 Goodbye, and a pleasure. Welcome to the 22nd meeting of the Net Zero Energy and Transport Committee for 2022. This is our last meeting before summer recess. At agenda item 1, we have consideration of whether to take items four, five, six, seven and eight in private. Item 4 is consideration of a draft report on our energy price rises inquiry. Item 5 is consideration of evidence. We will hear today. Item 6 is consideration of our work programme. Item 7 is a consideration of a draft report on a legislative consent memorandum for the high-speed rail crew to Manchester Bill. Finally, item 8 is consideration of evidence that we heard last week as part of our inquiry into the role of local government and its cross-sectoral partners in financing and delivering in NZ Scotland. Do we agree to take these items in private? Yes. That is agreed. Thank you very much. Items 4 to 8 will be taken in private. Item 2 is our first evidence session in relation to our inquiry into a modern and sustainable ferry service for Scotland. This new inquiry aims to seek out how best to secure ferry services that are future-proofed, compatible with Scotland's net zero goals and meets the needs of all service users, especially the island communities that depend on them. Today we are opening with a scene-setting evidence session. We are going to hear from a panel of people from islands across Scotland about their experience of ferry services and their views on the remit of our inquiry. We have published a draft remit for feedback from the public. That remit is subject to views and opinions and feedback that we will receive today. I welcome our six panellists, all of whom are joining us remotely. We have Sam Bourne, chairman, Aaron Ferry Action Group, Gary McLean, vice-conviner, Islay Community Council Ferry Committee, Margaret Morrison, chair, Harris Transport Forum, Lawrence Odie, chairman, Yale Community Council, Joe Reed, chair, Mull and Iona Ferry Committee and Paul Riley, transport representative of Stronsie Community Council. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the committee. Thank you very much for joining us. We very much look forward to hearing your views on the first evidence session in relation to this inquiry. We have got about 90 minutes for this session because we have a large panel. I would suggest that, if possible, we keep questions and answers as concise as possible. We are very interested to hear your feedback, but we are also keen to explore as many issues as possible this morning. Let me start and go straight to questions. The first question that I have is a general question. We have obviously seen significant disruptions to ferry services over the past few years, but what I would like to understand better is the real day-to-day impact that this disruption has on island communities. I would like to ask each of you what are the day-to-day impacts that you have had to manage as a result of the constant disruptions that you have experienced with ferry services? If I could start with each of you in turn, if I could start with Sam Bourne and then move to Gary McLean, please. Sam, over to you, please. Good morning, committee. I commend you for taking on this inquiry. I think that we would all agree that we are now at a very critical juncture in Scotland's ferry service provision. This inquiry is vital in trying to understand the issues and how we may be able to solve them. Let's think of some of the day-to-day impacts that an island such as Arran suffers. It can't be overestimated and overstated how reliant Arran is on a reliable ferry service. Examples range from residents attempting to get to medical appointments on the mainland hospitals. That's a fairly common tale, particularly difficult during the winter when disruption is inevitably higher through weather and technical issues due to overhaul. That has a huge knock-on effect. For us, our nearest major hospital is Crosshouse near Kilmarnock. To make an appointment, you need to be getting one of the earlier ferries of the day and to get home again, you need to be ensuring to get on either the afternoon or the evening ferry. If either of those are disrupted, you're either not making your appointment with all the knock-on effect that that will have, potentially, or you're needing to stay overnight. It's not unusual to hear stories of residents having to spend a couple of days early to make sure that they can make their appointment. They may have been waiting for, in the current climate, six months or more for occasionally, sometimes very important appointments. That's just one small example. It stretches through to the island producers not being able to get their products to market reliably. Farmers not being able to get their animals to market. The other way, coming on to the island, goods and services, suppliers are less keen to do deliveries on the island because of the risk of their drivers and vehicles then getting trapped for a day or more. During January, I think that we had one occasion where we had five co-op lorries stuck on the island for a couple of days. That has a huge knock-on effect for the co-op delivery system as well. There are so many effects throughout the whole community and economy. We haven't even got to talking about the effect on the tourism and hospitality industry with the lack of ability for people to be able to plan reliably to come and go on their holidays. The modern economies of the island are so tourism-reliant, especially on the likes of Arran, that it's an essential economic fact. It really can't be overstated how many and varied the impacts are. I'm sure that the other panellists will echo very similar experiences. Many thanks, Sam. You've raised a number of issues. They are a very helpful introduction that I'm sure the committee will explore when we get to other questions. If I could ask the same question of Gary McLean, and after that I'll bring in Margaret Morrison. Gary, over to you, please. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A very apt question you've asked, convener, because the heavy emails has actually broken down at the moment. Eila is now without three round-trip sailings for the past two or three days, if memory serves. I think that the real crux of this is that capacity and reliability are so important to our island community. At the end of the day, this is very much a lifeline ferry service for the local community. It's very difficult to assess the impact day-to-day, other than to echo what Sam has said. It could be people needing to local community trying to go to the mainland to fulfil appointments, go shopping, seek family, and to live a normal life that is not impeded by our slightly more remote location. As for business, we have nine functioning whisky distilleries on this island, which require goods coming in and going out, which are all quite time sensitive. We require a large freight capacity. If any little cog in the machine breaks down, it has a disproportionate effect on everyone else. In our case, it happens to be the ferries all too regularly, unfortunately. With the whisky industry comes tourism, from which a lot of people derive their primary income either directly or tangentially to it. If people have a bad experience, they are less likely to come back. If they try to book and there is no availability at the time, which is convenient, they will go elsewhere. The disruption is something that can be overestimated. You mentioned a couple of important points about tourism, the impact on tourism and business, which we want to follow up on a bit later. Let me bring in Margaret Morrison, again the same question about overall day-to-day impact in terms of disruptions. Good morning, committee members and fellow panellists. In Harris, we are absolutely beyond anxious with a constant stream of service withdrawals, which is under mining island life, usually. I have lived here since 1987. I run a business, and I am also an essential worker who has travelled through the islands. What we are finding is that I have never seen such anxiety amongst opulation. Visitors coming to the islands who have said to me that they will not return because of the situation with the ferries, which, to be perfectly honest, is utterly chaotic at the moment. We have had service withdrawals in the last fortnight on several of our ferries, which has resulted in visitors either being stuck on one island or not able to get to another, having problems with accommodation being cancelled. To be perfectly honest, I feel that we have met, discussed and talked, and we are at a total impasse with CalMac and the Scottish Government. We will never see young people coming to our islands to set up business as long as we have this problem. We are also facing a six-month closure of our main ferry terminal in Harris, and the impact of that is going to be significant. We feel that something has to be done because we are at the moment, even to go off island, you become anxious about booking a ferry because you cannot book one. We get told, well, you have the law of seaforth and store in a way. Then when you try to book that, we get told it is full. Then you ask locally to be told you cannot get availability. We have the chaos on the booking system added to the unreliability of the vessels, which are now breaking down frequently. As I said before, I came here in 1987, and I do not ever remember having those issues with the ferries. Yes, they were weather dependent, and we have always accepted that. However, that has reached an all-time critical situation. I feel that the islands of the Western Isles are really at the point of almost extinction of our businesses. Our morale is so low that we have no confidence left in CalMac and the Scottish Government, because they ask us what we want, we tell them, and nothing is done about it. The situation here cannot stress just how dreadful we are all feeling about the situation with the ferries in Harass. Margaret, thank you very much for