Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Official Report 933KB pdf

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Topical Question Time

The next item of business is topical question time. In order to get in as many members as possible, it would be helpful to have short and succinct questions and answers.

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Ferry Procurement (Vessels 801 and 802)

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that decisions about the procurement of vessels 801 and 802 were rushed “for political purposes”. (S6T-00630)

It is entirely wrong to suggest that the contract award was rushed for political reasons. First, the timetable does not support that notion, given that Ferguson Marine Engineering Ltd was publicly announced as the preferred bidder in August 2015. Secondly, the contract was awarded in line with all the procurement rules and practices in the normal way, as the Audit Scotland report confirms. Thirdly, contrary to what Jim McColl said this morning on the BBC, it was the chief executive of Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd and Jim McColl himself who signed the contract. That is a man with a clear interest in shifting the blame on to others when, ultimately, the root cause to the delays of these important vessels was their construction under FMEL.

Yesterday, the First Minister said that she has

“no hesitation in answering any and all questions.”

I believe that the Parliament must hear from the First Minister in detail this week. However, in the First Minister’s absence, is Kate Forbes able to confirm whether the award of the contract without a full refund guarantee was discussed and agreed by the Cabinet? If so, was the Cabinet made aware of CMAL’s concerns? If not, is the Scottish Government’s position that the decision to ignore CMAL was made by Derek Mackay and him alone?

There has been a debate on this subject, there has been a statement on this subject, I am answering questions on this subject and I have answered press queries on this subject, so I think that the member will find that there has been significant scrutiny of it.

As I said in my first answer, the procurement process was undertaken in good faith following appropriate due diligence. No concerns were raised at the point of announcing the preferred bidder in August 2015, and that is why the preferred bidder was announced based on the advice of CMAL. FMEL clearly scored the highest score overall. When concerns were raised, mitigations were put in place. That is all very well documented in the Audit Scotland report.

That did not answer the question that I asked. [Interruption.] It failed to answer it. I think it evident that only the First Minister can clear up the questions about what has gone wrong and who was involved when.

We need honesty and openness on the issue. We cannot afford secrecy and cover-up, because taxpayers, in the middle of a cost of living crisis, are paying for the cost of this Government’s failure. Audit Scotland has pointed to a lack of information about the decision-making process. This is very serious indeed.

For the Public Audit Committee to do the job that it must now do, every piece of relevant information needs to be published, including communications between ministers, special advisers, accountable officers and Government agencies about the award of the contract. Can Kate Forbes at least confirm today that that will happen?

Kate Forbes has said today that there was no rush and no politics. I do not think that anyone thinks that that is credible.

I can go further than that. That has already happened: reams of paperwork have been published and are publicly available on the Scottish Government website.

The fact is that the evidence about the lack of a full refund guarantee has been in the public domain since 2019, but it has taken Neil Bibby three years to come across that fact. If the member is serious about learning lessons and serious about analysis and fact, I suggest that he goes back to the parliamentary inquiry, as well as the Audit Scotland report, to look at the facts.

The First Minister stood here last week taking full responsibility for the decisions. We abide by collective responsibility. We have been open and honest. We recognise where things have gone wrong and we are learning lessons for the future. If the member would like to look at the facts, those are all publicly available.

A number of members are seeking to ask a supplementary question. I will try to take as many as possible. If I am to do so, I suggest that it would be courteous if questions were asked and then the answers listened to. Thank you.

As the Audit Scotland report highlights, the yard was being placed into liquidation and the only option was for the Scottish Government to step in to save it. No Opposition MSP has yet indicated whether they would have stepped in, or whether they would have let the yard go into liquidation, leading to job losses, the shutting of the yard and the vessels being finished elsewhere.

However, we all agree on the importance of the vessels and agree that they must be in service as soon as possible, so it is vital that Parliament remains abreast of progress at the yard. Can the cabinet secretary provide any further detail regarding how Parliament will continue to be updated?

