CalMac ferries scandal: Scottish Government's talk of a 'fixed-price contract' is a smokescreen– Kenny MacAskill

Go into any search engine and ask “what is a fixed-price contract?” and you’ll see a definition of “a set sum for a task”.

Work continues on the delayed and over-budget ferries being built at the Ferguson Marine shipyard (Picture: John Devlin)

Straightforward you might think – but not in Scotland. Vessels 801 and 802 which still sit in Fergusons Yard in Port Glasgow are stated by the Scottish Government to have been commissioned with a fixed-price contract of £48.5 million for each vessel.

As a result, the price of £97 million has entered folklore, akin to what was initially said about the Scottish Parliament building at Holyrood. But as with that particular scandal, costs for the ferries have soared and the supposed fixed price has long since been left in their wake.

But was it ever a fixed-price contract? I wrote to John Swinney asking how it could be classified as that when there were clauses in the contract allowing for variation in specification and, more importantly, in price. The response I got was frankly disingenuous.

Sticking to the mantra that it was a fixed-price, reference was made to a standard contract used in the trade. However, that was then followed by the admission that: “There were clear and established mechanisms in the contract to enable changes to be mutually agreed and costed.”

So according to the Scottish Government, we have a fixed-price contract where what’s being provided can vary and, with it, the cost. In anyone else’s book that most certainly isn’t a fixed-price contract. Moreover, as we’ve seen, the changes to specification have been substantial and, as a result, the cost overrun has been massive.

What’s going on, you might ask? This is about the blame game. These were the wrong vessels, a complex LNG dual-fuel engine, insisted upon by CMAL, and a contract they were made to rush through by the Scottish Government in its eagerness for a fanfare announcement by the First Minister.

Rather than accept their errors, they’ve sought to pin the blame on Jim McColl in particular, and the yard more generally. Yet there’s nothing wrong with either McColl, one of Scotland’s most successful businessmen, or the workforce. Instead, blame rests with those who procured the wrong ships and rushed to sign a contract lacking in specification. ‘Fixed price’ is a smokescreen.

Kenny MacAskill is Alba Party MP for East Lothian