that introduction and sorry to hear of the impact that the community is facing. Let me ask Joe Reed to come in on the same question in terms of day-to-day disruption as a result of ferry services. Good morning. I echo everything that has been said so far. It is important to remember that every island is different, so every island has different problems. Sometimes, they have very different ferry services. Mull is relatively close to the mainland, and we have a relatively frequent service. We are lucky in that regard. For example, we look to our near neighbours on Coll and Tyree, who have a handful of sailings each week and only one service. If they have disruption, particularly in the winter due to breakdowns or weather, they are completely isolated for days at a time. The shelves go bare. It really has a severe impact, particularly on those small and vulnerable islands. On all islands, as you have been hearing, the problem is widespread. We have two crises. In the winter, we have a crisis of reliability. That is when we feel the reliability crisis is worse, because that is when all the dry docking is trying to happen. They are trying to squeeze in huge dry drop schedule that often overruns. We have this logistical Rubik's Cube in the winter that never runs to plan. We have weather cancellations that are increasing. The winter reliability is declining really badly to the point where people can no longer depend on the service that they used to be able to depend on. We cannot rely on the service anymore. It is a guessing game, particularly in the winter. We look at the weather forecast. Will it sail, won't it? Which ferry is on? What is the likelihood? Should I go on that service or should I go on another? If I have an important appointment to make, maybe I should go a day early just to be sure of making it. It all adds to the cost of life. It deteriorates the quality of life. It is really appalling. We have that awful situation in the winter. In the summer, yes, the reliability issues continue, but the summer problem, particularly on the busiest islands, is one of capacity. There is a complete lack of capacity in the system. Whereas in the winter, it is a guessing game as to whether the ferry will sail or not. In the summer, it is a guess. We just know that unless we book weeks in advance, we are not going to get a place because the ferries are full. There is just insufficient capacity. Demand has been stimulated by RET, but absolutely nothing was done to prepare for it. These problems are not fleeting problems. They are not operational issues. These are strategic failures. They are strategic failures to plan over decades. There is a strategic failure to plan for the impact of RET, a strategic failure to plan for vessel replacement and to make sure that it is done timuously. The system has been lacking from proper governance and planning over decades, and it is crumbling. 801.802 is a symptom of a failing system. It is not the cause of a failing system. It is pretty dire, and it needs to be assessed from a blank sheet of paper. How could the system be better delivered? Look to the exemplars abroad of the best ferry services, take the best of them and apply them to Scotland, because Scotland has one of the worst public ferry systems in the world in relation to the amount of money that is spent on it. That is the other point to make. That is not necessarily about needing more money. The sums of money being spent on the ferry service are eye-watering, but it is being spent appallingly badly. The outcome for that money that is being spent is terrible. If you were to look at the public money being spent per head or per population or per passenger carried and compare it with near neighbours like Norway, you will find that it is a really shockingly high figure. We need to spend our money better, and it is of critical importance to the islands for all the reasons that the other speakers have said. It is eroding the quality of life. It is making business on the islands far more risky. It is leading to depopulation. People are leaving the islands because of the unreliability of the ferry service, because life on the islands is no longer sustainable without the uncertainty and risk of whether they can get honour off the island. Particularly for the most vulnerable, particularly for the elderly or the ill, people who are going for regular cancer treatment who cannot get their appointments, for example. Those are the people who are worst affected by this, but the continuous erosion of the quality of life for us all could go on. I think that that is probably enough for me for the moment. Thank you very much for that overview. You raised a number of serious issues that the committee will want to explore further. I have lost most of the meeting because my brand band got cut off a wee wild, which is in a rural area. We have had a very good service up until recently, but we do have wider problems in the wintertime, but the main problem that we have is unreliability because of the staffing or maintenance problems. It has a big effect on the island, but most of the young people in the 50s left to the mainland because they had been staffed at the commutant on a daily basis to their work, and now they just move out. The other thing is that we have a large fish procession factory that puts out almost 20,000 tonnes of salmon per year. They have WD getting out at times, and they have to catch the second ferry, the narsling ferry, to get the goods to mainland Scotland. The whole thing is almost a crisis point here. Okay, Lawrence, thank you very much. I am glad that we were able to get you back online, and your connection was good there. Thank you very much for that introduction. Let me bring in Paul Riley on the same opening question on the impact on day-to-day life as a result of ferry disruptions. Thank you very much both for the opportunity to speak to you, but also for the opportunity to express the views of, I think, most of the Northern Isles in Orkney, that is. I am on the Stronsie community council as a transport rep, but I also have a representation here to speak for Edie, North Ronaldsy, Sandy and Westry, the other islands. Populations range from 50 to nearly a thousand on each different island. The main problem that we feel exists is that the local ferries and planes in Orkney are akin to the bus rail services in Northern Scotland. They are essential. They are not just convenient. In our experience, we have, in particular, in our section of Orkney, three vessels serving their violence. All three vessels were built before 1990, all parts used by dates. They are still fairly found, but when they go away from maintenance, they come back, and within a few weeks, one, two or even all three, have to go back for further work. That shows the reliability of the services that are compromised. As far as we can, no provision is being made for this line of any ferries. Nothing in the pipeline is far aware of islands. Nothing is being done by Orkney Island Council or by the Scottish Government to take this further. I thought that it was fundamentally essential. Having got our ferries, and we have a plane service as well, the question still comes up, anybody with mobility issues. The planes are small, eight-seaters. They are very reliable, very good pilots, as good as services can be for most of the islands. The ferries, however, of the three ferries that we use, only one has some sort of disability access, and that is sometimes simply not working because it involves a lift that apparently can't be used every now and then. So, anybody with mobility issues, that is a serious problem getting to the island by plane or by sea. I think overall, though the quality of life on the islands is generally good, it depends very much not only for the current population, but for the future of the islands, very much on the sustainability of the service, and this needs to be addressed as far as we think this needs to be addressed urgently. Thank you. Thank you very much, Paul. That was a very important introduction that you provided in terms of the impact of ferry disruptions. Let me bring in Fiona Hyslop for further questions. Good morning, and thank you all for your powerful statements about the current situation. We want to hear from you to help to shape and scope our report and our investigation, and so your views, yes, on the short term, but also on the medium and long term, is really important. I am keen to hear from you as to what you think we as a committee should be looking at and what the main priorities for you would be. Can I first come to Joe Reed? You talked about the need for looking at things with a blank sheet of paper. If we are going to inform the next connectivity ferry plan, what are the things that you think should be put in place and what should we look at for the medium and long term in particular? I will come to the other members and the convener will keep me correct on time. I hope that I can hear from all of you if we can. I will come to Joe first because you raised that. At the core of this is the quality of the decision making and how those decisions are influenced. At the moment, the system that we have is giving us very poor outcomes, poor decisions and poor outcomes. You need to look at the fundamental structure of how the system is organised, fundamental structure of how a ferry service is delivered and what is the best way to deliver a ferry service. When you look at Scotland's system, we have this bizarre separation of vessel owner and vessel operator, which is completely artificial. Transport Scotland and Government try to often micromanage operations that are done by these other two organisations. We have these three organisations without it really being clear who is in charge, who is making decisions, who is making those strategic decisions. To give an example of how that artificial relationship between vessel owner and vessel operator works, we apparently have a