Vanity project? Shapps: 'Why would you ever be against connecting different parts of our country in a better way?' GRANT Shapps has defended the prospect of a “fixed link” between Scotland and Northern Ireland to improve transport connectivity across the UK as his Holyrood counterpart dismissed it as a Boris Johnson “vanity project”. Today, an interim report by Sir Peter Hendy, the Network Rail chief, unveils a £20 million programme to look at creating a strategic transport network across the four nations of the UK by improving links across air, sea, rail and road. Whitehall sources have suggested that the Scottish Government has not fully engaged with Sir Peter’s review, which is focused on “Union connectivity”.