Chamber and committees

Let me come back to you on the exact Cabinet decisions. The issues would have been reported to Cabinet by ministers saying, “We’re doing these things,” rather than through full Cabinet papers, on which Cabinet would take the decision.

No. I believe that the information that is published will show you that, because it shows, in a lot of detail, the different options that the Scottish Government looked at very rigorously. Project Kildonan looked at the different contingency options that were there. There was a lengthy period of time, so it is completely wrong to jump from May 2017 to nationalisation, and not to take proper account of all that happened in between, not least the loan provisions that the Scottish Government made, which I am sure that you may want to come on to later—

First, I and the Scottish Government are ultimately accountable. This is a public sector contract. First Ministers do not regularly sit before individual committees of the Parliament. I am not saying that I had any choice in the matter, but I welcome being here, because I recognise unreservedly that ultimate accountability.

We all—the Scottish Government; CMAL; to a lesser extent, to be fair, but nevertheless, I include CalMac; and Transport Scotland, which is an agency of the Scottish Government—have to reflect on all aspects, recognise whether decisions that we have taken could and should have been taken differently, and learn lessons from that. I do not shy away from that.

However, neither do I think that the fact can be escaped that this was a contract that a private company signed up to. It contracted to do a job that has not been done. Therefore, in my view, a significant degree of responsibility has to rest with FMEL and FMEL’s management at the time—not sole responsibility, and I am not saying that none of its concerns is legitimate, but it has to be part of this, too. Although I am sitting here readily accepting that there are lessons for the Scottish Government and for our agencies, I am not sure that I have heard that from FMEL. I have heard lots about why it is all somebody else’s fault. Absolutely, a degree of responsibility lies elsewhere. However, it is also important that it recognises that it contracted to do a job that was then not done. That has to be a significant part of it, too.

Me?

Sitting here, I cannot say—again, this is just the inherent limitation of trying to decide which decisions you would have made with hindsight—and cannot be sure, and I do not think that anyone could be, that retendering would have resulted in a situation where we did not have any problems. I cannot sit here and give you a guarantee on that. There is commentary in the 8 October paperwork that underlines this point. That submission says that, in CMAL’s view, some of the problems around the guarantee would have been encountered with any bidder.

It is really impossible to answer categorically, from the perspective of hindsight, what you would have done and what the consequences of it would have been.

Again, that is one of those questions where the answer is that if I knew then what I know now, of course I would not have wanted to do that, but I did not know then what I know now. I am not telling the committee anything that it does not know when I say that it is not unusual—in fact, it is entirely usual—for vessels to be launched well in advance of them being completed. I have been at other ship launches in my political career. It is known that, at the point of the launch of a vessel, it is not completed, so there was nothing unusual in that.

I certainly was not aware of this at the time of the launch. I was aware that there was a slippage in the contract delivery date, and I think that Parliament was also aware of that at that point, because I think that Derek Mackay had already advised it of the initial slippage in the delivery date. However, I was not aware that CMAL had concerns about doing the launch at that point. In fact, having reviewed my briefing for that event, there were plenty of CMAL executives and non-executives on the attendance list. I certainly was not aware that there were concerns about launching the vessel at that point.

Everything that I am referring to today—subject to the caveats on the processes in the Government about legal privilege and commercial confidentiality—I am happy to make available to the committee.

I have seen the actions that I asked officials to take forward coming out of that meeting. If the committee has not seen that—if it is not in the bundle of documents that has already been published—I will certainly look to see whether it can be made available.

Yes, I do.

That is exactly what I am saying.