Chamber and committees

We are committedto working with the UK Government to ensure the safety of Scotland’s roads. The new offence, provided by section 21 of the Road Safety Act 2006, of causing death by driving while unlicensed,disqualified or uninsured reflects the fact that drivers who bring a car onto the road illegallyput the public at risk. It is entirely proper that those who deliberately floutthe law in this manner should be held responsible for any fatal consequenceswhich arise from their decision to drive. The new offence is expected to come into force laterthis year.

There have been a number ofexchanges over several years between the European Commission, the UK Governmentand the Scottish Executive on a range of ferry issues including the Gourock-Dunoonservice. The general convention is that such communications are not published.

Caledonian Maritime AssetsLtd has not been asked to undertake any preliminary design work for vessels forthe Gourock-Dunoon ferry route. The Executive is currently examining theoptions that are available for the route and will announce its conclusions assoon as possible.

There is no ScottishExecutive subsidy available to Western Ferries for their route betweenMcInroy’s Point and Hunter’s Quay.

Scottish Ministers have notargued that this would be the case.

I refer the member to the answerto question S3W-2279 answered on 7 August 2007. All answers to written parliamentaryquestions are available on the Parliament's website the search facility forwhich can be found at: http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

Guidelines were issued on 1 March 1995 by thethen Secretary of State for Scotland to Caledonian MacBrayne Ltd. Those guidelinesregulate how the company should operate business activities beyond thoserequired to deliver the network of services that qualify for subsidy. Theguidelines permit the company to undertake such activities provided that priorapproval has been given by the Scottish Executive and subject to a number ofconditions. The major condition relates to the need for the activities to becarried out on a fully commercial basis, with no leakage of subsidy from thecompany’s core activities.

A proposal for a Users’Charter was submitted to the previous administration by the Managing Directorof Western Ferries in 2004. This proposal, amongst other issues was discussed,at several meetings between Executive officials, Ministers and Western Ferries.The discussions were exploratory in nature and the proposal was not pursued.

Caledonian MacBrayne’sAnnual Report and Consolidated Financial Statements for 2005-06 indicate thatthe operating loss on the Gourock-Dunoon ferry service was £2.451 million. The2006 edition of Scottish Transport Statistics indicates that in 2005 624,700passengers travelled on Caledonian MacBrayne’s Gourock-Dunoon route. On thatbasis the average subsidy per passenger in 2005-06 was £3.92.

Caledonian MacBrayne’spublished Annual Report and Consolidated Financial Statements for 2005-06indicate that the loss on the Gourock-Dunoon route in that year was £2.451 million.The company does not publish more detailed information on costs and revenues onthe grounds that release of such information would be likely to prejudicesubstantially its commercial interests.