Tories to call for more ferry funding as watchdog reports on Ferguson Marine

The Scottish Tories are to call for an increase to ferry funding in a debate this week.

The debate will push for long term financing for the ferry fleet, which the party’s transport spokesman, Graham Simpson, has said is “ageing and ever more unreliable”.

A report from watchdog, Audit Scotland, is expected this week on the Ferguson Marine shipyard, which was taken into public ownership in 2019 and subsequently shown to have major problems that led to the delay and increased cost of two ferries.

The ships, the Glen Sannox and the as-yet-unnamed 802, were due to be delivered in 2018, but have since been pushed back to April and July 2023 and projected to cost twice as much as initially thought.

But on Monday, Luke van Beek, a former independent adviser to the Scottish Government on ship building, said the cost could rise as high as £400 million.

“I assume the current estimate of cost is somewhere in the £350 million to £400 million bracket,” he told The Times.

“The cost of completing them is likely to exceed the cost of starting again, particularly if they were to start again on a simpler design.”

Mr Simpson said the Scottish Government had “dodged questions on this fiasco for too long”.

“The SNP have presided over failure after failure at Ferguson Marine,” he said.

“From endless delays, to spiralling costs, to too-short cables, the SNP’s nationalised shipyard has become an utter laughing stock.

“But that should not distract us from the real casualties of this SNP incompetence – Scotland’s island communities.

“Islanders have been abandoned by an SNP Government that has not only failed to produce the lifeline ferries it promised, but is still failing to provide adequate long-term funding for Scotland’s ferry provision.

“As a result, island residents are having to rely on an ageing and ever more unreliable fleet – with all the daily stress and disruption this entails.

“The SNP have dodged questions on this fiasco for too long. The Scottish Conservatives are bringing this debate on Wednesday to stand up for island communities and force the SNP to answer for these shocking failures.”