Can the minister answer the question that I posed earlier about when the Glen Rosa will be available for sailings? Will it be September, as promised, or will it be six months later? When will it be?

The whole issue could have been resolved if, as part of the contract that was given to the overseas yard, two ferries were built in Scotland. That would have spread the risk and maybe enabled Ferguson’s yard to stay open. Does Paul Sweeney agree that that might have been a sensible way of doing it, rather than just walking away from the situation, as the Government has done?

Will the member give way?

I thank Claire Baker and the Labour Party for their motion, which allows us to discuss a subject that I have been involved with for nine years on various committees that I have sat on.

For me, the debate is split into two parts. I hope that I will have time to get to the second part, but let me start with the first part, which is the delivery of ferries. During the nine years in which I have been involved, I have seen two owners of the yard, four CEOs or turnaround directors, three different chairs, goodness knows how many ministers and goodness knows how many cabinet secretaries—I have lost count. What have we got from that? Not a huge amount. We have one boat, which is seven years late and is costing far more than anything else, and we have a yard that is waiting to deliver the Glen Rosa.

If the cabinet secretary wants to stand up and tell me when the Glen Rosa will be delivered, I will be delighted, because neither the committee that I sit on nor the Parliament has been told a date, despite the promise that we would be told a date before the end of January. We are now told that we might get it by the end of March if we are lucky. I will take an intervention on that if the cabinet secretary wants to respond.

The yard should be the pride of Scotland and it should be delivering ferries for Scotland, but at the moment there is no CEO and the chair has never built a ship in his life, having been involved in aircraft for a lot of it. The yard is costing Scottish taxpayers £20 million a year in unrecoverable costs just to stay open. We have an admission from the past CEO and the previous CEO that, every time we build a ferry there, its cost will be 25 to 30 per cent greater than the cost in any other yard in the world. That information was given to the committee in evidence.

It is therefore unsurprising that the small vessels replacement programme could not go to Ferguson Marine. I wish that it could have done. However, the board signed off on an investment plan, which was also signed off by the Deputy First Minister, saying that the matter would be solved with the direct award of the small vessels replacement, for which the yard would get £14 million to help it to build, knowing fine well that the permanent secretary had said that a direct award of the small vessels replacement programme would likely be illegal.

How do we sum all of that up? Is it incompetence? Is it inexperience? Was it a gamble? I do not know. It is probably all those things. What we do know is that the Government appointed the board and the turnaround director and approved the appointment of the CEOs. I am sorry to say this, but I believe that the Government has sold the workforce down the river. It is a disgrace. I am disappointed that I have to stand here in the Parliament and say that, but it is a fact.

I turn to the west coast ferry services. Ms Hyslop sat on the very committee that took evidence on ferry services for the Western Isles, and we heard very clearly during an evidence session that there should be a direct award only if islanders supported it. I have had no evidence presented to me—or to the committee that I sit on—that islanders now approve of a direct award.

The Government is now talking about a direct tender process, but it has not done the one thing that it has been asked to do, which is to sort out the whole procedure. We have CMAL, Transport Scotland and CalMac—a plethora of organisations—but we have no one in control, and the whole thing is tumbling out of control.

I am sad to be standing up in Parliament saying this. I am sad that the Government cannot give me a date for delivery of the Glen Rosa, because no one seems to know that, and I am sad that the Government has sold Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow down the river. It is a disgrace.

I hear that Labour will now support the direct award of the contract, but at a meeting of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, at which the Labour Party was represented, it was agreed that there would be a direct award only if the islanders approved that. Are you ignoring the islanders now?

Interestingly, a school in the Highlands that I visited the other day does not have toilets for both sexes. There is a single set of toilets, and it is up to the children to police the toilets to keep the sexes separate, which they were doing quite effectively. The female pupils do not want males in their part and the males do not want females in their part, so they have divided the toilets up among themselves and police them themselves. Do you think that that is the right way forward?

Will the member take an intervention?

Does the member agree that for a minister to stand up and give a speech and not interact with 13 attempts at interventions is a disgraceful show of how irrelevant they are in this Parliament? I am truly shocked; I wonder whether the member agrees with me.

Good morning, and welcome to the 10th meeting in 2025 of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee. The first item on the agenda this morning is a decision on whether to take item 3 in private. Item 3 is consideration of the committee’s work programme. Do we agree to take item 3 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

??

Thank you. We will now move into private session.