Hold a public inquiry into Scotland's ferry fiasco
The SNP backed probes over the Parliament building and Edinburgh's trams. It should do likewise when scandals happen on its own watch.
THIS month eighteen years ago, as a youngish political reporter working at the Scottish Parliament, I spent my working days at the Scottish Land Court in Edinburgh’s new town. Its tiny courtroom, which normally settled minor disputes on crofting rights and agricultural tenancies, had been converted for devolution’s first big show trial, the Holyrood Inquiry. The growing scandal of the Parliament building, and its £400 million price tag, had become the dominant story of Scotland’s new democratic era. In 2003, the then First Minister Jack McConnell accepted that a full public inquiry was required, with full disclosure of documents and witnesses questioned on oath. In front of the portly gaze of the late Conservative peer Peter Fraser, who presided over matters, a succession of Ministers and senior civil servants were ordered to give evidence, to the delight of we story-hungry hacks.
Reading back this week through the findings and the debate of that time is a reminder of the two purposes that inquiry served. It was primarily about mammoth political incompetence at the then Scottish Executive and the old Scottish Office, and the refusal of anybody to take the blame for the spiralling costs. As Lord Fraser memorably summed up: “The ancient walls of the Canongate have echoed to the cry of “It wis’nae me””. But the inquiry was also about catharsis. So deeply had the embarrassment at the bottom of the Royal Mile scarred Scotland’s brave new world, everyone could see that the books needed to be opened so we could draw a line underneath it. As an editorial in one newspaper put it when the inquiry began: “The closet political village that is Scotland needs exposure if it is ever to modernise or democratise.” It concluded: “If we cannot build a parliament efficiently, what chance of building a better Scotland?” The inquiry would help Scotland “move on”.
We no longer have a Scottish Executive; a few years after that inquiry, the new SNP administration decided to rebrand it as a Government. Mammoth political incompetence, however, is still with us. For that, we only have to look at the snowballing scandal over the delivery of two new CalMac ferries on the Clyde. Today, a report by Audit Scotland reports on a “multitude of failings” with the project including a “lack of transparent decision-making, a lack of project oversight and no clear understanding of what significant sums of public money have achieved”. I was going to write that these ships are floating Holyrood building but given that one of the overdue and overpriced boats being constructed hasn’t even made it into the water yet, that would be to put an optimistic slant on this affair.
The ferries fiasco is just as big a scandal as the Parliament building was two decades ago. The Parliament was three years late in opening; one of the boats on the Clyde, the MV Glen Sannox, is expected finally to set sail this summer, four years overdue. The Parliament project witnessed epic financial mismanagement: as one official wrote about the architect Enric Miralles when he was hired: “Nobody tells Enric to think about economy with any seriousness”. Similarly, in the ferries scandal, vast sums have been thrown about: witness the £60,000 a month salary paid to its “turnaround” director Tim Hair, who recently left the project. The Scottish Parliament building, originally priced at £40m, eventually came in at a total cost of £414m. This week, former Scottish Government shipbuilding adviser Luke van Beek estimated that the cost of the two ferries currently sitting in the dock at Fergusons Marine, originally priced at £97m, would come in at £400m. It is eerily familiar.
This begs the question: if a public inquiry over the parliament was justified, shouldn’t there be a public inquiry over the ferries too? The former owner of the yard, the businessman Jim McColl, has said he wants one. Mr van Beek likewise. In 2003, Mr McConnell bowed to this kind of pressure, accepting an inquiry into the parliament building was inevitable. Today, over ferries, however, the SNP Government has yet to agree to one. A few years ago. the same SNP Government ordered a public inquiry into the delivery of the Edinburgh tram route, delivered by the then Labour-led council. When it is their own decisions under scrutiny, it appears different standards apply.
And no wonder. It was Nicola Sturgeon’s former mentor Alex Salmond who brokered the deal to “save” the Fergusons yard on the Clyde a few weeks before the independence referendum in 2104. It was Nicola Sturgeon who claimed selfies with shipbuilders in 2017 when the Glen Sannox hull was ‘launched’ prematurely, with painted-on windows. It was former Finance Minister Derek Mackay who nationalised the yard in 2019, claiming he was saving it from administration. All of them would be star witnesses in a public inquiry. Unlike the Scottish Executive in 2003, it seems the Scottish Government of 2022 is too fearful of the decisions it made being scrutinised too closely (The same applies to the situation at Prestwick Airport. As was reported yesterday, it has received £43m of taxpayers’ money, which has been largely written off, with no private sector buyer likely to step up).
What a pity. A public inquiry is clearly justified on the facts alone. More than that, just as the Scottish Parliament building inquiry did nearly twenty years ago, so a hearing into the ferries fiasco would help shine a light on the “closet political village” that still exists in our country. It would show how that village has become even smaller and less accountable than twenty years ago. It would reveal how decisions affecting remote and vulnerable communities in our islands are being made by a detached and centralised elite in Edinburgh. And it would show how we are led by a hyper-politized governing party which, on this particular matter, put short-term political opportunism before the public purse and the needs of citizens across Scotland. It would tell us a story of modern Scotland.
Its easy to see why SNP leadership might be expected to resist such an inquiry. But let’s hope it sees the light. Twenty years ago, the then SNP opposition played an important part in the Parliament inquiry. Led by the SNP MSP Fergus Ewing, it harried and chased a complacent political establishment, demanding the truth be told. Its then leader, John Swinney, issued bold and uncompromising words. Indeed, speaking in a debate about the Inquiry in 2004 – within the newly opened parliamentary chamber - Mr Swinney summed up the mood of the nation.
“What we have here,” he thundered, “is a private culture where chats in the corridor and long-established connections are used as substitutes for frank and open government. We must seek an assurance that that culture has ended and that we are now operating in a frank, open and transparent climate.” He concluded: “If we are to serve the people of Scotland effectively, we must have political debate that is open, honest and transparent. We must deliver that in the Parliament and we must demand it of the Executive into the bargain.”
Fine words indeed from today’s Deputy First Minister. Now, nearly twenty years on, they apply directly to him and his colleagues. Let’s hold a full public inquiry into this ferries farce. Let’s see some openness, honesty and transparency from our government. Let’s see how the SNP runs our country.
This article first appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail, 23rd March 2022