Meeting of the Parliament 14 June 2023
I welcome this important debate and I speak in support of my Labour colleague Michael Marra’s motion.
As Michael Marra said, Scotland’s islanders are right to be angry, dismayed and frustrated, because they simply do not have the ferry service that they need or deserve. They have been failed and they have been let down. Given that fact and the recent and damaging disruption to island businesses in particular, it is only right that those businesses receive the compensation that they need and deserve.
It is little wonder that we have seen protests recently on South Uist, and we know that the same anger and frustration is felt in other islands across Scotland, including in Arran in my West Scotland region. I have spoken to businesses, particularly food producers, who are in despair. Delays to ferries cost them thousands of pounds a day and could cost jobs in the long term.
Let us not talk around the key issue behind why we are here. The number 1 reason—the main reason by far—why islanders do not have a reliable ferry service is that CalMac does not have a reliable ferry fleet. In addition to being unreliable, it is an ageing fleet: 38 per cent of vessels are more than 30 years old and over the recommended lifespan for a ferry.
That flies in the face of the First Minister’s claim last week about the SNP’s investment in ferries. Let us look at the outcomes. Over the SNP’s time in office, only six ferries have been built—six in 16 years. Compare that with the 10 ferries that were built by the previous Labour-Liberal Democrat Government in half that time—10 in eight years. Even Margaret Thatcher’s Government built more new CalMac ferries than this Government has. Its record is shameful.
There is a plenty of blame to go round for the whole ferries fiasco, but the Scottish Government cannot blame anyone else for its abject failure to provide new ferries. It cannot blame CalMac, it certainly cannot blame the Ferguson’s workforce and it cannot blame the previous Government for its failure to provide decent ferries for our islands.
Given that this is the Government’s fault, the least that it could do now is adequately compensate island businesses whose futures are at real risk. It is time for the Government to take responsibility. I say that because it appears, day in, day out, that the Government is desperate not to take responsibility but to deflect blame elsewhere.
To be clear, CMAL and CalMac are not entirely blameless, but it is not their job, and it is certainly not the job of their workers when dealing with angry passengers, to take the flak for the Government’s overall procurement failure. The project Neptune report has been part of the deflection strategy. We need to look at how governance and structures best work and how we best run our ferries, but that cannot, and must not, distract us from the fact that the Government has not built enough ferries.
One clear commitment in relation to project Neptune from the former transport minister was to rule out privatisation. It is hard to see how the current situation could be made worse, but the privatisation of CalMac would do that. That should also be ruled out by the new transport minister.
On taking responsibility, I wish the new transport minister, Fiona Hyslop, and the new transport secretary, Màiri McAllan, well, as I do Kevin Stewart. However, I say to them what I said to Neil Gray last week: the ministerial merry-go-round needs to stop. There was a time when ministers could not get down to Ferguson’s quick enough for a photo op; now, ministers cannot wait to get ferries out of their portfolio and to buy themselves time with nice platitudes.
Real responsibility would be a Government minister standing up in the chamber, staking their reputation on fixing this mess and saying that they will not leave until the job is done. Because of the current fiasco, we face a situation in which our ferry network is in crisis and we are having to build ferries in Turkey. We are also—