Chamber and committees

He is going to apologise now. [Interruption.]

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. In relation to the announcement that the Minister for Transport made earlier about the missing email, the first that I have seen of the document was on Twitter. I have just seen it now. That is disrespectful to the Parliament.

Will the member give way?

We now know that John Swinney was involved in the decision to award the contract to Ferguson’s. Should not John Swinney, who was involved, make a statement in the chamber?

I will not take any more interventions.

It is little wonder that the good people of Arran elected a Conservative councillor—Timothy Billings—last week. Islanders such as those on Arran are the most important people in all this. They are the ones who cannot get to hospital or to work, cannot get deliveries, cannot see family and friends, and, in some cases, cannot get to school, and all because we have an ageing and unreliable fleet on the west coast with no clear plan for renewing vessels. It does not matter to islanders who runs the ferries or where they are built; they just want them to be there.

Our motion mentions the 15 stage payments that were agreed for each vessel, and there could be more than that. It also talks about the lack of engagement with the experienced workforce, about which Edward Mountain will have much more to say.

I have been calling for the Minister for Transport to release the project Neptune report, which, we are led to believe, will set out options for how we might procure and run ferries. Jenny Gilruth said that she could not release it during the council election campaign. Well, that reason does not exist now, so she should publish it this week. Only then can we start to have a sensible conversation on this topic, which is what we need to have. We should not get bogged down in ideology. We should listen to the voices of islanders, such as those on the Mull and Iona Ferry Committee. They have been making some very good points about vessel design and how we should look at potentially breaking up the west coast contract into smaller chunks—which is not, as some believe, privatisation.

We will support the Labour amendment in the name of my good friend Neil Bibby. Unfortunately, the amendment in the name of my other very good friend, Jenny Gilruth, is, I am afraid, devoid of hope and we cannot support it. She should speak to me next time, and I can send her some of my positivity, because that is what the islanders of Scotland are looking out for, and it is not what they are getting.

I move,

That the Parliament believes that the way the Scottish Government has been running ferry services has been a scandal; calls on the Scottish Government to say why it awarded the contract for ferries 801 and 802 to Ferguson Marine Engineering Limited against the advice of its own experts; is concerned about why 15 stage payments were agreed for each ferry; notes concerns that the deal may have broken EU state aid rules; further notes concerns that the lack of documentary evidence to explain the contract award could be in breach of the law; is disappointed that the Scottish Government failed to listen to the experienced workforce who had concerns about the management of the yard; believes that the yard could have survived without the orders for vessels 801 and 802; agrees with the view of the majority of people in Scotland who think that the Scottish National Party administration has done a bad job of running ferries; is concerned that this will contribute to island depopulation, and calls on the Scottish Government to spell out how it plans to run and procure ferry services in the future.

We wanted to call this debate “Ferries Fiasco”, but parliamentary staff told us that we could not. The debate might not be called “Ferries Fiasco” in the Business Bulletin, but that is what it is about.

The Scottish Conservatives used our previous debating time to talk about ferries. Had anything changed since then, we could have gone on to something else. However, we still do not know why the Scottish National Party Government awarded the contract to build vessels 801 and 802 to Ferguson Marine Engineering Ltd against the advice of its in-house experts and despite its posting hundreds of documents. We have had the very sad sight of the United Kingdom forces hero Keith Brown beating a hasty retreat from Her Majesty’s press the other week, sidestepping their battle lines to slink into the cover of the Scottish Parliament canteen.

Mr Brown later gave a less than satisfactory interview with Channel 4 news, in which he said:

“That document, the one that signed it off, if it ever existed, is not now available but it was quite clear from associated documents that it was approved and approved by the minister for transport.”

Work that one out: a document—“if it ever existed”—that signed off the decision. Perhaps the minister can tell us now whether the document that Mr Brown referred to existed.

The silence speaks volumes, Presiding Officer. Mr Brown remembered the script after that and again blamed Derek Mackay, who, at the time of the decision, was the lowly Minister for Transport and Islands, and Mr Brown was his boss. The idea that Derek would not to talk to Keith, who would not talk to John, who signed the cheques, who would not run it past Nicola, is preposterous, particularly when the SNP had an announcement to make at its conference. Derek, Keith, John and Nicola: the Ferries Four—a very dodgy group with no hits to its name.

There is a real and enduring stench of cover-up. The SNP’s secrecy is appalling and corrupt. We do not know why the yard got the contract, but it did. Nicola Sturgeon says that the Government saved the jobs at the yard. The yard could have continued if it had not been given that ill-fated contract. There is no reason to think otherwise.

The yard had work—that is a fact. I believe, and Jim McColl believes, that the yard could have continued. We can be pretty certain that the yard will not take on anything of that scale again, whatever the future holds. However, we do not know what the future holds for the yard, because the Government cannot make up its mind.

I will take an intervention from Mr McKee because he never gives us any answers to questions.

There was work at the yard. It had work and it could have taken on more work.

Presiding Officer, the debate has moved on a little since we last discussed the issue in Parliament; I must be fair about that. For example, we have discovered that the FMEL deal might have breached European state aid rules because the Government did not tell the European Union about an incentive of around £106 million to ensure that the work went to Ferguson’s.

We know that figures such as the hugely respected Jim Sillars and the former First Minister Jack McConnell believe that the failure to come clean on the decision-making process might have broken the law on several fronts.

We also know that only one in five Scots think that the SNP is doing a good job of running ferry services. Those one in five people need to get out more if they think that, because most do not share that view.

We have discovered another thing, too. Stewart Hosie thinks that ferries 801 and 802 are “a little late” and that money has not been wasted. Five years and more than 2.5 times over budget sounds more than “a little late”, and it certainly sounds like waste to me. It is that sort of attitude that has got us to where we are.

Will the minister give way?