Chamber and committees

I will try to be as brief as possible, convener.

The petitioner has set out very well some of the remaining issues. For example, it is not at all clear where the idea of radar surveillance has come from. It certainly begs some questions about the £3.5 million that was spent on New Century house, which now seems to be a rather expensive white elephant in relation to ATMS. That speaks to the concerns that both Rhoda Grant and I, and, more importantly, the petitioners raised about the incremental costs that have been incurred through the process on an objective that was seen as the only show in town but which has miraculously now been temporarily dumped. There is an on-going concern that HIAL may simply dust down the remote tower proposals four or five years down the line and seek to reintroduce them.

The other point that I stress is about the extent to which HIAL is relying on co-operative surveillance. There have been some suggestions from HIAL that that was up and ready to go, but that has been refuted by the CAA. It would be interesting to hear HIAL’s response to that challenge, because, fundamentally, if the CAA is not convinced, it will not get off the ground.

There are many questions that remain to be answered. The immediate risk to jobs on the islands and at the other airports is to be lifted, but there is some deep anxiety about the medium to longer term. There is also anxiety about HIAL’s handling of a project that seems to have been calamitous and which looks set to rack up more and more costs at the public’s expense.

If the committee were minded to hear directly from the petitioners and had time available in which to do so, that would be very valuable, in that more detail could be laid out on some of the issues that the committee could usefully continue to keep under review.

I was talking about the deputy convener and Alexander Stewart, rather than the deputy convener being Alexander Stewart.

I think that that must be the motivation. We are at an impasse where, in a sense, HIAL was suggesting that installing remote towers was the only way of achieving the modernisation that everybody accepts is necessary for future air traffic services in the region. Having reached an agreement that lifts that immediate threat to jobs, perhaps Prospect feels that things have been moved on. However, there is certainly an anxiety among staff at the local level that HIAL is buying the time that it was always going to need to achieve the remote towers.

I would be interested to know whether Prospect believes that that remains the case, but a number of its members, including staff in Orkney and, I understand, at other airports, remain anxious about the longer-term intentions of HIAL management.

I will be extremely brief, convener. I very much welcome the comments from the deputy convener and Alexander Stewart.

As Rhoda Grant said, local recruitment is essential. HIAL almost made the process an exemplar when it last recruited locally. Since then, it has moved away from that model and sought to hire ready-made air traffic controllers. That was always a short-term fix, and it has left the company with some retention issues.

It would offer staff at various airports some reassurance if HIAL were to embark on a local recruitment drive. The approach has proven to be the best way of not just recruiting but retaining staff. If HIAL management gives evidence to the committee, that is a point that could be very usefully put to them.

In correspondence with HIAL, it would be helpful to tease out what alternative options it is actively considering. It has talked about delaying a final decision on remote towers but no alternatives.

I thank the convener for allowing me to participate in these discussions.

I do not have a great deal to add to what Rhoda Grant set out, which was comprehensive and which I agree with in its entirety. The five-year delay was almost inevitable anyway. The deadlines that HIAL was working to were always heroically overambitious. We therefore would have been at this point at some stage in the future anyway; alongside—as Rhoda touched on—an inflated budget, given the problems that the project has already hit.

I recognise that, from the perspective of the committee, building in that five-year hiatus makes it difficult to pursue lines of inquiry, because the response that the committee will get back is that it is all under consideration and that they will take a view in four to five years’ time.

However, given the investments that HIAL is making in a remote tower in Inverness and the reputational investment that the senior management has made in remote towers, the fact that they are not talking about alternatives to the remote tower model reinforces the impression that they have bought themselves a little bit of time. They have bought themselves a little bit of breathing space from the criticism that they were receiving from across political parties and, more importantly, the communities that are most directly affected. Therefore, I hope that there is some mechanism whereby the committee can make it clear that the matter remains in the crosshairs of scrutiny, however that pans out over the next few months and years.

Absolutely.

The assessment’s undertaking was delayed; that might have, quite legitimately, been due to Covid. Its publication was significantly delayed after it was handed to HIAL’s management, before it was shared more publicly. As far as I am aware, the predecessor committee did not have an opportunity to look at the detail of that in the context of our work on the petition.

Such assessments are provided for in the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018. The coming into force of the provisions was slightly delayed, so there is a question as to whether the proposals were legally bound to be subject to an island impact assessment, but given the nature of the programme, HIAL undertook the assessment, the conclusions of which—

It was aware that the assessment had taken place.