Sturgeon criticised for 'premature' CalMac ferry announcement
- Published
Nicola Sturgeon joined Jim McColl at the yard when she announced it was the preferred bidder for the CalMac ferries in August 2015
Nicola Sturgeon has been criticised by a Holyrood committee for prematurely naming Ferguson Marine as the preferred bidder to build two new ferries.
Ms Sturgeon made the announcement in 2015 despite "considerable negotiations" still being required, the Public Audit Committee said.
It said this had likely weakened the position of government ferry company CMAL when problems emerged.
The ferries are now five years late and massively over budget.
The criticism of the first minister was backed by a majority of MSPs on the committee in a 124-page report after months of investigations
Its two SNP members, Colin Beattie and Willie Coffey, did not agree with the conclusions about Ms Sturgeon's role and said their committee colleagues had "pursued a narrow political agenda".
The committee also said there had been a lack of information, delays, incomplete answers and failure to answer from ministers and Transport Scotland during its inquiry.
The Scottish government said it had already made changes to address many of the issues raised by the report, and would respond in full to the committee once it had studied its findings.
The committee's report said taxpayers and island communities had been badly let down by many of those involved in the project to build the two ferries - the Glen Sannox and the currently unnamed hull 802.
The ferries are meant to serve island communities on CalMac routes in the west of Scotland, but are still not ready despite their price tag nearly tripling to almost £300m.
It emerged last week that both ferries have been hit by a further delay, with the Glen Sannox now not ready until the autumn rather than May of this year and hull 802 now due to enter service in the autumn of 2024 instead of March of that year.
Glen Sannox was launched in November 2017 - complete with "windows" that had been painted on
The decision to publicly announce Ferguson Marine Engineering Ltd (FMEL) - at that point owned by businessman and prominent independence supporter Jim McColl - as the preferred bidder in 2015 came in for particular criticism in the committee report.
Mr McColl has previously said he believes the contract to build Glen Sannox and Hull 802 was awarded for political reasons, claiming that the Scottish government wanted good publicity for its party conference in 2015.
The Scottish government has dismissed that allegation, with Ms Sturgeon saying the shipyard would have closed if it had not been given the ferry contract.
One section of the cross-party committee's report said: "Given that it was clear that considerable negotiations were still required, we question the first minister's decision to publicly announce the preferred bidder.
"The committee is not convinced that such a public announcement was necessary or indeed appropriate for this project, especially at that time, given the considerable work and negotiation that was required before CMAL could take a decision to award the formal contract.
"We believe that this almost certainly weakened CMAL's negotiating position with FMEL, particularly as important details of the contract were still being worked out."
Windows painted on
It was "particularly concerning", the report said, that no full record exists of a meeting between Ms Sturgeon and Mr McColl from May 2017.
It said it was still unclear how large amounts of public money were spent during Mr McColl's ownership of the yard.
And the report also said it remained unclear why the first minister led on the preferred bidder announcement and why her press release and associated social media communications did not reflect that there were "significant negotiations to be concluded".
The launch of the Glen Sannox in November 2017 - which was attended by the first minister - was also described as premature by the report.
It later emerged that windows had been painted on to the ship to make it look more ready than it actually was.
Ministers were not aware of CMAL's concerns about the launch but should have played a more active role, the report said.
The two ferries were hit by further delays last week
FMEL entered administration in August 2019, with the shipyard being taken over by the Scottish government through its new publicly-owned Ferguson Marine (Port Glasgow) Limited.
Committee convener Richard Leonard, a Labour MSP, said the people of Scotland had been badly let down by the ferry saga, and that it was important for lessons to be learned for similar projects in the future.
He added: "There have been collective failures at government and agency level from the start.
"It has been dogged by a lack of transparency, by ineffective governance arrangements, by poor record keeping within the government and by baffling communication failures".
Other members of the government and public agencies also came in for criticism in the report.
The committee expressed "serious concern" at then infrastructure secretary Keith Brown's failure to answer key questions about his role in the awarding of the contract.
It said former transport minister Derek Mackay showed "poor judgment" in sending an email to a constituency MSP, which FMEL interpreted as waiving its requirement to provide a builders refund guarantee.
The auditor general is still investigating the procurement process for the contract, following claims made in a BBC Disclosure documentary.
Documents obtained by the programme indicated that Ferguson Marine benefited from preferential treatment during the tendering process.
'Disastrous and shameful legacy'
The committee was also frustrated by delays in receiving evidence from Transport Scotland officials, leaving MSPs questioning the level of "respect" shown to parliamentary scrutiny.
Transport Scotland "consistently failed to accurately and timeously reflect CMAL's significant concerns to Scottish ministers", the MSPs said.
However, a spokesperson for the committee's SNP members - Mr Beattie and Mr Coffey - said the convener's headlines "significantly embellish the actual substance of the report".
"Despite six months of work [and more than 16 hours of evidence] through this inquiry, the committee has largely failed in its core purpose - to determine how public money was spent and whether that represents value for money," they said.
"Instead, opposition politicians chose to rush through the report before the first minister stood down and pursued a narrow political agenda at the expense of workers at the yard who are committed to delivering these vessels."
Scottish Conservative transport spokesman Graham Simpson said the ferry project was "one of the most disastrous and shameful legacies of Nicola Sturgeon's period as first minister" and that the Scottish government had "learned nothing" from the failures.
He said: "She should take the publication of this damning report as a final opportunity to apologise to the Scottish taxpayer for the reckless waste and secrecy that has surrounded this fiasco, and most importantly to islanders, who have been betrayed at every turn by her SNP government, and deprived of a lifeline service."
Glen Sannox and hull 802, pictured, are still being constructed at Ferguson shipyard
Ferguson Marine's annual report, which was was submitted to Companies House this week, said the board of directors had in 2022 identified a "material uncertainty related to events or conditions that may cast significant doubt on the Group's ability to continue as a going concern, external".
The document, dated 16 March 2022, said that at that point the directors anticipated the intervention of Scottish government ministers in 2023 to "clarify the uncertainty", warning that the company would otherwise "not be unable to realise its assets and discharge its liabilities in the normal course of business".
Last week, Deputy First Minister John Swinney allocated an additional £6m to help complete the ferries.
A spokeswoman for the Scottish government said it was "committed to transparency" and had published more than 200 documents relating to the ferry project on its website.
She added: "We have co-operated at every stage of the Public Audit Committee inquiry, as well as those previously undertaken by the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee and Audit Scotland.
"Ministers have apologised for the delay to the ferries and the distress and difficulty caused.
"We are committed to their completion, securing a sustainable future for the yard and supporting our island communities that rely on this type of vessel on a daily basis."