I apologise to members, as I may have to leave before the end of question time. I am grateful for permission to do so from your good self, Deputy Presiding Officer.

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on how much it estimates will be paid in compensation for the properties to be compulsorily purchased to further the progress of the dualling of the A96 between Inverness and Auldearn, including the Nairn bypass, and when that process will be completed. (S6O-04308)

Completion last year of the statutory process for the A96 dualling from Inverness to Nairn, including the Nairn bypass, clears the way for the Scottish ministers to take forward the final stage of the process to acquire the land that is required to construct the scheme, and Transport Scotland is pressing ahead with the procedural steps to make that happen.

It is currently expected that the process to take title to the land will be completed in the coming months. The current estimate of compensation for land to be acquired for the scheme is approximately £12 million.

Scotland was promised in 2016 that the made orders for that project would be published in that year. They were published last year—eight years later. Even now, there is no timetable, no plan and no indication of when the Nairn bypass will be completed.

Will the cabinet secretary, at last, give a statement to Parliament setting out such a plan? If she will not, does she not think that an apology is due?

First as the Minister for Transport and now, as Cabinet Secretary for Transport, I have progressed the A96 Inverness to Nairn project, including the Nairn bypass. I have ensured that we have made progress on completing the made orders and acquiring the land. We are acquiring the land because we intend to dual that part of the A96 first. That is what is happening.

As I explained to the public meeting in Nairn last summer, the timetable for dualling will be determined by two things. The first is the method of procurement, whether it is capital procurement or through a mutual investment model. We are considering the mutual investment model for the A96 part of the road—which we have just been discussing—and for the A9. On completion of that consideration, we will be in a position to determine the timetable, which I will be happy to share with the Parliament.

The other consideration is whether one procurement process will be completed for the whole project or whether the contracts will be separated for different parts. A strong argument was put to me at the public meeting in Nairn that the Nairn bypass might be done separately and differently. All those things will impact on the timetable, and we will consider them. When we have managed to assess all those points, I will come back to the Parliament.