system where every six years the service is tended. That would result in a competitive tendering situation where you get the best operator offering the best value for money. The driver of cost within the ferry service are the vessels. That is where all of your operating costs are. The huge majority of your operating costs are in the vessels. However, when the tendering happens, the operator who is tendering has absolutely no control over those operating costs because they are obliged to use the vessels that CML gives them. The flip side of that is that when a vessel is being renewed, being replaced, as is happening on Islay now, that process is going through now. The decisions that go into that vessel design bake in those operating costs in terms of vessel size, how many crew on the vessel, whether the crew are live aboard or live ashore, how much fuel it burns, all those key decisions around the operating cost of the vessel are being taken on the one hand by CML who have absolutely no relationship to their success or otherwise. It is completely unrelated to the financial success of CalMac. If they specify a high cost vessel, it makes no difference to them. It makes no difference to their business or personal outcome. CalMac also can specify a vessel, but it does not make any difference. There is no opportunity for a competitor to offer a different vessel because they know that the vessel that they specify now is the same vessel that any competitor is going to be obliged to use. They have no incentive—I am not saying that that is the explicit thought process that goes through management's mind in CML or CalMac, but those are the implicit pressures on them. There is no commercial pressure, there is no incentive for them to make good decisions as far as those vessels are concerned. Whether a vessel needs a crew of 12 or a crew of 27 makes no difference to the bottom line of CalMac or CML because whatever the operating cost is, we pick it up. Whatever the deficit is, and it is currently about £150 million a year operating cost alone, before you buy vessels, before you spend money on peers, £150 million a year is the operating deficit of CalMac. That is because there is massive inefficiency and waste in the system because we have crews that are far bigger than is typical in the rest of the commercial world. We have vessels that are far more complex, bespoke, one-off designs that are very time-consuming and expensive to build. They are very fuel-thirsty. All of these decisions are baked into the designer procurement because no one has an incentive to make better decisions. The question is how do you incentivise the decision makers to make better decisions? If it is within a public system and if it remains within a public system, what are the structures that you create that incentivise better decision making? Or you have a truly competitive situation, as you do in Norway, where they have one of the best public ferry services in the world. You have a truly competitive situation where the operator of the vessel is also the owner of the vessel and they compete for the right to government subsidy to operate a service on the basis of their efficiency and productivity. Their decisions are linked to their financial performance, their business performance. I understand that your committee has also looked at international experience, so if you could perhaps indicate to our clerks separately what way we should be looking at that would be helpful, but I am conscious that we need to hear from everybody. I know we started late, so I apologise. If I can maybe come to Margaret Morrison next. The weather issues are going to be with us, climate change is with us, and that is going to be an issue that we are going to have to factor in. However, you talked about the need to have sustainability for businesses and we want repopulation. What would you like us as a committee to look at? What should be the things that we want to see from our ferry service that we can advise and inform and hold the Government to account on? What are your key priorities? Our key priorities from Harry's perspective are what we were asking for. We think that this is a simple ask, and I appreciate that it may not be. However, we are looking for a Western Earth network. We got made up of six large ferries with two deployed servings on the way, and a dedicated ferry on the route from Tarbrick, Loch Maddy, Loch Boysdale and Castle Bay, plus two smaller ferries to serve the sound of Harris and the sound of Barra. This dedicated ferries will provide greater capacity and frequency in normal times, and resilience will improve with the ability to cover any breakdowns that are happening now. I am afraid that we are not in as regularity and also when the vessels go to dry dock. The operations and management of the network should be based within the Western Isles, because what we are finding is that we need to manage our service locally. Their management is based many miles away, and it is a confusing management structure. We just feel that immediately what would really help would be the opportunity to charter an overnight freight service on the Alipol Stornway route. We have talked about this, and we get told that the freight ferries that the Petalina brings to mind is not fit for purpose. We hear this from Seymal. What would it take to make it fit for purpose? We are closing down for six months on Harris in October, and that is not far away at all. We were told that we would have extra sailings on Seaforth. To date, we have had no word that this is going to be a reality, and what we feel is what is happening right at the moment. We have no availability in the lot of Seaforth. People from Harris will have to leave home very early in the morning to sit in a wake queue and then to watch the ferry closing, and you make your way back to Harris. If you meet Harris, what we are really looking for is that we have a mesenine deck on the Hebrides. You would think that this is not a huge problem, because a mesenine deck is to add extra capacity. However, we are told that it cannot be used on all sailings because of issues with crew. There is money that CalMac needs to open the mesenine deck to allow extra capacity. The Scottish Government refused to give transport to Scotland. The money, again, we have all those layers of bureaucracy that are making our life so intolerable. We feel that this has to be the mesenine deck on the Hebrides. It should be re-instated as soon as possible. We would ask for postponement of the closure of Ewing Pier for 12 months until we can find alternative sailings or additional capacity that can be secured. We get told that additional capacity is a problem. We have had meetings with Kevin Hobbs, who has told us that acquiring the vessels that are appropriate for our routes are very difficult. We understand that and I am quite sure that he is trying his best. However, just to say that nothing is available cannot be done. We hear this so often. We are in a desperate situation and we really have to have scrutiny of those decisions. Why can we not get available capacity? Why is this not happening? It is interesting that there is not an island representative on the CalMac board. I wonder where people get their advice from. If people sitting on the CalMac desk have never been sitting in a car waiting to get on to a ferry or being extremely anxious to get back home or to come to the mainland, they do not have that felt experience. I am an NHS worker. I have stood in the rain. I have been told that the ferry is full to capacity to find that it is half empty and I have walked on. I applied to join the CalMac board. I was told that I was not suitable. I do not know what makes anybody more suitable than somebody who has had that experience. I come back to the design and implementation of a new simpler management structure with fewer decisions taken in the central belt. It is like any experience in life. You have to be there just to understand how dramatic it is to be told that you cannot get on a ferry and there is no prefery to stay wherever you are. I think that a clear set of tangible milestones for the launch of 802 would be extremely concerned. This is going to become a Cinderella vessel. Huge efforts, I think, will go into completing the Glen Sannocks in an attempt to salvage reputations. Only then will we get attention given to 802. We are really worried that the recently ordered vessels for Islay and Dura due in 2024 will actually be in service before vessel 802. I really do not want to miss this opportunity just to explain to you the importance of the ferries to Harris and to all our Hebridean islands and the severity of the current crisis and the collapse in confidence that we all have. My fear is that we are going to see an island full of elderly people who do not always want to travel. Our young will not come back and work here because of this. Unless this situation is resolved, so I really hope that we get listened to but nothing ever gets done. I am really hoping that today this committee will take on board our concerns and try and help us and support us. Thank you, Margaret. Your MSP, Alistair Allan, raised the EUIG issue in its Highland Council of the Own Supports. There is something really interesting about decision making, the distance of management, the fact that any policy should have lived experience as part of that. I think that the repopulation of islands should be something that we look at as well. That is very helpful. Obviously, crewing and staffing is an issue that we have heard from others. Can I maybe come to Sam Bourne next on that issue about community decision making? I understand that there are a number of different organisations in Arran that want to inform what happens with the ferries and the businesses. What do you think good community consultation looks like and how do you work with all the other groups, including a very vibrant tourism group and business award winning in