Meeting of the Parliament 14 June 2023
I am pleased to note that transport has been restored to Cabinet level; it should never have been removed. I take this opportunity to welcome Fiona Hyslop to her new role as transport minister.
I thank Michael Marra for bringing this important debate and motion to the chamber. Scottish Liberal Democrats will support the motion at decision time, as well as the Conservative Party amendment. It is the right thing to do to compensate islanders who have been left high and dry as a consequence of their lifeline ferry service failing to meet their needs. The motion calls for resilience funding for compensation, to come from
“penalties imposed on Caledonian MacBrayne for breaches of its contract with Transport Scotland.”
The hundreds of people in South Uist protesting earlier this month about CalMac’s decision to cancel most ferry sailings to Mallaig for the reminder of June will be a lasting image of the frustration at the Scottish Government’s self-inflicted ferry fiasco. The thinking seems to be that the impact can be measured in numbers. The logic seems to be that it is a small community, so there will be small impact. In fact, the opposite is true, because there is a disproportionately large impact on smaller communities: the missed hospital appointments, missed weddings and missed funerals and the loss of income for accommodation providers—when bookings are cancelled because visitors cannot get to the islands—and for retailers who have no stock. It is a threat to the island way of life.
I welcome reports that CalMac will review its route prioritisation matrix, but the cynic in me suggests that it is doing so now only because the islanders’ demonstration hit national headlines. There is much that must be done to repair the damage and loss of trust. As Michael Marra observed, the hundreds of people who protested in South Uist would equate to 180,000 people in Edinburgh. If comparable numbers of cars were parked nose to tail to show disappointment at transport decisions that affected people’s lives in the capital, the Government would not be able to ignore the chaos.
The scale of protests in South Uist shows the strength of feeling about being isolated—even trapped—the sense of injustice on the part of businesses that face losses and the anger that is felt about the fact that the company at the heart of these issues is getting yet more taxpayer cash. There is a sense that the Scottish Government and Transport Scotland do not fully understand the needs of islanders, the critical need for connectivity and the interdependency.
The SNP-Green Government needs to look beyond the central belt. Island communities feel as though they have been abandoned. Depopulation is a serious concern in Scotland’s islands and rural areas. The handling of the ferry fiasco and the lack of accountability on the part of the Government show that the concerns of islanders are distant to ministers. We face the collapse of communities in island areas if ferries are not operating and service is not improved.
The response to the situation has shown that the Government’s response to depopulation is lip service at best. What is needed is long-term thinking about the ferry fleet capacity and resilience, a rolling plan for the replacement of old ferries, innovation in the build and other needed functions and a move away from thinking that the impacts on island populations will be small. Islands and those who live on them are very much part of Scotland, geographically, culturally and socially. Islanders are no less important than those who live on mainland Scotland. It is critical that we get transport connectivity right, whether that is ferries, buses or—dare I say it?—tunnels, and everything else will fall into place.