Chamber and committees

In the interests of transparency, I should draw people’s attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests and my trade union affiliations.

I have one final question, as we have all four of you here. I go back to the point about the sponsor team arrangements. My question is first and foremost to David Tydeman. How well supported do you think you are by the sponsorship team in the Scottish Government?

Thank you. I want to pick up on that issue. We are very interested in written authority, because we have not seen any since 2007. Therefore, you will understand why we are interrogating the procedure, who was involved, and what steps were taken. You have confirmed that the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Finance were involved. Do you speak to the permanent secretary about those decisions?

Forgive me. Those are steps that were taken by a minister that we have not seen for a very long time. However, rather than simply saying that you do not think that something represents value for money, full stop, in the letter you go on to elaborate about there being

“entirely legitimate and important factors that Ministers can take into account”.

Do you not think that that was straying into territory that is about Government policy? Is it not your job simply to say whether something meets the test of propriety, regularity and value for money?

Okay.

I will come back to Gregor Irwin. In your letter to me of 19 May, you say that the reason why you were not prepared to disclose any of the FMI report was that you needed to protect FMI’s methodologies and intellectual property. However, I presume that any consultant that is hired by the Government has a methodology and relies to a certain extent on intellectual property rights. Why on earth would any report by any consultant ever be published, if such are the criteria to be applied?

If the payment is for performance—

Hang on a minute, Mr Miller. This is not just an enterprise in which public money has been invested. It is owned by the Scottish Government. There is one shareholder, which is the Scottish Government—

—so, as the chair of the board of that organisation, do you not see there being any need for public accountability and public interest in the remuneration structure—not of the people who are building the ships but of the people at the top of the organisation?

Bill Kidd has some questions.

Does the First Marine International report contain any opinion on public ownership versus private ownership?

Thank you. On that positive note, I thank our witnesses for giving us their time and for their contributions. It has been very useful to us. I thank Colin Cook, Gregor Irwin, David Tydeman and Andrew Miller for joining us.

I now move the meeting into private session.