Arran? How do we build that into the future for the medium and long term? That is a very good question. First, I would probably like to echo what the two previous speakers have said about the scope of where you need to be focussing on this inquiry. I would suggest briefly a fundamental route and branch review of operating models, vessel types and service provision, which is wide-ranging and has to be wide-ranging. You have to look at every element because they are so interlinked. Representation on the boards of Steemall and CalMac particularly, whether—we will mention this right now—we are wondering when Project Neptune report will be published. We believe that that has been sat on desks in Transport Scotland and at ministerial level for some time. That is essential to help to inform options. We would urge publication of that, if that seems possible. How can we improve community representation? Representation on boards is one step. There is a current body called the ferry community board that is handpicked by CalMac. It is prevented from discussing issues that are not network-wide, so it does not really hear or it is not allowed to communicate some of the fine detail, as Joe pointed out. All the islands are slightly different. There are slightly different challenges and slightly different service levels. A suggestion could be to remove that ferry community board from a CalMac entity and make that its own independent entity that would have the ability to feed into that discussion. Moving down to a more island level, there are multiple different bodies involved in many of the islands. Mainly—certainly speaking from our experience, our and ferry action group exist because of a level of frustration with the current system, that we do not seem to be making progress, that we seem to be still talking about the same problems without seeing any particular solutions. Clearly, the issues up the river at Ferguson's are disastrous, really. Disasterous in many ways for the taxpayer. We are paying £300 plus million for two vessels. That is unaffordable, but the knock-on effect of that through the network—we are now five years late. Five years ago, that vessel should have been operating on Arran. That would have allowed the old Isle of Arran to be redeployed through the network. That would have been an additional vessel to help fill some of the gaps. 802 would have come online. That would have allowed Hebrides to cascade down. By now, on the original vessel replacement plan, we would have been building vessels five and six, not long away from delivery, and already have four new vessels in the fleet. The knock-on effect of what appears to be just a small delay to some vessels in Port Glasgow has a huge knock-on effect through the whole network. I have other colleagues who want to ask questions, and we need to hear about the medium and long-term priorities from the others. Gary McLean, can I come to you? I am sorry to ask you to be brief about your medium and long-term aspirations and what you think the committee should look at. Is Gary McLean still with us? If he is not, can I maybe come to Paul Riley? We do not have Paul, so I apologise for that. Lawrence, I can definitely see you, Lawrence. Have you got what we would like us to look at from the medium and the long-term? I came in quite quickly there before having maybe not been fully aware of the question and just spoke about the inter-island ferries, but we also have the ferries from Shetland today. First of all, with the inter-island ferries, what we see is the answer. It is looking at fixed links. That would start the net zero thing, because it terminates pollution from the ferries, and it would start the connectivity problem. That is what we really feel it should be looked at for that. But inter-island ferries is fixed links. The north links are added to Aberdein. We need more capacity. There is a lack of capacity there. We need to look at outside the box. We need to look to see if we can get daytime runs, the ferry runs every evening from port to port, but see if we can get additional runs in through the week or larger vendors. We need to do something to improve that service. That is important aspects of that inter-island. I know that there are obviously other representatives on the session today that have that inter-island issue, and we have a point about fixed links. I cannot say exactly where the committee will go, but we are looking at wider connectivity, but the ferries are a key focus, but it is helpful to hear that. I am going to go back to convener to move to other questioners, but I am sure that those that we have not heard from Paul and Gary can probably come in at some point about their medium and long-term views for the committee as we progress this session. I will go back to you, convener. Thank you very much. Fionna, let me bring in Liam Kerr to be followed by Monica Lennon. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. I will direct one question only. I will direct it to Margaret and Joe, but I am conscious based on your submission, Sam, that you might want to come in at the end of this. Margaret First, the question is this. Where do you believe that decisions on ferry service provision, vessel specification and procurement are best taken in this area? Should this be national organisations like CMAW, like Transport Scotland, or should it be the local authority, or should it be somewhere else such as a transport forum? Hello there. I believe that it should be taken by the local council in consultation with chief engineer and somebody who actually knows about boats, because I think that this is the crux of the problem. It is interesting when you hear, I was going to say, men or women suits, and that is not fair, but when you hear people who are not hands-on practitioners talking about design of a boat, and if you have a chief engineer, or indeed if you have a retired captain or a current officer who hears this, they will say, well, actually, that is not right because it is a bit like driving a car and somebody who does not have a licence. You have to know your subject, and I do not believe that those people making decisions know their subject, because we all need expert advice, do we not, from people who are an authority on whatever it is. You would not take your car to a plumber to get fixed, and yet you would take it to a car mechanic, and yet we will have people sitting around the table making decisions on what type of vessels, on the sailings, on what locals need, and as I have already alluded to, we do not even have an island representative on the CalMac board. To who is sitting around that board knows what it is like to live in a community where you are told your ferry is cancelled within a few hours off you are going anywhere, or again, if you are an essential worker trying to get to Barra, where you have two ferries, you are told the ferry is full and you find it is not, so having local, somebody around the table who knows what they are talking about, who has been into an engine room, who knows about engines, who has steered a ferry into Loch Maddi or a drosn or wherever it is, that is the sort of people we need to be listening to, I think. Of course, we need the management there as well, and of course there are financial constraints, and we all understand that. We really do, and I think that over the years we have been very flexible. We have worked so well with CalMac. The front-line staff, the immediate management of CalMac, are amazing. The local staff, the crew on the ground will do everything they can to help you to get on to the ferry, but their hands are tired as well, so let's get our chief engineers and our captains round the table. Thank you very much for that. Joe, I will throw you the same question. You made some comments earlier about vessel size and capacity. Is Margaret right about where the decisions on the service region and the capacity should be taken at local authorities with chief engineers and someone who knows? The key issue here, as I said previously, is the quality of the decision-making and the influences on those decisions. We need to spend our money better, not because we need to cut costs but because we need to improve services. The only way that we can afford to improve services is if we do more with the money that we already have, because there is plenty of money there. The money that is being spent is huge, and it needs to be spent better. Who is the best place to make those decisions? Government should not be making operational decisions. Government should not be making decisions about what type of ferry to buy, what fuel it should use or how many crew it should have. Government should be setting strategic policy objectives, and the operator should be challenged with meeting those objectives. If they are challenged to meet those objectives, they will find the technical and operational solutions to meet them. For example, if looking at our island of Mull, we are just engaging in a vessel replacement process for our main vessel, the Isle of Mull. It is very much focused on what the vessel should be. We have public servants, CML, CalMac and community representatives saying what the vessel should be, but that is not what we should be asking. We should be asking what service we want. The question should be what is the service that this island needs in terms of capacity, frequency, length of operating day, and emissions critically. Those are the key strategic policy objectives that should be set, and then it should be up to the operator to find the technical and operational solutions to meet those objectives. If you either do that by some process within a public framework, but I think that that is a very difficult thing to achieve, it is very difficult to get the best spending decisions out of a public system. If there were competing operators for those services, they would have an interest in finding the best way to meet those strategic outcomes. Our main