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The Herald Scotland

Is Scottish Government secretly working to kill off Ardrossan harbour?

Everyone who has made travel plans will have to adjust accordingly or cancel, including visitors from far and near heading for a major Gaelic festival, Ceòlas, in South Uist. Mallaig and Oban are 87 miles apart, while accommodation tends to be at a premium in July. Just their luck – one more example of consequences which continues to be visited upon people and islands. This fresh wave of cancellations and redeployments stems from the basic fact that the CalMac fleet has been run aground in terms of numbers and maintenance, despite millions being spent, quite literally in some cases, on plugging the holes. CalMac say plaintively: 'We are doing the best we can to maintain service levels with the vessels available to us during this period'. Read more As I never tire of pointing out, CalMac are more sinned against than sinners. They are at the sharp end of delivery while the real culprits are the Scottish Government (aka Transport Scotland) and its procurement quango, CMAL, which have failed to provide the routine flow of vessels required. Ferries which are a decade and more past their natural lifespan are worked harder and harder, with predictable consequences. After three years of setting its face against any compensation for businesses, the Scottish Government noticed there is an election coming up and conceded through gritted teeth a 'resilience fund' for the worst-hit islands. Arran is included but, not being an island, Ardrossan is not. Yet there are few places that have endured more economic pain than the port which had been the gateway to Arran for 185 years. What distinguishes the case of Ardrossan is that it is, in my belief, the victim of a long-term strategy to extinguish its role and thereby, to a large extent, its raison d'etre. Other places in the CalMac network are victims of incompetence and political opportunism even if nobody set out to do them harm. The case of Ardrossan is different and those responsible should be exposed and their objective, even now, frustrated. The story goes back to 2015 when Troon – part of Associated British Ports – lost its Northern Ireland connection when P&O dropped its Larne route. Desperate to plug the gap, they offered the Scottish Government £8 million to transfer the Arran service to Troon. There is no retrospective wisdom involved here as I wrote at the time that this initiative was 'solely at the behest of Associated British Ports, which has lost its Irish services and needs a substitute. It is blatantly opportunistic'. CalMac will restart a limited and temporary service (Image: free) ABP should have been shown the door. By this time, what later became the Glen Sannox had been ordered from the Ferguson yard, specifically to operate between Ardrossan and Brodick. There should have been no room for doubt but ABP, to my certain knowledge, had friends at court. The Transport Minister, one Humza Yousaf, ordered a review, which set the hare running. A campaign was mounted in defence of Ardrossan and, ostensibly, it prevailed. But it didn't really. When the Glen Sannox was ordered, it was supposed to be operational by 2018 so obviously, it was necessary for CMAL to be in negotiation with the owners of Ardrossan, Peel Ports. Otherwise, how could it happen? Due to events at the Ferguson yard, there was then a seven year delay in delivering the Glen Sannox – but in the course of these nine years, not a finger was lifted to secure the status of Ardrossan. On the contrary, the quiet transition to Troon continued to be encouraged, supposedly to give temporary cover while awaiting Ardrossan's readiness. For good measure, in October of last year, the Transport Secretary, Fiona Hyslop, appointed Stuart Cresswell who, until 2023, had 'full operational responsibility for all of ABP's port operations in Scotland including the Port of Troon' to the board of CMAL. But like I say, there is an election coming up and my old constituency of Cunninghame North is up for grabs. The votes of Ardrossan will be significant so on February 19, Ms Hyslop 'instructed Transport Scotland and CMAL to explore a potential purchase of Ardrossan Harbour'. Little has been heard of this since. I was curious to learn how much substance there was to this 'instruction', so I lodged a Freedom of Information request with CMAL, asking to see the exchanges between them and the Scottish Government about Ardrossan in recent months. This week I got the response, with around 95 per cent of the content redacted on the catch-all grounds that 'the balance of public interest lies in withholding the information'. Read more However, one interesting line had either slipped through the net or been left in deliberately, in which the chief executive of CMAL, Kevin Hobbs, wrote, the week following Ms Hyslop's instruction: 'We do not believe and have expressly stated that resilience at Ardrossan (given the entrance through the roundheads and turn) will never be as resilient as Troon given the open sea approach'. In other words, the chief executive of CMAL could hardly have been clearer that they have no interest in pursuing what, in public, has been their obligation and the Scottish Government's aim. So the question now is whether Ms Hyslop's 'instruction' is ever intended to prevail? I make no claim to nautical expertise but that is not the issue at stake. The real question is whether, consistent with Mr Hobbs' comments, CMAL and Transport Scotland have been (and still are) working to ensure that Ardrossan never again will be the gateway port for Arran. If that is the case – as I believe it is – the people of Arran and Ardrossan have, for the past decade, been cynically and cruelly deceived. To that, I object strongly – and call for an inquiry into the full circumstances, without evasions or redactions. Brian Wilson is a former Labour Party politician. He was MP for Cunninghame North from 1987 until 2005 and served as a Minister of State from 1997 to 2003