Chamber and committees

Again, it is about delineating responsibilities. I understand that the First Minister, the Deputy First Minister and the cabinet secretary met with the chair and the chief executive of the nationalised Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow to discuss those issues. In relation to any investment decision, one has to identify what the processes are—as you would expect, because that is exactly what your committee has been doing. Proper processes and due diligence have to be in place to ensure that value for money, public interest and all those matters are addressed. That is what the process is.

I cannot comment. All that I can say is that there is a general and, I think, cross-party willingness for Ferguson Marine to be successful. To reflect on the convener’s point about the workforce, the evidence in your report is that they were positive about the chief executive, who had been talking about the need to get into a profitable situation, to secure more work and so on.

I am pleased that that is the agenda that is being discussed but I cannot comment on how and when the decision will be made on that matter.

Obviously, those were the committee’s conclusions, and it is for the committee to come up with its own opinions, views and conclusions. It is self-evident that islands have been let down—I understand that. As the new transport minister, I have spent the summer meeting a number of island communities and their ferry communities.

Resilience in the fleet is really important. There are other issues in relation to ferries that are more to do with operational management issues, which are not the core function of this committee and which the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee has been dealing with, but I say again that resilience in the fleet is really important. That is why having the six ferries delivered before 2026 will make a big difference. Because resilience is what underpins all of this, those replacements are essential.

Clearly we know of the current delays. We will hear more about that, which is why I referred to the chief executive officer’s regular updates to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee in relation to where they are with progress on 801 and 802, now known as Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa. Another four ferries are being built in Cemre, Turkey, and are progressing well.

Going back to the first question, I acknowledge the point—it is self-evident. A number of ministers have apologised for what has happened, particularly to island communities. That is self-evident, too. I should say that no recommendation came from the committee’s conclusion in that sense, but what I have said will give the committee reassurance that we take this seriously and continue to take it seriously. As the new transport minister, ferries are definitely one of my main focuses.

I keep having to say this, but I was deputy convener of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, which spent well over a year taking evidence on ferries and then produced a report. I should make it clear that I was not a member of that committee when the report was finally concluded. Clearly, as minister, I will need to deliver on the cabinet secretary’s response. Perhaps that will give the committee an indication of one of the reasons for my being in this post—to focus on that, if that reassures the committee.

On the point about responsibility, the problems that occurred, particularly in the initial stages of the design process, have been comprehensively set out. As this committee and others have identified, there were relationship issues between the two contracting parties that also led to challenges and difficulties. I refer back to the RECC report, which set those out comprehensively. It made uncomfortable reading for a lot of people, but it really set those issues out, and this committee’s report also reflects what the issues and problem areas were in that respect.

I know from its report that the committee has visited the yard—I, too, have had the opportunity to visit on one occasion—and anybody who has done so will have seen the disconnect between the design and the build. The retrofitting that had to take place was not very helpful.

There were other issues along the way. Sometimes it is easier to reflect on things separately. David Tydeman’s response, which this committee will be interested in with regard to spend, identified what he saw as the difficult areas. Latterly, the pandemic was an element that stopped progress, but that was not fundamental to the initial issues. Later in his remarks, Mr Tydeman talks through what he sees as the key areas; a lot of them were design-build issues that arose right at the beginning, with things not being done properly at that stage. That is well documented.

The issue, then, is that we know that improvements are made. That is where your committee’s recommendations and—perhaps more important—some of the commentary in the report come in, along with, quite clearly, the recommendations from RECC in relation to what happens with milestones and so on. I think that this committee’s purpose is to make sure that the improvements have been made and will be made. I reassure the committee that improvements have been made. Some were made even in advance of this committee’s report, and they have certainly been made after it.

Some of what we want to do, particularly in relation to lessons learned, is to pull all that together and identify things. Some of those changes have been made, for example, with regard to the Scottish public finance manual, and we need to make sure that you can identify where some of those issues are. Some of them are for Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd and some are for Transport Scotland.

That was a wide response but I hope that it gives you some reassurance.

I do not know whether whichever of the officials is most familiar with that can recall.

Clearly, there are lots of lessons to be learned from the process and from the conclusions of not just your committee’s report, but the Auditor General’s report and the REC Committee’s report.

I think that, reading that exchange now, it is quite clear that the then minister for transport was reflecting factually on what had happened before. There had been instances at the yard, which FMEL would have known about, where things had developed without a builders refund guarantee. That was a reflection. It was not advice as to what would happen in another procurement; instead, it was reflecting on the past.

Those issues would relate to future procurement, depending on who had that. Therefore, you would be looking at the people who are bidding for the work having that underpinning and guarantee, in which case it would relate to a yard.

That is why I thought that that was a good recommendation. We want the Government to respond to it. In my detailed examination of your report, as I went through what the conclusions and recommendations were and what we have to act on, that is something that, in my new position—obviously, at the time that you produced the report, prior to my being in post, I would not have looked at it in that level of detail—I feel is a good and useful recommendation, and my officials will act on it.

Draft press lines are not necessarily the same as meetings or decisions. I can see how that might have happened, but I think that records were kept of everything significant. That is the point. It is about what is significant in terms of decision making and who knew what and when, et cetera. There is far more acute awareness of that now than there would have been previously.

Again, that is the committee’s conclusion and position. Obviously, it is part of your responsibility to set out your position and your view. You went into some detail about the appropriateness of that with the former First Minister, and you have good evidence as to where things were, which has been laid out a number of times.

I will need to reflect on the chain of events and the evidence that you have on that. It was not a recommendation to me, as the current Minister for Transport, for action. I do not know whether officials have better recall of it.

So many things are judgment calls. With hindsight, there might be a lot of things that people would not want to do or that they would want to rethink.

I try to avoid communicating during live procurements, although I have not had many in recent times. There is the “safety first” thing, but there are also MSPs who demand responses to their letters, and if they do not get them they will stand up in Parliament and ask why a minister has not responded to their letter. That is the call that we have to make. We want transparency and openness—that is what the committee is asking for—but it is a judgment call. He made that judgment. Looking back on that, knowing what he does now, would he have done the same thing? I do not know.

The content was a factual reflection on what had happened, as opposed to an opinion on a procurement, and he probably saw it in that way. I do not want to second guess how somebody decided on things or judged them, but that is my reflection. I think that the committee is looking for some reflections on your conclusions, as opposed to asking us to respond on what we are being asked to do as a Government now.