vessel, the MVI of Mull, does 10 return trips a day with a crew of nearly 30 people on it. If you set the policy objective of maximising frequency, you could use those same number of people and run three vessels. You could have three vessels with 10 crew on each. You could triple your frequency using the same number of crew, more than double your capacity, but you would be doing it much more cost effectively. Unless we have people who are making decisions around searching for cost effectiveness, productivity and efficiency, we will not be able to afford to improve our service. The service has not improved in decades, because every time we look for an improvement, the cost of that improvement is huge because of the massive operating costs that are baked into the system. We need decision makers who have a vested interest in running a productive, efficient ferry service. That is the question. How do you incentivise decision makers to make those good decisions? Obviously, one answer is that you have private operators who are competing for a public service contract, and they are competing against one another to meet those public policy objectives as cost effectively as possible, or you have some structure within a public framework that encourages that. At the moment, Transport Scotland, for example, has no shipping professionals in their team. The one group of advisers that they have has been disbanded. They may all be capable and intelligent people, but they do not have shipping experience, yet those are the people who are making operational and planning decisions for a shipping business. We need more professionalism, knowledge and experience and incentivisation to get the right decisions. I don't know if that answers the question, but I hope so. I would like Margaret's answer before. I think that that was a really useful summary, Joe. Finally, I will throw to Sam, because I thought that the submission that came in had some fascinating points on that area. Sam, is there anything that you want to add to the two answers that we have already heard about where decision making and provision procurement and specification should be made? Yes, echoing both previous speakers. I think that, fundamentally, Joe is right where we should be separating the specification into two elements. We should not be trying to specify the vessel at government level. We should be specifying the service requirement. That is a very robust and clear definition that defines the principle requirements that the vessel must meet. How many people per day must it move from A to B? How many cars from A to B? How long should its operating day be? Also, critically, what about its emissions on the path to net zero? That should be the outline specification that then gets given to the operator. The operator is the one who is then motivated to meet that criteria in the most cost-efficient way. That may mean multiple vessels. There are many benefits to the multiple vessel route. Increased frequency is the key one, but also significantly increased redundancy. If one vessel breaks down, say you have three vessels on a route, you still have two vessels, so you have only lost 30 per cent of your capacity. The recent examples throughout the network—let's take the example up and store it away when Lock C forth goes down—that's 100 per cent of the capacity gone. There is no redundancy, so the vessels have to be moved around the network, which then you're taking other vessels off other routes, which then impacts their capacity, which then has knock-on effects everywhere. It would be more manageable to have multiple smaller units, but those questions should be for the operator on long-term contracts, so they've got the time to get return on their investments, to deliver the specification as described by the very clear and robust service requirements. The thing is that it's such a huge area. There's so many interlinked things, but again, the fundamental service requirement needs to be informed by what the island community's businesses require from its core lifeline service, and from there it will look after itself. I understand. Thank you very much all for your answers. Back to you, convener, no further questions. Okay, thank you very much. Liam, next up is Monica Lennon to be followed by Jackie Dumbart. Monica, over to you please. Thank you, convener. Good morning. The panel has been very helpful and informative so far, and I think a few of my questions have already been answered in your contributions. But just thinking again about vessel size and capacity issues, so looking at the written submission that we received from the Harris Transport Forum, I'll come to Margaret first. Margaret, you say in the submission or the forum says that you're of the view that medium-sized vessels will provide a more resilient and more convenient service in the long term. I'm just going to come to you just to explain that further and invite other panellists to join in. Margaret, please. Yes, we feel that having two smaller vessels would be far more efficient and effective than having one large vessel, because if the seaforth wants to go off or have an engine malfunction, it's off. But also if you had two smaller ferries, then you've got more resilience, and that's what had we been consulted about in the new build, rather than what's being built at the moment in ferries. That's what we've opted for. Two of the ferries, the style that are being built for IRA, would be very suitable for our crossing on the bench. Thank you, Margaret. Sorry, I've got a window banging behind me as I've been distracting. I can't see the rest of the panel now. Would anyone like to add to what Margaret said or have a different view about vessel size? Just give us a wave if you want to come in. Yes, Joe, we'll come to you and then Sam. Thank you. I was told there was a button to press, but it's easier to wave, isn't it? Yes, if you speak to people all over the Hebrides, this will be what you get back all the time, is why are the ferries so big? We don't need these behemoths. This is another baffling strategic failure where we get these ever-increasing vessels in size being delivered that are inflexible, lack redundancy, when a vessel breaks down and you have to pinch a boat from another service and the shore facilities that are needed. Every time there is a vessel replacement, the pier needs to get bigger and deeper. There are vast sums being spent on pier improvement, so-called. Look at where 802 is going across the Minch. At the time of the procurement, I think that if you go back and you'll see that the ferry industry advisory group who were advising Transport Scotland at the time was strongly saying, was strongly arguing that they should buy two medium-sized vessels for that service, because at the moment, as one vessel, the Hebrides shared effectively between two routes. They were strongly advised in terms of improved service, frequency and capacity and redundancy and resilience to two vessels, but no, one vessel, one large vessel was ordered, 802. It's going to add capacity, but it's still going to be a highly vulnerable service because it's reliant on one vessel and will not improve the timetable at all. Ultimately, that's why UIG is having to have this six-month shutdown, is to accommodate this vast vessel. Two smaller vessels have been bought, none of that would have been necessary, none of that huge capital expenditure would have been necessary and the service improvement would have been far greater. Why are these decisions being made? Deloxyforth was another one, the Ulipul Stornaway service. It was strongly argued at the time by experts and locals that they wanted a multi-vessel service, frequency, redundancy, resilience and capacity, but no, a one large vessel was chosen instead. Already, the Ulipul Stornaway service shares with the Obancraeg new service the title of the most congested in the entire network, yet it's got the newest vessel. If anything is a demonstration of a failed strategy, it's that. There's a new vessel and it's already at capacity. As we saw last year, if it breaks down, utter chaos ensues because there's no backup on the route. It's a fundamental strategic error that we are relying on a small number of large vessels. We should have a large number of small vessels that are more flexible and redundant and can be moved around more easily, or if there are more of them, you don't need to move them around so easily. Vessel size is key, but it comes back to the point. Why are these decisions being made? Around what basis are they being made? How are the decision makers, email, CalMac and Sport Scotland incentivised to arrive at the best decisions? Obviously, the evidence of recent procurement is that the wrong decisions are being arrived at, 801 and 802 are far too big and complex. Massive vessels are really bad and hugely expensive decisions. Even if they had come in on budget, they would have been twice the price that they ought to have been. That's really helpful. Thank you, Joe. I'll turn to Sam now. We've just heard from Joe about the potential benefits of a multi-vessel service. He's talked about flexibility. I'm keen to get your thoughts, Sam. The choice of vessel type and size are critical to the long-term sustainability of the service. The advantages of multiple smaller vessels and being able to adjust your capacity to demand is critical. Let's look at a couple of examples already on the network that we've already touched on on the Stornoway route. Another example that is quite a good example is the Weems Bay Rothsee route for Bute. Two medium-sized matched vessels that run a long operating day where capacity can be matched to demand. Do you hear many complaints about capacity from Bute? Not very many. You look a bit further up the river to the western ferries. They have a fleet of up to four vessels that they can turn on and turn off depending on demand and match their available capacity. They're very efficient in that