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Every contribution to the Official Report — chamber and committee — searchable in one place. Pulled from data.parliament.scot, indexed for full-text search, linked through to every MSP.

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2,354,908
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1999–2026
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Showing 60 of 2,354,908 contributions. Latest 30 days: 0. Coverage: 12 May 1999 — 25 Mar 2026.
Craig Hoy Con Committee
28 Apr 2022
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Thank you convener, and good morning Mr Boyle. Last week, Mr Boyle, you expressed your frustration that you cannot get to the full facts and the heart of the ferrygate scandal. We are barely a week into our inquiries and I think that some members already share that frustration...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
24 Feb 2022
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Good morning, Mr Boyle. Thank you for joining us on what I understand is a busy morning. I am looking for clarification. Your report provides information on Scottish Canals’ financial performance for 2020-21. However, it is not clear from the report whether you have any speci...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
02 Sep 2021
Audit Scotland Strategic Priorities and Future Work Programme
Welcome to the meeting, Mr Boyle, and thank you for setting out your programme and priorities so clearly this morning. You mentioned Covid and your work on following the pandemic pound. The committee very much welcomes what you are doing, given that, as you have pointed out, ...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
09 Sep 2021
Section 23 Report
Yes. I draw the committee’s attention to my entry in the register of interests, which details that I am a member of East Lothian Council’s education committee. Good morning, Mr Boyle. I think that it is commonly and widely accepted that poverty and inequality are very stubbor...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
04 Nov 2021
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Good morning, Mr Boyle. You have partly answered the first question that I was going to ask, but I wonder whether you can elaborate on the subject a bit more. Paragraph 12 on page 5 of the report states: “The Commission does not have an overriding ‘Code of Corporate Governanc...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
17 Mar 2022
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2021”
Good morning, Mr Boyle. As we know, the diagnosis and treatment backlog has got significantly worse because of Covid, but, in many respects, Covid is not its principal cause. Although NHS boards around Scotland are trying to tackle the backlog, it is, as you say in the report,...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
21 Apr 2022
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Good morning, Mr Boyle. Normally, when you come before us, you provide reports that give us the complete picture. You put the pieces of the jigsaw together on how much money has been spent and the best value that has been achieved through that. There is generally also an audit...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
22 Sep 2022
“Scotland’s colleges 2022”
Good morning, Mr Boyle. I will take up the convener’s point in relation to the improvement plan and the expectations that it places on colleges. After that, we can maybe look at forward capital expenditure plans and tie up a couple of loose ends in relation to estate maintenan...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
06 Oct 2022
“Tackling child poverty”
Good morning, Mr Boyle. I want to look at achieving the child poverty targets. To give a snapshot of where we are, there are, obviously, some pretty severe and acute cost of living issues coming towards us. At this point in time, should we be more concerned about the inability...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
01 Dec 2022
“Scotland’s public finances: Challenges and risks”
Good morning, Mr Boyle. I want to take up the point about local government flexibilities and ring fencing. Obviously, when the UK Government hands consequentials to the Scottish Government, they come with no strings attached and little in the way of hypothecation, other than, ...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
15 Dec 2022
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Good morning, Mr Boyle. I suppose that, as we approach Christmas, we should be reminded that censuses are nothing new; the Romans were conducting them every five years more than 2,000 years ago. I want to reflect on what happened with the most recent censuses in England and i...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
19 Jan 2023
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Good morning, Mr Boyle. Your report identifies a £2 billion underspend across the capital and resource budgets. Is that level of underspend reasonable? Is it reasonable to reflect and expect that the reason for a significant portion of that underspend relates to the Covid pand...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
02 Feb 2023
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Good morning, Mr Boyle. Obviously, the report is optimistic and reflects a significant amount of work that has been done by the Crofting Commission. Looking forward, my concern is how that can be sustained. Paragraph 20 of your report says: “The progress made by the Commissio...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
09 Feb 2023
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Good morning, Mr Davies and Mr Boyle, and welcome. It is good to see you in the flesh, rather than on Zoom. I want to delve a bit deeper into the monitoring and evaluation that you can do around the compliance of Scottish income tax payers, which is becoming a live issue, giv...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
23 Mar 2023
“NHS in Scotland 2022”
Good morning to you, Mr Boyle, and to your colleagues. In the past, you have said to this committee that you will not wait until the huge piece of public policy work that is the national care service is created before you start to audit it and to analyse the numbers around it....
