Hansard

Presiding Officer, I have been accused, over the years, of banging on about ferries in the chamber, and that is absolutely right. If you had told me 10 years ago, when I first spoke about ferries in the chamber, that the 23-year-old MV Caledonian Isles would now be 33 years old, that it would have broken down for 20 months while in service, that hull 802 in Port Glasgow would still not be carrying any passengers, that the Irish berth at Ardrossan would still be lying in tatters, that the Glen Sannox would have launched seven and a half years late at a cost of £140 million and that it would have gone offline for repairs for months due to design problems after less than a year in service, that the Ardrossan ferry would now be sailing out of Troon instead, and that all the ferries issues that I spoke to in my maiden speech would be featuring so prominently in one of my last speeches, my answer back then would have been, “I really do hope that won’t the case, for the sake of our island communities.” Yet here we are, some 10 years on. It is the same chamber and the same me—perhaps aged a little bit since then—addressing the same sorry saga of cancelled crossings, stranded tourists and missed appointments.

We are supposed to be a proud seafaring nation, yet we have a ferries strategy fit for Luxembourg. Let us start with those two now infamous ferries, the Glen Sannox and the Glen Rosa. Everyone from Unst to Arran knows the story. It has been the subject of numerous committee reports, Audit Scotland critique and endless exposés unearthed by journalists and by furious and frustrated taxpayers through freedom of information requests. It is the stuff that textbooks will use as a case study for decades, to teach marine engineers and, hopefully, Governments how not to build a ferry. Both of those ferries were announced with huge fanfare at the Scottish National Party’s conference back in 2015. They were supposed to set sail in 2018, and they were supposed to cost £97 million in total. I bet that is a promise that the SNP now wishes it had never made—because, eight years and some £400 million of taxpayers’ money later, the Glen Rosa is still not finished and the Glen Sannox, delivered only last year, has been out of action for more than three months. In fact, they have had to rip parts out of the Rosa to repair the Sannox.

Those were supposed to be our flagship net zero marine machines. They were supposed to cast off the idea of dirty diesel engines in favour of that darling of civil servants, liquefied natural gas—the same LNG that caused so much of the delay and so many problems. For what purpose? We are not even producing LNG in Scotland—it gets shipped in from Qatar to a terminal in Kent. It gets driven 460 miles in a diesel road tanker to Scotland and, even then, we have nowhere to store if. It is barely, if ever, used on the ferry that it was designed to be used on—a ferry that was designed for a harbour that it could not sail from. That is a genius idea if ever I heard one.

Of course, there is also the Ferguson Marine shipyard in my own backyard of Inverclyde. It was nationalised by the Government in 2019. Since then, four chief executives have been sacked or have resigned and £3 million has been paid in salaries, golden hellos, golden goodbyes, bonuses and consultancy fees. Six transport secretaries later, not one of them has ever resigned. We can be grateful that the current Cabinet Secretary for Transport has, to her credit, shown determination and commitment to getting stuff done. I am delighted with the announcement yesterday of the four new vessels being built at the yard. That is exactly the type and profile of work that the yard can excel at—I hope we all agree.

However, the yard needs to get the contract first. When I spoke to people in the yard last night, many were sceptical about the Government’s announcement yesterday. The first stage of the small vessel replacement programme was awarded to Gdánsk, not to Greenock. Other contracts have been awarded to Turkey. The Parliament—including many on the Scottish National Party back benches—called for a direct award on all those occasions and the Government replied that it simply could not do it. Now, we are told that it can.

There is a massive difference between announcing an intention to award a contract and announcing the award of a contract. Yesterday, we heard the former, not the latter, so we have no idea whether ministers have sought Competition and Markets Authority approval or whether such approval has been denied or granted. None of that was in the statement. How do we know that it will not be denied again? For more than a decade, we have heard the words “Teckal” and “state aid” bandied around to explain why direct award was problematic. I might be long in the tooth and a bit suspicious, but I will believe it when I see it. The yard deserves nothing less.

I will sum up the motion and why it was right to use my first—and last—Lib Dem party business slot to focus on the plight of Scotland’s island communities. One major ferry is massively overdue. A new one is already out for repair. Another does not fit the harbour that it is supposed to sail from. New ferries are being built overseas, not here in Scotland, and we have an ageing fleet that breaks down, leaving islanders feeling like second-class citizens. It is a mess that has been two decades in the making. It has been a shameful episode in Scotland’s devolved political chapter, and I never have—and never will—apologise for raising it in the chamber.

I move,

That the Parliament believes that many of Scotland’s island and coastal communities have been let down by the Scottish Government and have paid the price for the failure of the Scottish Ministers to provide them with the lifeline ferries they need; recognises that this has had an impact on businesses, livelihoods and local economies; notes that whilst the Scottish Government extended the Islands Business Resilience Fund, there are many impacted coastal communities, such as Dunoon and Ardrossan, where local businesses are not receiving compensation and calls on the Scottish Government to rectify this; notes with frustration that the delivery of the MV Glen Rosa has been delayed by another six months until late 2026 and that the MV Glen Sannox required months of repairs; believes that taxpayers, islanders and workers at Ferguson Marine have all been let down over this ongoing fiasco and expresses deep disappointment that no minister has ever taken responsibility by resigning, and further believes that Scotland’s island and coastal communities deserve better and that new requirements to replace ageing vessels are needed alongside a rolling 30-year strategy for ferries and port infrastructure so that no community is ever left without a viable lifeline service.

16:03