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—and those who have seen SNP ministers desperate to try to cover up their responsibility for it.

Scotland has spent many years lagging behind on STEM and entrepreneurship education, and it is vital that that is addressed, albeit belatedly. On the technology side, we saw during the pandemic that the issuing of laptops to schoolchildren across Scotland was plagued with delays and obfuscations, as has been the promise to provide internet-ready devices for young people in Scotland since the election. Our education and apprenticeship system has been bruised by two years of Covid and it will take time to recover. The cabinet secretary spoke about new start-ups, apprenticeships and entrepreneurial learning in schools. When precisely will those things be delivered?

The minister has claimed that his Government seeks to reduce barriers to trade and has outward-looking principles, yet it remains the policy of his Government to put up hard barriers to trade with our closest neighbours and largest trading partners in other parts of the United Kingdom and to destroy the internal market that we enjoy.

To focus on something that he can actually deliver, will the minister advise what the Government is doing to support Scottish business and to increase operations and trade opportunities within our United Kingdom market?

Given the Scottish Government’s hope that a version of model 4 will be delivered in two years and that, as Douglas Ross rightly highlighted, there is no indication yet of how long model 6 will take to deliver, it is likely that there will be a considerable on-going reliance on the transferring of maternity patients to hospitals outwith Moray for the next few years.

However, the cabinet secretary did not answer Douglas Ross’s question on blue-light transfers from Moray, and the Scottish Ambulance Service was not mentioned once in his statement. Can he advise me what impact the on-going need for patient transports relating to maternity services will have on the Ambulance Service, which is already under pressure? What discussions has he had with the service on any additional support that it will need to undertake the role in the longer term?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I could not get the app to work. I would have voted yes.

Will the minister advise members who will make up the new industry leadership group for retail, how much progress it has made in appointing a co-chair and when he expects the first meeting to take place?

Will the minister take an intervention?

Will the minister take an intervention on that point?

As an islander, I think that today’s debate has been an important one. It has been illuminating, although, I suspect, not in the way that the Scottish Government would have hoped.

For far too many years, there has been a slow-blazing fire where a Scottish Government ferries strategy should be. That has had a real impact not only in my Highlands and Islands region but across other parts of Scotland.

We are all guilty of sometimes looking too much at the symptoms. We are annoyed by cancellations. We get upset about the impact on the economic recovery of our communities. As many of us have done today, we focus on those most obvious rusting reminders of ministerial failure that sit, unfinished, on the banks of the Clyde—the wooden windows and fake funnels of the Glen Sannox, as Edward Mountain highlighted. The project was launched with a fanfare that must now make even the First Minister cringe with embarrassment. As Neil Bibby said, ministers were quick to head down there when there were public relations opps, but not so much now.

Although we must take a real look at the causes and solutions, underlying it all is a Scottish Government that has taken remote and island communities for granted—a Government that has, more than any in the history of devolution, shied away from structural change in favour of showmanship, and a Government that has placed long-term problems that need big solutions in the “too difficult” pile.

Now, after almost a decade and a half in power, the consequences of that approach are showing in almost every part of our lives. There have been too many examples of those consequences from around the chamber today. I want to emphasise the impact of those consequences on the lives of the communities that ferries serve.

I mentioned recovery, which is a key area. At vital parts of this two-year pandemic, businesses and workers have sought to get things back on track and to bring in money when they could, often after long periods of being unable to operate at all. However, too often, communities have been hampered in that recovery by the problems with their ferry links.

For some parts of our economy, there have been longer-standing problems, with some of our most fragile communities left behind by choices that were made for them in Edinburgh. For some, the problems have meant poorer access to public services, as members have highlighted, with islanders having to miss rarely available appointments on the mainland because of a lack of transport options. Although isolation has been one of the worst parts of the pandemic for many people, for some who are reliant on an unreliable network, that isolation was made worse.

