Highlands and Islands MSP Donald Cameron has said that the SNP must be held to account by an urgent Scottish Parliamentary inquiry over their shambolic handling of operations at the BiFab engineering yards, including Arnish on Lewis, which have gone into administration.
The Scottish Conservative MSP said that the public has a right to know exactly what went wrong after the SNP Government put over £50 million of public funding into trying to safeguard work at the yards in Lewis and Fife.
Mr Cameron said: “There is very real fury in the Western Isles about what has transpired at Arnish, and no wonder.
“The yard promised well-paid jobs which are very badly needed on Lewis, so the sense of betrayal is entirely understandable. This shambles has only been made worse by the twisting and turning of SNP ministers who have tried to blame everyone except themselves for what has happened."
“It is especially galling that they were so keen to boast about having saved jobs previously, but are now hiding away while workers face being unemployed ahead of Christmas."
“We all know the SNP are allergic to being held to account but the case for an official inquiry into how they failed to do their job while handing over £50m of public money is unanswerable.”
Speaking this morning, SNP Economy Secretary Fiona Hyslop, when asked why a commitment was given on BiFab’s future in the first place, dodged the question and evaded responsibility. She said: “Because a year ago we have asked for cover, we did not actually commit to the agreement, you only do that at the point in time at which the contract is signed and then you transfer the liability for £30m of extra resource in terms of a guarantee.”
Pathetic.