Parliament will continue to be updated. The chief executive of Ferguson Marine provides the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee with a quarterly update and writes to inform the committee if additional issues arise. The system works well, as proved by the most recent updates on the legacy cable issues. I am also in discussion with the chair and chief executive almost fortnightly about what further performance information should be made public more regularly. Ultimately, I agree with Stuart McMillan that we need to make progress on the vessels. We need to learn the lessons, but the bottom line is that, if we were to pull the plug, that would throw the vessels into jeopardy, as well as the yard.

Jim McColl will be surprised to hear that he is being accused of shifting the blame. We need some straight answers to straight questions. Was it Keith Brown who approved the contract for the ferries? Why was CMAL’s advice not to go ahead ignored? Given that Jim McColl has said today that he would not have proceeded had he known of those concerns, should the Government not have told him?

Contrary to public statements that were made this morning, FMEL was crystal clear about the concerns that were raised about its inability to provide the required full refund guarantee. I go back to the point that we like facts in this debate. If you read the Audit Scotland report, you will see that it refers to the fact that, when the announcement was made about the preferred bidder in August 2015, no concerns were raised.

A number of weeks later, concerns were flagged about the required refund guarantee. At that point, FMEL would have been fully involved in the discussions about the mitigations that were required because a full refund guarantee was not in place. Audit Scotland covered in detail the mitigations that were pursued as a result, including around the schedule of payments.

At the point of the announcement in August 2015, no concerns were raised and that was signed off. Ultimately, CMAL and Mr McColl signed the contract.

Is there a ministerial direction on the agreement of that ferry contract?

CMAL and Mr McColl, on behalf of FMEL, signed the contract.

Willie Rennie is joining us remotely.

The First Minister has repeatedly claimed that Audit Scotland found nothing untoward in the procurement of the contract, but that is not true, is it? Audit Scotland said that the failure in the procurement process to provide a full refund guarantee and the lack of milestones meant that the international standard was not followed. Therefore, the First Minister is just wrong. The procurement process was flawed and that led to the loss of millions of pounds and a five-year delay. Will the finance secretary put the record straight and agree to a public inquiry?

I will go further, right now, and quote the Audit Scotland report. It states that the

“high-level review into CMAL’s procurement procedure ... found no material issues with the procurement”.

As I have set out already in terms of the timetable, when the preferred bidder was announced in August 2015, concerns had not been flagged. A number of weeks later, when concerns were flagged about the full refund guarantee, there were discussions about the mitigations to be put in place. The procurement process was independent of ministerial intervention—that is a well-known and well-established fact when it comes to procurement processes—and, as the member said, it followed an internationally recognised standard.

Given that the yard is owned by the Scottish public, I ask how many non-CMAL orders for shipbuilding the yard is actively engaged on, bidding for or likely to secure. If it becomes obvious that the future of the yard and its workforce are best served by returning it to the commercial sector, as the Government wants to do with Prestwick airport, is that something that the Government would be willing to do?

Jamie Greene is right to flag that point. Right now, securing the two vessels is our concern and focus, but since the yard was nationalised it has completed three other vessels. The yard is progressing with work, which I note because the morale of workers at the yard must be protected as far as possible, considering these public debates.

On the yard pursuing other work, it is actively engaged in a number of commercial opportunities. Those need to be progressed, and timetabling is key in that, because it will be at the point at which 801 and 802 are completed that the yard will look to pursue other work opportunities.

If the contract had not been awarded, it is highly likely that the shipyard would not have survived. I agree with Roz Foyer of the Scottish Trades Union Congress that

“the Scottish Government was 100 per cent right to intervene.”

She was also clear that

“We must not let the current issues distract from the need to build capacity and future orders.”

How will the Scottish Government work with the yard to improve its competitiveness and win new contracts?

I welcome Paul McLennan’s support for the yard and I echo his sentiments. I have set out priorities for the yard’s management to finish building the two ferries that are currently under construction and to get the yard into shape to compete for new work. The best way to secure the yard’s future order book is to make it as efficient and competitive as possible and to win contracts on merit.

We engage regularly with the new chief executive and, as shareholder, continue to support the yard to achieve its goals in any way that we can. That is what Audit Scotland recommended in its report: to focus on completing the vessels and turning the yard around.

