The decision to place the first phase of the Small Vessel Replacement Programme with a Polish yard rather than Ferguson Marine directly caused the job losses now being announced at Port Glasgow, Paul Sweeney MSP has told the UK Defence Journal.
Ferguson Marine confirmed on Tuesday that it had opened a voluntary redundancy programme expected to see up to 70 employees leave, around a quarter of the workforce, as work on the ferry Glen Rosa winds down.
Mr Sweeney, a former shipyard worker and Labour MSP for Glasgow, said: “This is yet another example of the completely incoherent industrial policy of the Scottish Government over many years. We’ve had over half a billion pounds worth of shipbuilding contracts awarded to overseas shipyards in the last four years, and not a single contract awarded to Ferguson Marine, despite the shipyard being under the ownership of the Scottish Government.”
He said one government agency had excluded another government-owned asset from bidding for work. “Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd froze out another government-owned asset, Ferguson Marine, from even tendering for the Lord of the Isles ferry replacement recently, and instead shortlisted only overseas shipyards and essentially drafted the tendering qualification requirements to exclude any British shipyard.
“This is completely perverse, and it shows that we are seeing a government risk averse and run by essentially lawyers rather than by people with an understanding of industrial and engineering policy and what will produce good economic outcomes, prosperous jobs, and a thriving competitive industrial base in our shipbuilding sector.”
‘A criminally negligent opportunity missed’
Mr Sweeney was most critical of the phase one award, which went to Remontowa in Gdansk.
He said: “They could have awarded directly to Ferguson Marine the phase one of the Small Vessel Replacement Programme. Instead, they gave it to Remontowa in Gdansk in Poland. That decision alone has directly caused these job losses at Ferguson Marine.
“They could have, and as has been demonstrated by their subsequent stated intention to directly award phase two of the Small Vessel Replacement Programme to Ferguson Marine, shown that all along they could have directly awarded that phase one contract for those relatively straightforward, repeatable series build ferries to Ferguson Marine.
“That would have given them a robust drumbeat of orders and a stable production cycle through the whole shipyard, going right through from steel production and fabrication to outfitting trades, and then the sea trials and so on. So you have every part of the shipyard flowing well, and you’ve got that flowline production model going.”
He said the opportunity to put the yard into what he called ferry factory mode had been squandered. “It’s astonishing, the incompetence around not doing that and not using that opportunity with the Small Vessel Replacement Programme to get Ferguson Marine into basically a ferry factory mode. That could have been the game changer there. And it’s a criminally negligent opportunity missed.”
Why the work has run out
Sweeney set out the immediate cause of the crunch at the yard, pointing to the end of subcontract work alongside the completion of the ferry. He said: “The Scottish Government have been in no rush to verify their ability to award that second phase contract to Ferguson Marine. They’ve been dragging their heels on that now for months, and we’ve now seen the consequences of that. The lack of mobilisation at the yard as Glen Rosa leaves, there’s simply no work coming through. The BAE Systems subcontract for Type 26 has come to a conclusion, so that is why we’re seeing this crunch for the shipyard, and it’s completely avoidable.”
On the loss of skills, he said: “It’s devastating to see that institutional memory being eroded, that critical mass of skills being undermined, because they’re very hard to re-establish once you lose them. It is simply going to make it more expensive, more difficult for that shipyard to be competitive in the medium to long term if you lose that capacity. You can’t just flick it on and off like a light switch.”
The subsidy control argument
Sweeney also said he had put forward a legal route for direct awards and been rebuffed.
He said: “I have repeatedly tried to offer constructive suggestions to the Scottish Government over several years now about how they can get this to work properly. Most recently, I spelled out quite clearly the opportunities in the Subsidy Control Act to directly award using national security provisions, and they simply responded with a load of legalistic guff.
“It has subsequently been made clear by the Treasury and by the Cabinet Office that national security powers can be used to directly award contracts in the shipbuilding sector, and are actively encouraging government agencies to do this. So why the Scottish Government isn’t using this massive opportunity with the verification provided by the UK Government to directly award is beyond me.
They need to get a grip and get a grip quickly, because lives, livelihoods, and people’s wellbeing are at stake here, as well as the future existence of a shipbuilding industry in Scotland. It’s not unexpected news, but it’s certainly something I thought we could have avoided. And the government ministers seem to be completely asleep at the wheel, as this thing unravels on their watch.”
He also pointed to the wider pipeline, noting that the National Shipbuilding Strategy identified a cross-government pipeline of orders over the next 30 years, and that Scotland is seeing what he described as massive leakage of that pipeline overseas.
Defending the yard’s record
Sweeney has also pushed back on the suggestion that Ferguson Marine’s own track record has made it an unattractive prospect for commercial customers, “It successfully completed a major frigate fabrication contract for BAE Systems recently. Many shipyards have had bad contracts in the past and successfully rebounded, but you need some fundamentals to sustain a commercial shipbuilding industry, and state financing is one of them.”
He argued that heavy industry of this kind cannot operate without state involvement anywhere. “Shipbuilding is similar to aerospace, in that the barriers to entry are so high that the state inevitably becomes involved in some way. Even Europe’s most successful shipbuilding firm, Meyer Werft in Lower Saxony, was jointly nationalised by the state and federal governments in 2024, but it then secured a 10 billion Euro contract with MSC Cruises last year. The problem is that the Scottish Government just tinkered with state intervention rather than taking the comprehensive measures necessary to be effective and competitive internationally.”
‘The yard has a record’
Asked publicly on social media whether the yard’s record would deter commercial customers, Mr Sweeney rejected the idea that its history rules it out of future work.
He said: “It successfully completed a major frigate fabrication contract for BAE Systems recently. Many shipyards have had bad contracts in the past and successfully rebounded, but you need some fundamentals to sustain a commercial shipbuilding industry, and state financing is one of them.”
On why the state has a role at all, he said: “Shipbuilding is similar to aerospace, in that the barriers to entry are so high that the state inevitably becomes involved in some way. Even Europe’s most successful shipbuilding firm, Meyer Werft in Lower Saxony, was jointly nationalised by the state and federal governments in 2024, but it then secured a 10 billion euro contract with MSC Cruises last year.”
He said the failure was not intervention as such but the extent of it. “The problem is that the Scottish Government just tinkered with state intervention rather than taking the comprehensive measures necessary to be effective and competitive internationally.”
He has also said the yard cannot win commercial work because Scotland does not provide shipbuilding project finance through its state investment bank, something he says every other shipbuilding nation does, leaving Ferguson Marine dependent on government contracts that have gone abroad.
The government and the yard respond
Stephen Flynn, the Economy Secretary, said the redundancies would put the yard on a more competitive footing and were necessary to help secure a viable future, adding that he was assured they would not affect Glen Rosa and that the intention to directly award four vessels is going through due diligence.
Graeme Thomson, chief executive of Ferguson Marine, said: “Shipbuilding capability relies on continuity and while changes of this nature are difficult, taking proactive action now ensures we protect the long-term viability of the yard and remain lean, modern, and ready to cut steel on the new fleet as quickly as possible.”
The Scottish Government said in March 2026 that it intended to make a strategic direct award to Ferguson Marine covering two ferries for Caledonian Maritime Assets under the Small Vessel Replacement Programme, along with a marine protection vessel and a marine research vessel.