way. One of the problems of the current large vessel option is that, while it offers capacity in the summer, in the winter, you're operating a huge vessel that's virtually empty. Again, very high cost for each passenger unit moved. This gets down into the real root of some of the decision making. Let's use the analogy of comparing it to the railways, which we know is quite a popular subject these days. Let's consider trains between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Do you run a 10-carriage train every hour, or do you run four carriage trains every 15 minutes? Which offers the best service level, obviously the latter? It's that model that we need to be considering for our ferry service. I don't know if there's any time left. There were some mentions earlier on that it might have been Joe who talked about crews and about the number of staff on ferries. Do the panel have a view about whether crews should live on shore or at home or in staff accommodation or on board their vessels? Do you have any other comments or views on the workforce issues that you think that the committee should be looking at? Perhaps I've come to Lawrence on that. We've not heard from you yet, Lawrence. We're in a slightly different situation with the other island ferries. The crews only stay on board when they're required to at night, but with the Aberdeen service, which sells overnight, the crews obviously sleep on the boat during the day, depending on which night they're at. To go forth to have additional runs, that would mean additional crews could come on the vessel and take the boat back to Aberdeen, while the northbound crew was slipping. That would be one way of increasing their capacity. Lawrence, Gary, do you want to add anything? It's a difficult one. One issue that we have at the moment is that we're delighted to have two new ferries coming to Islay. We still have to operate in the constraints of the current service, where we've got only four boats capable of coming into Islay, and the average age is over 30. That creates issues. With the large amount of commercial traffic coming off the islands, secondly, we're asking for additional sailings, which falls into the tripartite issue of We Ask CalMac. CalMac says it's not us. It's Transport Scotland. It's a contract variation. Transport Scotland, they go, this is where it comes on to crewing. It's expensive. If we're going to run additional sailings, we're out of crew hours. We don't have anywhere that the crew can see, because some of the vessels don't have overnight accommodation, which is suitable for the crew to be sleeping while the vessel is in operation. It doesn't seem like it's working at the moment. I think that if those who are going to be sleeping on vessels need to be supplemented by onshore accommodation, or if they can recruit locally, that's an absolutely excellent way of providing a good job for local people. It has to be a strategic decision on what we want to achieve from Black Ferry service. That's really helpful. Thank you, Gary, for that point about local recruitment. I'm not sure if anyone else in the panel wants to add anything. I'll pause for a moment if not, I'll hand back to the convener. Thank you. Thank you very much, Monica. I believe Mark Ruskell has a supplemental in this area. Mark will come in later. Jackie Dunbar is up next. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. I'm finding it very interesting this morning. There's been a lot touched on the passenger services today, but I've not heard quite so much regarding the freight services or the effect that it's been having on businesses. I know that Sam touched on that briefly before. I guess what I'd like to know from the panel. Do you have any representation in your group that feeds into your group to let you know the problems that freight services may have and business services have? How can we ensure that we hear their voices in this inquiry? Gary, I see you nodding, so I'm going to come to you first, if you don't mind. Certainly. Our local ferry committee tries to involve all aspects of island life, and that includes hauliers. In particular, the main haulier that's responsible for the vast majority of goods and services coming on and off the island. We are live to the issues that they face, but in some ways that's ameliorated by the block booking system, which is in place for our service, which creates its own issues as well. However, breakdowns and so on do affect the haulier's most, I would say, in terms of the other ones that are asked to juggle things around because it frees up the most space to allow people to get on and off the island. They have to deal with their customers who have an expectation of delivery. The more disruptions there are, the closer we get to shutting down a whisky distillery from operating. As soon as a business like that shuts down, there are massive costs, and that, obviously, affects everyone. I think that we're all in it together at least here. We try to take everyone's views, and often times they're not competing. We all strive for a more reliable service that has the capacity to meet the needs of the island. You said about the block booking service. I'm a bit of a novice, so I'm afraid. Can you maybe explain a bit further what that entails and what problems it can throw up? The block booking service is basically a deviation from the first-come, first-serve mantra that we hear from Transport Scotland, which allows commercial ferry bookings to be made on a yearly basis, saying how many sailings per week the haulier wants and how many lane meters. The issue comes with how that's managed, because if someone cancels at the last minute, then that frees up quite a lot of deck space. I'm not entirely sure exactly how that is operated, because there's a business-to-business team that seems to be very decorative due to commercial sensitivity and confidentiality. It deals with that within CalMac. If there's a lot of block bookings being cancelled at the last minute with no financial penalty, then it means that there's not space for anyone else to book. Not everyone has access to that system, whether it's that I don't know how it's decided who is allowed, block bookings and who isn't, or who, in fact, has them. Thanks. That was extremely helpful. I'm very wary of time, so if I could maybe ask the other, or if they want to feed in my answers to the committee. I think that we've heard some real razor-sharp evidence this morning, and it's certainly very educational. I wanted just to go back on something Joe had said around the introduction of road equivalent tariff and how there wasn't really a strategic plan around that. I see people nodding. Great. I wonder if I could just get a bit more on that from you in terms of how you think a strategic plan around road equivalent tariff should have been introduced, what would have been its key features. I'm just going to pick up on people who are nodding, so can I go to Sam first, please? It's a very big question. One of the inevitable consequences of making RET was reducing the cost of ferry travel. One of the inevitable consequences of that is increasing demand, allied with the shift of a lot of the island economies to a more tourism-based economies. Demand was always going to grow. The problem that we really face, and this echoes back into the previous question about freight and commercial traffic, is that we're now facing increasing demand with broadly static capacity. You can only fit so many vehicles on a ferry, and if you've got more demand, there's less space available. That's part one of the real issue. Part two is increasing unreliability. When you have cancelled sailings, that full boat needs to be accommodated on other sailings that are already full. There's two streams to it. There's the capacity question and the reliability question. All of which are the reliability question was predictable because the fleet is getting older. The increased demand was predictable because of the growth of tourism on the islands and driven by RETs. Okay, thanks. Can I turn to others as well? Gary, do you want to come in on this? Certainly. I can only speak to Islay but, in the past, local people were able to buy books of tickets, which allowed them a cheaper transport to and from the mainland. However, when RET was introduced, that was done away with, but largely the costs stayed the same for island residents. What it did do was drove down the price for non-residents, so that's obviously a great boon to our tourist industry. However, as Sam Scott said, we've got increased demand and capacity hasn't changed at all. In fact, it's probably decreased due to the age of the vessels lowering their dead weight tonnage. I think that we're all on the same page that it doesn't seem to have any impact assessment done on how that would affect local services in terms of demand. Which I find surprising because there were a number of pilots done on road equivalent tariff over a number of years, but obviously it's difficult to predict. Margaret, do you want to comment on this? I think that RET for the masses wasn't a well-thought-out plan. It means that Scottish tax pay is subsidising the fear of many foreign tourists, among others. The additional loss revenue would have contributed to the running costs and allowed us to have had some flexibility with funding. It's not benefitted the locals because it has benefited visitors to the island, so I feel that something should be done about it and should either be stopped completely or definitely need to be reviewed. Can we go back to Jo, then? You raised that initially. