Having followed Ferguson Marine closely for many years, under various owners including the current era under the Scottish Government, it was dispiriting to hear last Tuesday of major job losses at the shipbuilder.

The Port Glasgow shipyard has, to put it mildly, not had its troubles to seek over the years and decades.

And there has sadly been no shortage of politically motivated detractors since the Scottish Government became the owner in 2019. These noisy critics have certainly not helped the situation.

Former Scottish deputy first minister Kate Forbes, when I interviewed her in June last year, talked about the importance of building confidence in Ferguson Marine.

She said: “I would like to think that all parties in the Scottish Parliament want to see Ferguson Marine succeed and survive, which is why we need to build confidence, not knock it.”

It would surely be difficult to disagree with this assertion, especially given the importance of Ferguson Marine to Scotland’s future commercial shipbuilding capacity, in providing employment and to the Inverclyde economy.

Returning to this week’s news, Ferguson Marine is planning to cut up to 70 jobs through a voluntary redundancy process.

The shipbuilder currently employs 247 core staff as well as 32 apprentices and 31 agency workers.

Ferguson Marine, which is due to deliver the long-delayed Glen Rosa to Caledonian MacBrayne for the ferry operator’s Arran route in the fourth quarter, said last Tuesday that it has started this redundancy process as it “manages the transition between completing its current order book and starting work on a new phase of shipbuilding contracts”.

The Scottish Government in March........

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