Scottish government says missing ferry deal document found

The Scottish government says it has found a missing email detailing which minister signed off a controversial CalMac ferry contract.

The government initially said it could not locate the document.

It now says it has found an email showing then Transport Minister Derek Mackay approved Ferguson Marine being given the contract to build the ferries.

The project is now five years behind schedule, and well over budget.

The two ferries are likely to cost more than £250m as opposed to the original price of £97m

A recent Audit Scotland report said the ferry deal was approved by ministers without normal financial safeguards being in place.

The report also found that there was "insufficient documentary evidence" about the decision to award the contract - which led to opposition parties demanding to see the "missing" document.

The Scottish Conservatives said the email produced by the government did not answer why it had decided to award the contract to the Ferguson shipyard despite being advised against doing so.

And they accused the government of orchestrating a campaign to try to pin the blame on Mr Mackay - who resigned as the country's finance secretary in 2020 after sending inappropriate messages to a 16-year-old boy on social media.

The current Transport Minister, Jenny Gilruth, told MSPs that she had some "good news to share with parliament", before going on to say: "The missing document has been found".

She added: "Ministers were advised of this by officials shortly before noon today and I wanted to take the first available opportunity to give parliament this news."

Ms Gilruth said the email, which has now been published on the government website, "shows that the decision was rightly and properly taken by then transport minister Derek Mackay".

The email from Mr Mackay's office, which was sent in October 2015, reads: "The minister is content with the proposals and would like them to be moved on as quickly as possible please."

Ms Gilruth said the emails - between two officials who had since left government - had been found "by chance" because a copy had been retained by someone in the Scottish government's finance department.

Scottish Conservative MSP Graham Simpson said there was a "real and enduring stench of coverup" over the awarding of the contracts.

He added: "The missing document we and the Scottish public are seeking is one that tells us why the SNP awarded it to Ferguson, given they were expressly advised not to.

"Simply revealing another email in support of the SNP's desperate 'Operation Blame Derek Mackay' is not going to cut it.

"However much Jenny Gilruth pleads with us, we won't give up on this until SNP ministers answer a simple question: Why?"

Official documents previously published by the government showed several former and current ministers were involved in the decision to award the contract.

The Scottish government had already published an email from October 2015 in which Derek Mackay's permission was sought to go ahead.

However, other documents on the government website suggested Keith Brown - now the justice secretary - was asked to sign off Fergusons as preferred bidder in August 2015 as Mr Mackay was on leave.

Another official document shows the final approval was requested of Mr Mackay in a memo copied to Mr Brown.

The memo also notes that John Swinney "approved the financial implications" prior to Ferguson being announced as the preferred bidder by Nicola Sturgeon.

Scottish Labour's transport spokesman Neil Bibby said it was a "disgrace" that the document had not been given to Audit Scotland originally, adding there was still not "a shred of information about why this decision was made".

He continued: "Now these documents show that it was cleared by John Swinney. There are serious questions now for the deputy first minister."

Willie Rennie, of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, said it was "difficult to believe that the SNP happened to find this apparently critical document just before the debate on ferries".

He called for an urgent public inquiry, adding: "The transport minister's claim that it was only Derek McKay that signed off the contract has almost immediately been undermined by another document that revealed that it was the deputy first minister that signed off the contract."

Ferguson's - the last commercial shipyard on the Clyde - went into administration in August 2014 but was saved when then-First Minister Alex Salmond personally intervened.

He persuaded Jim McColl - a billionaire businessman who was one of his economic advisers - to take over the yard just days before the Scottish independence referendum.

Ferguson's was announced as preferred bidder to build two new ferries for state-owned ferry network CalMac a year later - despite being the most expensive of the six yards that bid for the contract.

The signing of the £97m fixed-price contract was announced in October 2015 to applause on the opening day of the SNP conference in Aberdeen, with the first steel being cut a month later.

But it only took a few weeks for the timetable for building the ferries to slip as costs soared - and the yard was eventually taken over by the government after again going into administration in 2019.

The new boss of the yard, David Tydeman, said recently that the target was for both ferries to enter service next year - five years later than originally planned.

He also said it was his intention to deliver both ships at a total cost of £206m - more than double the original £97m price tag.

That figure is on top of a £45m loan previously given to the shipyard by the government.

Jenny Gilruth felt like she had a win today when she was able to snatch the headlines during an opposition debate by producing the "missing document", brandishing it aloft in the chamber.

It settles once and for all that it was indeed Derek Mackay who signed off the controversial contract - although Audit Scotland's original question was *why* it had been approved, not by whom.

The government believes this has been answered too, both in other documents and in Nicola Sturgeon's responses on the many occasions she has faced these questions.

However, as the bad-tempered debate at Holyrood showed, this will not be the end of the matter.

To start with, why was this crucial record of a nine-figure investment only retained in an email chain "buried in someone's electronic files", as the minister put it?

Now that he has been confirmed as a central player, will Mr Mackay be called to give evidence to the Holyrood committee probing the deal?

And what was the role of John Swinney, who the email chain suggests was pulled in to approve the junior minister's approval?

The discovery of the missing document closes off one line of inquiry - but MSPs will likely continue to ask questions about the deal for at least as long as construction of the ferries at Port Glasgow drags on.