Ferguson chief says shipyard needs ferry contract with no competition
Graeme Thomson said he had already lobbied for the Inverclyde yard to be given the mandate to build the successor to MV Lord of the Isles. That vessel normally sails from Lochboisdale on South Uist to the mainland at Mallaig.
Fiona Hyslop, the transport secretary, said in April that money was available for a replacement to be built with CMAL, the procurement agency, looking at designs.
The yard has been in public hands since 2019 after it ran out of cash building the Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa ferries.
Holyrood ministers decided in March this year that they could not legally find a way to directly award Ferguson the work to build seven electric ferries for the small vessels replacement programme and that went to the Polish yard Remontowa.
Thomson, who started at Ferguson in May, told the Scottish affairs committee at Westminster that the state-owned yard could not compete on price with overseas rivals. A direct award would mean Ferguson being given the contract without it having to go through procurement.
Thomson said he had 'lobbied for a direct award' and believed the Scottish government was considering whether it was possible. He said: 'I'm not aware of what might be challenges or blockers to that.'
Asked by MPs what the future might hold if the yard did not win that contract, he said: 'It would be very difficult for us and very challenging.'
Thomson argued there was a need to give UK yards a better chance to win domestic work with about 150 non-navy vessels due to be built over the next 30 years.
He said: 'As long as there is a situation that international yards can do it cheaper than us, whether because of labour rates or tax breaks, then we will never be playing on a level playing field. We need to move the conversation away from a race to the bottom on price.'
Ferguson recently won a contract from BAE Systems to build structural steel blocks for HMS Birmingham as part of the Type 26 programme.
Thomson is hopeful that the scope of work could be expanded in the future, while it is also looking into bids to build pilot boats and tugs.
He said: 'If the portfolio starts with smaller boats, then we get back into larger boats, then I'm very content we would protect as much of the workforce as we can.'
Thomson told MPs he was confident that Glen Rosa, which is already seven years late and vastly over budget, would be ready for handover in the second quarter of next year.
Separately, Shona Robison, the finance secretary, said that the Scottish government continued to talk with bus operators and transport authorities to establish demand levels for double-decker buses as part of its efforts to find a future for Alexander Dennis.
The bus builder is proposing to shut its Scottish manufacturing division, with 400 jobs at risk across Falkirk and Larbert.
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Daily Mail
25 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
The truth about Britain's taxpayer cash-soaked wind farm industry laid bare in scandalous detail in court papers
The Cabrach and Glenfiddich Estates cover almost 50,000 scenic acres of Morayshire at the north-eastern end of the Grampian Mountains. Owned by Christopher Moran, a colourful Tory donor who made his fortune in the City of London, they take in grouse moors, a salmon river, a pheasant shoot and some of the finest stalking ground in all of Scotland. There are also some 18 tenanted farms, endless estate cottages, and a grand 17-bedroom lodge, which once belonged to the Dukes of Richmond and Gordon and boasts a ping-pong room decorated with oil paintings by Thomas Gainsborough. Moran, who is 77, acquired this pile via two transactions, in 1979 and 1982. A keen shot, he describes his hobbies in Who's Who as 'architecture, opera, art, politics and country pursuits', and once told an interviewer that Cabrach and Glenfiddich gave him 'sanity', saying: 'In London I can work 24 hours a day. But here, I unwind.' Lately, the wealthy laird's perks have been more than just sporting. For recent events have turned his picturesque Highland seat into one of rural Britain's most prolific cash machines. Historically, this was one of the finest unspoiled views in Scotland. But today, the skyline is broken by 59 gargantuan steel turbines of the Dorenell Wind Farm. Each of them stands 126 metres tall and sits on land that has been leased by Moran to the French energy giant EDF. They were installed in 2019, and – assuming the wind is blowing – can feed 177 megawatts of clean, green electricity (enough to power 106,000 homes) into Britain's National Grid. Given the stunning location, its construction was highly controversial. Locals filed around 600 complaints, saying it would despoil the landscape, hurt tourism and provide little tangible economic benefit. EDF argued it would play an