Sending good money after bad - John McLellan

Economics Minister Kate Forbes has vowed to leave "no stone unturned" in securing a future for the state-owned Ferguson Marine shipyard

To the surprise of absolutely no-one, the latest Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) survey revealed that trust in the Scottish Government to work in the country’s best interests is now at its lowest ever level.

Conducted last autumn, those who trust the Scottish government “just about always” or “most of the time” dropped to 47 per cent from 66 per cent in 2021, and although trust in the UK Government was much lower at 21 per cent, that’s actually a six-point rise.

The biggest slump is the satisfaction levels with NHS Scotland, down from 64 per cent in 2019 to just 23 per cent.

While the public understandably wants to see more investment, the perfect illustration of what’s going wrong came from Economy secretary Kate Forbes, the fall guy who had to announce another £14m was to be pumped into the failing nationalised Ferguson Marine shipyard in Port Glasgow.

The yard has yet to deliver the two ferries commissioned in 2015 which were due in 2018, and the cost has trebled to over £300m, so at least there was also confirmation that the troubled company would not be directly awarded a contract to replace the ageing CalMac small ferry fleet.

It would have been an utter scandal if it has simply been handed more work as a reward, but what the extra £14m buys is unclear.