§ Lord James Douglas-Hamiltonasked the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) what funds have been made available in Scotland for the building of roads for each local authority or region in each of the past 25 years;
(2) what funds have been spent on (a) Glasgow and (b) Edinburgh in the building of roads over each of the last 15 years.
§ Mr. AncramThe information is not readily available. Capital expenditure on new road construction and road improvement incurred by regional and islands councils since 1977–78—the first operative year of the block allocation system following local government reorganization—has been as follows:
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1977–78 (£000s) 1978–79 (£000s) 1979–80 (£000s) 1980–81 (£000s) 1981–82 (£000s) Western Isles 780 1,446 1,625 2,709 † SCOTLAND* 45,807 56,557 75,696 76,905 90,541 * Excludes expenditure by joint boards of Forth and Tay road bridges. † Not yet available. Specific grant-aid was generally discontinued in 1975, though in certain cases grants continue to be available under a number of statutory provisions. It is not possible to give specific figures for Glasgow and Edinburgh.