Chamber and committees

I think that we are talking about a meeting on 4 June, which was part of the ordinary process of obtaining technical clarifications from bidders. As I understand it, CMAL took proper in-house procurement advice on that and there was nothing inappropriate in having such a meeting. That is CMAL’s response to that point.

However, it is right that that aspect should be subjected to proper scrutiny by the Auditor General. Although you are absolutely right to say that that is entirely for him, it is important that it is not just my word that is taken on that and that the matter is properly scrutinised, as should be the case for all aspects of the BBC documentary.

For a public announcement that would be a media event, a communications special adviser’s proposal would come to me. Again, I am telling you things that most people already know. As every Government does—and I am pretty sure that it is exactly the same process with Prime Ministerial announcements—we look ahead to things that are coming up over the next few weeks, and the communications teams, with special adviser input, will decide whether an announcement that is coming up might be one for the First Minister to make.

I do not recall whether that was the case with this particular announcement, but I often look ahead at suggestions of media announcements that I will make for the next two or three weeks, for example.

What point are you asking me about in terms of my involvement? I want to be clear about that so that I answer your question specifically.

Was there an interest? You have used a rather pejorative term, which, for the avoidance of doubt and for the record, I completely and utterly refute.

Is there an interest on the part of any Government? I am talking in general terms and will come to the specifics in a second. I imagine that what I am about to say is shared by every politician round this table. Ministers and politicians in general are often challenged on these points by opposition politicians. Assuming that it is all done by the book, you are quite happy to see contracts go to Scottish companies and therefore to support Scottish jobs. I am pretty sure that every politician round this table would say that that is ideally what we want to see, providing that it is all done appropriately.

From your later comments, that is obviously not what you mean by “interest”. If you are asking whether there was anything untoward in the procurement process in order to somehow inappropriately steer the contract towards FMEL, there absolutely, categorically was not.

In fact, you do not have to take just my word for that. Kevin Hobbs, the now chief executive of CMAL, not in evidence to this committee but in evidence to the previous Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee inquiry—I think that this is the term that was used in that committee’s report—categorically denied that any pressure had been put on CMAL by the Scottish Government around the award of the contract. The contract was awarded purely on the assessment that CMAL did of the tender that FMEL had submitted.

So, the answer to your question, in the way that I think your question is intended, is absolutely, categorically no.

All special advisers in the Scottish Government are designated as advisers to the First Minister but they report to individual ministers and individual portfolio areas. Every special adviser is described as an adviser to the First Minister, but that does not mean that every submission that is copied to an adviser to the First Minister comes to me. In all the submissions that have been published by the Scottish Government, you can see very clearly which ones have been copied to me and which ones have not, and the 8 October submission was not copied to me.

Let me just say that, in order to answer the questions as fully as possible, at times I will say that I was not party to a decision or that I was involved in or notified of another decision. None of that is me trying to step away from my responsibility as First Minister. I think that it should be pretty obvious to everybody that I could never personally take every decision that the Scottish Government reaches, but that does not change the fact that, as First Minister, I am ultimately accountable for every decision that the Scottish Government takes.

That was some time later—an awful lot happened between that meeting and the yard going into administration. I am very happy to go into that with you in detail.

I again caveat this by saying that I am not a technical expert on how to design and build ferries. It feels as if all of you have become technical experts on that, but none of us is.

What was used here was a standard shipbuilding contract. Setting aside the issue of the builders refund guarantee, this was a standard approach that CMAL used in other procurements. Organisations and Governments procuring vessels across the world will use the BIMCO standard contract. A key point is that that standard contract puts the obligation for design and construction firmly on the shipbuilder. The contract contains provisions relating to modifications and changes to the contract specification.

The standard in shipbuilding contracts is that the tender design requirement set out by the client is then developed by the bidder into a concept design as part of its tender. Following contract award, it is then developed into a basic and finally a detailed design. All of that was accepted by FMEL when it tendered for and then entered into the contracts. As I now understand it, that is an absolutely standard approach to building ferries.

It is the responsibility of the shipbuilder to satisfy itself that the design is at an appropriate stage for work to commence. You have heard directly from CMAL on that point: it was the decision of FMEL—not a decision of CMAL—not to wait for a finalised design before it started construction. In fact, I think that CMAL used the term that it had opted instead to “build at risk”.

The putting in of the tender, and the agreeing of the contract on the basis of the tender and all those standard provisions, was something that FMEL did, knowing that it was taking on that responsibility. FMEL did not raise the issues that have since been raised retrospectively. To my knowledge, it certainly did not raise those issues at the time of the contract process.

Are there lessons to be learned? Of course, but I have not seen anything that would suggest that what was done in terms of the procurement and design arrangements was different to what would have been done in contracts that do not run into such problems. FMEL contracted to do a job. That job has not yet been done. I cannot speak to the advice that FMEL took, but it presumably took its own technical, legal and other advice before signing that contract, with all the obligations that came with it.

Committees—and particularly this committee, the Public Audit Committee—know full well the issues that any Government, not just this one, has with the release of legally privileged or commercially confidential information. That process has been applied to the information that has been released. If you feel that there is any piece of information or document that exists and which you do not have, and you want to put that to me, I will endeavour to consider whether it is able to be made available. However, those processes apply, and any Government applies them, which I think is well known.

With the greatest of respect, that is a pejorative term. We have a contract that has not been delivered the way that it should have been.

That is a very different thing to the term that you used.