Ross letting Sturgeon off over ferries farrago
In any organisation there are few more distasteful spectacles than buck-passing when a really poor decision has to be defended or justified. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has accepted ultimate responsibility for the Ferguson Marine Ferries debacle (your report, 25 March), but I was surprised at her less than apologetic tone.
I was even more surprised that she chose to invoke the name of disgraced former Transport Minister Derek Mackay as the person responsible for the original decision to award the contract in 2015. Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross rightly points out that it may be convenient for the Scottish Government to blame someone who is no longer part of the regime; but he has let the First Minister and Cabinet off lightly with his call for a public inquiry.
The public have had quite enough of detailed and costly inquiries which highlight “systemic failure” and rarely point the finger at one identifiable individual. If Mr Ross thinks that this is one of the worst public spending disasters since devolution he needs to go in a lot stronger than this.
Mr Mackay certainly had a high profile during the period the contract was awarded. He claimed a lot of political credit for helping solve some of the problems on the Forth Bridge structure in late 2015. But he was not a Cabinet minister at the time. His ultimate boss was certainly Ms Sturgeon but in between was Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Investment and Cities Keith Brown. Are we really being asked to believe that Ms Sturgeon and Keith Brown knew nothing about the contract award? For what reason was the advice of experts on the viability of the venture ignored? The Scottish Government is not alone in presiding over botched public contracts.
For the sake of public faith in politics, however, there is a need to come clean on what happened. Opposition parties need to be a lot more vigorous in asking questions over this stain on the reputation of the Holyrood government.
BOB TAYLOR Glenrothes, Fife