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think that RET should go? No, RET is a fantastic thing. That's not to say that it might not need some adjustment around the edges, but RET, as a principle, has been hugely beneficial. It's made the cost of travel much less. It's been wonderful. It's had some negative consequences. Perhaps there are arguments for adjusting it and not applying it universally to all traffic. It's also worth pointing out that RET only applies to passenger vehicles and foot passengers. It doesn't apply to commercial vehicles. We've been promised that for years, and it's never happened. Commercial vehicles travel pro-rata much more expensively than any other type of vehicle, which is stifling to business and unfair. RET was a fantastic thing, but the uplift in demand was entirely predictable and was predicted, but nothing was done to prepare for it. The ferry's plan of 2012-2013 basically has not been implemented. At the time of planning for RET, the ferry's replacement plan has not happened. Look back at the ferry's plan of 2012 and you'll see the vessel replacement plan and tick off the number of vessels that have been replaced. I think that you'll find that there's one or two out of a list of six or eight or so. The Isle of Mull was supposed to have been replaced two or three years ago. It hasn't happened. The pace of progress is absolutely glacial because there's real short-termism in decision-making. We're looking at individual vessel replacements rather than a fleet plan. There should be a whole fleet plan, not just this piecemeal approach to one vessel after another, where all this vessel is getting old. Can we scrape the budget together? Shall we replace that one? It's entirely short-termism. Reluctance to make the capital spending leads to continuing high operational costs. For example, we've got the Isle of Lewis running to Barrow. The Isle of Lewis used to run between Ulipwil and Stornoway. It's one of the second-largest vessel in the fleet, but because it should have been replaced with a smaller vessel, it was like this redundant vessel. What do we do with it? Oh, the only two places where it can fit a Barrow and Oban. We'll put it on the Barrow and Oban run. This is a vast vessel for one of the smallest islands and quietest routes. After time in the winter, the crew equal or out the number of passengers on that vessel, steaming backwards and forwards between Barrow and Oban. That's because no one got Barrow a new boat. They've got this cast-off, which is utterly inappropriate for the route and is costing vast sums to crew and run because it is utterly inappropriate. It needs a much longer term view in short. Lawrence, do you want to come in from a Shetland perspective? Well, I don't think that he really affects us, I don't think. Okay, that's good. I mean, we are stuck with it, wasn't it? Okay, thanks, Lawrence. And Paul, opportunities coming on this. I think we're struggling to get Paul there, but if I can maybe go about it. Are you not saving? Sorry. Yeah, we can hear you. Can you hear me? Yes. Sorry, according to the Simon audio only. Yeah, that's fine, we can hear you. So I apologise to my audience. The basic thing I'd like to point out is that in Orkney in particular, and I appreciate this and apply everywhere, but in Orkney there are three companies running ferries. There's Orkney ferries, which serves Northern Isles and the smaller islands of Orkney. There is North Link, which runs a service from Kirkwall through, sorry, from Aberdeen through Kirkwall to Lerwick and back, and from Scrabster to Stromnes and back, and there is Pendlin ferries. Orkney ferries, I've already told you about the over 30 year old boats that we have. North Link, they get a subsidy, I understand, of something in region of seven million pounds a year, just to run the services, and they are supposedly classified as a lifeline service. Pendlin ferries is a privately owned company, operates between Gilds Bay and St Margaret's Hope. It runs the most stable vessel of them all because it's a catamaran based vessel, and it is the most cost effective. And most interestingly, privately owned, it makes a profit. The Pentelina, which at present is languishing in Kirkwall Harbour unused, is another cat, catamaran vessel, excellent quality, but totally unused because apparently it's unsuitable for use with other islands. I find it extraordinary that out of three companies that run ferry systems, the only one that we know that works and is profitable is the privately owned one. They've got a spare vessel and, excuse me, surprise, surprise Scotland apparently can't use it. I think that's pretty bad, that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thanks, Paul. Okay, back to you, convener. Great, Mark. Thank you very much. Let me bring in at this stage Natalie Dawn, who is joining us remotely. Natalie, over to you, please. Thank you, convener. Good morning, everyone, and good morning panel. Thank you very much for your comments so far. They have been very helpful this morning. I'm interested in the role of community organisations and service provision. I appreciate the comments that have been made so far about service requirements, and communities are obviously the best place to help shape this. I want to expand on a point that my colleague Fiona Hyslop raised in relation to community representation and how you best feel that this could be achieved going forward in the medium and long term. Within that, how do we ensure that full communities are represented? For example, the inclusion of young people is really important, obviously having very specific needs. I'd like to ask as well how young people are represented within each of your areas. If I could perhaps go to—I'll go to Sam first, please. I think that having as wide a representation across the community is very important. That includes, as you suggest, everyone on the—all of the stakeholders from old to young, all sorts of different sectors of business—large business, small business, healthcare—all of those elements need to be catered for in a structure that has an effective voice. I mentioned earlier the ferries community board that sits as part of CalMac. That strikes me as a vehicle that could be an awful lot more effective if it was a more independent voice. That has representatives from pretty much every island across the network that feeds into it. That structure is probably something that needs development to allow that community board to become a much more effective network-wide voice. As to our own committee—unfortunately, I have the younger member on our committee—that's also part of the problem with the populations of a lot of our islands. We are a generally aging population, but the questions on young people representation is huge. Let's take the example of the young ScotKart free bus travel under 22 across the whole country. It doesn't apply to ferries. Why? Okay, thank you, Sam. I'll turn to Jo. Next, please, if anything's had. I think that the greatest opportunity for the interests of younger people to be reflected in the system is basically—we all share the same interests. A better connected island's more reliable service will benefit everyone. We all have basically the same need for reliability, dependability, lack of anxiety, and for the ability to carry out normal life, be that for a business, being able to get a tradesman in when you need to, or be it for a school trip, being able to actually get a space on the ferry to go away, to compete in a sports event, or, as in our case, Iona is an island, often an island, and their children at Iona, when they reach secondary school, go to Oban for school. In the winter, they're losing—I think last winter it was about 25 per cent of their school hours because the ferry is so unreliable in the winter that the kids are having to leave school early just to get home for the weekend. There's a very direct and explicit example of how an unreliable ferry service is directly impacting on education, and that kind of thing is happening all over the place. That is about not just technical reliability of the ferry, that's about the vulnerability of the service to poor weather, which is increasing. The service is getting much more vulnerable to poor weather. We're about 10 times more vulnerable to poor weather than we used to be across the board. In terms of representation, yes, we need much more community representation. You've got to remember that this whole organisation, the various agencies here, are all vested interests in a great sense. CML are a vested interest, CalMac are a vested interest, the trade unions are a vested interest, and the users are a vested interest. We all want to look after our own interests, as naturally you do. The vested interest with the least power are the users. We're the ones that are dependent on the service, and we seem to be the ones with the least power and the least influence on the service. Yes, could the structures be better? Absolutely, but could the communities board be different and not handpicked by CalMac? Could there be more, less fragmentation of the agencies that are responsible? Yes, on MUL, we have a peer that's owned by the council, we have a vessel that's owned by CML, and we have an operator and the service run by CalMac. Then we have Transport Scotland as well. For us, we have four different agencies to talk to, and four different representative structures are local councillors, ferry committee, communities board, and it's a mess, it's a total mess. That all needs cleaning up, absolutely, but it's meaningless unless the agencies themselves consider themselves accountable if they actually recognise that they are accountable, and there is a real deficit of that. If I were to point the finger, one of them, in particular, would be CML, I think, is utterly unaccountable. It doesn't consider itself accountable. It's making decisions that I'll send you lots of written evidence in that regard, but there is no accountability. It's great that you can have all the structures you want, but unless the agencies involved consider themselves accountable and respect the people that they are accountable to, it'll be pointless. I'm keen to hear the views of Margaret on that, although I appreciate it. I'm not sure if you have anything to add, but I'd like to bring