Former shipyard boss accuses Sturgeon of lying

Former shipyard boss Jim McColl has accused First Minister Nicola Sturgeon of lying over her claims that the CalMac contract saved the Ferguson Marine shipyard.

Appearing on the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme, McColl said the yard was doing “outstanding work” and denied Sturgeon’s assertion that the shipyard was saved by the awarding of government contracts, along with 400 jobs.

McColl told the programme: “That's a lie, and at the time there were 150 employees, not 400.

“I think she was a bit rattled in the interview, and she mixed it up with the statement that they made about saving the yard.”

In 2015, just before the SNP’s autumn party conference, McColl’s Ferguson Marine shipyard was announced as the preferred bidder for a fixed-price £97m contract to build two ferries for Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited (CMAL), the state-owned ferry procurement company, to be operated by CalMac.

McColl has insisted the timing of the contract was meant to coincide with the SNP’s party conference, but Sturgeon has denied this.

The pair have also clashed over the ‘refund guarantee’ that was missing from the contract. An Audit Scotland report recently found that Scottish ministers awarded the contract to Ferguson Marine despite the yard being unable to provide mandatory refund guarantees for the financial risk to CMAL. A typical shipbuilding contract contains a refund guarantee to ensure risk is borne by the shipbuilder.

Sturgeon told Good Morning Scotland on Sunday that Ferguson Marine had initially said it could provide the guarantee, and described McColl’s assertions the yard had always maintained it could not as “disingenuous in the extreme”.

On Monday, McColl told the programme: “It's a cash refund guarantee, and we were very clear from the beginning that we can't do that.

“It’s a facility that in other countries, is supported by national investment banks, and we don't have such a facility in the UK or Scotland, so we were not in a position to do it.”