 Welcome to the fourth meeting of the net zero energy and transport committee for 2023. Today we have apologies from the convener Edward Mountain. As agenda item 1, we have consideration of whether to take item 3 in private. Item 3 is the consideration of evidence that we will hear today as part of our inquiry into a modern and sustainable ferry service for Scotland. Do we agree to take this item in private? That is agreed, so item 3 will be taken in private. Our next item is an evidence session as part of our inquiry into a modern and sustainable ferry service for Scotland. I refer members to the papers for this item. This is our fifth evidence session for our inquiry into Scotland's ferry services. Today we are pleased to be joined by a panel of academics with specialist knowledge of maritime transport and ferries in Scotland and members of the previous Scottish Government's ferry expert group. I welcome our panelist, Dr Alf Baird, former Professor of Maritime Business and Director of the Maritime Transport Research Group from the University of Edinburgh, Napier. Neil Kay, Professor Emeritus Economics Department of the University of Strathclyde, and Roy Pederson, author and consultant. I thank you for accepting our invitation and for the written submissions that a few of you have sent in. We are delighted to have you here. We have allocated up to 75 minutes for this session. I will start off before I come to Liam Kerr. I will ask you all to start with you, Neil, and then go to Alf and then go to Roy. Can you briefly outline what island and remote rural communities need from their ferry service? It is a fairly open question, but it gives you an opportunity to make some introductory remarks. I think that the first answer would be a fairly open answer in terms of the prime need for investment. There has been a lack of investment in the past few years. I remember doing a study before RET was introduced, and what I found generally from other studies and also from studies in Scotland was that if you did a price reduction on the typical island route, then every 10 per cent reduction in price, you would get an increase in traffic of about 10 per cent. That was a useful rule of thumb. Obviously, it had to be adapted on a route-by-route basis, but that indicated that, when you reduce the prices, as RET eventually did, you have a crying need for increased investment, not just maintaining investment. I think that the second point there—and of course, just to the added point of that—we all know that there has not been investment needed in the past few years. The other point is the type of investment, and on that I would defer to Roy Pedersen and Alf Bair. I think that they have made points that are well worthy of consideration in terms of the right kind of investment that could be incorporated by the Kalamac network and are well worthy of consideration. More generally, the issue of ports and harbours is a patchwork quilt of ports and harbours around the Scottish network. Some are owned by council, some by SEMALE. My basic assumption is that decisions should be made as local as possible where possible and that ports and harbours should be allocated to council control wherever possible. That would allow ports and harbours themselves to be customised to the needs of the communities around them. SEMALE tends to be distanced to more than one sense both regulatory and physically from the ports and harbours that they administer. That would be an improvement in terms of the organisation of ports and harbours. I think that, generally—I would like to see Roy and Alf's points on that—the best people to make decisions about vessels are the operators themselves. In those respects, SEMALE has largely lost much of their design capabilities. I think that if you are going to have SEMALE with ships, they should own and have responsibility for the ships. Given what I have said already, almost by default it reduces the role of SEMALE to effectively zero. I think that there is an extra party in the organisation of the system in Scotland, and it could well be a redundant factor, as far as I see. More generally—I mentioned particularly Goryg Dynun, partly because I am familiar with it—I use both the ferries there, but also because it is one of the most studied routes in the Scottish Network. There have been several Government-sponsored studies of the economics of the Goryg Dynun ferries, and it is one of the most important routes. Western ferries carries about 40 per cent of the traffic carried by the entire CalMac network, so that alone makes it worthier study. There have been studies of the Goryg Dynun route that found that it could carry a feasible, unsubsidised commercial service. We know that from talking to potential operators. The reason that they have not been bid is because of the short-term nature of public service contracts and the high prices that SEMALE would charge at that particular port in Goryg. If there were opportunities for long-term leasing of ports and harbours, then that, in turn, could open up the possibility for commercial operators. In that respect, I include SEMALE. There is no reason why SEMALE—my apologies—is CalMac. There is no reason why CalMac itself, either in a ring-fen subsidiary, as it used to have with our Gale ferries, or in partnership with a joint venture with an outside company, could in fact not bid and win a contract for the Goryg Dynun service. I do not know because studies have not been done and the data is not available. I am not sure how many other routes would be eligible for long-term leasing of this nature, in which you will lease the port facility and then fix the port charges to RPI plus a certain amount for profit. However, joint ventures and leasing are options that have been pursued in other contexts and other industries. Historically, one of the problems in this context is that being vested interests in established views. I think that we need new ideas and new possibilities and new strategic thinking, and long-term leasing and joint ventures are fed into appropriate parts of the network could be one way forward. I am conscious that we have a lot of questions that we need to go through and we have the others to come in. Do you want to finish on this part of your opening remarks? Pardon? Is there anything you can finish on this part of your opening remarks? Very briefly, this may be controversial, but I think that shot crossings themselves add several costs that are not costed by the private operator. Shot crossings tend to divert from the town centres that they otherwise substitute traffic from. They tend to move traffic away from town centres, they add to road usage, they add to vehicle emissions, they add to wear and tear in the roads, they add to travel time and they often discharge or take on traffic at ports where there is no public transport availability. I think that there should be a presumption that shot crossing should not be considered or promoted in circumstances where a viable public service operator such as CalMac is available. I will end my point. Thank you very much. I will remind me, Alfred, that the question is, can you briefly outline what you think island and remote rural communities need from their ferry service? There has been a lot of research on the needs of island groups around the world and often top of the list is frequency, because frequency also gives you reliability of the system. Price tends to come down a bit lower. Frequency is the most important feature in most studies of user needs and that gives you reliability. That can be achieved by faster speeds and also by more vessels per route, simpler vessels rather than opulent vessels that have been described for the CalMac-type of ships. I think that that is important. There has been enormous investment in ferries in Scotland. That is not the problem. The problem is that it is spent very badly. That is very much related to the very poor procurement process. It is a very restrictive procurement process. The specification of the ship is very, very tight. Lots of bidders are squeezed out of that procurement process, including in the recent bidding for the two vessels for the second two of the four for island, where only two bidders bid, but the second bidder was rejected for spurious reasons. The other feature that I would add is that most of my research in the last 30 years has been on catamaranes around the world. We have catamaranes in Orly now. We are on the second ones. Those have replaced CalMac monohulls that originally started the services in Orly. We have tried to get ferries widely used in Scotland. All of us were members of Keith Brown's expert ferry group, which has since disbanded. I certainly advocated that catamaranes should be deployed, at least on trial periods. We were able to offer ministers and officials and ferry agencies catamaranes, but they always refused to buy them. They raised fallacies, in my view. I produced a paper on that and a presentation for the Mull and Iona ferry community on the ferry fallacies that are raised. CalMac and Seamull have always refused to use catamaranes. It so happens, I believe, this week that they may well be chartering the Orly ferry catamaran, the Pentalina. After 15 years of rejecting catamaranes, they might finally be using one because they are desperate for tonnage and ships are collapsing now. The issue with catamaranes is that they come between half and one-third the price of CalMac monohulls. They are half the time to build. They are much more efficient to run because of the lower displacement. I mean really the weight of the ship. The designs that CalMac come up with are inordinately inefficient. They are like bricks, the equivalent of bricks, so they add as much weight as they possibly can to the ship. The catamaranes have half the power requirement of a monohull, so half the emissions. If you are interested in net zero, the catamaranes will give you that. So half the price or less, half the emissions and also the most stable, safe ferry platform you can possibly get. This is the result of Professor Varsalos' recent study at Strathclyde on these catamaranes. Much more stable, no need for ballast tanks or stabilisers gives you a good indication of that and a massive saving on price. The problem is that SEMAL does not include them in the tender process. They exclude them. They even went to the extent in the Islay ferry class development of inventing a false catamaran. They got their naval architecture and never designed a catamaran before. To design a false catamaran added as much weight as they could just to discount it, which is worse than negligent. I also would raise the issue here of inflated prices for ferries tends to indicate around the world that something else is wrong here. Where you have inflated prices for ferries and in the recent tender for the second Islay class there was a bid 20 per cent below the winning bid with a delivery of 18 months, half the time of the accepted bid of Cymru in Turkey. SEMAL is taking bids and accepting winning bids and appointing bidders who have bid higher prices, excluding catamaranes from the bidding process and accepting later delivery times, which makes things worse for the islanders, because islanders are desperate for ships. We also have to remember that these are agencies that do not really have much in the way of maritime education among them. They do not understand, for example, that there is a shipbuilding cycle. If they knew the theory of shipping and shipping and maritime transport theory and policy, they would understand that you never order ships at the peak of a cycle. That is what they have been doing. They have been ordering ships at the peak of a cycle when they are expensive. That is another problem with ferry agencies and the Government. They tend not to be aware of that. I think that there is a whole range of issues to do with user needs frequency. That is a key issue, but it always comes back to procurement. We have a flawed and failed procurement process. There is also a lot of potential sculduggery, if you do not mind me saying so, on the Ferguson's thing, where a lot of evidence previously presented to earlier committees demonstrated from Luke Van Beek, from Ferguson's management, from myself, from Roy, from others, that the bringing down of Ferguson's, which happened for the second time, not the first time with CMAL, could have been intentional. Going in and making changes to those design and production every day just ensured that those ships would never be delivered. Why was that? Probably because the preferred bidder did not get the contract. I am very conscious that there is a whole range of issues. We are looking into this inquiry in order to inform the next islands connectivity plan. Some of the issues that you are talking about, you will be quite aware that the audit committee of the Parliament is looking into. If we can move on to Roy Pedestan, and perhaps you could have introduction remarks on the outlining of what island and remote rural communities need from their ferry service, which we will see with your question. I will clarify one point at the beginning. At the last session of this kind, I gave evidence that, afterwards, I received a letter from CMAL's solicitors threatening me with an action in the quarter session unless I changed my evidence. I just want to check that this session is that anything that we say will be privileged and we cannot be subject to suits for deformation. There are different rules in the Scottish Parliament than in the Westminster Parliament in terms of that. I am afraid that I cannot, unless the clerks can give me clarifications, I cannot give you any legal advice. I am not actually permitted by Parliamentary rules to give you legal advice, so that might have been something that you might want to seek before you came to give evidence if that was of concern. What I can assure you of is that this committee will treat everything that you say with respect, that it is on public session and that it is not on public record. If that is something that you want to seek address, I can suspend the session if you want me to seek advice on what you can say or not say in terms of being open to the action that you have said, but it would have been helpful to have clarified that in advance if that was of concern. I can proceed with the session as planned. In fact, the clerk of the previous session assured me that any evidence given in such sessions was privileged, but it might be worth checking that out. What the island communities require is good connectivity, I'll put his finger on it, frequent reliable services, preferably run in a cost-effective manner that doesn't cost the Scottish taxpayer an arm and a leg, as it currently is. It is worth pointing out, too, that there are 10 year-round vehicle ferry operators operating in Scottish waters. Most of them provide a good, reliable and, in many of them, frequent service. Some of them are exemplars of good practice, and I would in that regard name, especially Shetland Islands Council internal ferries, Pentland ferries operating across the Pentland Firth and Western ferries on the Clyde. Simple vessels, frequent service and efficiently run. There is one major exception, and that is the CalMac Seamall setup. In that case, the productivity is absolutely appalling. I think that Alff has already made reference to that. When CalMac was set up, it was set up to be self-financing, and it never has been, and it is now costing £150 million a year in subsidies. Simple vessels run in a manner that is accepted internationally as being quite normal. I would maybe take a slight issue with what Neil said about short crossings. The key to providing frequency is to select the shortest feasible crossing for a ferry route. To explain why that is important, ferries are much less efficient than road transport. Road transport is a very efficient means of transport. A ferry will cost between four and ten times as much per vehicle mile on a ferry than sending them along the road, and the road is at least twice as fast. In terms of emissions, the emissions of a ferry compared with a car or a lorry driving along a road, putting the car on a ferry and, collectively, the emissions will be between four and ten times that of driving along the road. The shorter you can make the crossing, the less emissions you have, the faster the overall journey will be. A ferry after all is just a bridge across a piece of water. It is part of a journey, not the end of the journey in itself. If it is a short crossing, it is likely to be a more frequent crossing and it is likely to provide more capacity than a long crossing. It is cheaper, less emissions, more frequent and provides a higher capacity and costs the taxpayer less. It is a kind of no-brainer. Each island community is different. There is not one size fits all, but there are models out there that I have mentioned. That is the route that should go down. One final thing—I know that the time is short—there is a mantra within the Scottish Government of no debundling. That is a mistake. I think that the future has to be small bundles. There is one community, namely Mull and Iona, who are interested in the possibility of taking over their ferry service as a community venture, which fits in exactly with the Scottish Government's Islands Act, which empowers local communities to spot on in that regard. However, as things stand at the moment, there seems to be great resistance to that possibility. Now, if it caught on in Mull, it could catch on in other places. I think that Arran might be another contender for that, and I guess that it is in some other places. Small bundles and community control, where it is feasible, as Neil MacDonald himself alluded to, and I will leave it at that for just now. