We did not need a £600,000 report to tell us ferries were a disaster - Scotsman comment

It is a situation which would be laughable, had it not already made you cry.

Hull 802 under construction at the Ferguson Marine shipyard in Port Glasgow in April with sister ferry Glen Sannox afloat behind. Picture: John Devlin

In a development which could have been taken straight of a Yes Minister script, it has transpired that the ‘value for money” report into the delayed and over-budget ferries is itself estimated to have cost taxpayers an eye-watering £620,000.

The due diligence study, which involved civil servants and outside consultants, was commissioned essentially to establish what everyone already knew – that the project to build the Glen Sannox and as-yet-unnamed hull 802 at Ferguson Marine has been disastrous.

That is not to say such exercises cannot be useful if they ultimately end saving money or correcting a project before it goes wrong. Neither, however, has happened in this case.

The report concluded that it would be cheaper to abandon hull 802 and start from scratch elsewhere.

But after considering the findings, Wellbeing Economy Secretary Neil Gray said the Scottish Government would instead plough ahead as they were, warning that scrapping the build would only lead to further delays.

And so we are entitled to ask the question today – what exactly was the point?

The final bill of £620,000 for a report which was ultimately over-ruled is a staggering use of public funds, even if it is a drop in the ocean compared to the overall cost overruns in a project which the opposition says is haemorrhaging money “on an industrial scale”.

Due diligence is vital on major public procurement projects. We only wish such care was applied at the outset of this sorry saga, before we saw costs running to three times more than the original £97 million contract, delays of five years and questions over the propriety of the awarding of the contract.

This project has been a scandalous waste of public funds and a complete betrayal our island communities. It should rightly shame everyone involved.

And we did not need a £620,000 report to tell us that.