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
27 Apr 2023
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow (Holdings) Limited”
Good morning, Mr Boyle. For clarity and to recap to some extent, from your perspective, does the yard have a viable future?
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
18 May 2023
Section 23 Report: “How the Scottish Government is set to deliver climate change goals”
Good morning, Mr Boyle, and thank you for an informative report into an important issue that, as you say, cuts across Government. I want to look broadly at the risk management arrangements before drilling down into some of the progress, or lack thereof, in addressing the iden...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
08 Jun 2023
“Criminal courts backlog”
Good morning, Mr Boyle. Obviously, prison overcrowding is nothing new. You have previously reported that the prisoner population in Scotland exceeds the capacity of the Scottish prison estate. To what extent are the backlog and, particularly, the number of prisoners being held...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
15 Jun 2023
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Good morning, Mr Boyle. The legislation and the associated statutory guidance place an emphasis on flexibility and choice for parents in accessing early learning and childcare, but the degree of choice is very much determined by local authorities. Will you flesh out a little b...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
29 Apr 2025
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Good morning, Mr Boyle, and welcome to the committee. We have talked about trying to be transparent and to put complex data and reports into more simplified language. You called for greater transparency in relation to budgetary information, to improve the effectiveness of the...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
25 Nov 2021
“Community empowerment: Covid-19 update”
Before I ask Stephen Boyle about the audit function, I will bring in Anna Fowlie. Earlier, the Auditor General said that the audit function is far more than a tick-box exercise; it is about learning, evaluating and assessing outcomes. I think that the SCVO has about 2,700 memb...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
20 Jan 2022
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
When Stephen Boyle was before the committee, we talked with him about the potential impact of a further delay in the census. The decisions of the past 48 hours, and the Covid data that has emerged, probably mean that that is less likely to happen. Nevertheless, could you give ...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
03 Feb 2022
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
I will ask one quick question of Mr Boyle. In your report, you note that further analysis of taxpayer behaviour “along with the relative success of compliance activity in Scotland and the Scotland-specific tax gap” would help the Scottish Government to “assess whether any S...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
10 Feb 2022
“Planning for skills”
Before we go into some detailed questions on the structure, role and remit of the ESSB, I want to take you back to your opening remarks, Mr Boyle. I agree with your comment that the skills agenda is vital for the economy, business and individuals’ career progression. I ask you...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
10 Feb 2022
“Planning for skills”
You touched on confidence in the governance process. I will turn to confidence in the board, because we know that the board became aware that limited progress had been made on skills alignment. However, despite that, requests for information were ignored or information was pro...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
06 Oct 2022
“Tackling child poverty”
Paragraph 71 mentions not only the importance of employability policies in meeting targets but the very long lead time before they have any impact. Mr Boyle, do you have any impression that the Scottish or UK Government is setting in place the long-term employability and emplo...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
27 Apr 2023
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow (Holdings) Limited”
Mr Boyle, you have mentioned that the language was somewhat opaque around the issue of the pay policy. You said that pay should be “broadly consistent with the provisions of” Scottish Government “pay policy”, and that “Any significant deviations will require further appro...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
15 Jun 2023
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Mr Boyle, you said that most parents seem satisfied or content with the arrangement, but let me highlight an example from East Lothian, where the parents were not happy. The council, for perfectly valid reasons, cancelled a contract with Bright Stars nurseries. In a period of ...
Craig Hoy Con Chamber
04 Feb 2025
Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill: Stage 1
I will be very clear that it was the SNP and Labour who took that away from them and are now only partially restoring it. Those are not just my warnings. The budget ignores deep-seated problems in the structure and sustainability of Scotland’s public finances. Audit Scotland ...