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. We will, hopefully, come back to many of the points that you have raised and the point about net zero considerations and energy use. I think that is an interesting one. Perhaps Neil Kee can address the difference of opinion later on. It would be quite interesting to hear, but I think that we need to move on now, and I will come to Liam Kerr for the next questions and then followed by a jacket of iron. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. Neil Kee, I would like to go back to something you said in your introductory remarks. The current set-up has CalMac ferries or circle operating services, but the vessels that are owned by CMAW and various ports and harbours are also under that organisation. In your view, Neil Kee, is this the best model for running services? If not, why not? Essentially, CMAW was created because of the decision to try to comply with EU rules and to create transparency in the awarding of the contracts to CalMac. CMAW was originally CalMac, in the sense that CalMac owned and ran its own vessels. I think that that is a clumsy point that has been made or implied by Alf and Roy as well. I think that that is a clumsy solution. It comes back to the point that I said that, essentially, the operator is usually the best decision maker as far as making the vessels are concerned. In that respect, I think that there is an element of unneeded redundancy in the system. As far as ports and harbours are concerned, there is an argument that has been made that the ports and harbours should be underneath one body at the moment. CMAW owns part of them, but it does not own all of them. I think that it would make sense for a ferry network if the ports and harbours were under either council control or a unified control at national level. In my view, the better system would be ports and harbours at local level. We have seen in other places where ports and harbours can be developed around the ferry network and could be an integrated part of a system there. Having the councils responsible with appropriate support for ports and harbours, financially, if we are necessary for smaller ports and harbours, I think that that would be the better solution as far as the existing network is concerned. It is partly the case at the moment with councils owning ports and harbours in certain cases. An example of Gwreg Dynun, the council owns the port at one side of the estuary and the CMAW owns it at the other side. There is a disconnect in unified decision making as far as the ports and harbours are concerned. Very grateful. Roy Peterson, just to take the second part of that answer on, so Neil Kaye was talking about what might be a better model. You pointed out in your opening remarks that CalMac was set up to be self-financing and you suggested that it clearly is not, as it is being operated. You suggested that there are other models that we might look at going down. Taking Neil Kaye's remarks on, what are those models that would be better for these services? I suppose that, in a nutshell, the country that has a model that functions extremely well and provides very efficient vehicle ferry services and passenger ferry services in an economical and efficient manner is Norway. The way that it works in Norway is small bundles. There are four or so large ferry operators who bid for these bundles. The bundles come out periodically once a year. A bundle will be a single route or a group of routes. The operator brings their own ship to the show, as Neil has said. The Norwegian Government does not take anything to do with building ships or designing ferries. It is the operators that provide their own ferries. It is much simpler, and it functions extremely well. To give examples, most Norwegian ferries operate from 6 o'clock in the morning till around midnight. Some of them run through the night. That is a level of service that is unimaginable in Scotland, except in Shetland and Western ferries. That is the way of doing it. As for the ownership of terminals in Norway, it is variable, but a lot of the terminals are owned by local authorities. Normally, in Norway, ferry terminals are unmanned, so the ferry comes in, the cars and bikes and lorries and passengers come off over the link span. The next lot have hewed up, they go on and the ferry goes on. The recently purchased loch freezer, which is ex-Norwegian ferry Utneu. In Norway, it operated with a crew of four, and there were no shore staff. Four people operated that ferry throughout the course of the day. Now, the ship has a crew of seven. At Craig and Ewer, there are two people on the pier, two people on the link span moving hurdles about, and there is a person marshalling the traffic. If you add five and seven together by my arithmetical skills, that comes to 12 people, not counting the numerous people at Obern marshalling traffic and selling tickets and catching heaving lines and so on. You are talking about around 15 or 16 people to operate the loch freezer in Scotland, where four people did it in Norway. That is the kind of level of malfunction, I suppose you could say, in the Scottish ferry system costing an arm and a leg. At Brodick, for example, where the recently rebuilt pier or new built pier was constructed by Seamall for a price of £30 million, the ships are in danger of lying alongside in a strong easterly wind. It is badly orientated. I would not say that that is necessarily true, but I have been told that there are more people behind the desk in Brodick terminal than there are selling tickets in Glasgow central station. All of the large ship Seamall terminals operated by Seamall are over-manned, as are the ships. I recently did a book in which I have asked the chairman—I will just cut you off, Roy. It is very interesting, but I know that there will be questions on staff later on, which I think will be—my colleagues will pick up with you. I just have a final question, which I will put to Dr Baird. The 2012 ferry's plan we know is due to be replaced by the island's connectivity plan, and that is going to have ferries as part of it. However, there is a separate draft long-term plan for vessels and ports, which has been given to key stakeholders for consultation at this stage. Do you take a view on whether it is optimal to consult on the two documents separately? Is this the way that it should be done with only key stakeholders having access to one at this stage? Should they even be separate at all? I think that the consultations are usually a pretty flawed process because decisions are made anyway in regards to this. I think that the problem is that the vessel replacement plans are never—the objectives are never met, have never been met, never will be met. They are just aspirations. They always are flawed. They never are achieved. So some islands have been waiting on new ferries for decades, and if you're replacing less than one ferry a year, some islands will never see a ferry in 30 years. So this is a problem. The problem has been fleet replacement—objectives have never been achieved. As Roy says, it alludes to it. This goes back to the form of central planning that we have, whereas if you debundle and the root tender, as everywhere else does, then it's much faster. I was involved in the Norwegian tender, where they were amazed at the size—the chef's tender in the Hebrides was 200 pages of requirements and took a year or more to get the contract done, whereas the Norwegian ferry tenders were four pages just like a bus contract and took a few weeks to get an operator in place. So its efficiency in terms of bureaucracy could be much better here. The other aspect about sea miles creation was it was unique in Europe to create a vessel owning company that then leased vessels to the operator. So I'm not sure it was a requirement for EU requirements. What most EU countries did was actually to debundle, root tender and also to privatise the operations of state-owned companies that had always been problematic and never delivered a good service or value for money and value for money here is a big issue. We are not getting value for money in this current system. On that point, you made some very interesting comments earlier about procurement involving, or not involving, catamarans for example. Is your understanding that either of these consultations are picking up that procurement with a view to analysing whether the problems that you suggest are there and if so what to do about it, or are these consultations not to the best? The whole process is flawed initially because the ship specification is a fixed specification. It comes out of CalMac, goes to Seamall, Transport Scotland then fund the eventual ship, Seamall get designers to come in and put designs together for that spec. The spec is a monohull specification. It's not a catamarans specification. Length beam draft displacement power is all monohull, which is extremely inefficient compared to catamarans, but that process then excludes superior options like catamarans. Basically, the procurement process is flawed. It's restrictive. It also includes some monohulls that are offered at lower prices from Asian yards, as recently was the case in the two Islay class vessels, which were a very rapid procurement process of 40 days announced last year for the extra two vessels. The order was rushed through before the end of the year. There was an Asian bidder that has complained to ministers about that process being rapid, and they were not given access to detailed designs of the ships that were held by the Turkish yard and a Norwegian naval architect commissioned by Seamall. A lot of the process that needs to be considered is restrictive and perhaps geared towards selecting an operator. This goes back to my point earlier about a big sign of failure in a procurement process is inflated prices. We know from market analysis that we've done that these are inflated prices that we're paying for ferries all the time. There's been a number of scandals around the world that you need to be aware of, including—I'll give you one example—the Estonian ferry bribery scandal, where four ferries were ordered, two from Poland and two from Turkey, by officials, subsequently found to involve €4 million in bribes. The sign that something was afoot in that case and others was an inflated price. I have deep respect for Dr Baird, but I think we'll have to get on, so just a bit sticking on the point. We're very grateful for your informed evidence, but a number of our colleagues have got some questions that they would like to put to you. Good morning. My first question is roundabout the management arrangements for Scotland's ferry services. What roles do you think that communities and ferry users should be playing in those arrangements, both at national and local level? I can see Alf Baird Noddon, so I'll go to him first, if you don't mind. I think that the management is a very important issue. I'm Professor of Business, so I would say that. From what I can see is that people dealing with procurement and operations of ferries seldom have a maritime business education. In many cases, the people dealing with making these decisions don't have a formal education in shipping economics, for example, or maritime economics, which is a discipline on its own. We have people making these decisions. For example, I mentioned the shipbuilding cycle, they are unaware of that. I think that there is a need for real expertise to be brought in, and some of the people who have been appointed to procure ferries and so on have come from organisations that have had their own problems in the past. We have been recruiting people who have not necessarily got the right skills. The officials running departments in Transport Scotland, for example, are dependent on those agencies for the expertise, but they do not have the right expertise. I think that that goes back to the point that Roy was making about the Norwegian system, where several private operators have the right expertise, and they are used to bidding for different contracts across different countries for ferry contracts, just like bus contracts, rail contracts. That is the normal standard process. There is that option of tendering more widely and debundling, because that is a requirement then, because that is why those operators do not bid for the Scottish ferry market, because it is one big fleet that they have to take. The inefficiency of the system is built into the fleet. I understand that, but what role do you think that communities can play on that, and the ferry users on both sides? Roy has done a lot of work on community ownership and operations, and communities can certainly run ferry services. I think that there is no doubt about that, if they wish. At the moment, in some communities, they have no option to improve things. They have to start to consider their own community operations. The system is so dire, in many cases, and it is letting people down so badly that economies are really struggling because of the failure in the system. Roy has done a lot of research on community ownership, including in his work with Hyde. I think that the closer a tender can be to a community, the better, because the community is most likely to know the sort of service that it desires. It also puts a discipline on the community, as well as seeking the best service that it can get. It has to do it in a cost-effective manner. The closest a community can get to being involved in the tendering system is for the community to run the ferry itself. That is what has been looked at in Mull. There is an ambition, if things stacked up, for the Mull and Iona community to have a go at running the ferry service itself by purchasing its own vessels, catamarans, probably efficient catamarans, to revolutionise the service, to provide an hourly service in summer from early in the morning to late at night. It is totally different from the system that exists at the moment. Community ownership is one way—it would be the closest you could get to community involvement. As I mentioned earlier, it would be very much in line with the community's act. Where communities were not interested in doing that, I think that you would find that the local authorities, to an