There has yet to be a clear, strategic look at Scotland’s ferries in the round. The Scottish Government has attempted to answer concerns in a piecemeal and short-termist way. It has often broken promises on fair funding and road equivalent tariff in the northern isles. First, we get the pledges, which then become ambitious targets and, finally, aspirational dates in the diary to be conveniently forgotten. Our islands have too often seen ministers visit and make promises. Islanders have then watched those promises sail away into the sunset, never to be met—if only the ferry network was that predictable.

It will take an entirely different approach to resolve the issue. We are calling today for an inquiry into the repeated failures to make provision for renewing our ageing fleet. Above all, we need to examine the sustainability of the fleet in delivering current levels of service. We know that it is not only the franchised ferry fleets that are in need but those that the two local authorities in Orkney and Shetland operate.

At the same time, any strategic examination of ferries must make a credible estimate of the costs and advantages of fixed links. Colleagues will know that fixed links can take a number of forms and that they could be a key part of the transport network in the northern isles, as Willie Rennie highlighted. Where real benefit can be demonstrated—I believe that, in many cases, it can be—we should get on with the job of building sooner rather than later.

We must be realistic about the needs of our fleet in order to be able to review them and set them out for the coming years and decades. That will take a level of honesty and commitment to funding and to the sort of contingencies that are essential in such operations.

As we look forward to reducing carbon emissions, where do our ferries stand? The Scottish Government can hardly claim to have any leadership role when we buy up from abroad vessels that countries dispose of as they switch to renewable alternatives. Norway aims to have an entirely electric car ferry fleet by 2025. Where will Scotland stand at that point? We know that the Scottish Government’s decision to buy the northern isles boats has put it even further away from its own targets for reduced emission vessels.

At the heart of these decisions must be the communities themselves. The future of routes, provision and resourcing should not be decided in St Andrew’s house or Transport Scotland alone. It should not be left up to ministers or officials in whom communities, understandably, have little confidence.

Those decisions should be made with by consulting and collaborating with people who depend on ferries, but that simply does not appear to be on the Government’s agenda. As the local council highlighted, the Western Isles still have no one on the board of CalMac—the very operator that provides vital lifeline services to those islands.

A number of notable contributions have been made today. My colleague Graham Simpson highlighted that NASA designed and built rockets to go to the moon’s Sea of Tranquillity quicker than the SNP has taken to build a replacement ferry to Tarbert. He also highlighted two figures that relate to how much is needed to invest in our ferry fleet. Former transport minister Graeme Dey is reported to have suggested that it would take £1.5 billion over 10 years. Our estimate is £1.4 billion.

Edward Mountain noted that Scotland now needs to build 2.5 ferries every year for 10 years just to get back on track. However, there is no inherent problem with Scottish shipbuilding or contracts from Government. In the past few years alone, yards in Scotland have delivered two aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy and are producing type 26 and type 31 frigates for the UK Government.

Speaking about the ferries at Ferguson, Jamie Greene rightly highlighted that, despite the endless failures, the delays, the cost increases and the people and communities that have been let down, no one in the SNP Government has been held to account.

My colleague Donald Cameron spoke passionately about the degradation of the service that people in the Western Isles have come to expect, its potential to further the problem of depopulation and the impact on schoolchildren on Iona of unreliable ferry links with Oban.

There has been a growing crisis in our ferry services for some time now. A programme of recovery will be one strand of sorting things out, but, as we have made clear, that will not be the only action that is needed. We need a long-term, strategic approach to ensure that services remain sustainable and operational and that they improve for the communities that we serve.

I hope that the minister and her colleagues have noted the many examples that have been outlined today, and I hope that the cabinet secretary recognises and accepts that this is not good enough now, and that it is getting worse. Our constituents are watching. They are desperate for better from this Government. I hope that every MSP across the chamber who genuinely cares about the future of communities that rely on ferries will support our motion.

As my colleague Edward Mountain highlighted, the deal with Ferguson’s was based on a fixed price with milestone payments. That price spiralled out of control, and we have seen the delays—we heard all about them today. This week, the chief executive of CMAL advised me that, in relation to the agreement with the Turkish yard, the contract has been agreed on a fixed-price basis with agreed milestone payments. What will be different this time?