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Accident and Emergency (Waiting Times)

To ask the Scottish Government what urgent action it will undertake to resolve waiting time delays in accident and emergency following recent reported estimates from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine that the delays have contributed to 240 avoidable deaths this year. (S6T-00628)

Those are sobering statistics. We have always recognised the relationship between long waits in A and E and increased risk of harm, so we remain committed to delivering improved A and E performance. However, there is simply no doubt that the pressures of the pandemic are impacting on that performance.

We have a range of actions under way to help to reduce pressure in A and E and maximise capacity, including our record £300 million of new investment to help services to deal with system pressures over winter and our £1 billion national health service recovery plan, which aims to drive the recovery of the NHS.

The key to reducing long waits is to improve flow by reducing occupancy levels. We are delivering that capacity through a range of actions, including our enhanced hospital at home service, and by avoiding admissions and shortening the length of stays in hospital. Ultimately, the single most important factor in easing A and E pressure is controlling Covid transmission.

We will continue to work collaboratively with the RCEM to understand how we can improve long delays and patient care.

The cabinet secretary’s reply is just not good enough. We learned today that waiting times are the very worst on record. Official statistics for the week ending 20 March show that 2,615 patients waited more than eight hours to be seen, and more than 1,000 patients waited more than 12 hours.

Under this Government, this crisis has rumbled on for years—it is not just about Covid—with no respite for staff and no redress for patients. Ministers continue to plumb new depths in their mishandling of the crisis. It is clear for all to see that they have lost control of the situation. My party has long called for an inquiry into avoidable deaths caused by waits in emergency care. Does the cabinet secretary agree that we now need such an inquiry urgently?

Alex Cole-Hamilton made a passing—almost fleeting—reference to the pandemic, but nobody could suggest that it is anything other than the pressures of the pandemic that are causing the significant drop in A and E performance that we have seen. Figures are just not comparable with those that we had before the pandemic.

In the current figures, we see the highest levels of infection, record numbers of patients in our hospitals with Covid and, on top of that, huge numbers of staff absences because of staff testing positive for Covid—in fact, staff absence numbers have doubled over the past four weeks. Those cumulative pressures are undoubtedly causing the dip in A and E performance.

We will take action where we can. Today, the Scottish Ambulance Service announced the record recruitment of 540 new recruits in a single year, which is positive. We will continue to invest.

On Alex Cole-Hamilton’s question, he knows that there is a public inquiry on Covid, and it will be up to the chair of that inquiry to look at whatever issues she sees fit.

That is quite astonishing. One of the first questions that I asked in the chamber of the cabinet secretary’s predecessor was about ambulance waiting times. For the cabinet secretary to dismiss what is happening as an aberration caused by Covid does a disservice to staff and patients.

There have been 15 years of Scottish National Party mismanagement of our healthcare system, but we have now reached a new low. So many staff are at breaking point, suffering from severe burnout and even trauma in some cases. Just a few months ago, a freedom of information request that was submitted by the Scottish Liberal Democrats revealed that staff absences in the Scottish Ambulance Service alone have shot up by 300 per cent. Due to workforce planning issues and a lack of vision and relief from the SNP, some members of staff are even considering leaving the workforce altogether.

The SNP-Green Government voted down my party’s staff—

Could we have a question, please, Mr Cole-Hamilton? Time is moving on.

I am coming to the question.

The Government voted down our party’s call for a staff burnout prevention strategy, and it dismissed calls for—

Mr Cole-Hamilton, I really want a question now. Time is moving on, and that is to the detriment of other members who want a shot.

All the while, the crisis worsens. What is the cabinet secretary waiting for?

Nobody is waiting. That is why we have invested £300 million in our national health service to cope with winter pressures; invested in the recruitment of 1,000 healthcare support workers; and invested additional moneys in the Scottish Ambulance Service, which has recruited record numbers over the past financial year. Nobody is waiting around.

I have promised that, when members of Opposition parties have good ideas, I will engage with them. Instead of having a burnout prevention strategy—a bit of paper that will lie on a shelf—we are investing £12 million in staff wellbeing, so we are taking action.

