Nicola Sturgeon: Buck stops with me over ferry contract row

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has told MSPs “the money stops with me” in the dispute over the contract for two delayed and over-budget ferries.

Audit Scotland said the contract was awarded to Ferguson shipyard against the advice of a key authority and without the usual financial safeguards.

Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross said the dispute was “one of the worst public spending disasters since decentralisation”.

Ms Sturgeon said the goal is to save jobs at the yard and deliver the ships.

She also pointed out that the decision to go ahead with the contract without the usual financial guarantees was made by former Transport Secretary Derek Mackay.

The Scottish Government later released an email from 2015 asking for his permission to proceed.

The latest estimate says the ferries are five years late and will cost up to £250m – more than two and a half times the original £97m budget.

The shipyard was nationalized in 2019 and the government is now bound to pay the additional costs of the project.

Ms Sturgeon ceremoniously ‘launched’ one of the ferries in November 2017, despite it being so unfinished that it had painted boards in place of windows.

She was also at Port Glasgow shipyard in 2015 when it was revealed she was the preferred bidder for the ferry contract – which was eventually awarded to Ferguson despite advice from a government agency.

State-owned port and ferry infrastructure group CMAL was looking to start the procurement process over again after it emerged Ferguson Marine Engineering Ltd (FMEL) was unable to offer the standard guarantee of a full refund should anything go wrong.

Audit Scotland said it was not clear why this decision was made, saying there was “no documented evidence to confirm why Scottish ministers were willing to accept the risks of awarding contracts to FMEL, despite CMAL’s concerns”. .

Speaking in Holyrood on Thursday, Ms Sturgeon said the criticisms in the Audit Scotland report were “entirely fair and justified” and said the Government needed “to give serious thought to the lack of record keeping of the decision”.

However, she insisted that measures were being taken to de-risk the deal and that it was still the best that could be done at the time.

Questions were raised in Holyrood as to who was ultimately responsible for the decision, with Ms Sturgeon confirming that the Transport Secretary at the time was Derek Mackay.

Mr Mackay announced the final award of the contract on stage at the SNP conference in October 2015 and later left the government amid a scandal over his social media messages to a teenager.

But Ms Sturgeon insisted that ultimate responsibility rests with her as First Secretary.

She said: “This is a government acting with collective responsibility and I am ultimately responsible for any decisions the government makes. The goat stays with me and I have never tried to shy away from it in any matter.

“I’m not defending the cost overruns or the delay in building these ferries, it’s totally unacceptable.

“But at all times the motivation of this government has been to save jobs, save the shipyard and ensure that these ferries can be delivered – albeit with a delay, and that is a matter or a deep regret.”

Mr Ross said the award was “an absolute shock” and called for a public inquiry to be carried out.

He said: “This is one of the worst public spending disasters since decentralization. It’s a reckless waste of Scottish taxpayers’ money – but we still don’t know exactly who signed that disastrous deal.

“Audit Scotland cannot find a shred of evidence to justify the Government’s decision to go against expert advice without this contract.

“In the secret Scotland of the SNP, all evidence of this decision has disappeared. We are left with Nicola Sturgeon evading responsibility and desperately trying to throw her disgraced ex-minister Derek Mackay under the bus.”

Ms Sturgeon said a “formal review of what went wrong” would be carried out once the ships were ready to learn lessons.

Since the nationalization of the shipyard, problems have arisen again and again.

MSPs were told on Wednesday that the discovery that many of the cables installed on the Glen Sannox were too short had delayed delivery on this ship by eight months and the other ship by six months, adding £8.7m to the total bill could increase . A sum of £3.5m has also been set aside to renew expired warranties on equipment already installed.

Shipyard chiefs have also warned of “the risk of further unknown legacy issues” that will further set back the project, saying they will not know if there has been damage or deterioration to key systems until the ships are launched and tested.