essential role in helping Britain meet 'net zero' targets. In an effort to silence critics, they offered to set up a 'Community Benefit Fund' that would distribute some of the profits to charities that help residents. Although an initial planning application was opposed by Moray Council, development was approved on appeal by the Scottish government. That, broadly, is the history of the place. And there's nothing so very unusual about it. Thanks to our deepening political love affair with wind turbines – Energy Secretary Ed Miliband recently unveiled plans to double our onshore wind capacity by 2030 – similar schemes are being rolled out, against local opposition, across the land. Yet there is something that makes Dorenell not just remarkable, but very newsworthy indeed. And it involves the thorny topic of money. First, though, a brief lesson in wind farm economics. In common with all British facilities, Dorenell generates insufficient power to make back the cost of its construction by simply selling electricity on the open market. Instead, its owners receive generous subsidies, paid for by consumers via levies on energy bills, which are supposed to help them to turn a small profit. Supporting the UK's wind, solar and other renewable power in this manner costs the grand total of £25billion a year, according to the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) charity. That's more than £850 for every household and equates to around 40 per cent of the electricity costs you are currently paying every month. So far, so eco-friendly. But what few bill-payers properly understand is where the mountain of cash they shell out each month is ending up. For while Mr Miliband's subsidy system is supposed to help developers wash their face, it's increasingly enriching a class of 'wind farm vultures', who are exploiting the rules to cream off profits at the British public's expense. Energy firms have for years kept bill-payers in the dark about this mounting scandal, filing accounts that (perhaps deliberately) keep the finances of individual projects opaque, and hiding behind NDAs and other confidentiality agreements to conceal how much cash is being diverted to already wealthy landowners via lease payments. All of which leads us back to Dorenell. Because its finances were last week laid bare, in scandalous detail, during a remarkable case at the Court of Session in Edinburgh. The proceedings, which revolved around a contractual dispute, provided an insight into what is going on under the bonnet of Britain's cash-soaked wind farm industry. Take the question of profits. At one point, it emerged that Dorenell Windfarm Limited, the company that operates the whole thing, now makes almost as much money (in some years a whacking £40million) from switching its turbines off as it does from generating green energy. Later, it became clear that the firm makes millions more during these periods of downtime, via a loophole in the subsidy system that allows it to 'trade' the electricity it's not actually producing – more on which later. Take also the question of cash that Christopher Moran, who is already worth £658million, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, is creaming off from all this. Court papers revealed that he's being paid in the region of £10million a year in rent by Dorenall. That's the equivalent of around £170,000 per turbine, per year. What's more, it's ten times more than locals were led to believe he'd earn from the scheme. To quote one disgruntled campaigner, it makes the £2million funnelled to the 'Community Benefit Fund' since 2020 to compensate locals for despoiling their landscape 'look like chicken feed'. Some of the other dizzying numbers cited in the litigation show how the 'green' subsidy regime every Briton is financing has created a perverse property bubble. In effect, Christopher Moran's remote hilltops, which have for centuries only been useful for farming sheep and shooting, have been turned into some of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the country. 'People sometimes wonder why a landowner would want to host a wind farm. The answer, as this court case shows, is they are being offered rents that would tempt a saint,' is how Dr John Constable, director of the REF charity, puts it. 