Chamber and committees

I take no responsibility for whether people decide that they want to come back to work or, on seeing me in their office, decide that they do not.

For those who are interested in the landscape of the yard and how it works, I point people to the evidence that Alex Logan, the GMB convener at the yard, gave on 22 January 2020 to the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee.

Sharon Dowey has some questions.

I am sorry, but your meeting with Mr Mackay was on 5 June 2018.

So he said that, three years ago, he got a threat that people would resign.

Craig Hoy wants to come in with a number of questions.

Thank you very much indeed.

Yes.

We are rapidly running out of time, but I know that there are substantive questions that Craig Hoy and Colin Beattie want to ask. I turn first to Colin Beattie.

Thank you. You are right to say that we will return to the themes that you outlined in your opening statement in the next hour or so, so thank you very much for that.

You will be aware that the Scottish Government has released a large number of emails that give us some sense of things that were going on from 2015 onwards. Can I take you back to August 2015? We have published correspondence from Transport Scotland to Keith Brown, who was the Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Investment and Cities at the time. On 20 August 2015, correspondence seeks his approval for Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd to award FMEL shipbuilding contracts of a total cost of £96 million—I think that it went up to £97 million in the next few days—for two new major ferries. Towards the end of that correspondence, reference is made to the potential for a legal challenge from one of the unsuccessful shipyards. The correspondence goes on to state that CMAL was confident that it could defend any challenges in those circumstances, but it also uses the interesting phrase:

“that said, the relationship between Scottish ministers and Ferguson’s owner is well known”.

For the benefit of the committee, can you define the terms of that relationship at that time?

To go back to the point about the legal letter, the committee was told in evidence last week by Chris Wilcock, who is head of the ferries unit at Transport Scotland, that his understanding from the chief executive officer of CMAL was that no such threat existed. We will get CMAL in in a fortnight’s time, so we will put some of those questions to it then.