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Passengers are going to be worried about crews not getting paid for half the year, having to find other employment for the rest of the year and therefore, I suspect, being extremely weary and tired when they operate your ferries. Is that not a safety risk in and of itself?

The UK Government might well, as we expect, decide to put you and your competitors—for example, Irish Ferries, which you refer to in your letter—under the same requirement to pay the national minimum wage, but what, apart from risk to passengers, will be the benefit of having crew who are very tired and weary from having to supplement their income because you have halved their paid time at work?

Do you have any regret or shame?

You have acknowledged breaking the requirements of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 for business reasons. Are there any other laws that you would consider breaking if a similar situation arose? Can you understand why passengers would be very worried about travelling with a ferry company that is happy to break the law?

Natalie Don, who joins us remotely, will ask the next question. I remind members that their questions do not have to be allocated to all witnesses. However, it has been very helpful to hear from all the witnesses at the beginning.

Do you understand that it is not for an employer to decide what a union will think or how it will respond? It is for the union to decide that. Why did you not respect that fundamental, basic principle of employer and trade union relations?

Thank you. We will move on to questions. Will you explain what is currently happening with the MV European Causeway, and what regulations you are not complying with?

Thank you.

Graham Simpson will join us later. For clarity, Graham will be attending as a non-committee member, which means that he is entitled to attend the public part of the meeting and, at my discretion, to participate in questioning witnesses.

Agenda item 1 is a decision on whether to take items 4 to 7 in private. Items 4 and 5 are consideration of the evidence heard at our two evidence sessions, item 6 is consideration of draft letters on carbon capture, utilisation and storage, and item 7 is consideration of the committee’s work programme. Do members agree to take those items in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Agenda item 2 is an evidence session as part of our inquiry into the role of local government and its cross-sectoral partners in financing and delivering a net zero Scotland. I refer members to the papers from the clerk and the Scottish Parliament information centre for the item.

We launched the inquiry in December to look into progress at a local level in reaching net zero targets. The inquiry is also considering what role the Scottish Government and its agencies can play in supporting and challenging local government to work well with its partners, and how local government can play its part in ensuring a just transition to net zero.

We are now in phase 2 of our inquiry, looking in depth at the key themes that emerged from our initial evidence sessions and our call for written views, and we will continue with a theme that we began last week: vocational skills and workforce readiness for net zero targets.

I am pleased to welcome our panellists, who join us remotely. Ian Hill is industry insight manager and Ian Hughes is engagement director for Scotland at the Construction Industry Training Board; Gordon Nelson is Scotland director at the Federation of Master Builders; Martyn Raine is technical and skills manager at the Scottish and Northern Ireland Plumbing Employers’ Federation; and Grant Tierney is chair of Local Authority Building Standards Scotland. Thank you for accepting our invitation; we are delighted to have you here.

We have allocated around 75 minutes for the panel. We welcome comprehensive answers, but with five panellists you will appreciate that we will also welcome concise answers, where possible. I remind members to direct their question to a specific person or to set out a running order for answering the question if it is relevant to more than one witness.

My first question relates to industry in general. Are there areas of the workforce where witnesses expect current skills gaps to increase or new skills gaps to emerge in relation to the transition to net zero? I will go to Ian Hill first.

Will the new crew be unionised?

I will move on to some further questions on your shareholder. You have set great store by the claim that you wanted to oblige the shareholder, even though you say that it did not instruct you to carry out the actions that you have taken. Your shareholder has fundamental interests globally, but it also has fundamental strategic interests, for example in the freeports that the UK Government is developing and the green ports that are being developed here in Scotland. Do you not think that you are jeopardising not only the reputation of your shareholder but its strategic aims, which might prove to be counterproductive for its interests?