extent, would have to represent the community's interest in pulling the tender together. However, local authorities should consult with local communities to see what their requirement is. I could add something to that. Two points, really. The first is that I have some previous in this. I resigned from the expert ferry group explicitly in my letter saying that the problem was that community voices were excluded from any influence over the plan's strategies that were being put forward. That is something that is more endemic at all levels, as far as community involvement and voice is concerned. That is one point. The second point is that, if communities have to run the run ferry service, that is an indictment of the failure to provide proper public services. Essentially, running a ferry—and I am sure that Roy and Alf would agree—is not a trivial matter. Communities have enough to contend with on a day-to-day basis, living in isolated areas, which, in many cases, are very difficult to sustain in, without the responsibilities of running a community. There may be communities who really want to do that, but I think that the point that I would put down in economic terms is that if a community has to run a ferry service, something is wrong with the public provision of transport services locally. Just to be clear, are you saying that they should have a big part in the management arrangements, but not necessarily taking ownership of it? Whatever works for that particular— There are two points. They should have as much voice and involvement as possible by consulting groups with the ferry companies and so on. However, if they have to run the ferry services themselves, that is a major step beyond that. As you might appreciate, I wanted to check on the situation, and I can confirm that you are indeed covered by privilege in what you say to this committee. Sticking with you, I might want to ask about Project Neptune, which has been published. If you could share your views on that, we will see which recommendations are implemented, but if you could share some views on that, I will come to Neil Kaye on that as well. Thank you for clarifying the earlier point as well. Project Neptune was a rather inexpensive job, and it was a little bit disappointing. I suspect what might come out of Project Neptune is an amalgamation of Seymal and David McRain group, or CalMac ferries. It looked at four examples of subsidisation of ferries in other places—British Columbia, Hauraki Gulf in New Zealand, Norway briefly, and Sydney Harbour. With the exception of Norway, none of them were particularly relevant to the Scottish situation, yet the Norwegian system was the one that was glossed over because the Norwegian system requires debundling, and it seems that the powers that are in Scotland at the present are not minded to go down that route. It was an expensive job and somewhat disappointing. I do not know if I would want to say much more about it. I suspect that what will come out of it is an amalgamation of Seymal and CalMac. Neil Kaye? I would just tag on to the points that Roy Pedersen is making and say that if it does result in the amalgamation of Seymal and CalMac and the ports and harbours, then I think that that would be a mistake. I think that it needs a routine branch reorganisation around the ports and harbours at one level and the ships on another. Just on the point of bundling, I would just add the point that I take the points about debundling. The main advantages of bundling are well established, economies of scale and tendering, interchangeability of crews and vessels. If you have a debundle, I think that you have to look at what level do you debundle at local level, at a regional level, or do you debundle by kinds of ships? If you are going to talk about debundling, I think that you have to go a step beyond actually talking about debundling and asking what is debundling going to achieve other than smaller contracts. Those are issues that Monica Lennon might want to pursue in her question. Thank you, convener. I will begin by referring to my voluntary register of interests, giving my trade union interests. I did have questions about bundling, but I think that your positions have been set out in the quite comprehensive opening remarks. Norway has been mentioned quite a lot, so I am keen to ask a little bit more about that model. Roy Peterson, you have expressed that that would be your preferred model for unbundling. From my reading, the situation in Norway is different from Scotland, and it is on a much different scale, so ferry services in Norway take around 10 times the number of passengers that we transport in Scotland. There is still public subsidy for the four private companies. Are you aware of the extent of that public subsidy? I know that the figures were not included in Project Neptune. I have not got the figures at my fingertips. I do not know if Alff has, but in terms of subsidy per ferry route compared with subsidy per ferry route in Scotland, it is a lot less in Norway than it is here. There are a lot more ferries in Norway, although a lot of them have been replaced in recent decades by tunnels and bridges by fixed links, but still a lot of ferries. I am sure that it is around 44 million passengers every year, so that is 10 times the Clyde and Hebrides ferry service network. The Clyde and Hebrides ferry services network is less than half of Scotland's ferry provision. The Western ferries alone, as Neil alluded to, carries more vehicles and passengers on its one route than all of CalMac's Clyde routes put together. When you add in Orkney and Shetland, Orkney into Ireland's ferries, very busy Norwegian-style ferries, and the Kerr and Ryan routes to Ireland, CalMac runs a minority of services in Scotland. The difference is not so great between Norway and Scotland, where the difference is significant, is in the productivity in Norway. As I alluded to with the Lough Freeza, it is so much superior to here. It runs them very efficiently. Part of the problem—I appreciate that you have come from a trade union background, but the typical large CalMac ferry has a crew of around 30. The Alfred, which runs across the Pentland Firth, which is of a similar capacity to a large CalMac ferry, has a crew of 13. CalMac routes of less than an hour have up to a dozen catering staff. The question is why is it necessary to have catering on a one-hour crossing—a coffee bar, perhaps, selling beverages and chocolate biscuits and such. It seems reasonable, but I have a three and a half hour train journey to Inverness this afternoon, and I will not even get a cup of coffee on the train. Why do we need full catering on a CalMac service? Is your argument that you want to see fewer crew and less provision of catering on ferries? Also, the business of crew living on board—in some cases, it is necessary for crew to live on board, but on many routes it is not. The provision of crew cabins—in a modern CalMac large ferry, each member of the crew has a large on-suite single-birth stateroom. For a 30-odd crew, that takes up an awful lot of space. Basically, you have a hotel on top of the ship for the crew, which would otherwise not be necessary. That adds to the expense of the build of the ship, but also greatly to the operating cost. That is all part of the productivity thing. On the shore side, you have a large number of people employed in the larger ferry terminals when, in Norway, you would not have anybody or maybe in a very busy place, you might have somebody but directing traffic and maybe an office selling tickets. However, by and large, ferry terminals are unmanned, so that is where the— Just to be clear, Mr Precision, is it your belief that reducing the terms and conditions perhaps or the experience for crew leads to better public service for passengers? I would not necessarily reduce the terms and conditions, certainly in terms of wages and so on, although the CalMac terms are very generous compared with industry standards. However, it is a case of what is the point of employing large numbers of people unnecessarily when there is a shortage of people in the health service and education service and using public money to do that. I am not sure that we can easily transfer the crew in these ferries into the NHS. I am about to come to you, Mr Precision. There is a way—one of the ways that we have suggested before, if a move towards catamaran would be important because with lower cost vessels you can have double the vessels for the same money or more. The problem with Scotland's ferry network is that it does not have enough ships. If we compare to Norway—Norway has over 300 ferries, we have less than 100—Calmax fleet of 31 ships could easily be doubled, providing better frequency, and that goes back to the user needs frequency and you get this with more ships. You also get, with different manning arrangements, the same crew numbers overall on double the ships. If the RMT—I am sure that there would be a will to discuss that—move to more efficient tonnage and give a better shift system—rota—rather than live on board all the time for many short routes, which is unnecessary in today's modern era. Those are legacies of the old steamer times of parahandy kind of things, going round the islands with crews on for weeks. You do not need that on a one-hour crossing. It can be a normal shift system—two shifts a day even—longer operating hour, but with moving towards more efficient ships procurement, you would have double the ships. That can also be done by Government if Government had the right management in place. Government at the moment does not have the right management in place in CMAL or necessarily Calmax or Transport Scotland dealing with ferry provision. It does not have the right experience and expertise, which is global expertise that we need to do this. However, there is a way to do it that it maintains and improves the number of—increases the number of people working at sea because we actually have an underdeveloped system. As Mr Baird, you mentioned catamaran and you seem quite keen on that approach. You certainly know more about it than I do, but do you have a commercial interest in that or financial links with manufacturers? No, I have worked with most of the naval architects that deal in catamaran and also some monahouse over 30 years. My work is always in research, usually for Government bodies, mainly for the EU and other bodies. So, not commissioned by private entrances? No, I have just compared monahouse and catamaran. The previous submissions to committees here showed that, for the £300 million spent on the two vessels at Port Glasgow at the moment, it would have been enough to replace 30 Calmax ships with catamaran, and I have submitted that previously. The designer in Asia, Stuart Ballantyne, is a ScotSex pat, and he has built over 100 of those vessels. He is building a 30 at the moment for the Philippines, with 50m catamaran. They come in very low cost, but we have been operating one in Orkney for more than 12 or 13 years. We are on to the second one now. So, you would like to see Mr Ballantyne being more involved in Scotland? Yes, he has offered to build those under licence at Ferguson's and offered that contract to Jim McCall when he owned the yard to build 30 or even to replace the entire Scottish fleet, including Orkney and Shetland, with 50 catamaran, and to use that as a platform for exports, eventually, to have that expertise to build that up, to have a training school, to have that—and there is a Clyde catamaran group being developed, linked to Inch Green Dry Dock, with Robert Byrdson and his campaign for the Inch Green Dry Dock to be reinstated. It is blocked at the moment by the Port of Liverpool owner from being used. So, we could have a good shipbuilding strategy developed by central government. I think that central government could actually operate the ferry systems more efficiently. Lothian Buses is a great template for a public sector body that works really effectively, and I have been a user of Lothian Buses for many years, and my uncles were shop stewards there as well. We have a big interest in buses too, but I am punched of time. So, there is a way to do it. So, back to the Norway model, because I know that you said in the Caledonian Inquirer just in December that, if you tender and debundled, you would get the private sector coming in and operating services in corridors in different routes, but still regulated by a transport authority as they do in Norway. The other side of this I have heard concerns that what people who call for this are really calling for is for companies like Circle and P&O who are not as generous with wages and conditions to come in and bid for profitable lifeline routes. Is that what you would like to see? No, I think that what has to happen is that the integrated transport providers across Europe are not the Circos necessarily or the P&O's even of this world. Companies like Viola and others that were interested in bidding for Scottish routes on a debundling basis and Stagecoach as well are integrated transport providers who operated bus, trains and ferries. So, they are just looking at them as a transport vehicle and that is what we have to look on ferries, it is just another bus, another train, rather than something unique that has to be managed separately. Having it as part of an integrated transport thing can be done, but like I say you could still have a central government run operation as long as it is run efficiently. Thank you. I am keen to hear from Neil Kaye. How would you respond to concerns that unbundling the Clyde and Hebrides, where it is of its contract, could lead to private operators cherry picking routes leaving the state to operate the most difficult or unprofitable routes? Again, it depends what you mean by unbundling. I think that the points have been made that you do not have to unbundle on a complete route by route basis, you could do it by small bundles say four or five, I think that has been mentioned already today. The other thing about that is what you tend to find across Europe is incumbency wins, that the incumbent operator has advantage, it knows the markets, it knows the conditions and it is well placed to win the next contract. I think that opening up to contracts more widely, as has been the case in the past, does not have to be an and or as far as public operator, private operator. Again, outside this network, joint ventures are very common and what you do with joint ventures is you marry the local expertise of the incumbent with other expertise such as technical expertise of the joint venture partner and there are potential partners for CalMac, which if they were to offer up say either the whole route or four or five bundles of the CalMac network as a whole, CalMac would be well placed to win these tenders both in terms of incumbency and also in terms of bringing in expertise from outside. So I wouldn't put it as necessarily an and or public versus private, that's not the way things tend to happen in other contexts. That's helpful. Thank you very much Monica. I will now move to question from Mark Ruskell, who is joining us remotely and then to be followed by Ashwin Mark. Morning. I wanted to ask you about road equivalent tariff and what the case might be for reform of RET, how RET has influenced services and procurement over time. I realise we're a wee bit short for time, so if I could get the nugget of a response from each of you, that would be fantastic. Can we start with Alff? Roy is an inventor of road equivalent tariffs, so I'm sure he'll be able to tell you much more than I can, but obviously it's increased demand. If you reduce prices, you're likely to increase demand. The problem is the system can't cope or couldn't cope. The system capacity is limited, whereas Norway has been increasing, it's introduced more than 200 ships in the last 25 years. We're struggling with a couple in the last 10 years, so we really are in a different ball game. We need a lot more ships. Again, it goes back to