Dunoon and the Gourock Dunoon Ferry Action Group are in something of an upset since the Chair of the group, Susanna Rice, received a letter from Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon.
When Ms Sturgeon moved not long ago from Health to Infrastructure and Capital Investment in the Scottish Government, Transport Scotland became part of her responsibility.
In a continuing dispute over the public sector ferry provision to Dunoon, Ms Sturgeon had to start from the position, agreements and structures her predecessor at Infrastracture, Alex Neil, had established.
He had taken the old style political way out of trouble – set up a Steering Group to examine the issue – it keeps the natives happy; and throw money at consultants, commissioning an external report on the matter to ‘kick it into the long grass’ and leave plenty of room for deniability later, should the need arise.
Ms Sturgeon has played the game she inherited with some grace. She paid attention to the Ferries Action Group, has been considerate in her attitude, has kept the Steering Group going and has taken advice on what is and is not possible in concessions to the protests from the campaigners.
The Sturgeon letter
Nicola Sturgeon’s letter to Ms Rice is transparent in detail and reasoning, careful and lucid.
She has let the Ferries Group know that one option they wished to be considered is neither operationally nor legally achievable; and would actually undermine the service in its ability adversely to affect reliability.
The option suggested was bringing in the MV Coruisk [above] to contribute to the Gourock-Dunoon service in place of the safe but skittish catamaran, MV Ali Cat.
Ms Sturgeon points out succinctly that:
- the Coruisk’s speed prevents her from fulfilling the schedule of the contracted service;
- her need for a 70 minute return journey as opposed to a 60 minute one would mean that train connections between Gourock and Glasgow could not be met as scheduled;
- evidence suggests that the Coruisk would not contribute positively to the reliability of the current service;
- had Coruisk been in the Argyll Ferries bid, they would not have won the contract because she could not meet the service specified in the tender;
- if the Coruisk was introduced into this service within the life of this contract, it would be a sufficiently large variation from the tendered specification to leave Transport Scotland open to legal challenge from unsuccessful bidders for the contract.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said of Ms Sturgeon’s letter:
‘Ministers have considerable sympathy for the communities who use this service and commissioned a review to look at temporarily replacing the MV AliCat with the MV Coruisk for the remainder of the winter season. Following that appraisal, it was clear that this option could not be pursued as it was found the MV Coruisk would be unable to deliver the scheduled timetable; there was a lack of assurance it could maintain service reliability and there is a significant risk of legal challenge.
‘The Deputy First Minister understands this is disappointing news for the community and gives her personal assurances that the Government remains committed to working towards long term solutions. Ms Sturgeon is willing to meet with representatives to discuss this decision in more detail and has stated her clear expectation that Argyll Ferries deliver the service to the best of their ability, ensure that cancellation and disruption information is provided transparently and that contingency arrangements are reliably delivered.’
The reliability issue
In detailing the reliability concerns under point number 3 above, Ms Sturgeon says:
‘Secondly, I am not assured that the MV Coruisk would deliver significant improvements to the reliability of the service. Figures from Winter 2011-12 show that, when providing relief cover on the Wemyss Bay-Rothesay route, the MV Coruisk was cancelled due to adverse weather on 9.5% of her scheduled sailings; the overall level of cancellations on the Wemyss Bay-Rothesay service last winter was 5.3% which indicates that the Coruisk’s performance was well below that of the other vessels on the route. When the MV Coruisk was deployed on the Gourock-Dunoon route in 2003-04, 4.5% of her scheduled sailings were cancelled, a third of these due to adverse weather. Whilst the overall level of cancellations in 2003-04 is not in itself a compelling reason for the non-deployment of the MV Coruisk, when taken together with the other factors set out in this letter, I am not persuaded that she would provide the certainty which we all seek. ‘
It is interesting in the light of these figures to remember that the total sailings cancelled by Argyll Ferries in the 18 months from June 2011 to December 2012 have been 1158 which, out of a possible 28,834 sailings, is 4% – or 2.6% over 12 months.
