Has Humza Yousaf finally solved the SNP’s ferry fiasco?

The scandalous debacle of Scotland’s ferries fiasco has rumbled on for some time. It is almost a decade since Nicola Sturgeon announced the takeover of the Ferguson Marine shipyard by the Clyde Blowers billionaire, Jim McColl. He was the preferred bidder to build two new dual-fuel car ferries for the state owned CalMac island ferry service. They never materialised. The ferries saga has been the longest-running procurement scandal since the SNP entered government in 2007.

Now, First Minister Humza Yousaf, who was transport secretary when things started to go wrong in 2018, thinks he has finally hit on a solution: privatising the beleaguered shipyard on the Clyde. But there’s a snag: one of Scotland’s largest unions is furious.

GMB Scotland seem to think the government should keep hold of Ferguson Marine whatever the cost. Their senior organiser, Gary Cook, says selling off Scotland’s only remaining civil ship builder would be ‘sabotage’. 

In Yousaf’s defence, it is high time this mess was tidied up. Nicola Sturgeon pumped £40 million of public money into the yard after it was bought by the SNP-supporting tycoon McColl in 2015, in what some believe was a sweetheart deal. The former first minister claimed she had saved Scottish shipbuilding and hundreds of jobs when she ‘launched’ one of the ferries back in 2017, even though it had no engines and the windows were only painted on. The SNP government then nationalised Ferguson Marine in 2019 after McColl’s company collapsed. Since then, yet more public money has been thrown at the yard in a desperate attempt to complete the Glen Sannox and Hull 802 – the two ferries which were intended to serve island communities around Scotland – before the hulls rust into disuse. 

These two boats, which should have cost £97 million, are now five years late and expected to cost well over £400 million, if they are completed at all. Ferguson Marine has become a national scandal – and island communities have been left stranded by the SNP’s failure to update Scotland’s ageing ferry fleet. 

The state-owned ferry operator, CalMac, has fallen out with the state-owned CMAL which buys and leases CalMac’s ships. There are threats of legal action. Something had to be done. So, the cabinet secretary for the ‘wellbeing economy’, Neil Gray, has said that it’s back to square one. 

Gray told the Scottish parliament’s economy and fair work committee this week that the government will ‘do what we can to ensure the yard is returned as a commercial going concern into private ownership as quickly as possible’. Thus ends (well, maybe) the most serious procurement disaster in the history of the Scottish parliament, one rivalled only by the scandal over the cost of the Holyrood parliament building, which was five years late and vastly over budget. 

It also surely draws to a close the SNP’s experiment with public ownership. Ideologically predisposed to nationalisation, the Scottish government has rescued a clutch of financial basket cases over the years. Glasgow’s Prestwick airport collapsed into public hands in 2013 and has burned through nearly £50 million in public money since then with little to show for it. 

Scotland’s only platform fabrication yard, BiFab at Methil in Fife, was embraced by the state in 2017 with another £50 million of taxpayers’ money before it finally collapsed in 2020. The remains were recently bought by a London-based company for £850,000. BiFab was supposed to give Scotland a stake in the production of the jackets for offshore wind turbines in the coming North Sea renewables boom. These structures will mostly now be built abroad, as far away as China, and dragged here by tug. 

Last year, the Scottish government took over the ScotRail franchise, which is popularly known as ‘ScotFail’ because of chronic timetable failures and unaffordable ticket prices. The omens are not good: it continues to live up to its nickname. Passenger numbers are still way down on pre-pandemic levels and costs are rising, not least because the SNP’s first act after the service was nationalised was to award RMT workers at 7.5 per cent pay increase. Further strikes are in the pipeline. 

It’s true that public ownership can work. Scottish Water is generally regarded as providing a superior service to privatised water companies south of the border. Rail is nationalised in many European countries. But the Scottish government’s track record is a poor advert for state control. 

Civil servants seem unable to negotiate contracts with any confidence or clarity, as Audit Scotland has observed. And when things go wrong – as they have done repeatedly in Scotland’s numerous public procurement failures – no one carries the can. But as a General Election looms, Yousaf appears to be fearing he might get the blame. This concern would explain his attempt to draw a line under the Ferguson Marine scandal. And it would be convenient for Yousaf to draft the private sector in to clean up the mess. But even if someone does come to the rescue, voters – particularly those Scots who are desperately reliant upon ferry services to get around – are unlikely to forgive and forget.