Party leaders pledge to fix ferries chaos and blame 'incompetence'

The Scottish government has been accused of "waste and incompetence" as the ferry network faces a critical shortage of ships.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, and several other party leaders, took aim at ministers as CalMac confirmed further disruption to west coast routes.

Four large ferries are unavailable due to technical issues, while four other ships are undergoing annual maintenance.

First Minister John Swinney said he "very much" regretted disruption for islanders and visitors.

State-owned CalMac, which runs services on Scotland's west coast, has warned disruption will continue into next week.

It has apologised to customers after announcing that "virtually every island served by a major vessel" was affected by the current shortage of ships.

Three large ferries - Isle of Arran, Glen Sannox and the newest ship Isle of Islay - have been unavailable since last week with a fourth, Lord of the Isles, was taken out of service at the weekend.

A smaller ferry, the 49-year-old Isle of Cumbrae, developed a fault on Monday.

Two other large ships, Isle of Lewis, Hebrides are away for scheduled maintenance or repairs, along with the chartered catamaran Alfred and a smaller ferry Loch Frisa.

Scottish political leaders criticised the government while on the campaign trail for May's Holyrood election.

In Stornoway, Scottish Labour's Anas Sarwar accused ministers of "waste and incompetence", while warning livelihoods were being affected on the islands.

"It's people missing out on hospital appointments, people missing out on celebrations or tragic funerals," he said.

"For businesses it's missing out on vital trade and it's impacting tourism."

"So we will fix that mess."

Sarwar has pledged to create a single ferries agency with guaranteed island representation, and to "sort" the procurement process for new vessels.

Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay, campaigning in Aberdeen, called the ferry shortage a "national scandal".

"For almost 20 yeas they have run the ferry network into the ground," he said.

"They need to get serious about ensuring ferries are built and delivered on time."

Findlay said his party would consider "ingenious" methods to improve the network - including leasing ferries from elsewhere.

He added that the Tories would scrap CMAL, the government-owned ferries procurement body which leases ships to CalMac.

Scottish Green co-leader Ross Greer described the ferry situation as "an absolute scandal".

Campaigning in Falkirk, he said that once a new fleet had been delivered islanders should be compensated with at least a year's worth of free ferry travel "to begin to make up for the amount of damage that's been done".

Greer added that ports had fallen into disrepair and said they should be brought back into public ownership.

In Edinburgh, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said island communities were victims of a "ferry fiasco".

He said the LibDems would bring forward a bill in the next parliament to compensate communities and reform procurement of new ferries.

"The structures that govern our ferry operation right now are just not fit for purpose," Cole-Hamilton said.

He added that island communities should be "at the heart" of ferry procurement.

Reform UK pledged in its manifesto for Scotland that the party would launch a 10-year rolling ferry renewal programme "to reduce the age of ferries and improve reliability across the network".

The party's leader north of the border, Malcolm Offord, has also criticised "waste and duplication" in the government's public spending.

In Peterhead, Swinney said he accepted responsibility for the issues but insisted the government was taking action, highlighting that three new ferries were due to be delivered from Turkey over the next year.

He told BBC Scotland News: "Of course I would prefer if there were more vessels available at this particular moment but minsters are in touch with CalMac to make sure that every island community is serviced to the best of our ability in what are particularly challenging moments."

CalMac has redeployed several of its vessels to plug gaps in its west coast network.

From Tuesday, the MV Clansman is to operate between Uig-Castlebay, Tarbert and Lochmaddy. This means services for Barra and North and South Uist will be via Uig on Skye.

The MV Isle of Mull is also to be redeployed to serve Coll, Tiree and Colonsay.

Both changes are scheduled to be in place until until 9 April.

Four vessels under annual maintenance.

• MV Alfred (Due back 6 April)
• MV Loch Frisa (Due back 9 April)
• MV Hebrides (Due back 15 April)
• MV Isle of Lewis (Due back late May)

Five vessels with technical problems.

• MV Isle of Arran (Off since Wednesday)
• MV Glen Sannox (Off since Thursday)
• MV Isle of Islay (Was due to begin service on Friday)
• MV Lord of the Isles (Off since Saturday)
• MV Isle of Cumbrae (Off since Monday)

Chief executive Duncan Mackison said: "The situation remains critical and our focus over the weekend has been on ensuring service provision is in place throughout the next seven to 10 days."

He said the changes would "give communities and customers a clear view of minimum service levels, with the hope that we can review and enhance services before then as some of the eight vessels off-service complete maintenance and repairs and return".

Would you like to be in the audience for BBC Scotland's leaders debate?

The special episode of Debate Night, hosted by Stephen Jardine, will take place between 19:00 and 20:30 on Sunday 12 April in Paisley Town Hall.

The leaders of the Scottish Conservatives, Scottish Greens, Scottish Labour, Scottish Liberal Democrats, Scottish National Party, and Reform UK have been invited to take part.

You can apply to be part of the audience at bbc.co.uk/debatenight or by clicking this link.

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