Ferry fiasco part 2? Sky-high flight prices and scrapped services are another blow to islanders – Brian Wilson
Loganair’s withdrawal of morning flights between Inverness and Sumburgh, Kirkwall and Stornoway will create an expensive problem for the NHS
A confidential dispute between a Scottish government quango and a commercial business costs the NHS millions of pounds. A quarter of all activities provided by a health board are affected.
If this happened in Edinburgh, it would be a big story (I hope). So it is only fair that when exactly what I describe is evolving in Shetland, Orkney and the Western Isles, attention should be paid.
Anyway, the lessons are wider – dysfunctionality which leads the Scottish government to treat millions like small change; hypocrisy about what SNP ministers love describing as “our islands”; pernicious quangos without accountability to the places they exist to serve. For good measure, there is the absence of any policy for Scotland’s internal air services, other than leaving them to the dubious mercies of a commercial monopoly.
Flights crucial for NHS patients and doctors
Last month Loganair, now a hard-nosed operator, announced withdrawal of morning flights between Inverness and Sumburgh, Kirkwall and Stornoway. To 99 per cent of Scotland, that may sound like a routine adjustment. To one per cent, it really matters.
These are crucial flights for patients in the islands who must travel for treatment and also for Inverness-based consultants who come in and out to do hospital shifts. The announcement of withdrawal was made without any consultation.
According to the Western Isles NHS board, it will cost up to £1 million in agency locums instead of using Raigmore consultants, as well as £100,000 in extra patient travel costs. Multiply these numbers roughly by three, and that’s before you get to the human impacts, the logistics of conveying vital medications and so on.
The Western Isles NHS board says that “28 per cent of our total activity” will be affected. Of course, it’s not just the NHS. There are workers who depend on these services to make it possible to maintain an island base and, for example, work offshore.
Eventually, people give up and move to the mainland. The steady drip of cuts across all public services contributes inexorably to continuing depopulation. This is just one more blow. There is no counter-strategy.
Mr Rennie on the case
To his credit, Willie Rennie MSP, who now chairs Holyrood’s Transport Committee, convened an urgent evidence session. It emerged that Highlands and Islands Airports Limited (HIAL) – a wholly owned Scottish government quango – was told by Loganair in February they wanted £1.3m from the Scottish government, channelled via HIAL, to maintain the schedule.
When HIAL’s chief executive claimed he had not attempted to contact ministers or senior civil servants to involve them in the issue, Mr Rennie declared himself “astonished”. This week, Loganair put the boot in harder.
Their chief executive wrote to Mr Rennie: “We had raised these risks frequently with senior representatives of HIAL over several months… Our reasonable expectation was that HIAL would, in turn, communicate openly with its stakeholders, including senior representatives of the Scottish government”.
If this did not happen (which is actually hard to believe), the net result is that because a Scottish government quango did not speak to the Scottish government about a demand for £1.3m, costs amounting to several times that sum will be borne by another devolved service, ie the NHS, before you count the social and economic costs. What a shambles.
A 55-minute flight for £329
The question of whether the £1.3m demand was justified is separate and I am not inclined to take Loganair’s word for anything. They are currently blaming landing charges imposed by HIAL as the “principle reason” for grotesque fares on their Highlands and Islands routes – but not others.
In the event an urgent call obliged you to fly from Glasgow to Stornoway on Monday, the 55-minute flight will cost you £329, one-way. Aberdeen to Sumburgh comes in at £355 and Kirkwall at £315. If, however, you take a slightly shorter Loganair flight from Glasgow to Derry, the top price is £108.
It is notoriously difficult to pin down exact comparisons between fares, which Loganair exploits to the full. However, research suggests that full fares on its comparable non-Highlands and Islands routes are on average 80 per cent lower than on those serving HIAL airports.
An Air Discount Scheme (ADS) was introduced in 2006 for residents, businesses and public authorities including the NHS. In 2011, it was cut back to only ‘leisure’ travel and SNP ministers continue to say restoration to its original form is “unaffordable”. The result is prohibitive fares for small businesses while even ADS fares are now “unaffordable” for many.
The charge denied by Loganair is that they are subsidising their growing network outside the Highlands and Islands by “price-gouging” on these monopoly routes. However, the only way to pin down the truth is through full transparency which is consistently denied on grounds of “commercial confidentiality”. Please keep at it, Mr Rennie.
Lack of accountability to islanders
There is no trace of a holistic view of regional air services in Scotland, probably because the obvious need for more Public Service Obligation routes would involve subsidy demands on the Scottish government. But the alternative of turning a blind eye, without any cost-benefit analysis, is now unacceptable because of Loganair’s soaraway pricing.
Of course, there is no accountability to island communities expected of HIAL. In line with SNP practice, ministers tend to avoid appointing anyone living in the Highlands and Islands to the quango’s board, far less allowing an islander to chair it – as happened in the now-distant past.
When an Edinburgh accountant was shuffled off to another quango last year, a Yorkshire-based aviation consultant replaced her as HIAL chair. There’s a lady who runs a “real estate financing platform” in Madrid on the board and another who is also on the Scottish Prison Service quango. But certainly not an islander who would understand the impacts of what these people seem to rubber-stamp.
That would be as dangerous as allowing the natives a say in running the ferries.
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