Speech in the Scottish Parliament

10 September 2008

Ferry services

I welcome the committee's report.

To say that ferries provide a lifeline to the communities they serve is to state the obvious.

Such communities face disadvantage due to their distance from markets and services.

Ferries bridge that gap, so we must provide a responsive service that is grounded in the community it serves.

We must deal differently with each community and its individual needs but seek to provide equity and parity to lessen the natural disadvantage.

For that to happen, ferry users must be at the forefront of planning, and other service providers must be involved.

It is unacceptable in this new millennium that children need to leave home to go to high school.

I had to do it, and I know that it is far from ideal to leave home and family when they might be needed most.

The lengths to which people go to avoid it are striking: people with whom I went to school and who continue to live in the same area give up hours of their own time to get their children to and from school each day.

They recognise the need for that, because of their own experience, and want better for their children.

Families on Colonsay still face the prospect of leaving the island or waving goodbye to their children for a month at a time.

Unfortunately, they are not the only ones. Ferry services need to address those issues.

Listening to ferry service users and meeting their needs is vital when ferry services are being put in place.

There could be no better illustration of that than that in the Uists, where the local community has been campaigning for a new direct service between Lochboisdale and Mallaig, which would result in far faster links to the mainland and the new road link from Mallaig to Fort William and beyond.

The link to Mallaig would cut journey times dramatically for travellers to and from South Uist and could only be of benefit. It has overwhelming community support.

The local community company, Stòras Uibhist, has managed to locate a vessel and an operator who, if necessary, would work with CalMac to deliver the service.

In answer to parliamentary questions lodged by Peter Peacock, the minister said that he has the money to provide the route.

I welcome that.

The beauty of the proposal is that it would add a service and vessel that would run alongside the current service between Barra and Oban.

As I love to visit Barra and therefore recognise the community's requirement for good transport links, I wish to ensure that its needs are fully accounted for and suggest that doing otherwise would cause division between communities and pit them against each another.

The proposal would also offer more choice to people in Barra, who would have an alternative to use in bad weather.

As I have visited the area and had holidays cut short—indeed, I have had to travel to Barra via Uig in Skye—I would really welcome the new service.

I hope that the minister will work with the community to introduce it.

We need to find ways of developing routes outside the tendering framework.

I welcome what the minister has said today, but many different arrangements need to be put in place, especially to cover bad weather, so that ferry services can be provided outwith the normal timetable.

I hope that that will be dealt with both within and outwith the tendering process.

I could not speak without mentioning the road equivalent tariff.

The committee report states that there was little consultation on the pilot's implementation.

If the RET pilot is a true pilot, what is it being gauged against?

In his intervention on Liam McArthur, Alasdair Allan admitted that the scheme would be unworkable in the Shetland Isles, so why is it being piloted?

In its inquiry into the future of Scotland's hills and islands, the Royal Society of Edinburgh stated that the Government should review the means of supporting ferry services from the mainland to islands other than the Western Isles so that they can have a scheme that is similarly advantageous to that for the Western Isles.

No one is arguing that the Western Isles do not need a cheaper ferry service; we are arguing that all island communities need to be treated equally.

There are many other issues that I want to discuss, but I will conclude by dealing with European policy.

We need to examine the issue more closely.

For example, the EU provides less favoured area support to farmers and crofters who operate on the periphery, which should be used to offset their natural disadvantage.

Nowhere is more peripheral than our islands.

Given that the public service obligation subsidy cannot be used for freight or animal transportation, surely we could use some of the LFA money to discount the freight services that farmers and crofters use for supplies and stock transportation.

As the EU acknowledges and tries to alleviate the difficulties that farmers and crofters who work in our rural areas experience, surely it must recognise that business experiences the same disadvantage.

Would the EU prevent a Government from attempting to mitigate such disadvantage?

I think not.

The debate has many facets, but it is clear that the ferries are a tool for keeping disadvantaged communities together.

To lessen that disadvantage, ferries must be provided in a way that best suits those communities' needs.

All islands must be dealt with equally, and ferries should be used to address their natural disadvantage.

In seeking to do so, this Government has built resentment in island communities.

The solution is in the Government's hands, and I hope that it will address the issues that I have raised.