SECRET SCOTLAND: COCOONS OF SCOTGOV CONTROL EXPOSED AS PROJECT NEPTUNE REPORTS
The ferry fiasco continues as a picture of political corruption, incompetence and vested interests under the aegis of the SNP comes into view.
Scotland’s ferry network is essential infrastructure and not something to be approached casually by policy makers. Despite this being obvious, apparently it needs to be restated, judging by the cacophony of ineptitude, political corruption and ineffective governance structures afflicting our lifeline ferry network. From funding, procurement to construction and media fairy-tale: everything seems cocooned inside Scottish Government control. A secret Scotland is revealed, where governance structures are unfit for purpose and allegations are levelled against a public-relations obsessed SNP administration.
Even a casual scan of the Ernst and Young ‘Project Neptune’ report leaves one with that sinking feeling that once again taxpayers will be losing out, and that there is more to the story than publicly known or admitted.
The report in question is the product of multinational consultancy Ernst and Young, commissioned by the Scottish Government to examine the ‘strategic framework of options for the CHFS network’, or ‘Project Neptune’ for short. Put simply, the incumbent Scottish National Party administration tasked the consultancy with examining governance structures concerning Scotland’s failing ferry service.
How did we end up here? What fiasco precipitated a need for a wholesale review of ferry network governance structures? Additionally, what does the Ernst and Young report say? Further, does the Scottish Government’s decision to select Ernst and Young to conduct the report tell us anything?
Sailing toward fiasco
When it comes to the incumbent Scottish devolved administration it is hard to escape the conclusion that it is increasingly defined by ineptitude. That it takes a Turkish shipyard to construct two new lifeline CalMac ferries for Islay, despite taxpayers owning a nationalised shipyard on the lower Clyde tells quite the story.
But worse, there is a lingering stench of political corruption too. It is no longer possible to ignore the possibility that the political and public relations requirements of the SNP has been trumping competency and good governance. When a ferry procurement contract is signed by a Scottish Government without the standard full-refund guarantee for taxpayers, serious questions must be asked.
Many originally dismissed the decision to award Fergusson Marine with a ferry contract following its £97m bid as an exemplar in incompetence by the SNP. But there has always been possibility of political corruption.
There are by now quite a few voices making this case in the public domain. One such person is transport expert and consultant Roy Pedersen, who informed a parliamentary committee that “incompetence, vested interest or corruption”1 could be the explanation behind the decision to award Fergusson Marine with the £97m ferry contract (despite being the highest bidder).
Another set of voices are the former management of Fergusson Marine itself. They have accused the SNP government of “abuse of power”2. The allegation is out there to be investigated, that the SNP sought to protect state-owned ferry firm CMAL from having its politically embarrassing mistakes being made public.
There are reasonable grounds to suspect there is more to the ferry fiasco than mere incompetence. Ultimately, a £97m contract to build ferries could end up costing taxpayers more than £400m.
Public relations over outcomes
But should anyone really be all that surprised? It is hardly breaking new ground to suggest that under Nicola Sturgeon the Scottish Government, the SNP itself and even the wider pro-Independence movement has been entirely subverted by the needs of a more Presidential politics.
Under Nicola Sturgeon it is increasingly possible to see a propensity to prioritise communicating ‘the line’ to the 24 hour press cycle over any actual focus on positive policy outcomes. Worse still, there seems to be a conflation of electorally successful soundbites with actually pulling the levers of power to obtain outcomes.
Am I alone in suspecting our First Minister represents a capable politician when it comes to winning votes, but is an extremely poor technocrat? Most First Ministers have at least one iconic and significant policy which defines their time in power. Donald Dewar had the parliament coming into existence. For others such as Jack McConnell there was a smoking ban and Alex Salmond got a ‘gold standard’ independence referendum agreed. But what of Ms Sturgeon? Baby boxes? Excluding that the list of botched, ill considered or just plain illegal policy initiatives has become a long one.