Craig Hoy Con Chamber
27 Nov 2025
Non-Domestic Rates (Liability for Unoccupied Properties) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 3
I believe that, if Parliament and the public are to learn anything from this failure, an independent review remains essential. At stage 2, I proposed a mandatory review by the Auditor General. I thank Richard Leonard for pointing out that my amendment was deficient, and I apol...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
17 Mar 2026
McCloud Remedy
I recognise that you welcome the section 22 report, but Stephen Boyle said:“The SPPA needs to provide greater transparency”on its progress and“take action to address other issues regarding governance and transparency”.Having reviewed your letter, is there still work that you n...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
10 Feb 2026
Legacy Issues (Finance)
My question is probably for Stephen Boyle, but others may want to chip in. It strikes me that, with the Scottish Government coming forward with a £1.5 billion figure, it is very much focused on scale, size and cost but not on the required form and function for the public secto...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
10 Feb 2026
Legacy Issues (Finance)
I think that I know what the answer to this question will be, but it will be useful to get it on the record. It might be one for you, Mr Boyle. What should be the committee’s view of the Scottish Government repeatedly using one-off revenues to fund long-term commitments? You r...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Chamber
22 Sep 2021
Scottish Ambulance Service
My constituent Susannah Jackson, who has previously suffered a stroke, had a bad fall at home. An ambulance was called at 5.30 pm but did not arrive until 10.30 that evening. My constituent was worried and in pain. She was taken to Edinburgh’s royal infirmary, where she had to...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Chamber
06 Feb 2025
First Minister’s Question Time · Flotation Energy (Contract Award)
The Scottish National Party’s Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, lobbied the Scottish Government on behalf of the renewables company Flotation Energy, which was awarded consent for a project. Thirty days later, Stephen Flynn received a £30,000 donation from a director of that ...
Craig Hoy Con Chamber
26 Nov 2025
Economy
Mr Marra says that it is cheaper than this morning—it was extremely bad this morning. I will leave Mr Marra to make his own case for this disastrous budget. It is quite clear that we are now in a doom loop of Rachel Reeves’s own making. Confidence in the economy has slumped, ...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
10 Mar 2026
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Good morning, Mr Griffin. I am going take a slightly scattergun approach, because several issues have arisen this morning that I think merit a follow-up.In relation to working from home, can you put on the record how you are actually monitoring, first of all, an individual civ...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Chamber
09 Sep 2021
Covid-19 Vaccine Certification Scheme
The coronavirus is the biggest threat that this country has faced in decades. The pandemic that it has provoked has made us challenge long-held beliefs about the way in which we live our lives, the role of the state, individual freedoms and the finely balanced relationship bet...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
28 Sep 2021
Scottish Law Commission
Good morning, Lady Paton, and thank you for your very clear and full opening remarks. I think that they may have dealt with some of my questions as well. However, for the record, I have one question and perhaps a supplementary to it. Given how outdated the present framework i...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
30 Sep 2021
“Community justice: Sustainable alternatives to custody”
Good morning. One of the key issues that was identified in your briefing is that Community Justice Scotland has reported that data deficiencies mean that progress against national community justice outcomes is still not being effectively measured. Have you been able to ascerta...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Chamber
07 Oct 2021
World Mental Health Day 2021
I thank Paul McLennan for lodging the motion, which enables us to highlight the upcoming world mental health day 2021. Almost every person in the chamber or watching at home will have experience of mental health issues or know someone who has suffered mental health problems. ...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
28 Oct 2021
“Covid-19 vaccination programme”
A report in The Scotsman this morning, which is based on a Scottish Parliament information centre report, says that up to three quarters of people in certain neighbourhoods of certain areas have not yet been vaccinated. There is a concern that reliance on digital means that so...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
04 Nov 2021
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
The former journalist in me has alighted on what was perhaps the soundbite of the morning, which was Colin Beattie’s comment that NDPBs have the capacity to become little knitting circles that turn in on themselves. I am struggling a little bit to see whether we are saying th...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
02 Dec 2021
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Good morning, Mr Mathieson and Mr Barron. The impression that I am getting from what you have said so far is that, in effect, what went wrong was circumstantial rather than systemic or attitudinal. Mr Mathieson, could you say at what point you got the impression that the leade...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
09 Dec 2021
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Good morning. I want to probe a little bit deeper into the additional costs of delaying the census, to ensure that the costs have arisen because of the delay and not because the project was going off kilter prior to that. Your report says that moving the census from March 2021...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Chamber
14 Dec 2021
Covid-19
Within hours of the issuing of the public health guidance, my constituent, Jo Lawrence, who runs a catering business in East Lothian, sent me this message: “Here we go again 8K of cancellations this morning, just as we were getting back on our feet.” Last time around, many i...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
14 Dec 2021
Made Affirmative Procedure Inquiry
Thank you, and good morning, Sir Jonathan and Professor Tierney. Last week, the committee heard from Dr Ruth Fox, who talked about the impact of repeated urgent delegated legislation on the clarity and therefore the accessibility of the law. She said: “One problem with the m...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
16 Dec 2021