the point that I made earlier that the key factor that I've found in a lot of passenger survey work across Europe for the European Commission and others is frequency. It's a key requirement, a key driver of demand as well. You can increase demand much easier by increasing frequency. It's just like a bus, then if you've got a bus every half an hour or 15 minutes, it's a lot better than a bus every four hours. The way to do that is to have more vehicles or faster vehicles, so it's not rocket science, it's pretty straightforward. Fairy companies do it all the time. Here it seems to be a problem because of the inflexibility of the management structures and the processes and the prescribed way of doing things. It's the why it's I being done and they've never been able to look outside the box, as it were. I think that we need to change things. RMT has, in my view, a limited role. You could theoretically, in some places have, like the Staten Island ferry, got to free prices. If free ferry routes—nothing's free, of course—somebody has to pay for it, but theoretically you can get to that, but the key driver of demand is often frequency, for more boats. When I was a young transport search officer with the Islands Islands Development Board, I was tasked with coming up with a solution to what was called the mainland comparison for ferry charges. I, for my sins, invented road equivalent tariff. The idea being that it shouldn't cost significantly more to put a vehicle across a ferry than it would be to drive it along a road. The downside is that it's a blunt instrument. I'm not a believer in road equivalent tariff, I have to say myself. I think that we need a more market-orientated charging system. While it's useful to have low fares for island residents, it seems to me unreasonable to be heavily subsidising tourism. The idea of tourism is that it makes a contribution to the economy. It doesn't abstract from the economy. I think that we should have a two-tier system of lower fares for local residents and more realistic commercial fares for others. We should look at demand management so that for busy periods of the day, times of the year or times of the week, fares should be higher than at quieter times. That's normal demand management practice. We're familiar with airlines. If you book well ahead and so on, you get cheap fare. If you book on time of booking, it costs you a lot of money. The person next to you may have paid £30, and the person next to you may have paid £300, and that's the way it is. I wouldn't go to that extreme with ferries but something more flexible than the present system. I outlined something of it in my paper. The way that the cheaper fares for local residents can be handled is through the bus card system—a card for local residents that would get them a lower fare. It could also apply to their cars. If a car is registered at an island address, it could get a lower fare as well. You also mentioned in your written submission about linking that in with air travel as well, so potentially a national entitlement card for island residents that could look across different transport modes as well. Mark, can I bring in Professor Neil Key who wanted to come in on that, if that's okay? If I may add to Roy's points, before Ariti was introduced, I was invited by a council to discuss pricing of ferry services, and they wanted me to do a study of RET. I refused, because I felt that, as Roy's just mentioned, it's not just blunt, but it's also an inflexible instrument. Economists are always looking for employment, but I can assure you that there will be no lack of economists who will be able to do studies of what would be the impact of price variation on various kinds of routes. We could find out fairly easily what would be the impact of different price schedules. That kind of data-founded approach to pricing is what should be used. Not something in which you've got pricing for one transport service ferries being made equivalent to quite a different transport service roads. In terms of having RET, it's better to have it than not compared to where it was before, but it's not the best system that we could have. It should be much more sensitive to market and local needs. You've all suggested in different ways that the vessels that are currently being procured by Steamal are inefficient, that they are overspecified and that they are being quite critical of the idea of unique designs. Is there any reason why that's particular to Scotland, maybe something to do with sea conditions or anything like that, that would mean that a more unique design is appropriate for Scotland or not? Well, each island service has a different—there's not one type of vessel that will do for the whole of Scotland. You need horses for courses, but the big ship CalMac system is very inefficient. It's to do with monohull design. It's to do with the very large crews, which other operators wouldn't dream of having crews of that size. Just to allay the fear about loss of jobs and things like that, as Alff alluded to, shift working is a way of extending operating hours. At the moment, most CalMac services are shut just after tea time because the crews' hours are used up and then the ship ties up and the crew then are resting or whatever they want to do. With a shift system and living ashore where possible, it's possible to extend the operating hours from early in the morning till midnight with two shifts. In that way, you're extending the capacity of the route and therefore you're generating more revenue for the route, if you provide more capacity and more frequency. That's one of the things. As Alff has alluded to, for much of the system, the Catamarans are now well-proven best practice in many circumstances. Going down that route would save the Scottish Government an awful lot of money, both in terms of capital costs to the vessel and operating costs to the vessel. In terms of emissions, Catamarans tend to be about half the fuel consumption of an equivalent capacity monohull, so if you're half the fuel consumption, you're halfing the emissions. One of the recent developments with the CMAL system is the electro-diesel vessels, hybrid vessels that have batteries and diesel engines, and the idea being that they're much better in terms of emissions. Well, this is not entirely the case. In terms of per car space, the fuel per car per hour is about four litres. Western Ferry's conventional boats are about half that, so half the emissions. The Western Ferry's boats cost one third of the price of the hybrid vessels and carry almost twice as many cars. Why are we building hybrid vessels that are actually rather inefficient and are not heading us towards net zero? You might ask why is it with all those batteries and things that is the case. Part of the reason for what I can have worked out is that you're carrying a lot of batteries, so that's increasing the draft, so it takes more power to push the boat through the water. Secondly, they're not recharging the batteries between runs, the only charge of batteries up at night. In Norway, batteries ships plug in while the ship's discharging and loading cars. Are there other members of the panel that have anything to say about overspecification? We have to remember that most, well, pretty much all CalMac CML ships are what you could regard as prototypes, unproven, as they come out with a slightly different spec for everyone. Therefore, it's unproven. It's a bit like, as I've compared before, going to a car manufacturer Ford with your own design of a car and get them to build it rather than just buy a fiesta at the showroom. Obviously, the fiesta at the showroom is going to be more reliable, cheaper, quicker to get, and that's the fact. That's the kind of situation we're in. It's this preference to design prototypes, which end up with enormous weight. As I mentioned, weight is extremely important in a ship. Displacement is extremely important because that's your whole, the crux of your economics, your efficiency, your power requirement, your emissions and so on. This is where the catamaran wins hands down because its displacement is usually half or less that of a monohull. I'm talking about small ferries, not big ferries. Small ferries under 100 metres are much more efficient in multi-hell form, and we know that. I think that's the problem, is that they have the specification that they draft out that's always dictated a monohull, a heavy monohull. My comparison of the heavy hybrid, as I called it, the four or eventually three small vessels that were built by Seymal, by Ferguson, 43 metres ships, 23 cars, 11 million pounds each. Western ferries built 40 car capacity ferries at 4 million pounds. There was other people building in Ferdemark at 4 million pounds. Catamaran's 35 car capacity, 30 metre Catamaran's, were offered at 4 million pounds, but Seymal bought these heavy hyrids. There were 900 tonnes, I think, the weight, whereas the weight of a catamaran equivalent was about half. So, these are extremely inefficient boats designed by amateurs, basically. I would call them amateurs. They are real amateurs. This whole process is determined by the dilettante kind of management. If I can move on and ask the panel about their views on the committee's heard that some routes might be better served by two or maybe more smaller vessels rather than one large boat. I suppose I'm thinking there of the seaforth all the way to Stornoway, where I know that the community locally would have preferred to have had two smaller boats rather than the one large vessel. I can see that the more boats will probably increase resilience. That seems obvious. It may have a boost to the local economy and so on. Are there downsides to that? We've talked about increased staffing. Would that increase operational costs or what do you think? At the time that the lox seaforth was being conceived, I think that all of us pled for two ships rather than one large ship. The advantage of the two ships, apart from resilience, is greater frequency of service and more capacity. More capacity has the potential for developing traffic and therefore developing revenue. Marginally, it may be slightly more expensive to have two ships, but if they are crewed efficiently with your 12 to 14 crew, rather than 40 crew, in the case of the lox seaforth, there is not that much difference in the crewing costs, but there is a slight difference in capital costs. It would be slightly dearer to have two ships than one large one. However, it is the fact that you can have the frequency, generate the traffic and generate more revenue, shoot more than offset any additional costs. When 802 was being conceived when we were in the expert ferry group, I asked why was it the building one ship for the Uig to Tarbot Lachmadi. It's really two services. When it's running to Tarbot, it's not running to Lachmadi. It's a very inconvenient schedule because of that. And why does it have a thousand passenger capacity when the route has never carried more than a never ever ever on any sailing carried more than a third of that. This was just ignored and they proceeded with this monster of a ship, which now is not going to run on Uig to Tarbot and two ships are going to be provided. So the two or three ships, in some routes more than two ships, western ferries operate four ships in one route. Not only do they make a profit of about, I guess, £2 million a year, but they pay almost £1 million in tax to their revenue. So rather than abstracting money from the Scottish economy, they're contributing it well to, admittedly, the UK economy in terms of tax. Okay. Yes, thank you. Thank you. And finally, we'll bring in Jackadom Barr. Sorry, just to add a point there, that if you did have more frequent service in these routes with more efficient vessels, it would not only potentially be beneficial to the communities, but also if there was going to be a transfer of activity from larger vessels, more heavily crewed, to smaller vessels more efficiently run, then the crewing levels could be maintained in some cases and therefore, from the point of view of trade unions, that transition could be eased. Points are very well made in our visits that we've had in terms of this inquiry to users and communities, particularly in the West Niles of Jackie. Thank you. If I can go back to Roy just for a minute, if you don't mind, you said at the beginning that the ferry journey is part of the journey and not the journey. I think that's really important. When we did our evening evidence session a few weeks ago, some folk were saying that the problems that they had was trying to get rail services and bus services off a ferry, but they couldn't get the rail or couldn't get the bus journey that they needed. How do you think that we could mar that up and get it to be an integrated service? Is there anything international that you're aware of that we could maybe learn lessons from? Each situation is different, of course. There's not one solution that fits all, but maybe to give you an example of how very different it could be. At the moment, Islay is served from Kinnacraig to Portasgig and Portellin, with a relatively infrequent service at great cost to the Scottish Government. For a long time, what has been proposed for Islay by many is what's called the Islay Overland system. That is a short, frequent ferry from keels to lag in Dura, then a road journey through Dura, and then a short crossing across the sound of Islay to Islay. The main reason that has never happened is that the road in Dura is very, very poor quality. It's an A road, but it's a very poor quality. There's a part of us grass growing up in the middle of it. It's a very poor, narrow, single track road. Likewise, on the mainland side, the road for a fair bit is inadequate. However, if the Overland system were instituted, it would, at a stroke, reduce the ferry cost. We're talking about a four-crew ship instead of a two-thirty crew ship—a four-crew ship and a four-crew ship. Operating frequently, so it would increase capacity greatly. It would provide a shorter overall journey time, and it would almost enable you to travel at any time you wanted between Islay and Seaglass go. To cover the point that you made yourself, what is done in many countries in Norway, British Columbia and elsewhere, is to have a bus starting in Port Ellen, driving to Port Asgade, crossing the Little Ferry, up through Dura, across the other ferry, and driving to Glasgow. Several times a day, say three times a day, you put your luggage on the bus in Islay wherever stop you get on or in Dura, and it takes you to your destination without any difficulty at all, so that would be a completely seamless system. Actually, there's a system like that between Doon and Glasgow via western ferries—the bus travels on the ferry. It's not economic if you've got a long ferry journey, but for a short, shuttle-type ferry, that works. Otherwise, ensuring that there are good surface transport connections between ferry terminals and where passengers are likely to want to go is pretty fundamental. It comes back to the point where Roy and I disagree. I made the point that short crossings tend to divert users from the original destination. In the case that Roy has just mentioned, Guru Dhanun, MVA consultants did a study of traffic for the Scottish Government, traffic coming off western ferries, and they found that 90 per cent of the traffic coming off on the south of the Clyde terminal would head towards Glasgow. On the north side of the Clyde estuary, 74 per cent of the traffic headed towards Doon. That used to be served by a direct town service to town service vehicular service. What was happening was that western ferries were diverting traffic away from their natural routes, which would be the town centre of the town centre. In the case of the Dura Islay overland route, I think that Roy's made the point already that there would be costs involved, not borne by the private operator but borne by the public, either in the form of the taxation or journey