Donald Gorrie

A senior Scottish Liberal Democrat has hit out at Donald Dewar's decision to develop the Holyrood parliament project.

Giving evidence to the Fraser inquiry into the controversial parliament building, Donald Gorrie said the late first minister had been "foolish" in backing the plan.

According to the latest estimates the Edinburgh parliament will cost £430 million - nearly 10 times Dewar's initial estimate.

Gorrie said Dewar had failed to think the issue out properly and suggested he would regret it if he was still alive.

"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.

If Dewar was "looking down on proceedings he might think he made a bad decision", Gorrie said.

"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 went on to say.

The former Westminster MP also warned that civil servants had been allowed to make too many decisions about the parliament before it had actually been convened.

"If you design a parliament before it exists you are bound to make a lot of mistakes and need changes," he told Lord Fraser.

"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."