Scottish Labour Cal Mac

Scottish Labour's candidate for the Western Isles, Rhoda Grant, warns the "very existence" of Caledonian MacBrayne hangs in the balance and calls for the tendering process to be suspended.

Mrs Grant said that there is no need for the current head-to-head with Serco to be taking place and that it would be “a dark day for the Western Isles if the SNP succeed in privatising CalMac.”

If the main party in government following the May election, Labour said it would immediately seek a derogation from the European Union. It would apply for the Teckal Exemption, which excludes certain state-owned public services from competitive tendering requirements, she said.

Mrs Grant said that Labour had legal advice that, as a result of recent clarification of its extent, the Teckal Exemption would "undoubtedly" cover the services provided by CalMac.

They have also had it confirmed by the Scottish Parliament’s research centre that no costs would be involved for the taxpayer if the contest was called off, she said.

Mrs Grant said: “The SNP has repeatedly peddled the untruth that they are only doing what the previous Labour-led administration did by putting the CalMac contract out to tender. This is categorically not the case.

“The previous exercise was structured, very effectively, in order to exclude the likelihood of private bids. However, the SNP Minister, Keith Brown, when he launched the current process boasted about the number of private bidders who would be interested and how much money would be saved as a result.

“That was the thinking which set the scene for the present contest and for which the Western Isles could, in future, pay an incredibly high price.

“In fact, there was only one other bidder – Serco – with no experience of running a complex shipping operation like the CalMac network and with an extremely unfortunate history on other public sector contracts. There were plenty reasons to disqualify them, if the political will existed.

Mrs Grant said that the Scottish Government had deliberately set a timetable for the bidding process which meant that it would not be concluded until after the Holyrood elections.

She added: “The people of the Western Isles could be confronted, in just a few weeks time, with the permanent loss of shipping services run as a lifeline public service rather than as a profit-making machine for a sprawling multinational company.”

Scottish Labour says it would save Cal Mac

6 April 2016