By Steve Bargeton, political editor

THE LATE Donald Dewar could have been more interested in his place in history than doing what was good for the country when he chose Holyrood as the site of the Scottish Parliament.

In an astonishing attack arch Holyrood critic MSP Donald Gorrie yesterday told the Fraser inquiry that if the former Scottish Secretary and First Minister could see the result of his decision, he would agree it was a mistake.

“I think if he was looking down on proceedings he might think he made a bad decision,” said the Liberal Democrat backbencher.

“He was entitled to do that as First Minister. If he could command a majority he could do all sorts of things.”

He said Mr Dewar was within his rights to choose the site and appoint the key players before handing the project over to the Parliament, but he considered it “foolish.”

“It’s a legitimate political aspiration but it’s an extremely foolish aspiration. There is a risk of someone in his position confusing what’s good for Scotland and what’s a memorial to Donald Dewar,” he said.

Mr Gorrie said he believed it should have been left up to newly-elected MSPs to decide what kind of building they wanted and that no decisions should have been taken until Parliament was empowered in July 1999.

“If you design a parliament before it exists you are bound to make a lot of mistakes and need changes,” he said. “But the people producing the design were a bunch of civil servants in a room saying ‘Good God, what does a Parliament need?’ and started inventing something.”

He noted that the original estimate for area was wrong by 80%, the fit out costs were wrong by 157%, the completion date was out by 226% and the circulation space was half of what was needed.

“The design might be highly artistic but there are still changes being made now,” he said.

It was Mr Gorrie who tabled an amendment during a crucial debate in June 1999 demanding that the project be put on hold to allow a parliamentary committee to scrutinise the project and consider the merits of moving to a Calton Hill site or staying in the temporary home on The Mound.

“My own view is that Holyrood is the wrong site and at the time I had never met anyone in Edinburgh who thought it was right. Only Glaswegians would have chosen it,” he said.

Earlier the inquiry heard evidence from MSP Lewis Macdonald who was the first convener of the Holyrood Progress Group running the project and is now the junior enterprise minister.

He said Mr Dewar was right to press ahead with the project before MSPs were elected.

“As soon as the decision was taken in principle that there would be a Scottish Parliament it was right to move straight to where it would be, how it would be accommodated and what kind of Parliament it would be,” he said.

“If the process of identifying a site and identifying what the Parliament should contain had been left until, for the sake of argument June 1999, by definition we would be that bit further away from completion and I don’t think we would have gained anything significant in terms of the design.

“I’m not convinced that had we delayed the commencement of the project until that point that would have produced very significant cost savings or reduced the time involved.”

He said the group, set up in June 2000 by the Scottish Parliament shortly after MSPs voted to press ahead with a price tag of £195 million, had rejected capping the project.

“We did consider for example the possibility of … a guaranteed maximum price,” said Mr Macdonald, now the junior enterprise minister.

“We came to a fairly clear view that to do that would not offer benefits or deliver the kind of benefits that we wanted. We also considered the fees paid to consultants in the early period and I had a good look at the options there and again the conclusion was that the nature of the process in which we were involved at that time did not justify a change.”