Backlash mounts over ferry board appointments

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND - JUNE 10: Fergus Ewing MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy, gives a ministerial statement on tourism during the coronavirus crisis today at the Covid-19 social distancing Scottish Parliament, Holyrood on June 10, 2020 in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Photo by Fraser Bremner-Pool/Getty Images) : Fergus Ewing has submitted an FoI request.

The backlash against Scottish Government appointments to boards of two ferry quangos – CalMac and CMAL – has continued to build this week with politicians from across Holyrood weighing in.

As revealed by the Gazette, strong island-based applicants were again rejected while individuals with no island connections or relevant experience were appointed or re-appointed by SNP Transport Secretary, Fiona Hyslop.

The Scottish Parliament’s Public Petitions Committee has now been asked by Angus Campbell – who chairs the Ferries Community Board – to re-open the inquiry which it wound up recently, in the absence of movement from Ministers.

Since then, Ms Hyslop re-appointed the Copenhagen-based chairman of CalMac, Erik Østergaard, and two other absentee directors who admitted to never having visited a port served by the company.

Ms Hyslop then doubled down by appointing a Yorkshire railway manager to the board of CMAL while at least two well qualified island applicants were rejected.

One described the interview process as “surreal” with a Scottish Government appointments panel concentrating on “diversity” while nothing was asked about ferry infrastructure or islands.

In a letter to the chairman of the Public Petitions Committee, Jackson Carlow MSP, Mr Campbell and his co-petitioners – Rona Mackay and Naomi Bremner of Uist Economic Task Force – say they were “disappointed and frustrated” by the committee’s decision to end its inquiry.

Their “ask” had been for island knowledge and experience “to be recognised as an essential part of the skill-set required for these boards in the same way as financial and governance skills are demanded for boards generally”. The letter adds: “Unfortunately we do not seem to have made that case”.

Dismissing Ms Hyslop’s offer of “more advertising”, it continues: “It is not that islanders are unaware of these boards; rather it is the knowledge that their abilities and skills are not valued and prescribed in the requirements for boards dealing with lifeline services … We fail to understand why that can’t be set out as an essential part of the skillset requirements of lifeline service boards”.

The letter continues: “We note you have reserved the option to reopen this petition and would ask that you do this”. It suggests that by choosing not to recognise the negative impacts imposed on island communities by the current appointments process, Ministers may be in breach of the 2018 Islands Act.

MEANWHILE, SNP MSP, Fergus Ewing, has lodged Freedom of Information requests about the quango appointments process, asking for “sight of all documents in which the skills required for the posts were considered”.

Highlands and Islands Conservative MSP, Tim Eagle, hit out: ”Until Fiona Hyslop and her colleagues start rebuilding confidence by, for instance, appointing board members islanders can have faith in, there will continue to be this very corrosive lack of trust between island communities and the people, including Ministers, who are supposed to be looking after their interests.”