in if you do. Thank you, Natalie. From our perspective, I think that we would all agree that getting a young to engage on committees is obviously difficult. You really have to go out and find their views, and it's a very good point because the young is our future, and we really need to look at that. I think that good engagement with the local authority is important, because the local authority is constantly speaking to the young, through the schools, through the sports, and it also has the work of teachers. In the Harris forum, we will hear through our council representatives, who I feel, certainly from our perspective and Harris, they are very involved in the young. We hear through the youth development workers and Harris. Because it's a relatively small community, you do get that the views are much easier to collate views, but it's the young and the future, and it's so important to involve them however we can. We don't want the young to feel that this is a hopeless situation. We have to be cautiously optimistic that things will improve, because life in the Western Isles is generally wonderful. We want the young to stay here, and we want them to come back here, because without them we have no future, and that's the stark reality. So, engagement with you and the young is absolutely imperative. Thanks very much for your comments. I appreciate those were quite thorough responses, so I'm conscious of time. I'm happy to bring anyone else in if you have anything to add, but otherwise I will just pass back to the convener. Monica Lennon has a follow-up question, so let me bring in Monica. Thank you, convener. My question was for Paul, because you mentioned at the very beginning of your remarks today about some of the challenges around disabled access and the quality of accessibility issues. Some of the committee recently visited Orkney as part of a separate inquiry, so we got some insight into the issues that you have mentioned. Paul, if you want to elaborate on what that means, not just in Orkney, but in terms of Scotland's ferry fleet, what we should be looking at in the inquiry in relation to disabled access accessibility issues. Paul, are you able to hear us? Yes, I can. I am speaking. Can you hear me now? Yes. The basic problem with all our transport is mobility. Nobody, with any mobility issues, can leave the vehicle if they are on two out of the three ferries. Obviously, it's very difficult for mobility-issued people to get into a small plane with restricted access. It's difficult enough for able-bodied people. The problem with the ferry is compounded by the fact that, in theory, nobody should remain on the card deck while the ferry is moving between ports. Obviously, they have to stay in the vehicle if they can't get out or can't get upstairs. In some cases, a carer has to stay with them. Basically, that is true as far as I am aware for all ferries. The only one with ramps that I can think of is the Alfred part of the Pendent Ferries fleet. I believe that, thinking about it, Northlink, on both their routes, they have lifts on their larger vessels, so people are able to get around to some extent that way. But Interisland is virtually impossible. This, of course, isn't just people with direct mobility issues. It is people who, for instance, have come back from hospital with serious operations or needing to be accompanied to make sure that they can get home, etc. Thank you, Paul. It was really helpful to get that on the record. I am sure that the committee will want to explore those issues and the points that have been made by other colleagues today about the lifeline services, access to the NHS and healthcare and so on. Those are really important points that you have raised. Back to you, convener. Thank you very much, Monica. That brings us to the end of our allocated time. Let me thank our panellists for joining the committee this morning and sharing your views and concerns. I think that we have covered a lot of ground. If there were other issues that you wanted to bring up, please feel free to write to the committee to send an email or to provide follow-up supplementary evidence by sending that to the clerks. The session that we had this morning will help the committee to inform our final remit, which we will be signing off shortly. Thank you once again for joining us. We very much appreciate your time and for the serious issues that you have just raised with the committee. I will now suspend the meeting for 10 minutes. Thank you very much. Welcome back, everyone. Our next agenda item is the consideration of three petitions. I refer members to paper 3, which provides some background information on each petition, each of which we have looked at before as a committee. The first petition that we will consider is petition 1750. It was lodged by Alex Hogg of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association in August 2019. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to introduce independent monitoring of satellite tags fitted to raptor species in order to assist the police and courts in potential wildlife crime cases and to provide data transparency. On 15 March, we agreed to keep the petition open and to write to NatureScot and Police Scotland for reviews on the implementation of new data-sharing protocols in the first year and on the robustness of the data being gathered. We also agreed to write to the Scottish Government to ask for its views. All three have replied. I also note that we have received correspondence a late submission from the Scottish Gamekeepers Association. I now invite views of committee members on how we take the petition forward. I refer you to paragraph 11 of the paper. The satellite tagging of raptors is hugely important, not least because it enables us to detect wildlife crime. However, that process needs to be robust and transparent and has the confidence of all stakeholders. I was pleased that we got a submission back from NatureScot identifying that there are now new data-sharing protocols that are in place that perhaps were not in place when the petition was originally submitted. They believe that it provides important oversight, the data is there to provide oversight that is being done competently and professionally in an open way. I note that Police Scotland is happy with the protocol that is in place. On that basis, I suggest that we would close the petition, but we would want to keep an eye on how satellite tagging is progressing in Scotland. It may well be a question that we may wish to raise with NatureScot when the opportunity next arises in this committee. Thank you very much, Mark. I would agree with that. Do any other members want to come in? I think that, on the basis of what Mark has said and on the basis of the replies, the very helpful replies that we have received, we can conclude that the petition will be closed on that basis, but I also agree that we will invite stakeholders into the committee in the future to monitor the subject matter that is covered by the petition. We now turn to petition 1815. The petition was lodged by Steve Michael Wright on behalf of Trees for Life in August 2020. It calls on the Scottish Government to initiate a programme to translocate protected beavers to suitable habitats outside existing beaver range in order to minimise the need to kill animals adversely impacting arable farmland. The last time we considered this petition was on 15 March. We decided to write to NatureScot and the Scottish Government seeking further information and clarification about licensing and relocation. We also agreed to write to the Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee to draw the petition to its attention in the context of any future work on new rural support schemes. I now invite views of members in terms of how to deal with this petition, noting in particular paragraph 24 of the paper. Mark. Thanks, convener. I think that this was a very timely petition that was brought in front of this committee. Obviously, we have seen some progress from the Government in relation to translocations, the first licensed translocations in Scotland. That is very welcome, but there will be on-going issues around the national beaver strategy that I think needs some scrutiny. I would suggest closing this petition, but for the committee to keep one eye on the national beaver strategy and again if there is an opportunity to scrutinise that when it is launched, I think that it will be very useful because it will bring up lots of questions around on-going management of beavers, including translocations. I think that that would be the best way to take forward the issues that this petition raises. Thank you very much, Mark. Does any other member want to come in? On that basis, I agree with Mark. I think that it is important to note that the Scottish Government has changed its position on translocation, and NatureScot has stated that it now expects to see a much higher proportion of the animals needing to be removed being trapped and translocated as a much smaller proportion removed by lethal control. On that basis, we will close the petition, but we will look to hear from stakeholders on a national beaver strategy at a later date. Thank you very much. Finally, the petition 1872 in relation to ferry services was launched by Liz McNichol in May 2021, and calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to urgently ensure that all islanders have access to reliable ferry services. We last considered this petition on 15 March and agreed to postpone consideration to a later date because we anticipated that we would start a ferry-related inquiry that would deal with the issues raised in the petition. We have now started that ferry inquiry, which will cover the issues raised in the petition. On that basis, my suggestion would be that we close the petition. Is that agreed? That is agreed. Thank you very much. That concludes the public part of the meeting, and we will now go into private session.