STURGEON BRANDED ‘LIAR’ OVER FERRY DEAL
Former shipyard chief’s devastating attack on First Minister’s jobs claim
NICOLA Sturgeon ‘lied’ about saving hundreds of jobs at a shipyard by giving it a lucrative ferry contract, the former owner has claimed.
The First minister said Ferguson marine on the Clyde would have closed if SNP ministers had not made a deal in 2015 for it to build two new ferries.
But businessman Jim mcColl yesterday insisted a ‘rattled’ miss Sturgeon has not told the truth about the shipyard’s prospects after she was challenged about the fiasco.
The contract has since gone £150million over budget and is five years late, amid revelations the Scottish Government’s own experts originally warned against it.
mr mcColl, who supported the independence campaign in 2014 and subsequently became a Scottish Government economic adviser, said yesterday that when the ferries contract was awarded, the yard still
had an order to fulfil – which would have kept his 150-strong workforce employed.
Asked about Miss Sturgeon’s claim that jobs would have been lost, the tycoon said: ‘That’s a lie.’
Mr McColl also claimed that Miss Sturgeon’s ministers were well aware that a refund guarantee was not part of the deal, despite her claims that it was.
Ministers ignored advice at the time that a lack of a refund guarantee in case of delays or higher costs would put taxpayers’ money at risk.
Defending the award of the contract, Miss Sturgeon told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme on Monday: ‘At that point, had a different decision been taken, the shipyard at Ferguson’s would almost certainly have closed and the 400 people who are currently employed there earning a wage supporting their families would not be in that employment.’
The First Minister added: ‘Commercial shipbuilding exists on the Clyde because of the decisions the Government has taken.’
However, Mr McColl hit back yesterday, saying: ‘That’s a lie – and at the time there were 150 employees, not 400.
‘I think she was a bit rattled in the interview and she mixed it up with the statement that they made about saving the yard.’
Mr McColl added: ‘The yard had outstanding work.
‘It was still working on the ferry Katrina, which wasn’t launched until 2016 and was delivered early and on budget.
‘It also had additional construction work, fabrication work, so there was no danger of the yard going under at that time.
‘That was a slip by the First Minister in the interview.’
The contract to build two CalMac ferries was handed to Ferguson Marine despite concerns raised by Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited (CMAL), which is wholly owned by the Scottish Government, with Scottish ministers the sole shareholders.
Costs of the debacle have soared from the original £97million contract price to £206million, and this is forecast to rise to £240million by the time the vessels are eventually finished.
Mr McColl has already said that the decision to approve the contract was rushed through so the SNP could make the announcement at its 2015 party conference – ahead of Miss Sturgeon’s first Holyrood election after succeeding Alex Salmond as leader.
Government quango CMAL had warned that the contract was too risky because Ferguson Marine was refusing to provide a full refund guarantee.
However, ministers pressed ahead with the deal despite the risks, although they have failed to provide evidence of how or why they did this, amid claims that a key document may have been ‘illegally destroyed’.
Graham Simpson, transport spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives, said: ‘These are devastating claims by Jim McColl that completely undermine Nicola Sturgeon’s defence on the ferries fiasco.
‘The First Minister has been adamant that Ferguson had originally agreed to offer a full refund guarantee.
‘But if Mr McColl has paperwork to the contrary – and unlike Nicola Sturgeon he seems able to keep hold of key documents – she has some serious explaining to do.’
Mr Simpson added: ‘Similarly, the First Minister’s only defence for her government’s reckless decision to award the contract to Ferguson Marine has been that it saved the jobs of 400 staff at the yard.
‘But Mr McColl has driven a coach and horses through that claim by insisting that there were only 150 staff at the time – and that the yard had enough work to remain viable even if it hadn’t been awarded the contract to build the two CalMac ferries.
‘This scandal gets murkier by the day. It’s essential a full, independent inquiry is set up to get to the bottom of it.’ Liberal Democrat MSP Willie Rennie said: ‘Jim McColl’s business expertise is beyond doubt, and that was recognised by the SNP who courted him for years.
‘His anger at the treatment from the SNP is palpable.
‘Nicola Sturgeon will do anything, say anything and ditch anyone to protect the SNP.’
A spokesman for the First Minister said: ‘Not for the first time, Mr McColl’s comments on a BBC interview are at odds with the facts. The reality – as a simple reading of the First Minister’s interview shows – is that she was clearly referring to the 400 people ‘‘currently’’ employed at the yard.
‘And those 400 jobs would not currently exist if the Scottish Government had not taken the action we did to save the yard – that is a fact.’
IT was on Saturday morning, as I opened the kitchen cupboard looking for something to eat for breakfast, that I decided how I was going to vote in the local elections tomorrow.
There, sitting nonchalantly on top of the Corn Flakes, happily munching through a pack of Warburton’s sliced bread, was a rat.
It’s been a while since I’ve come face to face with our unwanted guests in this part of Glasgow.
For the whole winter, they disappeared. I don’t know if they hibernate or just head off to warmer climes, but we haven’t seen sight nor sound of them since the great Glaswegian rat-fest of autumn 2021 when our street hosted an army of the little blighters.