times across land. I would marry that also with the points that both Alf and Roy have made. I take the points that the existing ferry service run by Karmac is not efficient. There are more efficient opportunities available, but I think that the solution to that would be instead of replacing the existing public service crossings with short crossings, the solution would be to make the public service crossings to Dura Islay more efficient along the lines that they have suggested. How would we integrate that with the bus and rail services that are on the mainland, so that folk could maybe continue their journey without having to maybe use their cars? You could in the case of, for example, western ferries. They offload their traffic at the two terminals. There is a bus terminal on the south side. There's no terminal on the north side. Gwrech also in the town centre has a rail service, but the western ferries service doesn't connect with that. Short crossings in general tend not to connect with public transport. You may have to create the public transport or make it more suitable, but generally they're not designed for public transport because the existing public service Karmac offerings tend to connect with town services and town centres, where in fact there is public transport alternatives. There is a frequent passenger ferry between Gwrech and Denun, which gives you your town centre service. Maybe to use a Norwegian analogy as well, all over the Norwegian coast there are fast ferries, fast passenger ferries. I'm talking about 35 knots running from regional centres, multi-port calls, rather like the old Clyde steamer services, except in modern, now these ships have a crew of three, so they're very efficient. Can I maybe interrupt because we do have another panel session today, so I think your points have been well made. Jackie, have you got anything else? I've got one more question. If we can have a brief question and a brief answer, that would be helpful. Also in the evidence session we heard that the islands in the remote rural communities was finding it difficult to maybe get travel for, you know, if they needed a medical appointment or a last minute appointment that they needed to get on to the mainland. How do you think that that can be prioritised and last minute access is given to the rural communities and the island communities? Two ways, very briefly. One is increased frequency, gives increased capacity, and so it should reduce that problem. In some places in Denmark, for example, spaces are reserved for emergency use. Although all the tickets may be sold for the ferry, there are still a few places available for last minute attendance for medical purposes or funerals or whatever may arise, so there are ways of doing it. I know that there is far more that can be said about those issues, and I'm sure you'd want to say them, but we very much appreciate you coming in and showing your expertise with us. I'm now going to suspend this session for a change of witnesses and I suggest that we come back promptly just before 11 o'clock. Welcome back. We are now going to hear from our second panel today as part of our inquiry into modern and sustainable ferry service for Scotland. On behalf of the committee, I'm pleased to welcome representatives of CalMac's ferry community board. The board was established by CalMac in 2016 and is comprised of ferry users from across Scotland's west coast with responsibility for inputting into the ferry operator's asset management and operational decision making. Joining us in the room, we have Angus Campbell, chair and representative for the CalMac ferry service network, Angus Duncan Campbell, member of the Isle of Cumbria and Kirsty McFarlane, member for the Isle of Cotcall, who joins us remotely. Thank you very much for accepting our invitation and we're delighted to have you here. We've, again, got about 75 minutes for this session, so can I just open and maybe just ask you as the chair, can you briefly outline the remit and role of the community board and explain how members are appointed? Yeah, the role of the community board came about through the last contract, which had in it that the operator should work a board that brought the views of communities to the table on a network-wide basis. We no longer have CalMac in our title and that's quite deliberate. We've evolved a bit as a board as we've come through, so we find that you talk as much to Government, Transport Scotland and CML about the issues that concern communities as we do to CalMac as the operator, so we're now the ferry's independent ferry's community board. We sit at the moment with 15 members across the network and that can vary over time. They're recruited by public advert and by interview and we're doing some more next month. The principles we look for is the ability to represent the views of your community and get into how your community works, but more importantly, to take a network strategic viewpoint on how ferries should work and also to work cohesively together to try and improve the ferry services. I think that's the main core of what we try and do. So it's not so much doing more route-specific stuff, it's bringing these issues to the strategic level and bringing common issues and problems and trying to get them rectified going forward. Thank you and it's important to point out that distinction, so we will refer to you from now on as the independent ferry community board. I pass now to Monica Lennon to ask her questions. Thank you, convener, and good morning to our panel. How does the community board gather views of ferry users and how are those views conveyed to CalMac? If I can come to you first, chair? That is the purpose of the individual board members to gather the information from their own areas, and that's one of the things that we ask prospective members to demonstrate that they have that reach into their communities and they can bring the views forward. Outside that, many of our community board members are members of many community organisations, so they're liable or likely to be on community councils, transport forums, ferries committees. A lot of them are involved with third sector and other organisations that can feed into that process. We started off with our remit to have meetings every six months. We meet every quarter, but we also meet online in between that, probably average of it once a month. We also have subgroups that work with certain parts of the elements of it, so like customer services, we have a group working on that. On things like the VRDP, the development of the plans, we have a subgroup working on that. The small vessel replacement plan, we have people working on that, even to the islands act monitoring group, where through the board I feed into that and then we feed back down again. That's an outline. There's a lot of individual work and variance from community to community within that. No, it sounds like there's a lot of activity and hard work going on. Thinking about all that different activity, do you consider the community board as being a success? What would you pick out as perhaps some of the highlights and major achievements? I think that it took a while to find its purpose. Again, I think that it's through a concept being designed by somebody from above and just planting it into the system. What's taken us time is to find what works best for communities, and that has taken a while to do. But we have influenced, I believe, quite a lot of the things that have come through the system. There's an awful lot more we would like to influence and an awful lot more we would like to see the community voice affecting, but from things like school transport to failures to getting resilient meetings on particular failures of the system to feeding into the islands connectivity plan, for instance, we've put an awful lot of work into that and broadening the scope of what plans like that do to take in the more social and economic aspects as well is crucially important. Because we try and be constructive and strategic, we maybe don't get across enough what we're doing, if you understand. We've recently started our own online Facebook presence to try and help that process, but a lot of our members are very well known in their community, so that is the most reliant thing we have. It says that those relationships are really important. I'm keen to give Fiona and Angus Duncan Campbell the same opportunity. I'm sorry, Kirsty. I'll come to you. Sorry about that. Oh, it's just to respond to the same question. Just if you had anything you wanted to add. Thank you. I was just waiting for my microphone to come on. Can you hear me okay? Yes, we can. You're very welcome. That's great. Could I preface my remarks by just thanking you all for the great opportunity of coming to you by link? Had I not had this, I would have had to have left home yesterday and would not have been able to return until Thursday morning whether permitting. At the moment on call, we just have five sailings a week and pretty wild at the moment, so thank you all. This is a great opportunity. The question, I believe, was how do we communicate, how do we liaise with CalMac? I'm glad the question has been asked because I think there's a huge variation throughout the network in terms of how that happens. Perhaps the most closely linked and efficient way is out in the Western Isles, where you have an island statutory authority that has a transport group within the authority, which is very well versed in all the island needs and can communicate these needs regularly to organisations like CalMac on behalf of all the islands within the network. Then, right down to a very small island level, there may not be very much communication with CalMac at all beyond the interface between customer and the operator of the ferry. However, since joining the board, I've been digging down and you've tried to find out a lot more about how we relate to CalMac. I was really quite astonished to find out, first of all, that in the list of statutory consultees, let's say that CalMac goes out to consultation on changes to terms and conditions, which happened last year, we actually only have nine organisations on the list, one of which is the Western Isles Council, one of which is the board, and only seven other groups. I say that I find this astonishing because here we have a company that proudly says that it's rooted in the area since the 1850s, has been nationalised since 1948, living now and working it in a highly technological age. I thought that they would have links to absolutely every single island community that they serve and that they would want to maintain those links and consult with every single community that they serve on every opportunity. I'm taking at face value what I've seen on the CalMac website. Of course, they will have their links, perhaps unofficial links and formal links, possibly probably with every community. They will have people working, obviously, in every community, but I do think that that potentially has the effect of skewing outcomes, perhaps in one direction or another, if we're not sure that we're capturing news from throughout the network and possibly always going back to the same groups, possibly to get the same sort of answers. That's the kind of work that we're doing on the board. We're very strong on the idea that community voice should be absolutely at the centre of decision making and there's something that CalMac would possibly think of improving. On that point, you've made a really interesting point about who is on the list of statutory consultees. Clearly, you'd like that list to be expanded. Can you give examples of the organisations that you think are currently missing that should be on that list? As I recall the list, as I say, it's ourselves on the board, Western Isles Council, and you've got key players like Ailey, Aaron, you've got Campbellton, you've got the Slate community forum, which is on Sky, which is an island with a bridge. I'm struggling for the elder to forgive me, but what's really at the heart of what I'm saying is, for example, we have a new area manager for the Argyll and Highland region. This area manager has been in post since last August. This is not a personal remark in any way, shape or form, but it's a reflection of policy, CalMac policy. This person has yet to visit Cal. They've been in post for five months. I don't think they've visited Tydea. I don't think they've visited Colancy. You would have thought that putting paperwork and familiarisation processes to one side, you would have thought that the first thing that CalMac policy would ask all those managers to do in a new post would be to go out, experience the ferries, go to the communities that they serve, find out what contacts they can make, find out what the intimate needs of those communities are. Clearly, in my experience, that's what I'm saying, this is clearly not a CalMac policy, and I think it should be. I see no reason at all why they cannot have timetables for regular scheduled meetings between the area managers and network managers much, much more frequently with our communities than they do. Thank you, Kirsty. Angus Duncan Campbell, do you want to add anything to that? A couple of points. I think that the important thing that the community board does is to try to put that community first, because there are not really forums around the contracts and arrangements that represent the community views. I'm a Living Cumbria, I'm a member of the community council, and I also chair the ferry committee. In terms of representing island views, I think that I've got quite a good network of feel for what's happening, and I commuted off the island every day for many years. That community view comes across through the board. As Angus said, the board was established through the last contract, but the question that you would ask is why you need a board. We've done a huge amount to influence it, but the debate about whether the community should be first in this and not trying to catch up with the processes, the way that the contract is structured at the moment, it tends to construct Galmach, Moran, Interactive or Transport Scotland, and it does about interacting with the communities. I think that's why community boards are trying to get that community voice. I think that the important thing for us with any development of ferry services where we go is to put the community first and not the contract of the shipbuilding. It's about putting the communities first, what do they need, and that's very much the voice that we have as a committee to say that's what we are pushing for. We want the community voice to be heard by Galmach, we want the community voice to be heard by CML as an entity as opposed to individual routes, but there are a lot of challenges with the fact that the ferry service is not set up to consult well with the communities that it serves, and some of the challenges are coming out of that. Just very quickly to follow up what Angus said, one of the biggest challenges is that a lot of the communities that are served by ferries have got consultation fatigue because they've been through the system of trying to feed in to effect things and to make things better, not just for themselves but for the operation as well, and they've seen no result of that. One of the things we find when we go on and talk to communities about getting them out is that they say, well, we've done this so many times and it's been ignored. Of course, back to some of the issues that we were talking about in the last session, whether you have choice of vessel, choice of route, whatever, it's got to be the community voice that designs that, it's got to start with the community and build up. Part of our challenge is to motivate that voice to become loud again. I was going to ask about how do we improve and increase community representation, but clearly developing trust and confidence is important if people are willing to give their time. I just wondered, and I know that there's probably