The ban on singing sectarian songs at football matches crumbled at first sight of the reality of ever having to actually police it. Then there was the state appointed guardian policy which courts struck down as an illegal. Pursuing another independence referendum has went absolutely nowhere, as did the now-ditched pledge to establish a publicly owned energy company. Even the incoming Gender Recognition Reform proposals reveal inept policy-making by policy capture.
A long list of failure without any delivery. But this has all been successfully buried beneath the slick public relations machinery of the modern SNP. The media lines trump delivery, and the presidentialisation of politics around the personality of Nicola Sturgeon hangs over everything like a zeppelin.
An SNP addicted to internal political control -inside its own government, party and wider independence movement - is how you end up with Scotland’s unfolding ferry fiasco.
Project Neptune
Ernst and Young’s report itself is absolutely scathing. It pulls back the curtains on governance structure which are described as wildly unfit for purpose. It tells of an “absence of long-term planning”, with “sub-optimal” approach to maintenance and replacement of vessels, potentially causing “higher than necessary or unforeseen maintenance costs”.
We learn about just how ineffective, clunking and unacceptable the tripartite system involving Transport Scotland, CMAL, and ferry operator CalMac currently is. Even just a glance at an illustrative diagram of this tripartite arrangement speaks volumes.
Ultimately the Project Neptune report concludes that as things stand, this status quo “presents operational challenges and is unlikely to represent best value”3.
The Fergusson Marine ferry fiasco unfolded in an untenable situation where everything was wrapped up inside four levels of Scottish Government control. Transport Scotland agency as funders, procuring and vessel owning company, Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL), the ferry operators Calmac and the nationalised shipbuilders Ferguson Marine. All of it cocooned inside Scottish Government control. None of it ultimately revealed as efficient, capable or reliable.
Indeed, this picture of SNP government control was thoroughly exposed as having about as much transparency as mud when the Permanent Secretary had to defend the lack of documents around the Ferguson Marine contract4.
Double speak?
Sadly for everyone concerned, the Project Neptune report will unlikely prove to be the impartial analysis we all desire it to be. Questions have been raised as to why the Scottish Government decided to select Ernst and Young to be the private consulting firm to conduct the report. Critics have alleged the consultancy has a track record of promoting using private capital to redesign public services. Suddenly the spectre of “public-private partnership” reappears. A set of possible policy proposals gravitating around public-private partnerships was something which did much to discredit the former Scottish Labour-LibDem administration in Holyrood a few decades ago. That the SNP, after 15 years of relatively unchallenged power, is reaching for it again is quite concerning.
Why did the SNP government choose Ernst and Young if “the First Minister has been absolutely clear that we would not consider unbundling or privatisation”5? This is a private sector firm which can be credibly accused of having a vested interest in private provision of public services.
This is the firm Ms Sturgeon picked to write the Project Neptune report, make recommendations. She gave it £560k in public cash…only to immediately reject unbundling and privatisation recommendations once the report became public.
Maybe the clue is in my last sentence, ‘once the report became public’. After all, the Scottish Government originally sat on Project Neptune and delayed publication6.
SNP-brand ‘transparency’ was hard at work again, where ‘the line’ for the media took precedence over outcomes. In the meantime Scotland’s ferry fiasco has left remote communities high and dry, pulled back the curtain on a hidden Scotland where governance becomes a secondary consideration to the immediate political needs of Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP.
One wonders for how long the Scottish National Party can continue to take its voters for granted - and get away with it - under the pretence of a long promised independence referendum being just over that next hill. And the next, and the next…and the next.
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/ferry-firm-told-to-apologise-to-transport-expert-threatened-with-legal-action/
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19000143.ministers-accused-abuse-power-ex-ferguson-marine-chiefs-deny-corruption/
https://www.transport.gov.scot/publication/strategic-framework-of-options-for-the-chfs-network-project-neptune/
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/ferries-fiasco-permanent-secretary-defends-lack-of-documents-around-ferguson-marine-contract-3678295
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scotland-ferries-scandal-privatisation-ruled-out-for-ferries-after-critical-report-3836943
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/another-snp-secrecy-row-key-27378922
Excellent as usual, thank you. Utterly damning and yet people still believe the sound bites.