It is also necessary to note that, with a year-round schedule of no fewer than 60 sailings a day, Argyll Ferries is faced with what can look like horrendous cancellation statistics. As was the case this Hogmanay – one full day’s cancellation in gale force winds can allow for figures to be produced of, say, 95 cancellations quoted in a timeframe where 60 of these [63%] can be accounted for by a single day’s gales, with the boats forced to remain at their berths.
An amusing note is that, in MV Coruisk’s first season on the Dunoon-Gourock route in 2004, after her almost immediate retirement from her debut service on the Mallaig-Armadale route, she had problems with slow berthing and met a flood of complaints from passengers. This has been, of course, the same pattern of performance and reception as that experienced by Argyll Ferries at the same stage. Plus ca change…
The move and the result
The particular attraction of the Coruisk for the campaigners has been that she is a vehicle and passenger ferry – and once on the route, why should she not carry cars? With the shorter and quicker Western Ferries service carrying vehicles between the outskirts of the towns, there is no need for cars to travel on the less economic town centres route; and the former state-owned CalMac service did poor business in this respect for these reasons.
On all possible counts, the Coruisk manoeuvre wouldn’t float.
In saying that: ‘I have concluded that, for a number of reasons set out below [Ed: as above], it will not be possible to deploy a substitute vessel this winter’, the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Secretary goes on to note that she knows how disappointed the ferry campaigners and the town will be at the news she is transmitting.
She commits herself: ‘to working with the Action Group and the local councils, through the Steering Group, to secure lasting improvements to the town centre service. Once we have the report in April from the feasibility study now underway, we can collectively consider its findings and start to plan for the long-term – and that must, I believe, include vessels that can provide an acceptable level of weather reliability. ‘
The message
The obvious, if sub-textual, message in this letter is that there will be no vehicle and passenger service on this route. There cannot be.
As we have shown exhaustively on more than one occasion, with subsidy limited by European law to the passenger element only and with the town centre route being longer than the shorter Western Ferries route, with higher fuel usage and, therefore, fares – its vehicle fares could not match those of Western Ferries without illegal subsidy.
Any vehicle service on the town centres route could therefore not be economic nor attract sufficient traffic to be other than a substantial loss maker.
What Ms Sturgeon is offering is an effort to plan, ‘for the long term’, for improvements to the existing service which, she says: ‘…must, I believe, include vessels that can provide an acceptable level of weather reliability. ‘
This means that unless the consultants’ feasibility study, due to emerge from the long grass in the coming Spring, comes up with something beyond imagining, the current contract will run its course.
For the future, Ms Sturgeon does not say that any new contract would require ‘vessels that can provide an acceptable level of weather reliability’. She says she ‘believes‘ it must include them.
The reality is that such a requirement would mean a new-build boat or boats. The only suitable second hand boats on the market, able to deliver the contracted service specifications for this route, were the two that Argyll Ferries acquired. These are currently in service and are constantly subjected to largely illegitimate attack – as the statistics above attest.
The Scottish Government does not have the money to build two new boats.
A private sector operator might be contracted to deliver a service with a higher level of reliability in very adverse weather, but with cost a key driver in such matters, lighter boats, like the current ferries on the route, will always be more easily affected by windage. Heavier boats will cost more to run, produce higher fares and higher subsidy for the Scottish Government – aka the taxpayer. At a time when public service costs of all kinds are under the pressure of cuts, it is hard to see that the government could realistically contemplate – or defend – upping the subsidy.
Local MSP, Michael Russell’s response
Of Ms Sturgeon’s decision, local MSP Mr Russell says: ‘Obviously I am very disappointed that it has proved impossible to replace the Ali Cat this winter but Nicola Sturgeon’s explanation is clear and compelling. I have spoken to her already about the decision which she has taken only after much detailed consideration and she has assured me that she wants to continue to work with the community. I hope the Ferry Action Group will arrange an early discussion with her and take forward a positive agenda building on what the consultants say in April.
