Scottish islanders who are fed up with the country’s crisis-hit ferry service are to investigate running their own ferries, claiming they have lost patience with government bungling.
After years of service cancellations and break-downs, islanders on Mull and Iona want to replace the car ferries run by the 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 inquisition by MSPs over allegations that a botched ferry-building contract was rigged in order to save one of the last shipyards on the Clyde.
Sturgeon is to appear before Holyrood’s public audit committee on Friday as part of its investigation into costly over-runs that have hit the construction of two badly-needed ferries for 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 £97m. Now at least five years late, Audit Scotland, the spending watchdog, predicts the boats will cost at least £240m.
A BBC Scotland documentary alleged last month that Ferguson Marine, the Clyde shipyard given the contract in 2016, was secretly given the precise specifications for the vessels, written by the government’s ferry owner CMAL, while it was bidding for the work.
The BBC said that enabled the firm to totally revise its designs midway through the bidding process – a change no other bidder was allowed to make. Ferguson’s was also able to bid without proving it had bank guarantees as insurance against the contract failing.
After a series of delays and government bailouts totalling £45m, the firm collapsed into administration and had to be nationalised 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 because the yard failed to order a crucial part for the hybrid engines.
John Swinney, Sturgeon’s deputy, told the BBC documentary ministers shared the blame for the Ferguson’s debacle. “There has been a collective failure,” he said, later telling MSPs Audit Scotland had been asked to investigate the BBC’s allegations.
Jim McColl, a millionaire investor and former ally of Alex Salmond, the former first minister, who owned Ferguson’s at the time the contracts were awarded, insisted he did not know at the time no other bidder had those specifications.
“In hindsight, it put us in a very strong position,” he said, and denied any wrongdoing.
Opposition parties argue the Ferguson’s 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 underwriting guarantees worth £545m for an ailing aluminium smelter in Fort William.
For islanders, it is emblematic of an at times chaotic ferry service which has badly damaged the tourism vital to the Hebrides, left islanders unable to make it to hospital appointments, weddings and sports fixtures, and led to millions of pounds in lost business for traders, farmers and contractors.
They say services are worsening. Between January and September this year, CalMac, the company which operates 34 ferries between 50 ports dotted across the islands and west coast, cancelled more than 8,100 sailings, 1,500 of those for mechanical reasons.
Joe Reade, chair of Mull & Iona ferry committee, and owner of the Tobermory-based biscuit firm Island Bakery, said their islands already had a strong tradition of community ownership, including forests, affordable housing and a buyout of Ulva, an island just off Mull’s western coast.
Scotland’s Hebridean ferry services are an entirely state-run monopoly: CalMac runs the services and CMAL owns the boats. Both are overseen by Transport Scotland, a government agency which runs the country’s road networks and oversees public transport.
In a sign of how significant the issue has become locally, the feasibility study into the costs and risks of Mull running its own ferry service is being funded by another state agency, Highlands and Islands Enterprise.
“Hebridean ferry services are some of the most inefficient, wasteful and high-cost in the entire world,” said Reade.
“We need higher capacity, higher frequency, better reliability, more weather-resilience, longer operating hours and more convenience.
“Those improvements can only be afforded if the ferries are cheaper to buy and operate. Right now, no one has a vested interest in improving value for money.”
With Ferguson’s now close to finishing the ferries, the Scottish government hopes the Holyrood investigation will bring this saga to an end. In late October it announced that two new ferries were being ordered for £115m, using the same design as two boats being built – in Turkey - for services to Islay.
“The Scottish government is absolutely committed to improving the lifeline ferry fleet and better meeting the needs of island communities,” said Jenny Gilruth, the transport minister.
Reade remains unimpressed; those new ferries were first proposed in 2012, he said, and remain much costlier than needed.
