Information on loan funding provided to Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited (CMAL) relating to the Ferguson shipyard contract: EIR release

Information requested

For the following information after clarification:

a) Any loan funding provided to CMAL relating to the Ferguson shipyard contract to build two CalMac ferries

b) Any additional resources provided to CMAL as a consequence of extra costs it has incurred in relation to the CalMac ferries contract at Ferguson shipyard.

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

The answer to your questions are as follows;
a) The details of all loans to Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited (CMAL) including “Voted Loans“ and any payments made to CMAL for the Ferry contract are already publicly available. They can be found in the Audit Scotland report Page 21, Exhibit 3 for scheduled milestone payments and then Annex 4, page 70-71, planned versus actual payments to the yard.

New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides (audit-scotland.gov.uk) 

The Cabinet Secretary for Finance also updated the Scottish Parliament on 23 March 2022 on revised costs to the contract to build the two CalMac ferries.

Ferguson Marine update: statement by the Finance and Economy secretary - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

b) No additional monies were paid to CMAL as a consequence of extra costs that have been incurred in relation to the Caledonian MacBrayne (CalMac) ferries contract at Ferguson shipyard. Funding was provided to make milestone payments only.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.