not a lot of time left, I'm looking at my convener here, but I just wondered is there any more that you'd like the Scottish Government to do in supporting the community board in effective communication? Is there anything you want to say on that? Yes, I think that we could be supported a lot better. I think that the fact that we as a group have chosen to move away from the operator, if you like, and established that space has also left us a little bit lacking in terms of support. One of the crucial things for us going forward is that the community voice gets in not just at the island specific level, and that's very, very important. That's why some of the things we look at, we recognise, one size doesn't fit all, that each community in each island should be able to choose what's the best outcome for them. But there's also a huge space where I think that we've been fighting to get the community voice heard. I don't think that it's respected enough the fact that you can design services from taking the community voice into the beginning of that process, so that you come out with the right answers at the end. I'm sure that we can all give some examples of where that could be. I think that our work has made a change to that, but there's still a long way to go. We're aware of your petition to the Parliament, and I know there's probably not a lot of time, Letia, but could you just maybe briefly say how you think this could be best achieved? The petition to the Parliament, I've done that as an individual working with some others from across the islands. That is to say that the knowledge of island life and the experience of living on islands should be considered a necessary skill for boards, among all the other skillset that you can actually look for. I'm glad to see that for the last female board, for instance, that was a skill. I think there's a process going on at the moment for the David McBrain board, which includes that in the list of skills that they're looking for, and we would argue that that's a point that should be embedded in legislation, but from island matters, island experience, island knowledge, it's a skill that's absolutely essential. Can I briefly ask about the socio-economic reports that were produced into the impact of ferry services and what the ferry community's board is doing to take forward those findings? The socio-economic report was an attempt to build up evidence to back up the crucial role that ferries play in their communities over and above taking people from A to B and also to show their relevance to the wider socio-economic benefit of the islands, but the socio-economic benefit of the country as well, and why it's good for the country as a whole to invest in ferry services and what they bring. We're not there for the sake of the ferry services, we're there for what they then enable to happen, and that can be for individuals, for equality, for access to services, for businesses to provide jobs and to help with the population issues. One of the crucial points of it was that through government you might have lots of different initiatives going on to help with these individual things, but if you speak to islanders and you don't have that connectivity, that ability to join, I remember speaking to a transport minister with a young audience in school in Benbecula, and they asked what, you know, 90 per cent of that class were leaving the island on completion of school and we asked what would make you stay, and one chap stood up and said, I want to be a crofter like my father, but he says, I also want to do what young people do on the rest of the country. I want to be able to go, as he said to Parkhead on a Saturday, I want to go to a concert when I want, I want to go and visit family, I don't want to feel trapped on the island, and that's a fundamental right that islanders have, and that's why it's hugely important that when we look at all the different legs that make islands work, the crucial place that ferries play and that connectivity plays in it, so that was the basis of what the study sought to do rather than just list what's the value of the cargo that's carried or the number of people that's at bigger peace, if you like. We've heard from young people as part of this inquiry and we're very keen as a committee to make sure that the young people who you've just described and their aspirations and their needs are as much part and parcel of this inquiry as you said, the more commercial aspects that tend to get more of a focus. Can I bring in Mark Ruskell next? Mark Ruskell is remote, so he'll ask his questions next. Thank you, convener. I wanted to ask specifically about the community board's involvement in project Neptune, what was your involvement in project Neptune, how you found the process and what your expectations are now for your involvement going forward? If you want to come in so ever, can I ask the chair, Angus Gamble? Probably in the project itself the only interaction we had was we gave evidence through myself to Ernest and Young when they were doing the study. The next real involvement that we had was when we heard the study was being published, I think it was in September when the transport minister indicated that she was keen to hear a community voice on what structure should look like and what didn't work well at the moment and what could work better and what the aspirations of the communities were in terms of how they interrelate with those that managed their ferry services. She asked if I could lead that work for that part of it and use the context of the community board to help set up that consultation process. We've just recently started that, so we're in the process of going out round the islands and we'll cover the whole network and we'll spend time in the islands. One thing we're determined as a board is that it won't be any form of tick box because we've been on the receiving end, so hopefully we can do it in a slightly different way. When do you anticipate finishing that piece of work? The aim at the moment is to finish the travelling around by the end of March and I've been asked a bit a month later to produce some sort of document. I'm not a specialist at these things, I'm a volunteer doing it, so I hope that that's going to be a feasible timeframe. That's great, it's obviously going to be something that this committee is going to be very interested to see the results of that. Would Angus Duncan Campbell or Kirsty want to come in on this? Angus Duncan first and then to Kirsty? I think that there's come back a couple of points around social economics, so I think that those the importance of the wider impact in the communities isn't particularly felt in any of the decision making at the moment. You know, Karl Mack basically have a timetable and you know if a timetable is disrupted they just go well. It's either something we're measured against or something we're not and the consequence of the communities isn't in any way in the remap or in any of the discussions that are had with Transport Scotland. So putting the communities first and putting that, like the community's social economic impact is really important. I think that in terms of the project Neptune then, as Angus said, we are involved in discussions with our communities about what people think about it. I think again that community voice first and the accountability to the communities is one of the key elements that we really want in terms of any change that comes out of project Neptune, something that comes out of it, because at the moment we see the operator focused on where's your timetable. It's not the timetable I'm not doing it and if you want anything else you've got to talk to Transport Scotland and that just seems wrong in terms of putting the community needs first. That's where a lot of the frustrations with the communities flow in and some of the things that they do. There's a lot of different opinions you got from the last session about how well we can see mal-build ships and ports and we've got some frustrations and cumbrae at the moment about some of the decisions that they want to make about rebolning slipways and how weather-resilient they're going to be. I think that it's important out of project Neptune that, and really what the community board is all about, it's putting that community voice first. I think that whatever structures come out of project Neptune, it's got to put the community at the first and the community needs first, as opposed to that there's a timetable whether you like it or not, there's a capacity, there's a boat whether you like it or not, and that's where the frustration with the communities comes in at the moment. We want to put the community needs first. What does it need in terms of service? How many sailings a day do you need? What capacity do you need? What aspirations do you have to grow your community, to grow the economics of your community? Those are the decisions that should be had first, not that there's a timetable and there's a boat. As Angus Chairman said, he was asked back in September by the Minister for Transport to lead the consultation on project Neptune in terms of going out to our communities. We're all delighted at that. It's an awful lot of work that we recognise for Angus, but going back to one of my original points, I'm really excited about it, that Angus is determined that he's going to go everywhere if he can. I think that it's going to be a great opportunity for a particularly smaller island communities to have the opportunity to have their needs addressed. The socio-economic report that was mentioned previously is so difficult to conceptualise and actually put a monetary figure on, for example, Angus touched on the aspirations of young people. Many of us in the islands are living with a form of constant anxiety, particularly in the winter months, because of the unreliable services. How do you put a figure on that? How do you quantify it? It's very difficult. I'm sure that we'll be hearing all about issues like this during Angus's consultation. He also mentioned that there is consultation fatigue out there. If I could express it that way, a number of our communities are saying that they don't want to be deeply involved in thinking about framing our ferry services. That is something that should be efficiently happening in the background. We are very conscious of the fact that Angus has raised the question of why, in fact, are we here as a community board at all if things are running smoothly? Having said that, we all welcome the opportunity of getting the chance to express what our community needs are, but it's just something to bear in mind that we are all looking to the point where this is going to come to an end, it's going to be resolved, and that this level of community engagement will surely scale back. It's fairly intense at the moment, and it has been quite intense. This has led to the feeling of fatigue. We're all hopeful at the moment that we're finally getting things together, and let's just hope that we all pull together and get a good solution out of all this. I'm going to move on to another issue that has been raised with us. It's around the prioritisation for island residents of booking and boarding, particularly if people have an urgent need or a last-minute need to get access to a ferry. Is that something that you've engaged with CalMac about as a community board, Angus, and what has been your response to that? There are several elements to that, and I think that it's important that we don't take a simplistic view to that. The position of the board is that different islands have different answers to that, because there are pluses and minuses to that approach, depending on how you implement it. It's one of those places where we've said we respect the views of different islanders. One point that I would strongly make is that I often feel the reason that we're looking at how we tweak demand or how we prioritise one part of the customer base over the other is because of the poor state that we've ended up with in services. People are very frustrated, they're very angry, and they can't get to the natural services that people on the mainland can get, so they try to find ways of differentiating how they can get priority into that system. I know that Cursity, for instance, in college, can speak for them. They're quite keen on having a place where space is reserved for islanders, but the importance of jobs, the economy of young people, being able to get back and forwards is also there. My personal preferences that we deal with core root of the problem is that we don't have a ferry service that's fit for purpose, and we increase resilience, we increase the frequency, and we give a service that meets the needs of the islanders. Like I say, with what we're dealing with at the moment, you can understand why people want to be sure that they can get to vital services or get away when they have to. Before I move on to other members of the panel, I can also ask you just to give a reflection then on road equivalent tariff. You'll have heard some of the comments from the last panel, particularly with Pederson on that. Is there a case for reform? I think again there that will vary from island to island. I come from a place, Lewis, which 20, 25 years ago I was involved in campaigning for something, it wasn't called RET then, but it was a very similar process. The importance, I think, you have to remember. In the Western Isles, for instance, a tourism industry 25 years ago was almost non-existent and now pays a significant part in our economy. If we're going to get businesses to locate on the islands and provide jobs and futures for people, we have to give a ferry service that meets these needs. It's not a simplistic thing like that. Sometimes, too, we forget about the poorest in our society. It is a real challenge to say a young family, as I mentioned in the paper, in Stornowate, because that's my own place. I'll take it as an example. To pay £800,000 to fly to Glasgow, there are only choices to take a car and go. As a family, we have to be careful that the benefits of RET are not systemised out of whatever we do going forward. Our view as a board is that there might be space for individual conversations around that and get what suits. However, those other aspects have to be taken into consideration as well. I do really get concerned about the fact that there's a feeling that islanders don't deserve the public money that comes into services for transport. We have as much right to this anybody for any service anywhere in Scotland. I must say that I got a little bit agitated sitting there hearing that we should go to those common denominator and that subsidy was a totally bad thing. We have a duty to look after all parts of our society and we do it in other ways too. I'll compare it to the under-22 travel on buses. We feel strongly that's a right that should apply to young people on our islands as well. Sorry if I went a bit over the scope of what you said. That was useful. On the issue of priority for island residents, as Angus has indicated, there are a number of islands that are interested in going down that route. In fact, we were contacted just last week by Transport Scotland, who I think are committed to running a pilot team outside of Oban this coming summer. Paul and Tyrie are potentially going to be involved in that. We're delighted that the door hasn't been closed on the idea, which perhaps isn't in the first place because there doesn't seem to be very much flexibility from our point of view with the CalMac booking system. You sort of say to yourself, well, why should it be so difficult to build into a system the fact that you live on an island and you have a desire to travel and can you not be treated in a slightly different way? However, that's the policy decision perhaps as much as a practical one. I think that we have to point out that CalMac does have a fairly limited means by which island residents can get a form of priority if they need to travel, but the criteria