Meeting of the Parliament 19 March 2025
I suppose that it depends on the starting point, but I think that the cabinet secretary had some nerve to begin her speech by saying that progress has been made. There has not been one inch of embarrassment or shame about this whole episode—delayed ferries that are over their budget, painted-on windows, a leaking hull and short cables, with it being cheaper to scrap the ferries and start again. How embarrassing has this whole episode been?
Not one minister has resigned as a result of the series of catastrophes over many years. The people who have been let down are the yard workers, taxpayers and islanders. Even though ministers owned the yard and, before that, their favourite industrialist was brought in to save the yard, no minister has accepted any responsibility.
It was striking that, at the Finance and Public Administration Committee yesterday, the permanent secretary commented, in passing, that we need to learn the lessons from the past on procurement. What could he have been talking about?
We need cast our minds back only a few years to the BBC documentary that exposed the procurement process for those two infamous ferries. This afternoon, the cabinet secretary refused to say what proportion of the bid related to social benefit, but it is interesting that, in the previous procurement process, the bids were assessed 50 per cent on price and 50 per cent on quality. This time, bids were assessed 65 per cent on quality and 35 per cent on price. Therefore, the percentage of the assessment that was based on price was lowered, and yet Ferguson’s did not win the contract this time. It won it the time before, when the assessment was 50:50 on price and quality.
The previous process involved a 424-page document being provided to Ferguson’s, rather than to any other bidder, and design support being given to the company. It is clear that the previous process was rigged, but that has never been admitted by the Government and still no minister has resigned.
The reality is that the Government is more interested in chasing the headlines than it is in building a proper industrial strategy. Just look at BiFab: the Government wasted £50 million with no benefit whatsoever. The company collapsed, no jobs were saved, and the minister said,
“you win some, you lose some.”
Dalzell steelworks was, in effect, mothballed—that has been the case for months. There has been no benefit, and the money involved represents considerable exposure for the Government. The Trump tariffs pose a considerable threat to the Lochaber smelter, and we have seen none of the 2,000 jobs that were promised. And now Ferguson’s. All that because the Government has been more fixated on chasing the headlines than on building a proper industrial strategy. The Government should be ashamed.
I supported the budget this year, and we worked with the Government because we were building in more support for the northern isles, but the rest of the strategy is an embarrassment. I wish that the Government would be honest about that, because, as the permanent secretary said only yesterday, we need to learn the lessons from the past. This Government seems to be completely incapable of doing so.