Chamber and committees

I have a final question. Last week, you said that one material witness from FMEL who wanted to give evidence as part of your audit and investigation could not do so because they had signed a gagging order with the Scottish Government. If the Scottish Government agreed to lift the non-disclosure agreements, would you be willing to reopen your lines of inquiry and produce an annex to your report?

Earlier, Gill Miller said something about the awarding of the contract and the tender process, which is another missing part of the jigsaw puzzle. I note what you said previously about the scope of your report, but it has been suggested that, although FMEL was the most expensive option and would not be able to give a refund guarantee, there was a view that it could potentially deliver the highest quality and that significant additional points were awarded for quality at some stage in the process. Have you had any sight of the tender scoring, and do you think that it should now be published if it has not been published already?

Good morning, everyone. Through its plans for a national care service, the Scottish Government is planning significant reforms to social care, which will extend beyond residential social care. The commitment to proceed with reform seems absolute, but the planning for that reform is still at an early stage, and the ink is barely dry on the consultation. However, while we move towards those reforms which include wide-scale structural reform, it is clear that there are significant urgent needs now. What levels of investment are required, in the short term, to meet today’s needs and, in the long term, to implement future social care reform? Given that, over the past decade, local government in Scotland has been chronically underfunded by the Government, do you have confidence that the funds will be forthcoming to meet the short-term needs and the long-term structural requirements? That question goes first to Caroline Lamb.

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 trail that underpins that. However, on two lifeline ferries for our island communities, we do not have that. Your report clearly identifies multiple failings, but key pieces of the jigsaw are missing. As the convener said, they have gone missing, they were not produced or they were withheld from you.

My first question is wider than my other ones. When all is told, close to £500 million could end up having been spent, first, by a company that was owned by someone with close links to the party of government—the Scottish National Party—and, latterly, by a company owned by the Government itself. How concerned should the Parliament and the public be that you have been unable to publish a report that tells the full story of how that money has been spent and why?

Reform of the scale that is necessary will involve significant changes to governance, accountability and collaboration, and will require some degree of new leadership. To what extent can the Scottish Government learn from previous wide-scale reforms and avoid having a Police Scotland mark 2 as the product?

I have a brief final question about how data gaps are going to be addressed. It is clear that there are data gaps in relation to demand and unmet need, for example. How do you intend to plug those gaps now and as you move forward to a more integrated system with social care and the NHS? How will you align and integrate the data so that you get a better product in the end?

Paragraph 27 of your report says that, on 8 October 2015, Transport Scotland advised the Scottish ministers of CMAL’s considerable concerns about awarding the contract to FMEL. We would expect any discussions to have been minuted in the company of civil servants from the Government and, perhaps, Transport Scotland. No doubt, there should have been note takers, but you say that you have no insight into the discussions that took place on that day. However, we find out from the report that, on the day after Transport Scotland advised ministers of CMAL’s concerns, ministers said that they were “content to proceed”. Therefore, there must have been some discussion on that day.

The report implies that ministers were aware of the risks and chose to ignore them when they awarded the contract. Is that correct?

There might also be some missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle in relation to payments and milestones. Having spoken to people in the industry, it appears that it is quite common for contracts for ships to include a schedule for five payments. However, the contracts for 801 and 802 both had 15 scheduled payments. Did you explore why that happened and who agreed to it? Do you think that, alongside the failure to provide a refund guarantee and the plea for accelerated payments, that is further evidence of the financial fragility of FMEL?

You would normally expect that, when there is a division between the civil service and ministers, a ministerial direction would be issued. To your knowledge, was that done? If not, do you believe that it would have been far better if such a document had been produced?

I have a question about the Scottish Government’s loan payments. It appears that the accelerated payments and loans were a significant cause for concern in relation to FMEL’s cashflow. Through the first loan, the Scottish Government, in effect, secretly loaned the company up to £15 million, and, latterly, a further £30 million was given to keep the company afloat, in positive cashflow terms, so that it could continue to service another part of the Government’s work. There was almost a sort of Ponzi scheme at the heart of this.

The Government claimed that the original £15 million loan was commercially confidential, but that reasoning was dropped when the further £30 million loan was made available. Do you have any understanding of why the Government changed its tune in relation to the commercial confidentiality of the loans?