LABOUR has warned that the privatisation of CalMac's services threatens to have a huge impact on many fragile communities.

The tendering process for the next Clyde and Hebrides Ferry Services contract is now under way. The next contract will run from October 2016 for up to eight years and attract up to £1 billion of public funding.

The RMT union has already attacked the whole exercise as "unnecessary, expensive, disruptive and pro-privatisation".

Although opinion is divided as to whether tendering is the only way to satisfy European state aids regulations, the Scottish Government like the Labour/Lib Dem Scottish Executive before them, insist it is required.

David Stewart, shadow minister for transport and islands, said: "There is a worry in my mainland and island communities that the contract could be lost to a hard-nosed, remote and non-unionised private sector company with a knock on loss of quality of service and jobs.

"As one union official said to me losing the contract to such a company would be like putting the fox in charge of the hen house."

Mr Stewart said the Scottish Government should consider the success that the public sector East Coast rail service before privatising CalMac.

It is expected that the private sector giant Serco to challenge CalMac for the routes.

The controversial multinational, which specialises in managing outsourced government contracts here and abroad, won the £243 million six-year Northern Isles contract in 2012, to provide lifeline services to Orkney and Shetland.

Almost immediately there was the threat of strike action over the workforce's terms and conditions and few months later over plans to cut jobs.

Just after the contract was awarded the Scottish Government announced sailings between Caithness and Orkney would be reduced from three a day to two angering islanders.

A Serco spokesman would only say of the Clyde and Hebrides tender: "We are currently evaluating the opportunity."

Martin Dorchester, managing director of CalMac Ferries Ltd, said: "We are not complacent and recognise that, with the support of our existing customers and stakeholders, we will have to fight hard to secure this contract."

There could be an unexpected entrant to the competition. But many industry sources are convinced it will be a two horse race between Serco and CalMac, given that all the routes are to be tendered in one bundle leaving no apparent room for cherry picking the routes with the greatest potential. Also when it costs around £1.5m for a company to go through the tendering process, no hats will be thrown in the ring on the off chance.

Industry insiders say it will be down to whether the Scottish Government wants to retain the direct control that CalMac gives ministers, or the distance Serco affords them if things go wrong or if there are unpopular cuts to be made.

At one point there were understood to be seven companies interested in bidding for CalMac's network that last time they were put out to tender. Three maintained their interest and were invited to tender: CalMac, V Ships and Western Ferries. But both Western and V Ships' subsequently withdrew. Western Ferries, which have a highly successful operation between Hunter's Quay (Dunoon) and McInroy's Point (Gourock), is not interested in all the routes. Meanwhile V Ships which also had been interested in Orkney and Shetland's routes, are seen as unlikely to try again.