'As a result, the green subsidies that make these high returns possible are now at an unsustainable level.' Constable points out that what happens at Dorenell is likely to be happening across Britain. For this particular wind farm accounts for little more than 1 per cent of the UK's entire onshore capacity. Details of how the public's cash is being splurged are laid bare in an 'opinion' on the litigation that was published by Lord Sandison, one of Scotland's most senior judges, on July 10. It reveals that Moran's company Glenfiddich Wind Limited, which runs his estate's wind farming operations, is suing EDF's operating firm Dorenell Windfarm Limited for 'sums allegedly underpaid' under the terms of its lease. The claim covers a three-year period from 2022 to 2024. During that time, the contract between the two stipulated that Moran's firm would be paid either a 'gross income rent' based on a proportion of revenues generated by the turbines, or a 'minimum annual rent' of £6million, depending on which was higher. In 2022, he received £8,496,981. The following year, the figure was £9,480,725, and in 2024 it reached £10,406,641. To put things another way, Moran made more than £28million by doing very little aside from owning a remote bit of moorland. But at some point, he decided the figure was around £6,196,518 less than it ought to have been under the terms of the contract, and took EDF to court. At the heart of the dispute is an argument over so-called 'constraint payments'. This term describes cash that is paid to wind farms to compensate them for either switching off their turbines, or reducing capacity, when the grid has become too full to take on more electricity. The system is designed to cope with power surges during times of high wind speeds. Initially, it was rarely used. In 2010, the first year of its existence, 'constraint' fees cost consumers £174,000. But as more wind farms have been built in remote areas bottlenecks in the grid have become more commonplace. As a result, upwards of £300million a year is now being spent under the 'constraint' scheme, which has now cost bill-payers the grand total of £1.8billion, according to the REF. What's more, critics believe wind farm operators can sometimes make more, under the rules, by switching off their turbines than from making electricity. This has created a perverse incentive to build new facilities in isolated regions such as Moray, where the strained infrastructure means 'constraint payments' are likely to be more common. Dorenell is a case in point. For according to court papers, in 2023 it received £37million in 'constraint payments', equating to half its gross income of £74million. The following year, the figure was £40million. These sums were then included in figures used to calculate Moran's rent– but Dorenell Windfarm Limited was also making extra cash from shutting down its turbines by exploiting a loophole in the subsidy system via which farms receiving 'constraint payments' are provided with 'credited energy' they can then sell on the open market. A highly-complex trading arrangement then allowed them to make millions in extra profits by selling the 'credited energy' that they'd never actually generated when prices were high. Moran thought that a portion of this extra income ought to have then found its way into his rent payments. EDF disagreed, sparking a contract dispute. In his opinion Lord Sandison appears to have largely sided with Moran, and both sides in the dispute are now considering their next steps. 'The exposure of such scale of financial returns and infighting, all whilst this wind farm development has one of the most derisory community benefit packages in the country, should be subject to the highest level of scrutiny by the Scottish government,' is how Jonathan Christie, the Chief Executive of The Cabrach Trust, a local charity dedicated to regeneration, puts it. Colin Mackenzie, a whisky historian who has holiday lets near the Cabrach and Glenfiddich Estates, describes the roll out of wind turbines across the Highlands as a 'national scandal' saying: 'The figures in the court case are astonishing and make the £2million awarded to local projects since the Community Benefit Fund opened look like chicken feed.' Moran isn't the only one to have smelled a rat about Dorenell's 'constraint payments'. Last year, Ofgem forced the operator to pay £5million into a 'redress fund' after finding that it had charged 'excessive' amounts to switch off turbines under the scheme. To critics, the grubby affair only serves to highlight how energy subsidies represent one of the most regressive wealth transfers in history, funnelling cash from poor people to some of the wealthiest in society. Christopher Moran is perhaps the very last person who might be in need of extra cash. A grammar schoolboy from a modest background, he joined Lloyd's of London in the 1960s as a 17-year-old insurance broker's assistant and within five years had acquired his first million. By the 1990s he had a car collection that extended to three Rolls-Royces and a Lagonda, plus one of largest homes in London: Crosby Hall, a medieval pile in Chelsea that was once home to King Richard III. There was also a beauty queen wife, named Helen, with whom he had two sons before divorcing in the late 1990s, a vast collection of antiques and Old Master paintings, and a contacts book that would see him host everyone from Tony Blair, Boris Johnson and David Cameron, to Prince Harry, Queen Elizabeth, and an