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Good morning, Mr Brannen, Mr Kerr and Mr Scott. At the outset, and for the record, I wonder whether you would like to give us a flavour of the Scottish Government’s views on why the leadership and governance arrangements at the commission broke down in 2020-21 after a period ...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
11 Jan 2022
Made Affirmative Procedure Inquiry
Good morning, Deputy First Minister. I welcome you and your officials. If we can step back from the pandemic for a moment and think in slightly more abstract terms, do you think that the increased use of skeleton legislation and the widespread and now relatively common use of...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Chamber
12 Jan 2022
Mental Health and Wellbeing (Primary Care)
I wish you, Presiding Officer, and everyone else who is present a happy new year. I welcome this debate on mental health and primary care in Scotland. At its core, the debate should be about the challenges that we face in mental health services. Those challenges have undoubte...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
13 Jan 2022
Cross-Party Groups
Good morning, Mr Whitfield, and a happy new year to you and committee members. On 7 December 2021, the cross-party group on beer and pubs held its inaugural meeting, in order to prepare for this meeting. That was in recognition of the fact that there are now more than 4,600 p...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
20 Jan 2022
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Good morning, Mr Lowe, and welcome to your colleagues. Will you give us a bit of a flavour of the work that you did to assess the impact of the delay of the census on the delivery of public services in Scotland, and on the allocation of funding to councils and other public bo...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
20 Jan 2022
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Good morning, Stephen. I do not want to put you on the spot, and I am not sure how good your live tracking presently is in relation to the new round of business support, but about £375 million of support for business was announced in December. The general impression that I am ...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
27 Jan 2022
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Good morning. As far as financial management is concerned, it has been broadly recognised that, because of Covid, the Government’s budget was going to be fluid and perhaps more complex. However, I want to look at last year’s underspend of about £518 million, which comes princi...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
03 Feb 2022
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Good morning. The report examines the impact of Covid-19 on HMRC compliance activities. It says: “COVID-19 has continued to have an impact on HMRC’s compliance and debt management activities. Across the UK, there were 29% fewer civil compliance cases opened and 26% fewer case...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
01 Mar 2022
Evidence
Good morning, Mr Swinney. I will open with a slightly wider question that relates to two of the instruments that are before us today. In a parliamentary debate last September, you said that the Government was committed to removing regulations when they were no longer necessary...
Craig Hoy Con Committee
01 Mar 2022
Evidence
I welcome the fact that the instrument that we will consider this morning withdraws the scheme. If the scheme were to come back in its present form, would it now be compliant with GDPR legislation?
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
10 Mar 2022
“Planning for Skills”
Good morning, Mr Griffin. Before we go into issues of oversight and governance, I will echo the convener’s remarks about the late emergence of the shared outcomes framework. You have pulled the rug from under our feet to some extent in this session, because we have not had tim...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
17 Mar 2022
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Obviously, the impact of the cyberattack is significant, and it will be felt throughout the organisation. I have questions about staff training and future workforce planning. You all seem to be in quite good spirits this morning, but you might want to say a little about the i...
Craig Hoy (South Scotland) (Con) Con Committee
31 Mar 2022
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects (Accountability and Governance)
Good morning. Mr Huggins, the 2019 report suggested that a single individual be made responsible for overseeing Government ICT projects. The Government took that recommendation on board and said that it would consider it. You are the director of digital, so is that your role? ...
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Committee

Public Audit Committee 28 April 2022

28 Apr 2022 · S6 · Public Audit Committee
Item of business
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Hoy, Craig Con South Scotland Watch on SPTV
Thank you convener, and good morning Mr Boyle. Last week, Mr Boyle, you expressed your frustration that you cannot get to the full facts and the heart of the ferrygate scandal. We are barely a week into our inquiries and I think that some members already share that frustration. Key documents cannot be found or were not prepared. Key witnesses have been gagged. There are reports of possible fraud and corruption. Scotland’s former First Minister has gone as far as saying that we should be calling in the cops. Today, Erik Østergaard, the chairman of the Government’s ferries quango when the deal was done, has said that CMAL was given written confirmation to proceed with awarding the contract to Ferguson Marine, but it was not given any written confirmation of why that was the case. As with all scandals, there is perhaps now some whiff of a cover-up, with people and possibly even Government ministers covering their tracks. We are only one week into our inquiries, and I do share your sense of frustration. However, we are not alone. Jim McColl, who we should not forget was once a pal of the Scottish National Party—he had the First Minister on speed dial and was one of the Government’s favourite Scottish businessmen—is clearly frustrated; his submission to the committee is stark and points to more than just a fallout among friends in the nationalist movement. He says that the procurement process was driven by a party-political dynamic and was rushed to deliver headlines for the SNP conference; he also says that CMAL’s concerns were not conveyed to him and that not enough time was given to the feasibility of the conceptual design. If that were the case, it would be very serious indeed. In fact, we would be talking about corruption of the procurement process and it would explain why things since then went badly wrong and why ministers potentially have been keen to cover their tracks. In the absence of any documentary evidence to disprove all that, how concerned should we be about the original process being conducted along such lines? If Mr McColl’s claims are true, does that explain why we have seen such resistance to full and total transparency at a critical point in this process?

