Chamber and committees

So, whose name is at the bottom of that contract with FMI? Is it the Scottish Government’s or FMPG’s?

But the FMI website says:

“We act with integrity and transparency, holding ourselves to the highest standards”.

According to my reading of the reports, the contractor FMI—not the client that was buying its services—instigated the non-disclosure agreement.

Again, Mr Tydeman, you understand that a quarter of a million pounds of public money has been spent on that piece of work, and we are told that we can have no sight of it whatsoever.

Okay. Mr Tydeman or Mr Miller, do you have any reflections on the bonus payments? We are talking about the report that was produced by Audit Scotland, which drew particular attention to £87,000 that was paid out, based on a 17.5 per cent bonus payment that was made to certain senior members of the team.

That is an interesting analysis, Mr Miller. What about having good regard to public accountability? In the end, we are talking about a project—a procurement for two vessels that are five years late, and counting, and three and a half times over budget. In that environment—as, I think, Mr Coffey said when the Auditor General was here—it beggars belief that bonus payments have been made.

Ah—so we have a little bit more information about the FMI report.

I invite Craig Hoy to ask a round of questions.

Mr Cook, do you have any reflections?

Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 16th meeting of the Public Audit Committee in 2023. We have apologies from Colin Beattie and I am pleased to welcome Bill Kidd as his substitute.

The first item on our agenda is for the committee to consider whether to agree to take agenda items 3, 4, 5 and 6 in private. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

We turn to our main item of business. Agenda item 2 is consideration of “The 2021/22 audit of Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow (Holdings) Limited”. We are joined by four witnesses, who will give us evidence on their perspectives on the report and will answer the questions that we have about it.

I am very pleased to welcome our witnesses. David Tydeman is the chief executive officer of FMPG and Andrew Miller is the chair of the board. From the Scottish Government, we are joined by Gregor Irwin, who is the director-general economy, and Colin Cook, who is the director of economic development.

We have quite a number of questions to put to you but, before we get to our questions, I will give you the opportunity to make short opening statements. First, I invite David Tydeman to make a short statement.

It was, however, very much a “On the one hand ... and on the other” piece of advice that you gave, which I think is an interesting approach.

I will move on to something else to do with the written authority decision. In your answers to Sharon Dowey, you mentioned external commercial advisers. Are you prepared to share the workings of those commercial advisers with the committee?