Chamber and committees

Again, just for the record, you mentioned evidence that we have received that suggested that, Mr Østergaard, your letter was dated two weeks—or 12 days, I think—before the decision was taken by ministers. The submission says:

“While it may have expressed his frustration”—

your frustration, Mr Østergaard—

“the email makes clear that it dated from two weeks earlier”—

it was 12 days—

“and before the latest round of negotiations. (The Auditor General’s report does not make that fact clear, and it could be taken to read as a final position.)”

However, you are telling us this morning that that was the final position of the board.

Can I follow up some of those lines of questioning from Sharon Dowey? I go back to the point about written authority or not written authority, and the difference between instruction from your sole shareholder and written authority. To all intents and purposes, it was equivalent, was it not, because your advice was being overridden?

Mr Østergaard, do you want to come in at this point?

Mr Østergaard, in one biography that I have read about you, when you were appointed to the board of the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company, you were described as possessing

“extensive experience with a number of European shipping concerns in a career that has spanned over 30 years in shipping.”

Have you ever known a ship to be built without a builder’s refund guarantee?

In the context of what we have heard this morning and what we have seen in the written submission, did you at any point consider resigning as chair of CMAL?

That was evidence that we heard from Jim McColl, who said that he had been in a private meeting with Derek Mackay, which the civil servants had been asked to leave, when he was told that there was what he described as a legal letter from the board of CMAL threatening resignation en masse.

Again, just for the record, Mr Østergaard, neither did you, as chair of the board, notwithstanding the very strong terms of the email that you sent on 26 September, in the afternoon, saying, quite starkly:

“In my opinion the best option would be to bin the present result and start from scratch on the basis of our initial requirements”.

Those are quite strong terms, are they not?

We have an attachment in an email that was sent to ministers, which is a note from CMAL at the time, back in October 2015, which says:

“Without guarantees for all payments made, there is a substantial risk. Under normal circumstances it is probably unlikely that a company of the size of CMAL would take on this risk.”

It says, “Under normal circumstances”. What were the abnormal circumstances that you were operating under?

We may return to some of these themes.

We are going to pursue those issues in a moment, but I want to take you back to the 31 August announcement. We now know from internal emails that were released in 2019 that there was an email to Keith Brown on 20 August 2015, copying in Alexander Anderson, the senior special adviser to the First Minister. Under the heading “Presentational issues”, paragraph 16 says:

“It would be appropriate for Mr Mackay as Minister for Transport and Islands to lead on this announcement”.

However, we know that, 11 days later, the First Minister was accompanying Mr Mackay and presumably leading on the announcement. What did you know about what was going on behind the scenes at the Scottish Government at that point?