array of celebrities at his palatial residence next to the Thames. Life has not been without the occasional scandal. His City career suffered a setback in 1982 when he became the first Lloyd's broker to be expelled in 300 years for 'discreditable conduct'. A few years later, he was censured by the Stock Exchange Council and fined $2million in the US for alleged insider dealing. And in the 2000s, Moran was reported to be one of several individuals the Tories had returned donations to so as to prevent their identities from becoming public under new disclosure rules. In 2018, a newspaper probe found that one of his properties, a serviced apartment block named Chelsea Cloisters, was home to more than 100 prostitutes, earning the building the nickname 'ten floors of whores' (Moran denied having any knowledge of their presence). And in 2023, it emerged that he'd fathered a daughter named Iva via his girlfriend Emily Rae. Not that Moran is running away from controversy. To the horror of locals, he's announced plans to build 22 new wind turbines on his estate via a joint venture with a Canadian company. Given recent revelations at the Court of Sessions, we can assume they will earn lots of money from being switched off. And so the Laird of Cabrach and Glenfiddich will get even richer, Scotland's Highlands will become less beautiful, and you and I will be forced to pay for it.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Man arrested in Glasgow for holding sign allegedly supportive of Palestine Action
A man has been arrested in Glasgow for holding a paper sign allegedly supportive of the proscribed direct action group Palestine Action, the third arrest of its kind across the city in the past week. Police Scotland confirmed that the 64-year-old man, who had been speaking to a small group of protesters gathered at Nelson Mandela Place in the city centre on Friday afternoon, had been arrested in connection with an offence under the Terrorism Act 'for displaying a sign expressing support for a proscribed organisation'. The sign read 'Genocide in Palestine, time to take action' with the words Palestine and action larger than the others. Another man wearing a T-shirt with the same slogan was charged with a similar offence last weekend at the TRNSMT music festival in Glasgow Green. As lunchtime shoppers passed by the scene of the small protest on Friday, police officers asked the man to stop displaying the sign, which he refused to do. He was then arrested and led away in handcuffs to chants of 'let him go'. The incident was peaceful throughout. The ban on Palestine Action came into force on 5 July after a high court judge refused to grant the group's co-founder Huda Ammori an injunction suspending it while a judicial review was pending. Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, announced the ban late last month, days after activists from the group broke into RAF Brize Norton and defaced two military aircraft with spray paint. Cat Train, who attended the protest wearing a T-shirt with the slogan 'mothers against genocide', said: 'I wore this T-shirt to remind police that we are witnessing genocide in Gaza, with women and children killed daily, while our freedom to draw attention to this is being massively quashed.' Train added that, while she believed the high court judge had offered reassurances that not all direct action relating to Gaza was proscribed, 'there seems to be real confusion in how to enforce this'. This week a third man was charged with a similar offence. The 38-year -old was charged on Wednesday under the Terrorism Act for allegedly 'displaying a poster expressing support for a proscribed organisation at a property in the Shawlands area of Glasgow'. A 55-year-old man was charged last Saturday outside the TRNSMT music festival, again in connection with an offence under the Terrorism Act, for allegedly 'wearing a T-shirt expressing support for a proscribed organisation'. The T-shirts were produced by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Their spokesperson, Mick Napier, who attended Friday's protest, said: 'We put this T-shirt out because we wanted to use the furore around the ban to draw attention to the genocide. The T-shirt is not about Palestine Action, it's about genocide'. Napier said the 55-year-old, who had been leafleting at the festival before his arrest, had an 'excellent response' from festivalgoers. 'We're getting a substantially different response from the public even than two months ago. The atrocious actions in Gaza are burning deep into the national and international psyche.' A Police Scotland spokesperson said of Friday's arrest: 'A 64-year-old man has been arrested in connection with an offence under the Terrorism Act for displaying a sign expressing support for a proscribed organisation.' Since MPs voted in favour of proscribing Palestine Action at the start of July, the ban has been condemned by UN experts, civil liberties groups, cultural figures and hundreds of lawyers as draconian and setting a dangerous precedent by conflating protest with terrorism. More than 70 people were arrested across the UK last weekend at demonstrations where references to Palestine Action were allegedly made.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Now Police Scotland chiefs say no uniformed officers to take part in Pride march