‘I am of the view that the best hope now lies in ensuring a longer term for the contract which would allow any successful bidder to build appropriate vessels but that decision can only be made in Brussels. We need to renew the pressure for such a change in European legislation whilst continuing to work with Argyll Ferries to ensure the highest possible standards on the route as presently operated.’
This picks up in two ways on Ms Sturgeon’s apparent open door to some possible revision to this ferry service in the next year.
Mr Russell repeats the phrase ‘no replacement for the Ali Cat this winter‘ and goes on to suggest ‘a longer term for the contract’.
These two comments are likely to be no more than spinning out of a tricky personal situation whose history is outlined below. Mr Russell uses them to infer that the government might consider scrapping the current Argyll Ferries contract in the coming political year and running another tender with a different specification.
In the economic and legal context of the route, under both European and competition law, what could possibly be significantly different in a new tender?
This is not going to happen.
What would abandoning this contract say about Transport Scotland’s competence in the tender it ran to produce the current contract? What confidence would that give, in apparently admitting that this has been a bit of a horlicks, that they could do better next time? This would be unfair since the reality, as we have said before, is that in the current contract, Transport Scotland did the very best it could for Dunoon, within the constraints that govern its actions.
Transport Scotland is already in the position of having postponed walking a tightrope of its own making by mothballing – for an inordimate amount of time – the issuing of a new contract for the Clyde and Hebridean Ferry Services. Public confidence in this department would not be best served by its having first to scrap the Gourock Dunoon contract only two years into its term.
Scrapping this contract would be an own goal for a party that can afford no more of those. And it would be expensive for a government currently failing to look fiscally on the ball.
The Russell volte face
Mr Russell’s response also sounds eminently reasonable, if one excludes his drama-ridden history of involvement in this affair.
The MSP chose earlier to support, if not lead, this protest against his own government; and against a tendering process for which, as a Minister he was, under collective responsibility, as accountable as anyone. He had also made no objection to it until the Ferries Action Group, with the Dunoon public in full cry in support, gave him a rude reception at an unforgettable rough house of a public meeting in Dunoon in November 2011.
After this, Mr Russell aligned himself to the protesters and additionally chose, for whatever reason, to orchestrate a personalised campaign against Archie Robertson, Group CEO of the state owned David MacBrayne group of companies to which Argyll Ferries belongs. The targeting of Mr Robertson, in a scattershot campaign, had not been a major focal point of the protesters until this point.
Irrational and unfair as it was, the MSP persisted in demands, literally, for ‘heads to roll’, until Mr Robertson just packed in his job in an early retirement deal.
Mr Russell also brought in the then Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Alex Neil who came up with the old tactic of flattery and anaesthesia – the Steering Group and the commissioning of consultants to prepare a feasibility study.
The involvement of this pair of political old timers and the illegitimate comfort they gave the campaigners in these tactics let the affair carry on beyond its natural life; and cruelly gave unfounded hope to the campaign.
Now having sustained their presence on the barricades, Russell has effectively dumped his aficionados by accepting, rightly, the wisdom of Nicola Sturgeon’s decision – on evidence that has always been known.
Had Mr Russell had the same political courage, to be straight with his constituents and to explain the facts of the case to them as Ms Sturgeon has done, this matter would have been long put to bed without the reputational damage Dunoon has inflicted upon itself.
With campaigners from the town broadcasting far and wide, for tactical campaign advantage, highly coloured and scaremongering stories of the inability of their passenger ferry service, public confidence in making leisure visits to Dunoon has been shaken.
The town has work to do to recover that situation.
Note 1: Nicola Sturgeon letter to Gourock Dunoon Ferry Action Group
Note 2: The photograph above of MV Coruisk is from Geograph and is reproduced here under the Creative Commons licence.