Chamber and committees

What questions did you ask? If you ask, “Do you get stressed about things?”, most people will say yes. It depends on what you ask and how you phrase a question.

I am glad that you have injected some positivity. I know that you have to shoot off, so I will let you go, but thanks for that—I appreciate it.

I will put my next question just to Jo Anderson, because we are up against the clock. You mentioned outcomes, and the report states:

“The Scottish Government does not measure the quality of services or outcomes for people receiving mental healthcare.”

That seems to me to be a huge oversight. If you accept that the situation should be rectified, how should it be rectified, and what kind of things should we measure?

That is possibly a question for the Scottish Government, and we will have it in at some point.

I have a separate question about something that arises in the report. This is not necessarily a question for Jo Anderson—I am just looking at you because you are in the room, but it could be for anyone. The report says that spending on medicines to deal with mental health has gone down, because the cost of drugs has gone down, but that the number of items being dispensed has gone up. Does anyone have a view on whether it is appropriate that we are prescribing more and more drugs? Are there better ways of dealing with mental health issues? Is it too easy to prescribe drugs?

I see someone nodding, and I think that it is Simon Porter, so he might want to come in on that.

Right. Paula Fraser was mentioned first.

I can hear some chuntering. I will come on to that.

However, in true SNP style, no one has taken the blame, no one has been sacked and no one has resigned because of it.

The Scottish Conservatives have argued that the current tripartite system should end. The committee has argued for that, too, and the minister has agreed today that it is not fit for purpose. We have called for longer contracts, and the committee has done so, too. We have said that CMAL should be scrapped. The committee does not go quite that far, but it suggests that there should be a new body—ferries Scotland.

We have criticised the Government’s dithering over the awarding of the next Clyde and Hebrides ferry services contract. As I have said, in all likelihood, that will lead to CalMac getting it again. We have said that we need an on-going ferries replacement programme in order to lower the age of the fleet. We have also called for clarity over the future of the Ferguson Marine yard. That was not part of the inquiry. Only Neil Gray can address that, and he is, rather typically, dithering. Maybe we will find out more about that next week.

At the heart of this are islanders. They are the ones who are suffering and they are the ones whom we should be looking out for.

Apart from putting islanders on boards, what does Labour want to change about the current situation? I am confused.

I, too, thank the committee for its outstanding work in producing the report; I recognise the contribution of all the committee’s previous and current members.

I will talk about the report, but we cannot discuss ferries without looking at the wider issues. The upshot is that Scotland’s islanders are being let down by the SNP, and the situation is reaching a critical point. This fine report is just the latest to be produced by a parliamentary committee. After previous reports, nothing happened.

The report starts by talking about leadership. If we had had leadership, we would not be in the current predicament with an ageing and unreliable ferry fleet and paralysis of decision making that means that the Scottish Government is ducking tackling the big decisions. For example, what are we going to do about the next Clyde and Hebrides ferry services contract? The current contract has just 11 months to go. Will that go out to tender? If not, why not? How long will the next contract be for? If it is for 10 years or more, as the committee suggested, will the ferry operator be responsible for owning the fleet and buying new ferries? That would be similar to the successful model that operates in British Columbia, where dual-fuel ferries are successfully run.

It cannot possibly be argued that the current rather bizarre set-up, in which one part of the Scottish Government buys and owns the ferries and another runs them, works well. That is all with Transport Scotland sitting above that and reporting to a succession of transport ministers going back a long way. I hope that the current incumbent will achieve something that is meaningful—a ferry system that works. Maybe we will find out about that next week.

To come back to the questions that I asked, why does the Government rule out private sector involvement? Why does it rule out islanders taking on services? Why is it boxing itself into a corner when that can have only one outcome—the same failed model that we have now? That is the very model that is putting island economies at risk and making people think about leaving islands.

It is not as if we do not have other models in Scotland—we do. Councils run ferries and so does the private sector. The one bit that gets all the headlines, for the wrong reasons, is run by the SNP. Today, Labour figures such as Katy Clark have said that they want all that to continue.

The committee said:

“Scotland needs modern, economical and sustainable ferries. The Scottish Government should set out how it will deliver on its commitment to reduce the average age of vessels to 15 years by 2030.”

Well, indeed. The committee also said:

“Scottish ferry services must be reliable.”

As Douglas Lumsden said in his excellent contribution, that would be good, wouldn’t it?

That point is rather irrelevant to this debate, but I think that everyone in the chamber criticised the actions of P&O at the time.

The committee also called on the Government to make ferries more affordable for young people. It has gone some of the way towards doing that, but providing four passes a year is not the full-time arrangement that is needed. We would never put up with that on mainland buses, which is the equivalent. I urge the minister to go much further—a point that was made by my good friend Kenny Gibson and Beatrice Wishart.

The committee agreed that the tripartite arrangement needs to change but could not agree on what should replace it. I imagine that some members were maybe waiting for a steer from the Government—they still are. As time runs out on the next Clyde and Hebrides ferry services contract, no one can plan ahead. Therefore, we are, possibly by deliberate default, heading towards more of the same.

The minister has a lot of decisions to make by the end of the year and no shortage of reports and consultations to fall back on. We had project Neptune, which told us nothing that we did not know already. We have had Angus Campbell’s review. We have also just had the musings of Barry Smith KC, who asked whether there was anything fraudulent in the procurement of the MV Glen Sannox and MV Glen Rosa—an allegation that, precisely, no one has made. We still do not know what Mr Smith was paid to produce his report. We do know that the former procurement manager at CMAL, George MacGregor, said that his claims that senior staff broke procurement rules and the yard should not have been shortlisted were not included in the report. Is that not just the sort of thing that a King’s counsel should have been tasked with looking into?

Those two ferries have swallowed up a huge chunk of a budget that could have gone on more new vessels. If the SNP had not been hellbent on giving the work to a yard that was plainly not up to the job of building two large ferries, islanders would have been enjoying travel on new ferries now, and other routes could have been enjoying new ferries, too. What a scandal. It is certainly a scandal, all right, but—

Will the member take an intervention?

Does the minister agree that the current tripartite set-up should be changed?