Ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called for an urgent investigation into the handling of the Scottish Government’s £30million rescue package for the BiFab engineering yard.
Brown has written to the chair of the Commons Business Select Committee urging an inquiry into what he describes as “the BiFab scandal” that leaves Scotland missing out on the offshore wind farm revolution.
The move came after the Scottish Government withdrew a multi-million pound guarantee that would have sustained 450 jobs at the Fife and Lewis yards blaming EU State Aid rules.
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: “The situation at Bifab is a culmination of a number of issues, the main one being the unwillingness of the parent company and majority shareholder J V Driver to provide working capital, investment or guarantees for the company.
“That is putting the Scottish Government in a position that no other minority shareholder could take on in terms of risk and this is risk to the taxpayer.”
