Seòmar agus comataidhean

We have run out of time. As you say, Mr Hobbs, we might want to explore further issues with you, but I thank all three witnesses for the time that they have given us this morning and for their openness. That has been appreciated.

As I mentioned at the start of the meeting, we have been able to publish some written evidence. We are keen to publish subsequent evidence, but we have to go through a certain due process in order to put that into the public domain. We will do that and give the matter further consideration. We might come back to the witnesses with questions that arise from that process. As a committee, we will also need to consider whether there would be value in having a further evidence session, because we have covered some areas in some detail, but we probably have not had the time to scrutinise other areas as much as we would have liked—it might not feel like that to the witnesses, from their end, but that is our take. I thank them once again.

I will suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses.

The next item on our agenda is consideration of evidence and witness information on major capital projects in Scotland, which the committee has taken a long-standing interest in. I am delighted to welcome Helen Carter, deputy director, infrastructure and investment, Scottish Government; Lawrence Shackman, director of major projects, Scottish Government; and Bill Reeve, director of rail, Transport Scotland. We have a fairly limited amount of time this morning but we will try to maximise the best use of it.

I have a couple of opening issues that I want to explore. My first question is partly for my benefit. We have received a briefing that suggests that, as far as the capital budget allocations that you have are concerned, there has been a higher than expected financial transactions budget allocation but a lower than expected capital budgets allocation over the next few years. What do the financial transactions budget allocations derive from and where do the capital budget allocations come from? Helen Carter, could you answer that?

Do you do any work to disentangle the relative weight and impact of Covid, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Brexit and so on and the effect that they are having on your supply chain costs and availability?

We have two evidence sessions this morning and the first is a continuation of our inquiries into the Audit Scotland report “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”. Joining us this morning—in the room rather than remotely, I am pleased to say—we have Kevin Hobbs, the chief executive officer of Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd, and Morag McNeill, the interim chair of the board; we also have Erik Østergaard, who was formerly the chair of CMAL and is now the chair of David MacBrayne Ltd.

I will invite Morag to give us a short opening statement. Thank you for providing us with a written submission, which we found very helpful. It has been published on our website. We got some further material yesterday; we have to make sure that it is cleansed, data-wise and so on, so we have not been able to publish that yet and we cannot refer to that material this morning. We hope to be able to publish it over the next few days. That may well mean that we will return to you to seek further particulars and search a bit more into what you have provided us with—we may even invite you back to give us more oral evidence—but we will see how things go this morning.

Thank you very much indeed. You set out quite a lot of the ground that we want to cover this morning. To pick up on one point that you made, do you accept the recommendations of the Audit Scotland report?

Again, just for the record, you mentioned evidence that we have received that suggested that, Mr Østergaard, your letter was dated two weeks—or 12 days, I think—before the decision was taken by ministers. The submission says:

“While it may have expressed his frustration”—

your frustration, Mr Østergaard—

“the email makes clear that it dated from two weeks earlier”—

it was 12 days—

“and before the latest round of negotiations. (The Auditor General’s report does not make that fact clear, and it could be taken to read as a final position.)”

However, you are telling us this morning that that was the final position of the board.

Can I follow up some of those lines of questioning from Sharon Dowey? I go back to the point about written authority or not written authority, and the difference between instruction from your sole shareholder and written authority. To all intents and purposes, it was equivalent, was it not, because your advice was being overridden?

Mr Østergaard, do you want to come in at this point?

Mr Østergaard, in one biography that I have read about you, when you were appointed to the board of the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company, you were described as possessing

“extensive experience with a number of European shipping concerns in a career that has spanned over 30 years in shipping.”

Have you ever known a ship to be built without a builder’s refund guarantee?

In the context of what we have heard this morning and what we have seen in the written submission, did you at any point consider resigning as chair of CMAL?