Now, however, as the days lengthen and the blossom hangs heavy on the trees, so the vermin head back to the city to gorge themselves afresh. It’s like a civic tradition round here.
Specimen
The rat in my cupboard was a perky little specimen. He or she turned to look at me when I opened the cupboard door, mid-munch, and sat there looking at me for a few seconds, brazening it out. ‘What?’ he or she seemed to be saying to me: ‘This is my cupboard as much as it’s yours. Please close the door and let me finish my food.’
I felt triggered. I hadn’t invited the rat in and yet here it was, invading my private space. I advanced warily. The rat blinked. Then, realising the game was up, it darted out and disappeared through the small hole in one of our kitchen cabinets through which it had nibbled its way.
I spent the rest of the morning cleaning up, closing the hole and adding fresh reinforcements (clumps of ratresistant wire wool work best, I’ve found).
And as I did so, I decided that, this coming Thursday, I would vote for any local politician who looks even half-capable of cleaning up this city’s dirty streets and putting it back into order.
To do that, it’s worth looking at what’s gone wrong with local politics over the past few years. First and foremost, it’s about money. The Accounts Commission, which audits local authorities in Scotland, concluded earlier this spring that, when recent extra Covid cash is excluded, there has been a real-terms funding cut of 4.2 per cent to councils since 2013-14.
The Commission warned as a result that councils will face ‘significant challenges’ delivering on the basics.
Extra sums have been squeezed out of Edinburgh in recent weeks but the direction of travel is clear: the SNP Government has cut councils to the bone. Other spending priorities, such as the everballooning NHS have taken priority. Local authorities have been left on their own.
But it is not just about money, it is also about control. According to the Fraser of Allander Institute, increasing sums of the cash that councils are given is ring-fenced by Miss Sturgeon’s team in Edinburgh: our local authorities are not deemed capable of deciding for themselves how they should use their funds.
It is a long time since the SNP talked about partnership working, or historic ‘concordats’. Faced with budget cuts and with limited room for local decision-making, the consequence is that councils end up making huge cuts on ‘discretionary’ spend – such as libraries, play parks and the local environment.
Recently, funding for education and social care may have gone up, Fraser of Allander says. But since 2017, spending on ‘cultural services’ has plummeted by 9 per cent and on environment services by 8 per cent.
We have seen the consequences of this back on my local street. Our local community group used to get public liability insurance from the council so it could organise a quarterly litter picking event.
But – faced with cutbacks – the council withdrew it. So the community clean-ups have stopped.
On top of that, the council also decided to charge for bulk uplifts of rubbish in the privately owned lanes which our houses back onto.
Inevitably, over the winter months, the rubbish has piled up. Local protests led to a hurried clean-up a few weeks ago. But, given the evidence of the rat in my kitchen cupboard, it appears to have come too late.
Given this appalling treatment from Edinburgh, you’d have thought some local leaders in Scotland might have raised their heads above the parapet to protest.
It is simply impossible to imagine Manchester’s Andy Burnham or Birmingham’s Andy Street or West Yorkshire’s Tracy Brabin standing for it.
But the SNP hasn’t introduced directly elected mayors in Scotland – after all, that might distract attention from the Nationalist narrative.
Loyalty
Instead, most of our cities are led by a collection of supine and anonymous SNP leaders whose first loyalty isn’t to their locality but to ‘the cause’.
So instead of vigorous leadership demanding change from Edinburgh, we end up with Nationalists bending the knee.
Memorably, Glasgow’s hapless council leader Susan Aitken once introduced Nicola Sturgeon as ‘the boss’. It’s not her fault: they are Nationalists, after all.
This contempt for local democracy has come to the fore over the past few weeks as the SNP has campaigned ahead of tomorrow’s local elections. The party knows turn-out will be low; this is what happens when you denude local government of its meaning and purpose.
So instead of focusing on the local issues that the campaign might merit, the SNP has decided to focus on motivating committed Nationalists by claiming the election is a chance to ‘send a message’ to Boris Johnson.
The Prime Minister has as much control over local democracy in Scotland as Emmanuel Macron but, sad to say, it will work.
Why tackle the complex realities of today, when the fantasies of nationalism can help obscure your failures and your inaction?
Truth
The blunt truth is that local government in Scotland is no longer anything of the sort.
Buzz words such as ‘community empowerment’ are all the rage, but the broad culture is still to do things for people, not with them.
And characterised by weak leadership, it is no match for a powerful Edinburgh political establishment which appears to think it would be far more convenient if Scotland’s 32 local authorities could be reduced to one: itself.
Tomorrow is a chance to demand something better. It is a chance to oppose the centralising mentality in our governing structures in Scotland.
It is a chance to demand that power is driven down to street level.
It is an opportunity to insist that, instead of frittering away millions on bungled ferries and pointless new independence prospectuses, the SNP Government should grant our cities and towns some of the independence it claims is so important by providing them with the funding to support themselves.
Candidates who understand the need to put place before party will get my vote tomorrow. And if they have a ball of wire wool and some rat poison, that would not go amiss too.