Chamber and committees

As it happens, I raised that particular issue last night, as I was reading documents in preparation for today. That was an error, but, as I think can be substantiated by looking at the committee’s website, the letter is published in full there. The letter that was sent by Transport Scotland omitted, in the way that it was formatted, a couple of paragraphs. I noticed that last night, so I am not surprised that the committee noticed it, too. I have the full letter in front of me, and the committee has the full letter, and I am happy to answer questions on the entirety of the letter.

I do not believe that there was any intention to mislead, not least because it would have been very obvious to anybody who had any knowledge of the matter. Taking all that into account, I am satisfied that that was an inadvertent formatting error, and it does not change the fact that the full information is before the committee.

I would thank the convener if I could complete my point. The fact that you know that underlines the point that I am making. The full letter is on your committee’s website, and therefore the idea that, somehow, that would have pulled the wool over anybody’s eyes stretches credibility.

It would have been in what that briefing told me. I would have to go back and check, but I do not think that the term “builders refund guarantee” was used. It said that there was a preferred bidder but that, to be clear, negotiations were still on-going, which included complexities around the level of guarantee that FMEL would provide. It was very much couched as one of the things that we were talking about finalising, not as a big red flag that there was going to be a big problem.

The submissions on that will have been circulated and provided to the relevant ministers, and the minister at the time would have updated Cabinet periodically on the progress of that.

The Government looked at different contingency options—that is all there in the documents that you have seen. We got to the point at which, in our view, public ownership became the best option—given that we were in a process in which there was no ideal option—to meet the objectives that the Scottish Government had always been driven by: completing the ferries; protecting, if we could, the future of the shipyard; and protecting employment at the shipyard. That is why public ownership became the option that we pursued.

It is no secret that that was not the preferred option of Jim McColl. In the latter stages, before we got to public ownership, the parent company, Clyde Blowers Capital, put an alternative proposal to the Scottish Government. You can see from all of the documentation that that proposal was rigorously assessed and considered by the Government and that, for a range of state aid, procurement and legal issues, we could not accept the proposal.

Of course Jim McColl has views on the issue, and some of his views have more credence than others, as, I am sure, people will say about mine.

I am the First Minister. You can—

Indeed.

I assume so. Ultimately, I do not end up at places, making announcements, unless I have agreed to do so. If it was in the way that these things happen, it would have come to me as a proposal that, because of the nature of the announcement, it was appropriate for me to do it, and I would have agreed. Obviously, it is common sense to say that I must have agreed to that, because otherwise I would not have been there, making the announcement.

It was several years ago, so I will not say that I can tell you the exact sequence of events from memory, but, in the normal course of events—I have no reason to believe that it would have been different here—it is unlikely that I would have instigated it, because I would not necessarily have had knowledge that it was coming up on that date. It would have come to me as a proposal, and such proposals come to me regularly. The Government makes announcements—if not every day, then regularly, several times a week—and in all of those there will be a process of judgment about who is the right person to make the announcement. When the judgment is that it should be me, that will come to me as a proposal, and I am pretty certain that that is what would have happened here.

If there are any points beyond those answers that the committee wants to explore, that is obviously why I am here today.