are quite strict. There are a number of islands, particularly in my central part of the network, which have very small populations, quite infrequent ferry services. We have very, very little to live on our islands. For example, if I want to go for a hair cut or if I want to go to the bank or if I need to take my car to the garage, I have to leave the island, but ordinary everyday mundane criteria are not on that list. That's where the problem is really arising. However, as Angus has said, different islands in the network have different views on that. The great thing is that we appear to be at the point of having a pilot scheme this summer. Just very quickly, if I could mention RET to support and continue what Angus has just said about that, I think that if there is a sense of disappointment in some islands, perhaps it is that RET has really not brought down the cost of living. I think that that is what we all hoped that it would do. It has certainly increased travellers, and that has been a real boost to certain sectors of the economy. For some communities, the cost of food, the cost of fuel and nothing has really shifted because of RET, and that has been a great disappointment. We probably all remember that RET was originally going to be given to hauliers, and that was drawn. I apologise, but I can't really speak with any knowledge on that, but I do think that it might be worth another look trying to see if there is some way of broadening the scope of RET to see if we can really tackle that issue, the cost of living, through that mechanism. I have a couple of points on the prioritisation of residents. I think that there are mixed views and mixed views on the island that I come from, as well as whether it is beneficial. Fundamentally, why would you need prioritisation of residents if you have a capacity that meets the island's needs both for the residents and for tourism? It has been considered in a way that is missing the strategic point of if you need priority for residents, then your capacity is not right to deal with the aspirations of your community to grow your visitor population, to grow the economy of the island if you need to do that. I think that there are points to think about that. For an RET consideration, I of Cumbrae was still my island that the costs actually went up when an RET came in, because the discounted fares that we had previously were matched and they added a small amount on top of it when an RET came in. For a resident's point of view, the multi-genetics that we could buy was the price to set an RET at and added a wee bit to it, so we have lost out from an RET from a resident's point of view and it also encouraged tourists to bring their cars as opposed to just bring themselves, so we now have the position that in Largs in Cumbrae on a sunny day there are hundreds of cars queuing on one side and on the other side trying to get one off the island, so we welcome the visitors absolutely because we are Scotland's most accessible island and in terms of the ratio of passenger journeys to residents, there are 690,000 passenger journeys to Cumbrae, but a population of 1100 people, so that's almost seven times the number of journeys. We need the people on the island to come and spend money in the shops, but if they're bringing their cars with them and that's from a carbon point of view also gives issues, then we're sort of not encouraging the right things to do, so RET considerations in terms of peak pricing need to be thought about carefully. We want the visitors, we don't want to drive visitors away, but we want to think about a better balance between encouraging visitors to come and enjoy the island with accessible travel but not necessarily bring their cars and these are some of the strategic discussions that are really difficult to raise anywhere because CalMac is going, well it's not us, we don't do strategic stuff, we need to speak to Transport Scotland and there's no route into Transport Scotland readily to make any strategic discussions without going through a conflict, there's no community voice in that discussion about what does the community need to grow its aspirations of being a low-carbon island but actually having less cars but more visitors where there's a forum for that and that's just one example of the island, we'll have similar examples about how they want to grow their community, grow their economy, address the depopulation, encourage visitors and most islands just see, if you look at the census, 10 per cent over the past between censuses is a depopulation and very, very capacity and whether resilience are key points that play through into that, thank you. Thanks very much, that was very useful, back to you convener. Thank you, very important points that we're taking are keen and interesting and can I maybe just wind back a bit to ask you the chair about your input into the islands connectivity plan because we would expect the islands connectivity plan to be quite broad and to cover some of the areas that Angus Duncan has just talked about and I'm interested in the timescale from your, you've got an extensive consultation you're taking place and taking part in right across different communities so without putting you on the spot to say well when it's going to be finished can you maybe give us some kind of idea of the rough timescale for completion and are you confident that we'll be done in time to properly influence the island connectivity plan and the reason I'm asking that is we've heard that Transport Scotland might be beginning the process already of consulting on the long-term plan for vessels and ports before they're consulting on community need so I'm just trying to get a snapshot of what your expectations are but what you think is happening and are we right to be concerned about what we've heard? Probably yes. I spent yesterday putting in the community boards feed into that long-term vessel and port plan and again we emphasised the points we've said here about which comes first and what leads the process. I think it's crucially important that there's more recognition now of some of the softer things we talked about towards the socio-economic and the equality issues and the social issues that can be helped with it but again I think I don't know of it when it becomes public what we put into that consultation but we were emphasising, recognising them isn't just the issue it's actually how you then work that into your plans going forward and we have concerns with that. In terms of the island connectivity plan one of the things I've committed to do is feed anything on that in as we go through the process and the community board has been working quite diligently on that with some of the officers and trying to feed into it. I still think there is space for more community voices in the shaping of that and I do get a wee bit concerned that that process has been delayed and delayed so we're hitting timetables and we need to leave room for these sort of things to happen but certainly from the consultations I'm doing anything that goes back on that or the long-term plan will be fed back that's a personal commitment I made. So you're doing that in a continuous basis? Can I bring in Liam Kerr? I think you've got a number of questions you might want to focus on. Thank you convener, good morning panel. I'd like to actually take on that question you've just been asked but pick up on something that several of you have mentioned already involving services and service design and provision. You will have heard earlier that services could be designed differently or that perhaps the vessels might be a different spec or the harbours might be a different spec. So chair does the community board have any input on these sorts of decisions at the moment and if so are they being taken on? We do have an input both as a board because we have one of our standing sessions in each board meeting is with CML, it's with Transport Scotland and we have separate sessions. A couple of weeks ago we had a combined session because it's quite difficult to always be talking to individual parts. Where I would say is we're not satisfied we get the full result of that out or that we're having the influence that we would like and it's not for our own sake as a board but it's for the community voice to be there and that's where I hope we're on the road of increasing the routes in for that and not just the routes in to hear us but the effectiveness of what is coming back up into the system actually changes what happens when it's necessary. Things like the type of vessels we use, it's very easy to say dropped to a low level of service, dropped to given the basics if you like and that will undoubtedly save some money in the system. But you know I would ask a question again, it should be for the community to decide what they need on that vessel. Sometimes they might turn around and say we don't need a huge catering facility on that vessel but it's not from an outside point of view that should be decided, it should be from what the need of the community is and the community needs assessment sorry I forgot to mention in terms of the islands connectivity plan and in terms of the long term vessel and port infrastructure plan has to become much more effective than it's been. It has to truly find out what the community impacts are and then it has to react to that information. So I do have concerns about the simplistic approach of just saying a very basic service A to B I mean in Lewis for instance I remember chairing that discussion over the seaforth in the town hall where everybody wanted and the two options were there there was two slides saying you can have two virtually the size of the Isle of Lewis so you can have a big vessel and the next 37 slides were all about the big vessel so the first question I did before I opened to the floor was what's happened to the options there's no thing there but what was other what else was missing from that discussion was they ended up having to put I think it was 28 million extra into infrastructure so the final cost of the bigger vessel was less a small rather than the two that were originally cost it for the smaller vessels because of that an account for cost plus it was supposed to do four trips a day it only did three plus it removed our freight ferry for 78 million pounds of public money we actually got a lesser service so it's very very important we take the views of what the community need what's going to work there and build up from that and then let the experts come in and tell us what kind of ships can meet that what kind of infrastructure we need to meet that sorry if I've gone on a little bit up it's all very helpful and Angus Duncan and are the community because you've made some comments about exactly this point earlier so are is your community telling SEMA what is needed in terms of vessels in terms of services and if so are SEMA listening or CalMac listening and responding? In terms of the so there's a lot of frustration in terms of the communities about about the sequence of these things you know the regards the islands connectivity planner we're doing right order as a community needs assessment up front and I think that the overall view is it's not where it needs to be there's efforts to try and change it and I think there's a community board we want to really support that but at a local level you know we think there's opportunities to change it but there's no there's no route to proceed Malcolm along and say that's the way he's getting to the end of life we want to replace it and we go right what you're going to do to make it better we want better reliability we want improved capacity improved visitor experience because we deal with 700 000 people a year and they go well we're not doing anything with weather resilience but surely it's getting stormier yeah but we're only doing resilience in terms of it's not stopping falling down so you know we are in the midst of a a debate and I've got nowhere to take that other than to go to the transport master because SEMA will say that's what you're getting and there's no route to take it through any forum to say you know that you know that's the way they're going to build for 60 years is going to is going to be the right thing for the island and there is a question about two two points for us as a community one is winter reliability so the ferry was off this morning if I'd come from the island I wouldn't have been here in time I decided to come last night but the weather warnings that's out today are further north open and northward sort of thing but the Clyde is a windy day it's a horrible day but it's not anything epic from a Scottish point of view that ferry was off the first two runs this morning so where's the design there's no remap for anyone in sea mall to build is a better weather resilient design to deal with global warming they just the example a company slept with is the same thing that was built in 1972 for a six car landing craft and that's a huge frustration and then there's the you know we're up one of the low carbon islands you know encouraging visitors as keytas for a population we're heavily liking and great trappers and being accessible but at the moment the balance between visitors and cars isn't quite right and we'd like to change that but that needs a bit more strategic thinking and we've got some thoughts about it but there's no forum to take them to calm that go we just do the contract contract says that's when the rungey get to the angus I want to change that oh that's transport Scotland and seem I'll go we just build boats you know so where's the forum that actually you know so hopefully when islands connectivity plan intent is to do that but I think there's a bit more work to make that come alive for us as communities to say actually you know want to grow a community whether it's call whether it's Tyree whether it's Cumbra you know how do you grow your community you know and how do you bring that social economic both the benefits in terms of growing particular parts of the conways whether it's Silas whisky and gin or whether it's Cumbra's day trippers or whether it's Arran's day overnight visitors you know all these ones and needs to be how do you put that community needs first in the capacity for your for what type of business you want whether it's visitors whether it's distilling or whether it's day trippers how do you put that first and then build in that model and build something that's suitable for the west of Scotland weather that's getting worse and there are some views that there's the operators less risk averse difficult to say whether that's real or not but certainly you know there doesn't isn't an aspiration to build more weather resilience services in terms of the way it plays through that we see at the moment in terms of case studies. Very grateful I might come back to you on exactly that point in a second Kirsty McFarlane you heard Angus Dung isn't there talking about whether resilience and you talked to Kirsty right at the start of this session about the challenges that you would have faced had you attended here today. This committee's heard suggestions that CalMac is becoming more reluctant to sail in adverse weather. Do you, Kirsty McFarlane, think that that is happening and in any event does CalMac listen to representations from the community board as to sailing in adverse conditions. Angus has just said there that that's very much our experience if we want things to change in terms of the timetable if we would like a replacement service for a service that has been lost because of weather for example it's just not forthcoming. I think over the years we do have the impression that CalMac have become more averse to risk taking but I think it's to be fair to CalMac it's not as simple as it would appear. Problem of weather has been compounded by the fact that the vessels are becoming older and there's natural wear and tear and damage that can occur. I suspect that there's a pretty frantic feeling amongst senior