IN presenting his draft Budget and tax raising intentions, Finance Secretary Derek Mackay would have us believe that he is prudent and can be trusted with finances (“Mackay urged to use Budget to address child poverty”, The Herald, December 6).
When minister for transport and the islands, he ordered two new ferries for the Arran and Uig routes. The controversial and overly expensive vessels have been in Ferguson’s shipyard in Port Glasgow ever since. They were due to come into service in the summer of 2018 but it is unlikely that the first will see service before early 2020.
We have seen a further four ministers in that time come and go but it was Mr Mackay who was responsible for ordering the inappropriate, unduly complicated and overpriced vessels. Working to the minister’s instructions, Transport Scotland and its agents Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd remain in dispute with the yard which, along with its backer, Jim McColl, threatens legal action.
With no staged payments being made to the yard for more than a year, pending resolution of the dispute, Mr Mackay as Finance Secretary awarded the yard loans to the tune of £48 million to help it develop and diversify. Has some of that money been used as working capital on construction the vessels rather than the purpose for which it was intended?
I suggest that, in ordering the vessels in one role and later baling out the project with a loan equal to 50 per cent of the contract’s value, with the vessels not yet in service, Mr Mackay’s financial management skills on a £96m project are brought into question. Can he be trusted with the national Budget and fiscal arrangements?
Neil HC Arthur,
Broombrae,
Kilpatrick, Isle of Arran.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here