Iain Macwhirter Iain Macwhirter

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

Humza Yousaf (Credit: Getty images)

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’. 

Thus ends (well, maybe) the most serious procurement disaster in the history of the Scottish parliament

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.

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Written by
Iain Macwhirter

Iain Macwhirter is a former BBC TV presenter and was political commentator for The Herald between 1999 and 2022. He is an author of Road to Referendum and Disunited Kingdom: How Westminster Won a Referendum but Lost Scotland.

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