In relation to the SNP having been in government for 15 years, I remind Alex Cole-Hamilton that, for the fourth time, the people of Scotland have voted for my party to ensure that we have stewardship over the NHS while he languishes in opposition.

Behind the truly shocking statistics are real people, including those who are waiting at the Royal Alexandra hospital in Paisley, in my region, which the cabinet secretary visited a few weeks ago. On that visit, did he listen to what staff told him about the pressures that they face? Did he bother to talk to patients in Paisley, who could have told him about waiting for hours, often in pain, in the back of an ambulance? Did he listen to Dr John Thomson, the vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine in Scotland, who said:

“The rhetoric of, it’s bad but we’re not as bad as elsewhere, is no longer applicable”?

When will the cabinet secretary accept that people across the country are fed up of excuses? Indeed, before the pandemic, A and E targets had not been met for two years. When will he accept that people want an NHS that works, not one in which more than 1,000 patients are waiting 12 hours to be seen in A and E departments?

On the questions that Paul O’Kane asked, I met staff at the RAH and I have, of course, spoken to patients up and down the country. My family and I use the health service, and I am grateful to every member of our NHS and of our social care system for the incredible and heroic efforts that they have made over the course of the pandemic.

Nobody—neither I nor the First Minister, when she has stood in the chamber during First Minister’s question time—has denied the fact that there were issues and challenges before the pandemic. However, I hope that Paul O’Kane recognises that the pressure of the pandemic is the reason for the scale of the challenge and the reason why there is this level of pressure. People cannot think that record levels of infection, record levels of hospital occupancy with patients who have Covid, and high levels of staff absence due to Covid are not having a severe impact. The past two years have, to be frank, been the most difficult in the NHS’s almost 74-year existence. We will continue to invest in the health service; our record investment of £18 billion is, of course, well known.

On Paul O’Kane’s final point, I will continue to engage with the RCEM and Dr John Thomson, as I have done during my time as health secretary.

As we have heard, new statistics that were published this week revealed the worst A and E waiting times on record. Almost two in five people were not seen within four hours, and it is shameful that more than 1,000 people spent more than 12 hours in an A and E department. It is tragic but abundantly clear that hundreds more people will die in A and E departments if the SNP Government does not wake up and smell the coffee.

Have the families of those who have died in preventable circumstances been informed of the reason why their loved one has died? What urgent action is the SNP Government taking to eliminate every avoidable death in our NHS?

Whenever any patient passes away, detailed notes are passed on to the family and next of kin about why that has, sadly, happened. I know that cases have been raised in which communication could have been better on that front, and I expect health boards to ensure that there is appropriate communication in that respect.

I say to Sue Webber, once again, that I understand the important job of Opposition to scrutinise and ask questions on the issue, and I am happy to continue to answer those questions, but there are no easy solutions or answers here. The single biggest thing that we can do to help to ease some of the A and E pressures that we face is to control Covid transmission. If I had listened to the Conservatives about the lifting of regulations and protective measures, I think that the situation would be far worse than it is at the moment.

The unprecedented pressure will undoubtedly have added a further burden on an already tired workforce in A and E and general practice out-of-hours services. Reports of deaths due to A and E waits will have been really hard reading for staff, who have been under pressure for some time. Given that further pressure, what further measures can the Scottish Government take to support this vital workforce?

We can ensure that our staff are well treated and well taken care of, including in terms of their mental wellbeing—I have referenced some of the investment that we have made in that regard. We can ensure that they are well paid—they are of course the best paid in the entire UK. We can ensure that we are growing the workforce, as per our national workforce strategy, which was launched recently. As we recover—we will of course recover—expanding the workforce will be vital to that recovery.

We are having, and have been having for many months now, conversations on the issue with health boards up and down the country. We know that, unfortunately, the current wave of Covid will not be the last one that we will experience. Therefore, it is vital for us to do our best to try to insulate unscheduled care and planned care from future shocks. We hope to announce changes to infection prevention and control guidance in the very near future.