cutting down, it is often too late for that particular tree.
But what it is not too late for – although you might loose that battle – is the war.
The community campaigning, the community opposition will be what undermines this daft bypass proposal.

And at the moment it is a few trees they are cutting down, and that is really highlighting the issues around the bypass to people, and i think this will lead to much wider opposition towards the whole scheme.
So I think the first few trees will go down, but i think that will lead to a much bigger community campaign.

Q: Thank You.

A: Thank You.

More information about the demonstration:
[Feature Climate Change Demo | report 1 | report 2 | Audio with Friends of the Earth]