Chamber and committees

What weighting was social value given in the tender procedure?

Presiding Officer,

“Britain is an island nation—a nation of islanders and shipbuilders”.

So proclaimed the opening sentence of the 1961 film “Seawards the Great Ships”, which was the swan song for Clyde shipbuilding. At that time, the country still held a global share of around 10 per cent of the world market for shipbuilding; now it is less than 1 per cent. John Grierson and Hilary Harris produced Scotland’s first Oscar-winning film—at that time, great achievement was celebrated in the industry. It is a great tragedy that, in more recent years, the islanders and shipbuilders have been in conflict—unnecessarily so—as a result of the incoherent policy of this Government.

Reflecting on yesterday’s announcement about the award of the small vessel replacement programme, it is clear that the public procurement strategy for Scotland is incompatible with an industrial strategy—and that has not been unpredictable. The Government made a reasonable conclusion that it would be too risky to pursue a direct award of the contract—fair enough—so it decided on an open procedure. However, when I met representatives of Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd, who kindly came to the cross-party group last night—as Mr McMillan, the member for Inverclyde mentioned—they were clear that, according to the public procurement strategy for Scotland, there was to be a split of 65 per cent technical weighting and 35 per cent financial weighting. Independent teams checked the procedures in relation to the different tenders and then came together to make a decision, which is how they arrived at the award to Remontowa of Gdansk.

What has been missed in all of that, of course, is social value. In every UK nation, there is a minimum requirement for a 10 per cent social value weighting—apart from in Scotland. That seems like a glaring omission in the procedure. Indeed, if the ministers had been paying any attention to the recommendations from Maritime UK—and, indeed, the views of the cross-party group—on the refresh of the national shipbuilding strategy, they would have recognised Maritime UK’s recommendation 3, which stated:

“Despite welcoming the minimum 10% social value weighting, the UK shipbuilding enterprise urges the UK and devolved governments to show more ambition in their use of social value, in line with the practices of competitor shipbuilding nations, and raise the threshold for UK content.”

No wonder the contract went overseas, if we are not prepared to put in place the fundamental basis for our yards to be competitive. I do not think that anyone here wishes to see public expenditure in Scotland support the social value and economic multiplier of a foreign nation and its economy.

At the heart of the public procurement strategy for Scotland is surely community wealth building, but that is not translating into a demand signal that is then able to be captured by Scottish industry. That is at the heart of the problem.

Regardless of whether it is a direct award or an open procedure, we need to make sure that our procedure is competitive. We know that there is a cross-Government shipbuilding pipeline across the UK of more than 150 new vessels, but we are seeing those vessels flowing overseas to Turkey, Spain, in the case of the Northern Lighthouse Board’s vessel, and now Poland, with the latest contract going to Remontowa. We need to address that matter. It is clear to me that the Government must engage with the issue of social value.

—and for other contracts.

I am happy to give way, if I can have the time to do that.

I appreciate that point. There were many ways to structure the contract that would have allowed more work share to happen in Scotland. It is clear that no subcontract opportunities will be available to Scottish shipyards, unlike, for example, in the Liverpool combined region, which was able to structure the Mersey ferry contract to allow for Cammell Laird to take a work share, despite the main contract originally being awarded to Damen of the Netherlands. More can therefore be done there.

Furthermore, I encourage ministers to consider the common user facility model developed by Australia in both Adelaide and Perth, where the infrastructure—the shipyard itself—is state owned, but is marketed as, in effect, a common neutral facility that any contract winner can then utilise for the purpose of generating social value as part of the fulfilment of a contract. That does not favour any one company, but allows the facility and the economic benefits to come into the local community.

I urge the minister to look at the Australian model and to consider how that could be utilised in a future round of the small vessel replacement programme—

Mr Cole-Hamilton makes an interesting point about NHS staff. My experience of interactions with NHS clinicians is that they have plenty of ideas for continuous improvement and making innovations in the system, but they are not listened to. Often there is no culture of organisational improvement in health boards, which is a real source of frustration, burnout and demoralisation. Does Mr Cole-Hamilton agree that that is often a factor in people in the system feeling burnt out?

There is an instinctive risk aversion about rapid prototyping and adoption, which the member rightly highlights. There could be greater achievements in that respect.

Mr Gulhane referenced the quadruple helix. He said that the key component—in addition to academia, Government and industry—is public and civic society buy-in. That was tested adequately, effectively and promisingly during the pandemic, during which we saw rapid introductions of NHS clinical interfaces that were readily accepted and adopted by the public. Who would have thought, mere months before the pandemic struck, that we would be engaging in such a national effort and unified purpose to improve national outcomes? I think back to the big public health initiatives such as the 1957 tuberculosis eradication campaign in Glasgow, during which the whole city got together to try to eradicate tuberculosis through mass X-ray campaigns. We could mobilise the population behind the agenda in a more effective way, and I encourage the health secretary to look at opportunities to do that.

I appreciate the minister giving way. There are many good examples, and he has highlighted a couple, but the key fundamental structural problem is that we do that good primary research, make the early-stage investment and scale Scottish companies up, but they get to a value of £20 million to £30 million and then they are usually acquired by a large foreign multinational. How do we try to anchor more of those firms in Scotland so that they can get to FTSE 250 and FTSE 100 levels, building more headquarters in Scotland for those big companies?

Brian Whittle makes an important point about time. One thing that surgeons have told us is that national treatment centres might not be the panacea. The issue is not necessarily the facilities; it is more to do with their efficient utilisation. When it comes to how we treat operating theatres, perhaps we should think about Formula 1 pit stops. Maybe we should specialise theatres so that they can roll patients through. That would involve their doing only one procedure, being highly tuned in and effectively utilising the assets that we already have. That is the core of the issue, and we need to look at that more—[Interruption.]

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer.

The point that Dr Gulhane made earlier about the quadruple helix and the idea of buy-in from the population is critical to achieving those outcomes. The population is up for it. During the pandemic, there was a lot of doubt about whether the population would go for lockdowns or participate in mass vaccination programmes. In fact, there were huge levels of co-operation. When people see the public health benefits of such initiatives, there is wide buy-in: we could do a lot more to encourage people to buy in.

People do not want to be advised, “Unless you think that you’re literally going to die, do not come to A and E—go and see your GP.” We need a more sophisticated way of dealing with people who present at the NHS. Often, people are not getting the right access at the right time and, as members have mentioned, that means that they have worse outcomes.

I also think that we need to look at productivity, which is at the heart of it all. There is a huge opportunity for primary research, but if we are to incorporate that in the system of improvement in the NHS, we need to empower staff to deliver advancements on the ground. That is why our amendment encourages the Government to do more.