managers that at this precise moment if one other ship goes down with damage or comes out of the network with damage that would really have a terrible knock-on effect. They have to inevitably take all those factors into account. In this sector, for example, we are beginning to have ferries cancelling because of a bit of fog or because there's not enough daylight which was just absolutely unheard of 20 years ago. On that particular example of daylight, if I could just put in a wee story here, the minister announced sometime last year that she was expanding whether digital or rather the other way around digital weather monitoring systems to the third party ports to reduce the incidence of cancellations and so on. I discovered from CMAL that we've got very, very good lights now on call per year and we've got CCTV cameras that the skippers can remotely access to see the conditions around the pier. CMAL confirmed that they had installed them, funded by Transport Scotland. When I asked CalMac why she wasn't using them, or I beg you pardon, I asked CalMac, why can't you come in if it's a little bit dark? I was told that this was from Robbie Drummond at one of our board meetings. He said, we don't use this equipment, why not? Well, it costs money. Where's the money going to come from to use this equipment? There's camry equipment. It seems extraordinary. There's a very, very small example of something that's funded by Transport Scotland, installed by CMAL, but then not used by CalMac. You think, well, is Transport Scotland checking with CMAL that everything is okay? Is CMAL then checking with CalMac? Look, how often has this been used? Is it effective? Is there anything else that we need to do? Of course, not using this equipment, not having a smooth working relationship between the three bodies ends up reducing the service to islanders. As Angus Kerr has said, all the issues that need to be resolved in terms of what communities need and want, the timing seems to be smithing here. The CalMac contract, I think, the extension comes to an end in 2024. I don't think that we should underestimate how major a job this is to go around our communities to find out what their needs are and to get some kind of coherent responses and then actions coming from this. It's not a simple job. CalMac themselves do not have a simple job, because the Hebridean Islands and the Clyde Islands are very, very different places. We're asking them to listen to communities and to take on board what we're all saying, but we do appreciate that this is not simple. I've just given a wee illustration of right down to basic level of where those problems occur. I said earlier on that we're delighted that Angus has been asked to lead the consultation with our community. Sorry, convener, I should say that I got mixed up with Project Neptune and the islands got it, everything planned. I'm slightly new to the board and got that wrong, but the sooner we push on the better and we're looking forward to improving the situation. I'm very grateful. Before I hand back to the convener, Angus Duncan, do you have anything to say, since you brought it up quite rightly, on the whether resilience piece and whether CalMac are becoming more risk averse, particularly having heard the useful answer of the curse you just gave? I think it's difficult to say in terms of whether we're more risk averse. The masters are personally liable in terms of being, you know, so there's a bit there that the master needs to be, you know, as responsible for his ship and, you know, he needs to manage it safely, so, but at the same time, if CalMac aren't designing things to be more effective, and I think particularly the port ship does, you know, docking, the docking, but it's probably the hardest bit, but, you know, I say a bit frustrated with that, but I think also the contract, the fact that contract KPIs exclude weather, you know, whether that has a factor in it, I think we would like to see that, you know, the overall experience of the communities is reflected in any future contract, and that there's an incentive put in terms of making that community, you know, the community needs first, as opposed to having lots of exclusions that, you know, whether it does drive behaviour not difficult to say, but ultimately the master is responsible, so, and Robbie would say, it's not his call, it's the master's, but I think having the right vessels that are suitable for the communities that are required, the right timetable that suits the community in terms of their aspirations and that deals with Scottish weather, both summer and winter, are key underpinning priorities, and I think there's a lot more work to do to try and make sure they line up with each individual community's expectations, not to say that every vessel should be different, but at the same time I think thinking about that a bit more in terms of what the community's needs is absolutely essential. Thank you. Thank you for coming along today. If I can put my first question to the chair, if you don't mind, and it was to ask if the community board was happy or content on how CalMac accommodates and probably meets the needs of the disabled travellers, I wonder if that had been discussed. That's been discussed and there's also the organisation for disabled travellers, which will be part of the approaching next thing, but we've talked to us well, and we also, all of us, I'm sure there won't be any of us who don't deal with disabled passengers with certain issues, and that's why it's crucial when we design ships, for instance, we don't just make the simplistic thing we allow within the design how you're going to deal with any sort of disadvantage going across, because that equality of access is very, very important. It's something all of us as board members get. I think it varies from place to place and type of disability, how you get the answer. For instance, one of the last things I did was it's just getting quite space for young social problems to sit in a ferry where their parents can't have them out in a broader place because it gets imaginated and it makes that two and a half hour crossing much longer and much more difficult, so you make a plea for something to be at the end if it's a quiet number, of course that takes up space on a ferry, but that's the sort of thing we should be building into our thinking going forward. We heard, I was over in Cymru doing a day of consultation on Saturday and you hear of, you know, somebody's got very partially cited and you're actually walking up a slipway to get onto a ferry with a sea beside you and sometimes the lady said that she got help, sometimes she didn't and she ended up walking into the sea on the occasion. So there is a need for that to be at the priority of the list and to get consistency into how we deal with that. I hope that helps. How is CalMac's approach to that? Are they happy to engage with, well happy to engage is probably the wrong term I'm trying to use, but do they engage with the board and take the concerns forward? They do and I think in some cases I've come up with very good answers, but that's what I'm saying, the consistency maybe isn't there all the time. A much more rigorous approach to it I think would be appreciated, so that it doesn't just happen on the next area out, but it's there the next time and the next time. If I could finish on an open question to the three, if you don't mind, and I'll start with Kirsty this time to give the chair a little bit of breathing space. Are there any issues that we've not covered today that you think that we as a committee should consider as part of the inquiry and if you do, why do you think they're important? Kirsty, I'll come to you first if you don't mind. I'm a teacher and I think I would have to do what I do to my pupils and say would you like thinking time? Sorry, if you could just repeat the question. I was just wanting to find out if you think there was anything else that we've not covered today that you think that we should consider as part of the inquiry. Or maybe I've put people on the spot with that question. I think we also want to make sure that you've had the opportunity to say what you want to say in front of this inquiry, so if there's anything that you came wanting to share with us that you haven't to date, this is an opportunity for you to do so. One of the things that did occur to me, and I'm not saying that this is hugely accurate, if CalMac were here they could maybe correct me, but it seems to me that what we've really been talking about and focusing on, and certainly as a board what we tend to discuss really just relates to what we would call the major vessels in the fleet of which there are 11 or 10, if you give out the smaller monohull that serves the small aisles. It's really in the major fleet that the problems are occurring most of the time, and that's where a lot of the media coverage has been occurring, and I think it's true to say that where the Falcon Barth focus as a board goes, we perhaps tend to overlook that there's also a small vessel fleet out there, little work courses that a lot of the major vessels will be cancelled today. A lot of these smaller vessels, they may have cancelled as Angus Duncan said earlier on, they may be cancelled for one or two sailings, but then they'll get up and go, and they're very resilient, and I'm familiar with a number of the routes and they're crewed by just fantastic people. What I'm saying is that there are some good news stories in there, and perhaps we don't give, as a society or as island communities, we perhaps don't give credit where credit is due or we don't recognise that some things on the surface would appear to be working okay. The problem really is with the major vessel fleet, and it certainly affects us here. What I think doesn't help and is a little bit concerning, if I may just round up by bringing focus on to Calmax's latest annual report, which came out last year and was circulated to us as a board, having gone through everything that we've gone through as islands and as a country, in fact, it's a little bit unhelpful, if not misleading, to see in this report. It's upbeat, but it's not upbeat because it's going to independent shareholders. The only shareholder really is the Scottish Government, but the upbeat tone where it says that the reliability, the contractual reliability, was 98.8 per cent last year. That simply does not reflect the experience of a lot of users of the major vessel fleet, and I think that it's probably artificially inflated by the number of successful sailings that are carried out by the smaller ships. Calmax could perhaps separate the two sets of data and at least acknowledge that there have been really profound difficulties with reliability. The other thing that sticks out in the annual report is that customer satisfaction with the service remained high at 85 per cent. Again, if you were to take a straw poll among our communities, I don't think that you would get such a high figure. You would possibly get that figure if most of your respondents were perhaps visitors. It's good to see that there is that level of satisfaction. Again, I don't think that it honestly reflects the kind of communities that we are representing. As a starting point for where we're going forward and where we're hopefully fixing things, I think that there needs to be a wee bit of an acknowledgement or maybe a change of tune with Calmax. The one organisation that we really have contact with is the interface for us into how we improve as we go forward. I hope that it's not taken as a really negative ending note for me, but I don't think that those kind of comments can possibly be the starting point for us. There has to be acknowledgement from Calmax that things are not quite as rosy in the garden as they would portray. I'm conscious of time, so I think that if we can bring this session to a close and perhaps if Angus Duncan might want to reply to Jackie's open question if there's anything else you want and then we'll finish with the chair. I think that the key point for me is putting the needs of individual communities first and actually what community boards all about. I think that in terms of the way the contract structures, the relationships with TES and Calmax, it needs something significantly different going forward to put the communities first as opposed to contract or a top-down approach, which is what it's being set today. That's all from me, thank you. Thank you, chair, and thanks for the opportunity to do this. I think that that's the main important point. When there's so much upset and lots of service and things going wrong, we forget sometimes the good things that are happening as well. There's lots of good people working on these services. There's lots of movement, maybe not as quick as we would like, but there's movement in the right direction. I think that we should acknowledge that. Can I just maybe mention a couple of things? We spoke earlier about having a voice on the board of things, but equally important to the communities is having the dispersal of some of the decision making and the jobs that go with that to our island communities. There's no reason why management should be distant from the place and the best experience and the most informed decision making is when you actually go through that process yourself as living on an island and experience what it means and what the other answers might be like. One thing that we've got to break is having an operator told us to do a timetable, because that is no recognition of need. That's no recognition of what the service should be and it stops flexibility and it stops the ability to say, if we can't sail there, why can't we sail this way or that way or at a different time and still meet the needs of the community. One of the things that I do get concerned about is that we go into the next plan with fiddling around the edges of the existing one and the next contract. So it's important that we use that time wisely to shape the new plan and make real change. I'm going to show you this, you might not see it and I hope you don't mind me showing you. One of our members in Allen is a very much statistics man and he graphs and he records everything, Bill. He produced this when I was an iron last week and for the service, that's the reported satisfaction level and meeting the contract, which you can see runs at 90 odd percent. Not when I don't have my long distance glasses on. If you can leave that with us, that will help. The simple point is that is the actual delivery of service down there at 64 percent and that's what communities know, they feel it, they're in it all the time, so to have the sort of glossy reporting that things are up there, it doesn't drive change, it doesn't drive improvement. We've got to get levers into the mix for the next contract that is that. Thank you very much and if you can leave that with us as part of our evidence, that would be very helpful. I think that you're giving us some challenges as well because you obviously are taking forward the community voice to inform the islands connectivity plan. We, as your Parliament and as the committee responsible for transport, want to make sure that this light is shone in this area so that it can be quite fundamentally different. Hopefully, between us, for taking things from different angles, we can try to help to shape that islands connectivity plan and we very much appreciate the work that you've done to date. As volunteers, and again maybe extend that, we recognise that the community board is volunteers and that's an important task and responsibility you have and to do it as volunteers is something that I think nationally we should recognise. Thank you very much for what you're doing and Kirstie, thank you for joining us. I hope that you get back at some point hearing the howls of the wind outside there, but thank you very much for taking part and showing your views. That concludes the public part of our meeting and we'll now go into private session.