Meeting of the Parliament 14 June 2023
We all know about, and we have quite rightly rehearsed today, the problems facing the CalMac network. There are not enough ships. The ships that are there are ageing. They are breaking down more often, and those repairs are taking longer. CalMac, which was once very much considered part of the fabric of life in the islands, risks increasingly being seen by islanders as remote and bureaucratic.
Continuing disruption has hit many businesses in my constituency hard, nowhere more so—I should say—than in Uist. Lochboisdale is not typically a place where you will see protests and mass demonstrations. As others have pointed out, the fact that one third of the island’s resident population came out to demonstrate against the recent complete withdrawal of the ferry service says much about the pain that is being felt there.
South Uist has, in fact, regularly suffered more from service disruption than anywhere else on the Clyde and Hebrides network. Over the course of a year, there were 225 cancelled sailings versus 479 that operated. That is an astonishingly high cancellation rate, and it is easily higher than the rate anywhere else on the network. Winter was particularly bad, with only a quarter of scheduled sailings operating between November and March.
Lifeline services should, in the first instance, serve island communities. I carefully preface my next remark by acknowledging that every island in Scotland needs a good ferry service. However, while other islands with smaller populations get two or even four-vessel services, the whole string of islands from Eriskay to Berneray has to share half of a single ferry between North Uist and Skye at the moment.