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Special advisers are civil servants—they are temporary civil servants—so that was not an issue in that respect. You say that the meeting was a “big deal”—

The Government’s position is that, ultimately, we want all the commercial assets that we have taken ownership of to be back in the private sector, but we will have to make decisions about the point at which that becomes viable. We have not reached the point of decision on Ferguson’s.

Let me break that question down into whether it is normal for decisions on preferred bidders on contracts to be publicly announced, why it was me and whether it is something that I would normally do.

On whether it is normal to announce a preferred bidder, it is certainly not abnormal. Often, at the point at which a preferred bidder is being announced, if you think about it, the successful bidder—the preferred bidder—is being notified and the unsuccessful bidders are being notified. At that point, there is always a possibility that things will leak into the public domain anyway; so, often, a decision is taken to announce a preferred bidder. I could find you examples of other Governments doing exactly the same thing, such as the United Kingdom Government on a train contract and the Welsh Government a couple of years ago on a major roads contract.

As it happens, a few months after this announcement—this addresses your question on whether it is something that I would normally do—I announced, in May 2016 if memory serves me correctly, that CalMac was the preferred bidder for the Clyde and Hebrides ferry services contract. It was nothing to do with Ferguson’s in the broader ferry space; it was about the contract for the operator of the ferry service. I announced the preferred bidder for that, which would suggest to you that it is not completely unknown for preferred bidders to be announced or, indeed, for me to do it.

Finally, on why I, as opposed to a minister, did it, in any Government decision that leads to an announcement, there will be consideration within Government involving special advisers and communications officials asking, “Should this be something that the First Minister does?” That is how the media diary of the First Minister is determined. I will often get suggestions that an announcement is coming up and it is proposed that I do it, and that is what would have happened here.

Yes, but in my mind—I am trying to think—I knew that there were issues that he was expressing concern about. By that point, ministers were aware that there were issues around slippage in the contract. CMAL was reporting regularly to what was called the project steering group.

It was a conversation that I clearly thought that it was appropriate to have. Did I go into that meeting thinking that it was a great crisis meeting? No, nor did I come out of it thinking that. Mr McColl had concerns about cash flow, and he had had concerns about the structure of the milestone payments. He had a concern, which he continued to express, about the amount of money that, in his view—it is not a view that I or CMAL would share—was unfairly caught up in what I think had, by that point, become the surety bond that replaced the builders refund and the partial builders refund guarantee.

Those were the kinds of concerns that he was expressing to me. Not long after that, of course, he made the first claim to CMAL for additional costs over and above the contract. Clearly, at that point, tensions were already appearing in the relationship between FMEL and CMAL, so that was the nature of that discussion.

In the terms that I have told you, there was a reference—a couple of lines in the briefing—as part of telling me the self-evident point that negotiations were not concluded. There was a reference to the fact that the negotiations, which were still under way, included complexities around the level of guarantee. To be clear, though, it did not say, “And this is a matter of really big concern.” It just said that that was one of the things that was still being negotiated.

You may want to expand on what you mean. All evidence that I give before a committee is as transparent as it can be. I am trying to be very clear with the committee about the decisions that I am speaking about and about those that I had knowledge of at the time versus those that I now have knowledge of but was not part of. I am being as open and transparent as possible with the committee.

After I give evidence, it is for the committee to decide if there are points for clarification that it wants to address. I cannot determine what questions the committee asks; that is for you. I will answer all of them to the best of my ability. I hope that that has been your experience so far in this evidence session.

My differences with Alex Salmond on other matters are well known, but he was the First Minister and Ferguson’s, the last remaining commercial shipbuilder on the upper Clyde, faced the threat of extinction and closure, so he was right to seek to find a way to save the shipyard. Any First Minister would have been right to do that. Although I may now have many differences with Alex Salmond, I would not criticise him for making every effort to find a future for the shipyard.

I was not advised on 20 August. As, I am sure, we will come on to discuss, 20 August was when the decision on FMEL being the preferred bidder was taken. That decision was taken by Keith Brown because Derek Mackay was on holiday at the time. I know that you have gone through all of that with Derek Mackay. I was not party to that decision, but I was, of course, briefed some days later, in the run-up ahead of the announcement of the preferred bidder.

I am being as open as I can be. I deal with several things on a daily basis, and this was some years ago.

I think that it would be fair to say—I do not know whether it would always be expressed as explicitly as this—that, certainly in the months leading up to the decision around public ownership, there would of course have been concern that that was a possibility. Some months previously, FMEL had had a redundancy programme at the yard, and there were clearly very significant financial and cash-flow problems there, so of course that would have been a concern.

Just as FMEL signed up to the terms of the contract for the vessels, so did CMAL, so it was always—understandably—restricted in what it could do by the terms of the contract. CMAL’s view is that simply paying a lot more to FMEL at that time, in line with the claim that FMEL had made, would not have been within the terms of the contract, because there were not unforeseen problems. The contract had terms for modifications within it, but FMEL was not seeking to use those. If CMAL had acceded to those claims, it would have opened itself up to legal challenge from unsuccessful bidders. CMAL was at all times seeking—rightly—to operate within the terms of the contract.

As you know, the Scottish Government asked an independent Queen’s counsel to look at the claim, and that is what led to the conclusion that there was no legal basis for CMAL to make the additional payment that FMEL was requesting. CMAL’s view was that, if FMEL felt that that claim was justified, it should take it through the court process. I say again that FMEL always had that option and it chose not to do that.

The Government was looking at ways in which we could help to get the vessels completed, and to protect the yard and employment there if it was appropriate and possible to do so, over and above the contract terms. That is where the loans came in, and the options that were looked at in project Kildonan: how do we get the vessels completed but also protect the longer-term economic interests? Of course, keeping the yard open was pretty essential to getting the vessels completed. Those were the considerations that led to the decisions that the Government took.