Chamber and committees

That would best be answered by officials, if they have the information, because, as you will know, I was not the minister at the time at which those errors happened. I am happy to take responsibility for tidying up the legislation in a technical way. I ask Kevin Gibson to come in.

Good morning, convener and committee. The Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 was designed to make Scotland’s transport network cleaner, smarter and more accessible than ever before. During stages 2 and 3 of the parliamentary passage of the bill that became the 2019 act, a significant number of amendments were made. For context, the convener may recall that the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee considered more than 400 amendments at stage 2 and that the consideration of amendments at stage 3 lasted for around seven hours. That included amendments to provisions that amended existing primary legislation and the introduction of new provisions to which cross-references were made.

As a consequence, the bill as passed contained a significant number of provisions that required to be renumbered and cross-references that had to be corrected before its publication. When that exercise was undertaken, a substantial number of cross-references and other numbering errors were corrected in a short timescale, prior to the publication of the act. However, in a few cases, unfortunately, cross-references were not updated.

The primary purpose of the regulations, therefore, is to correct those erroneous cross-references and the incorrect numbering in the act’s provisions on bus services and smart ticketing. The regulations also remove duplicate provision on the parliamentary procedure that attaches to regulations under the act.

We are also using the opportunity to correct one minor drafting error in section 55 of the act—on parking prohibitions—to ensure that the effect of that provision is clear.

The regulations make relatively minor technical amendments to the act, to ensure that full effect is given to the Parliament’s intention in passing it. I am happy to answer any questions that members may have.

If you are happy for me to do so, I am happy just to move the motion.

I am happy to forgo summing up.

Motion agreed to.

Yes.

You are reflecting not on the transparency of the Government—although I am sure that you will do that at some point—but on the transparency of a private company: Ferguson Marine Engineering Ltd. You are also asking about whether the exchange of those letters was material to the company’s decision. You quite rightly say in your conclusions that that would not, in and of itself, have been the green light, and nor should it have been, because neither of the two individuals concerned were party to the contract. The private company, FMEL, would have wanted to abide by the procurement requirements of the contracting party, CMAL, which set out what was required for procurement.

You will be aware that the former First Minister, in her evidence, referred to Transport Scotland’s provision of the exchange of letters. The understanding is that she knew of that correspondence and its contents, but that the formatting meant that a paragraph was missing. Also, that correspondence was sent to the committee during a week when you were about to finalise your report. Officials would not have known that, which was remiss and has been recognised, but that would not necessarily have had an impact on your report, because the correspondence was made available. Regarding whether it should have been taken as approval, no one who deals with contracts and legal authority would have taken that as an indication of Government approval.

What the correspondence did say, which was reasonable, was that there had been instances, including involving previous work at Ferguson’s on hybrid vessels, when there was a different operating method.

The committee’s criticism of how a private company gave evidence was a fair one, but you are asking me to comment on something that I was not party to.

I can usefully comment on that, having come back into Government after two years. On verbal briefings, there will be a note that says, “I’ve met such and such and we’ve briefed on such and such.” It is evident that there is more record keeping and an improved record-keeping process. Again, we say that in the response to the committee. The new permanent secretary has made it clear that, not just in this area but across Government, there needs to be improved record keeping on everything. I spend a lot of time clearing minutes of meetings—I assure you of that.

Normally, the advice is not to do anything that would cause an issue with the procurement. That is what you would normally get when the letter comes in.

Colin Cook might want to comment, as he has dealt with this on the economy side of things.

There was a record of the decision. My understanding from the evidence that was set out, which you have in your report and which you heard in the evidence sessions that you held, is that, following that meeting, there was an email exchange that made it clear what the result was. Therefore, there was a record of it but not in the normal form of a minute of the meeting. It was an exchange afterwards.

No, that is not what I am saying. It has to be judged at the point in time when the work that has been carried out has been assessed and the procurement process has gone through.

Again, this is about looking back to something that took place a significant time ago. The changes that have taken place since then to improve procurement processes—prior even to the recommendations of the REC Committee and to your own recommendations—also mean that the process of decision making on investment is different. It is difficult to view something retrospectively through the lens as to what is appropriate that we as a Government currently have .

What I am saying is that, looking back, the types of processes that we have now should have been in place at that point—but, obviously, they were not. We have learned from that and have improved those processes. We have been open about that.