On a recent television tour of Britain’s coast, Michael Portillo found himself in awe of the Outer Hebrides. Why would more people not live and work in this ‘paradise’, he wondered from a vast sun-kissed beach near where I live on Lewis.
It was a fair question on such a day but the intrepid traveller had struck it lucky. Living on an island involves a high degree of dependency on ferries. And the reliability of the service provided by the state owned Caledonian MacBrayne, known as CalMac, on Scotland’s west coast is at an-time low for reasons that go far beyond the uncertainties of weather.
This week alone brought news of further disruption after ‘corrosion’ was found in a 24 year-old vessel during annual maintenance. Lochboisdale will be without a ferry at all for another month. Last week the island of Colonsay had to go without supplies for eight days straight because of weather and vessel issues.
Earlier this year the transport minister, Graeme Dey, resigned after eight months in the job. Now it is reported that his departure followed a meeting at which he allegedly told the Finance Secretary, Kate Forbes, that an extra billion would be needed to restore the fleet to health. When she showed him the door, he quit.
In short, there are too few ferries and most of the ones operating are long out of date. It is a story of under-investment; the dysfunctionality of an arrangement which splits procurement and operations between two Scottish government entities; and, most conspicuously, an effort to build two medium-sized ferries in Scotland which has turned into a £300 million debacle.
If this was only a story of mind-boggling industrial, financial and political incompetence, it would be bad enough
The two hulks now languishing in the Scottish government-owned Ferguson shipyard at Port Glasgow were supposed to operating several years ago. Today, some question whether they will ever be completed and the most optimistic prognosis is that they will arrive five years late and at treble the original cost.
For those who believe that the SNP devolved government operates by stunt and headline, this has become a classic case study. The contract was awarded to the Ferguson yard for purely political reasons with every objection over-ruled. What was not to like in saving an ailing shipyard with a government-directed order? Nicola Sturgeon made the mandatory pre-election appearances at the yard in a hard-hat for the photo opportunities with cheering workers.
The only problem was that the yard proved incapable of building the ships. At that time, it was owned by the industrialist Jim McColl who had been a well-publicised supporter of the SNP, a position from which he has since resiled with a vengeance. When the yard went bust as problems mounted there had to be a scapegoat and Mr McColl’s management fitted the bill.
He blamed interference by the Scottish government and repeated design changes by the procurement quango, Caledonian Marine Assets Ltd (CMAL), for making the job impossible; a view which tends to be supported by the fact that three years after the yard was taken over by the Scottish government, the two ferries remain very far from finished.
SNP Ministers hired a ‘turnaround director’ by the name of Tim Hair to bring order to chaos. He has now departed after 30 months with huge fees and expenses in his bank account while the evidence of a ‘turnaround’ remains scant.
Every week brings a new revelation. In what was supposed to be his valedictory report, Mr Hair revealed that there would be further delay due to the Scottish government wanting a ‘ducktail’ fitted to one of the vessels. Those with a little knowledge of naval architecture questioned whether you could just add a ducktail without affecting other aspects of the ship’s design.
While this was still being mulled over, Mr Hair took a further curtain call. It had just come to light that almost 1,000 cables installed on one of the vessels had been found to be too short (perhaps because the points they were supposed to connect with had been moved in the course of design changes). So this would lead to more delays, he intimated before departing.
If this was only a story of mind-boggling industrial, financial and political incompetence, it would be bad enough. However, the implications for island communities have proved dire as the threadbare fleet tries to hold the network together. Ferries are re-deployed at short notice. Breakdowns are increasingly frequent as elderly vessels are pushed to their limits. And all this on top of the impact, which islanders understand and are used to, of weather conditions which keep vessels in port.
The really depressing point is that there is no early end in sight. If and when the two vessels at Port Glasgow – known as Hulls 801 and 802 – are completed, there will still be a large backlog of investment in additional vessels to catch up on, and a few ships which are currently holding the network together will be ready for overdue retirement.
An associated issue is the unwritten policy of SNP ministers not to appoint local people with first-hand experience of islands or ferries to the boards of the relevant quangos. There is no islander on the boards of either CMAL or CalMac. In a bizarre twist, the chairman of CMAL – a Danish businessman named Erik Østergaard – has just been switched to become chairman of Caledonian MacBrayne. It looks very much like SNP ministers and civil servants standing by their man in the dispute, which has still a long way to run, about who has been responsible for the Ferguson fiasco.
In times of war and peace, Scotland’s Hebridean islands have been famous for producing seamen of the highest calibre. It beggars belief that the SNP can find nobody in the islands, or even in Scotland, to preside over the state-owned ferry company or even to serve on the boards of organisations which have such a crucial impact on island life. The prevailing mantra is that ‘trusties’ are hired to serve the government first and the islanders a poor second. As for devolution, that definitely ends at Edinburgh.
Meanwhile the fragile economic viability of these ‘paradise’ islands is becoming increasingly in peril.
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