Police officers in uniform will not take part in a Pride event in Scotland's biggest city on Saturday following a landmark High Court judgment. The Mail revealed yesterday that bosses of the force faced mounting pressure to ban officers from participating in the controversial marches. On Wednesday, the High Court ruled that Northumbria Police, one of Britain's largest forces, breached impartiality by marching at an LGBT + event. On Friday Police Scotland Deputy Chief Constable Alan Speirs said no uniformed officers would march at Pride in Glasgow today - in contrast with the situation last year, when dozens of officers were paid to take part. It is understood that a decision had been taken not to participate prior to the court ruling - but plans for minor 'engagement' were dropped after the High Court judgment. This could have included officers manning stalls or taking part in related events at the Pride march. Last night Scottish Tory community safety spokesman Sharon Dowey said: 'This is a welcome decision by Police Scotland. 'Given the SNP's sustained cuts to frontline policing, it is common sense that resources should be directed towards keeping people safe.' Explaining the police position, Mr Speirs said: 'Police Scotland has vast experience in policing events and in the coming days we will continue to do so in a professional, engaging, and proportionate manner. 'Glasgow's Pride will be no different and we will continue to engage closely with event organisers, although no officers will participate in forthcoming events in uniform. 'We continue to review the UK High Court judgment on Northumbria Police's participation in Newcastle Pride 2024 and its implications. 'We will ensure Police Scotland's response to events continues to be in line with our values and code of ethics, providing a professional and impartial service which upholds the human rights of all.' The Scottish Police Federation (SPF), representing rank-and-file officers, and former senior officers, had backed the High Court ruling earlier this week, piling pressure on top brass to ban uniformed police participation in Pride events. Last night SPF general secretary David Kennedy said it 'proudly supports the principles and values of the Pride movement, including equality, inclusion, and the right of all individuals - regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity - to live free from discrimination and prejudice'. But he added that 'we also support the operational judgment that police officers should not march in uniform while on duty at Pride events'. Mr Kennedy said: 'Participating in any march while on duty, including Pride, can give rise to questions around neutrality and may impact perceptions of police objectivity. 'Officers who wish to take part in Pride events in their own time should be supported and encouraged to do so, and we welcome efforts to facilitate this wherever possible. 'Supporting Pride and supporting operational clarity are not mutually exclusive—we believe both can, and should, co-exist.' Welcoming the High Court ruling, Kate Barker, chief executive of LGB Alliance, the UK's only LGB charity (excluding transgender people) said last night: 'LGB people have been deeply distressed by how it has become hijacked by gender identity ideology in recent years.' In July last year, the Mail revealed that police officers in Scotland were paid to take part in Pride parades despite the force cutting back on fighting crime. Uniformed officers were urged to represent the overstretched force at LGBT+ events in exchange for either pay or a day off in lieu. Meanwhile, the Mail can also reveal that officers have signed Pride flags in a show of solidarity with the LGBT+ movement. In 2023, officers were photographed signing flags as part of Pride Month. Argyll and West Dunbartonshire officers marked the occasion by signing a Pride flag which was sent round police stations. Chief Superintendent Lynn Ratcliff, who was the final person to sign it to show she was an LGBT+ 'ally', said she wanted her division to be the 'most inclusive area in Police Scotland'. In 2022, a Pride flag was sent round police stations in Edinburgh to 'allow officers to sign it to show support to LGBT colleagues and communities'. Last night Kath Murray of gender-critical think-tank Murray Blackburn Mackenzie said it is 'hard to think of a clearer example of institutional capture than literally signing allegiance' to the Pride flag.
