A GROWING SCANDAL THAT STURGEON MUST ANSWER FOR
FOR months, as the coronavirus pandemic has taken hold, I have been saying the Scottish and UK Governments must find a way to co-operate and work together to save both lives and livelihoods. Every day, whatever their differences, we are facing the same risk of disease and living with the same recession. Joint government working is central to our chances of recovery.
Yet, very close to my own home, I can now see a tragic instance of the fatal damage that the failure of the Scottish and UK Governments to work together is inflicting on our country.
From my own front window in Fife, I look across to Burntisland and to the BiFab yard, a great Scottish company. BiFab makes the undersea ‘jackets’ on which the big wind turbines stand.
There were high hopes for its future. The Scottish and UK Governments promised a bright future. But this week I found to my horror that the Scottish Government plans to kill BiFab off.
A few months ago, BiFab, partowned by the Scottish Government, won the £30million-plus contract from French energy firm EDF to build eight jackets.
I have talked to the parent company in Canada this week and they still desperately want to continue to create the jobs and deliver the sub-sea platform contract. But the contract relied on a £30million guarantee that the Scottish Government had offered to underwrite the project. Yet, at the last minute, Scottish ministers want to withdraw this guarantee.
The upshot is that the jackets will be manufactured in Indonesia.
In short, a Scottish company that won a major North Sea order to support the renewables revolution on the Scottish coast is being prevented from doing so by the Scottish Government.
It is a scandal and Nicola Sturgeon must answer for it.
The Scottish Government blames EU state aid legislation.
But a legal opinion by Lord Davidson sought by me, the GMB and Unite demolishes the Scottish Government’s arguments.
Based on publicly available information, it says that the abrupt withdrawal of the financial guarantee was ‘irrational’ – and a move that ‘no reasonable decision-maker properly i nformed would have taken’. Why? Because the EU state aid regime of 2021 will be different from that of 2020 after we leave the European Union.
Lord Davidson says it is ‘remarkable’ the Scottish Government didn’t just defer the decision until after the end of this year. And what is astonishing is the fact that the Scottish Government didn’t seek advice and support from the UK Government, either.
Promises are being broken. Both UK and Scottish Government have said 60 per cent of offshore renewable work will be placed locally.
So it is time now for the UK Government to step in with its offer of help, to work with the Scottish Government to save the jobs.
And if we get no movement at all, then I will consider the potential for a full judicial review.
This company has work. It is a going concern. It is now being denied the government assurances to allow all that to continue.
But if the two Governments work together, hundreds of Scots employees may have some jobs cheer at Christmas and Scotland can start 2021 on a brighter note, with one of our most important new industries saved for the future.