Exclusive:Ferries control shake-up call to avoid repeat of 'relentless focus on troubled contracts'
GMB union says ferry improvements should be a priority in next year’s Scottish elections
A shake-up of how Scotland’s ferries are controlled has been urged by the GMB union to prevent a repeat of the “relentless focus on troubled contracts”.
The union wants west coast operator CalMac and ferry and port-owning firm Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited (Cmal), which are both owned by the Scottish Government, brought back together after being split nearly 20 years ago to meet European Union competition rules.
The union said that would “increase accountability, improve services and bolster Scotland’s maritime sector” and should be a priority in next May’s Holyrood elections.
GMB Scotland secretary Louse Gilmour said: “The current structures have not delivered the modern ferries our islands deserve, but have been hugely effective in allowing ministers, civil servants, and quangos to shuffle responsibility from one to the other.”
She said that had been “brutally exposed” by delays and overspends blighting construction of the Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa ferries at the Ferguson Marine shipyard in Port Glasgow, which was also taken over by the Scottish Government in 2019, a year after the vessels should have been finished.
Ms Gilmour said: “The relentless focus on the troubled contracts has become a diversion from wider concerns around Scotland’s ferry services and the voice of islanders and workers has been ignored for too long.”
She repeated her call for the yard, where GMB is the biggest union, to be directly awarded further CalMac contracts.
She said: “More by luck than design, Scotland finds itself in the enviable position of having a publicly-owned shipyard with a long history of successfully building small, reliable ferries and a publicly-owned ferry company that could not need them more.
“At the next election, our political parties must show voters they are capable of joining those two dots as part of wider reforms shaped by the experience of islanders and expertise of workers.
“Ferguson’s was Scotland’s ferry factory for many years and there is no good reason why it cannot be again.”
The union’s CalMac-Cmal shake-up call echoes a motion to be debated at the Scottish Liberal Democrats conference in Glasgow on Saturday. The motion calls for the bodies to become independent of the Scottish Government.
Meanwhile, Scottish Labour transport spokesperson Claire Baker said her party would “deliver a real ferry plan to upgrade our rusting fleet, support Scottish shipbuilding and restore accountability in ferry governance structures”.
Her Scottish Conservatives counterpart Sue Webber said: “Any future ferry procurement must produce a system that delivers vessels on time and [is] best value for the taxpayer, as the SNP’s fragmented system is clearly failing islanders who continue to have to cope with complete chaos.”
A Transport Scotland spokesperson said: “No decisions have been made on reforming the governance of Scotland’s ferry companies, but nothing is off the table.
“At present, the focus is on preparations to bring the six new major vessels into service, which started with Glen Sannox on January 13, and we expect the first of the Islay class vessels to be delivered [from Turkey] later this year.
“All parties, including Transport Scotland, Cmal and CalMac, continue to work closely together under the current arrangements, which has enabled a significant acceleration in project delivery in recent years.”
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