A state-owned shipyard has to make a “justifiable business case” before it can receive millions of pounds in investment from the Scottish Government, John Swinney has insisted.
The First Minister said his Government had agreed “in principle” to providing the Ferguson Marine yard in Port Glasgow with £14.2 million of cash to help it modernise.
However, with only £570,000 of the funding so far handed over, Mr Swinney said there had to be “progress on the plans that are coming from the yard” before further support can be provided.
He was pressed on the issue after leaders of the GMB union demanded the Scottish Government stop making “excuses for a failure to invest in Ferguson’s future”.
The yard, which was taken into public ownership by the Scottish Government in 2019, has been mired in controversy as the construction of two new ferries being built for CalMac ran years late and massively over budget.
And, when the First Minister appeared before Holyrood committee conveners on Wednesday, Labour’s Richard Leonard – the convener of the Public Audit Committee – questioned if the Government’s approach was giving Ferguson “workers a fighting chance of winning any competitions for future work”.
Mr Swinney, however, said: “The commitments to invest remain in place and valid, and there is a means by which we can make that investment based on the progress on the plans that are coming from the yard.”
Adding that the Government is “engaging constructively” with Ferguson Marine, the First Minister said: “We have exactly the same aspirations – we want there to be a secure future for shipbuilding at Ferguson Marine.”
The Scottish Government is “in principle committed to allocating” the remainder of the £14.2 million, Mr Swinney said.
But he said: “We have to have a justifiable business case to make that expenditure.
“We have to have a basis on which we can make that expenditure valid, and defensible within the approach we take to public investment.”
