Scottish islanders fed up with the country’s crisis-hit ferry service are to investigate running their own ferries, saying they are fed up with government indifference.
After years of canceled services and breakdowns, the islanders of Mull and Iona want to replace the ferries run by state-owned company CalMac with their own community-run service using three faster catamarans.
Their announcement came as Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister, prepares for an MSP inquiry into allegations that a failed ferry-building contract was rigged to save one of the Clyde’s last shipyards.
Sturgeon is due to appear before Holyrood’s public audit committee on Friday as part of its inquiry into costly overcharges which have affected the construction of two much-needed ferries to Arran and the Western Isles. She will face challenging questions.
The purpose-built ferries were due to enter service in 2018 at a cost of £97 million. Now at least five years late, Audit Scotland, the spending watchdog, has predicted the boats will cost at least £240m.
A BBC Scotland documentary claimed last month that Ferguson Marine, the Clyde shipyard awarded the contract in 2016, was secretly given the exact specifications for the vessels, written by the ferry’s government owner CMAL, while it was bidding for the work.
The BBC said this allowed the firm to completely revise its design midway through the bidding process – a change no other bidder could make. Ferguson’s was also able to bid without proving that it had bank guarantees as insurance against contract failure.
After a series of delays and government bailouts totaling £45m, the firm collapsed into administration and was due to be nationalized in 2019 by the Scottish Government to ensure the ferries were built.
Both ferries are designed to use climate-friendly hybrid engines running on batteries and liquid natural gas. It emerged earlier this week that the first vessel due to enter service in 2023, the Glen Sannox, will run on diesel for seven months after the shipyard failed to order a crucial part for the hybrid engines.
John Sweeney, Sturgeon’s deputy, told the BBC that documentary ministers share the blame for the Ferguson failure. “There was a collective failure,” he said, later telling MSP Audit Scotland had been asked to investigate the BBC’s claims.
Jim McCall, a millionaire investor and former ally of Alex Salmond, the former first minister who owned Ferguson at the time the contracts were awarded, insisted he was unaware at the time that no other candidate had those specifications.
“In hindsight, it put us in a very strong position,” he said, denying any wrongdoing.
Opposition parties say the Ferguson fiasco is just one of a series of troubled deals by the Scottish National Party government that have put hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money at risk, including buying Prestwick Airport and taking on £545m worth of guarantees for troubled aluminum smelter company in Fort William.
For islanders, it is emblematic of a sometimes chaotic ferry service that has seriously damaged tourism, which is vital to the Hebrides, left islanders unable to get to hospital appointments, weddings and sporting events, and resulted in millions of pounds of lost business for traders. farmers and contractors.
They say services are deteriorating. Between January and September this year, CalMac, the company that operates 34 ferries between 50 ports on the islands and west coast, canceled more than 8,100 sailings, 1,500 of them for mechanical reasons.
Joe Reid, chairman of the Mull & Iona Ferry Committee and owner of Tobermory-based biscuit firm Island Bakery, said their islands already had a strong tradition of community ownership, including forests, affordable housing and the buyout of Ulva, an island which is located very close to the west coast of Mull.
Scottish ferry services in the Hebrides are a wholly state monopoly: CalMac operates the services and CMAL owns the boats. Both are controlled by Transport Scotland, a government agency that manages the country’s road network and controls public transport.
In a sign of how significant the issue has become locally, a study into the cost feasibility and risks of Mull running its own ferry service is being funded by another government agency, Highlands and Islands Enterprise.
“The Hebridean ferry services are some of the most inefficient, wasteful and expensive in the entire world,” Reid said.
“We need higher capacity, higher frequency, better reliability, more weather resistance, longer operating hours and more convenience.
“These improvements can only be allowed if the ferries are cheaper to buy and operate. Right now, nobody has a vested interest in improving value for money.”
With Ferguson now close to completing the ferries, the Scottish Government hopes the Holyrood inquiry will put an end to this saga. At the end of October, the company announced that two new £115m ferries had been ordered, using the same design as two boats being built – in Turkey – for services to Islay.
“The Scottish Government is absolutely committed to improving the lifeboat fleet and better meeting the needs of island communities,” said Jenny Gilruth, Transport Secretary.
Reid remains unimpressed; those new ferries were first proposed in 2012, he said, and remain far more expensive than necessary.
Add Comment