Chamber and committees

We understand that and have, as a committee, stated on numerous occasions that we are fully behind FMPG and the yard winning more work and being successful.

Mr Irwin, you have mentioned the Scottish public finance manual a few times now. I point out that it contains a section on this committee and your accountability not just to Parliament but to the committee, in particular. The advice in the manual, to you as the accountable officer, is that

“You may also be called on to satisfy the Committee that all relevant financial considerations were brought to the attention of Ministers”.

With that in mind, are you prepared to share that information with us?

I go back to my earlier question, which was this: are you prepared to share that information with the committee? We understand entirely that some elements of the work that you do in relation to FMPG are commercially sensitive, but I presume that the information could be supplied to us in a way such that it would not compromise commercial and confidential information.

Can you give us, this morning, a timescale for when you will make decisions on what can or cannot be released?

Let me turn to something else that will put under scrutiny your commitment to openness and transparency—the First Marine International report. Can you explain to us why you are not prepared to release that into the public domain?

According to your letter to me, however, when I add in the VAT, a quarter of a million pounds of public money has been spent on commissioning that FMI report. Are you saying that nothing about it can be published?

Why is the report covered by a non-disclosure agreement?

So we should knock on Gregor Irwin’s door.

Finally on this subject, one of the principal recommendations was, I presume, about productivity. You mentioned comparisons with other northern European yards. However, part of the minute of the FMPG board meeting on 2 February 2023, which Andrew Miller chaired and which Colin Cook attended, I think, says that “CM”, which I understand to mean Chris Mackay, who is a non-executive director, noted that the FMI report—it says “reports”, so we will come to whether there was one report or two—said that the yard needs to be three times as productive as it is. That means that some of the information in the FMI report is out in the public domain.

Okay. We need to move on. We understand that there are commercially sensitive pieces of information that would almost certainly be contained in that report, but I am not sure that we accept your argument, Mr Irwin, that the methodology of the consultants needs to be protected.

I will turn to another area that we spoke to the Auditor General about, when he was before the committee—the overall framework agreement for pay. The yard was nationalised towards the end of 2019, so why did it take until March 2022 before a framework agreement on pay and remuneration was agreed?

Well, I think that the people who are watching this will have a view about what has been delivered, what the performance has been like, what the outturns have been and whether those match up to people getting a 17.5 per cent “incentive payment”, or bonus—as you wish, because that will be something that people make up their own minds about.

I have a final question for Mr Irwin about something that was drawn out in the evidence session with the Auditor General but which is also contained in the report.

Earlier, you mentioned the sponsorship team arrangement. The Auditor General’s view is that there is a good deal of “ambiguity” about the relationship between the sponsorship team and FMPG and about how oversight worked. Actually, one of the catalysts for his drawing that conclusion was the fact that there was no advance clearance of the remuneration system.

Thank you. We will move on now, and I invite Willie Coffey to put some questions to you.