ANAS SARWAR

LEADER OF THE SCOTTISH LABOUR PARTY EVERY SECOND MONDAY

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MOST people in Scotland know about the SNP ferry fiasco.

For the majority of us, it's a sorry tale of government failure - a botched contract and lapse in oversight leading to spiralling costs and years of delays.

Two ferries, initially priced at £97million now costing closer to half a billion. Hundreds of millions of pounds poured into the bottomless blackhole of SNP incompetence instead of going to roads, hospitals and schools.

But for island communities it is about so much more than wasted money - it is about wasted potential.

The delays to these new ferries mean vessels well past their recommended lifespan are still being used on lifeline routes. As a result, cancellations caused by ferry breakdowns have soared in recent years, rising by 531 per cent since 2015. Since 2023 alone, 10,000 ferries have been cancelled.