In the same item of business

The Convener Lab
Item 3 is the continuation of our evidence session with the Auditor General and his team on the report into new vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides. We are pl...
Stephen Boyle (Auditor General for Scotland)
Good morning. Key message 1 in our report draws together our overall conclusion about the availability of documentary evidence for that key part of the decis...
The Convener Lab
Are you saying that that critical piece of evidence does not cover in full the ministerial decision to mitigate the risk?
Stephen Boyle
It is perhaps worth commenting that, since the evidence session last week, the Scottish Government has confirmed that it has been unable to find the relevant...
The Convener Lab
I was going to turn to that next. In the light of the questioning of the First Minister last Friday, a Scottish Government official was reported to have sai...
Stephen Boyle
That is a reasonable connection, convener. Through our work, we request and receive generally all relevant information in respect of important decisions. Thr...
Antony Clark (Audit Scotland)
I will be clear with the committee: we received positive and full co-operation from the Scottish Government when conducting the audit. As the Auditor Gene...
The Convener Lab
Okay, Mr Clark, I will leave the redresses to you or the Auditor General. Did you get an explanation as to why that documentary evidence did not exist? 10:00
Stephen Boyle
We were advised that ministers were content to proceed cognisant of the risks that existed, so I am not sure that we are able to confirm that there was docum...
The Convener Lab
Okay, so we do not know whether the Government is searching for something that exists.
Stephen Boyle
We have probably gone as far as we are able to, convener, and the committee might wish to pursue that line of inquiry directly with the officials involved.
The Convener Lab
Thank you very much indeed. Willie Coffey has a number of questions to put.
Willie Coffey SNP
My questions relate to the application of quality standards in design and construction, Auditor General. As you and members are well aware, that is a common ...
Stephen Boyle
You are right that the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee conducted an extensive review of the circumstances around the procurement, the design arrange...
Willie Coffey SNP
I will ask about the general application of quality standards. That is a recurring theme, as we all know, but in this case, they apply to the shipbuilding in...
Stephen Boyle
I will ask Antony Clark to build on some of the evidence that we gave last week in which we explored the nature of risk and risk transfer in the shipbuilding...
Antony Clark
Before I address that second point, I want to build briefly on the Auditor General’s response to your earlier question whether we found anything new beyond w...
Willie Coffey SNP
I was just coming to that particular issue. Paragraph 50 of the report says that “CMAL could only advise” and not require Ferguson to alter its approach to d...
Antony Clark
I will respond to that question, if that is okay. We are not really in a position to provide a comparator for these two vessels with regard to the number of...
Willie Coffey SNP
This is my last question for the moment. Again, it is on the quality issue, which is crucial and goes to the heart of much of all this. In paragraph 62 of th...
Stephen Boyle
I will address both those points. I go back to the point that Antony Clark made regarding the extent to which we are able to pass judgment on the quality or ...
Willie Coffey SNP
Sorry, Antony—I just want to come in here. Did Ferguson dispute that the cables were too short?
Stephen Boyle
I do not think that we know the detail of that.
Angela Canning (Audit Scotland)
Can I come in here? I think that the issue with the cables has just been discovered more recently by Ferguson Marine (Port Glasgow) Ltd, and Parliament was u...
Willie Coffey SNP
So it was not noticeable until late on the process that the cables in the vessels were too short.
Angela Canning
My understanding is that that event has more recently come to light as FMPG has been reviewing the work in the shipyards.
Willie Coffey SNP
Okay—thank you.
Antony Clark
I will step back briefly and talk more broadly about the governance arrangements. It is clearly the responsibility of the fabricator to fabricate the ship, b...
Willie Coffey SNP
I know that none of us is an expert in building ships. Nonetheless, Auditor General, do you recognise that some of these issues are recurring themes for the ...
Stephen Boyle
I absolutely recognise the committee’s long-standing interest in the successful delivery of complex infrastructure investment projects. I absolutely agree on...