How will Scotland plug gaping holes in infrastructure plans?

Private finance could be an answer to the A9 challenge. It’s also seen as a potential solution to the expensive capital project of improving the A96 between Inverness and Aberdeen, and perhaps the notoriously unreliable road over the Rest and Be Thankful pass that links much of Argyll with the central belt.

It could be used to expand kitchen capacity in schools for more free school meals, if they can be afforded, and for the expansion of pre-school child care.

But the Mutual Investment Model (MIM) being considered is only suitable for relatively simple finances – unlike hospitals and schools, where the model has been for private companies to build and then run the facility, extracting profit over 25 or so years.

MIM involves the setting up of a company jointly owned by the private construction/finance companies and by government. Any profits are shared.

Shona Robison points to the Welsh government as a model of how to do this for transport and a health project, generating what she calls ‘social benefit’.

The proposal is being tested by the Scottish Futures Trust, the low-profile government agency that has built up a centralised specialism in financing of public projects.

It reports back next spring on use of the Mutual Investment Model to help out the capital budget shortfalls. By that time, Shona Robison expects to know the capital available to Holyrood from the longer-term spending review covering several years from April 2026.

It’s not her preferred model, she told me. That remains conventional capital funding.

Yes, the payment for leases over 25 years means a squeeze on the day-to-day budgets for public services and on Holyrood’s devolved benefit payments.

There’s a reassurance from the finance secretary it will be tested for affordability and value for money.

But it might be necessary to help plug those big gaps.