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At the time that the yard went into administration, I was not First Minister. My predecessor was—rightly, I should say—doing everything that he could to see whether we could find a buyer for the yard. I understand, and would have understood at the time—I cannot give you precise dates for that—that Jim McColl was somebody he was speaking to about that.

I was not directly involved in that at the time, but I am not telling you that I did not have an awareness of it.

I had a professional relationship with him. Jim McColl had been on the Council of Economic Advisers, and I think that he had done other pieces of work for and around the Government. I cannot remember the exact timing of this, but he made a contribution to the skills policy of the Scottish Government. I would have come across him in what I would describe as a more political context, but I would not say that I had, or have had at any time, what I would describe as a personal relationship with him. It is a professional relationship.

Jim McColl is a businessman of renown and standing in Scotland—he is a public figure, in that sense. As regards his relationship to my party, to the best of my knowledge, he is not a member of my party and has never been a financial contributor to my party. I am not even sure that it would be correct to describe him as a full-throated supporter of independence. He has certainly made comments about constitutional politics.

When I became First Minister, my relationship with Jim McColl was principally through his continued membership of the Council of Economic Advisers.

As I said, I noticed that last night, and you have noticed it. I have asked Transport Scotland the question, “How did that happen?” and I believe that it was an error. The fact of the matter is that we all have the full letter. I think that, in many respects, the tone, tenor and content of that letter has—to be perfectly frank—been misrepresented, so I am very happy indeed to go into as much detail as you want about every single paragraph of it.

I will not quote directly from the Audit Scotland report. I have it here, but I do not have it open in front of me. However, I have certainly read comments made by Audit Scotland—if not in the report then around the report when appearing before your committee—that it felt that it had full co-operation from the Scottish Government and had not been obstructed or had any relevant information withheld. Obviously, I am paraphrasing and not quoting directly.

There is the particular issue of the response of the minister at the time, Derek Mackay, to the submission of 8 October 2015, which led to the final award of the contract. Audit Scotland understandably raised concerns about the fact that it had not seen it. In fact, for a period, we thought that it did not exist, but it was then uncovered, and it has now been published. If it is not on the committee’s website, it is certainly on the Scottish Government’s website. If that is what the convener is referring to, much has been said about that, and understandably so.

As the committee would expect, I have reviewed all the information that the Scottish Government has published. Indeed, I have now done so on more than one occasion. The Scottish Government has provided a wealth of material and documents in relation to its decision making and the wider issues around that.

If anybody, particularly members of the committee, believes that there is information that has not been published and should be published, and if that is put to me today or subsequent to this meeting, I will certainly give best endeavours to ensuring that anything further that we can helpfully provide is provided. I absolutely give that assurance. I am here today to answer any and all questions that are put to me. If there are any that I cannot answer today, I assure the committee that I will come back to you on them.

There is an absolute determination and commitment on the part of me and my Government to be open and transparent to ensure that the issues are fully open to scrutiny and that we demonstrate the lessons that are being learned from all the experiences over the past few years.

The Cabinet takes decisions on policy, budgets and budget cover for certain things. Ministers are tasked to get on with the jobs within their portfolios. They report back to Cabinet and update it, and Cabinet colleagues can ask questions, but that does not always take the form of papers that ask Cabinet to substitute for the minister and to make decisions.

Indeed.

Mr Beattie, which paragraph is that? I have the Audit Scotland report here.

It would have been in what that briefing told me. I would have to go back and check, but I do not think that the term “builders refund guarantee” was used. It said that there was a preferred bidder but that, to be clear, negotiations were still on-going, which included complexities around the level of guarantee that FMEL would provide. It was very much couched as one of the things that we were talking about finalising, not as a big red flag that there was going to be a big problem.

The submissions on that will have been circulated and provided to the relevant ministers, and the minister at the time would have updated Cabinet periodically on the progress of that.

The Government looked at different contingency options—that is all there in the documents that you have seen. We got to the point at which, in our view, public ownership became the best option—given that we were in a process in which there was no ideal option—to meet the objectives that the Scottish Government had always been driven by: completing the ferries; protecting, if we could, the future of the shipyard; and protecting employment at the shipyard. That is why public ownership became the option that we pursued.

It is no secret that that was not the preferred option of Jim McColl. In the latter stages, before we got to public ownership, the parent company, Clyde Blowers Capital, put an alternative proposal to the Scottish Government. You can see from all of the documentation that that proposal was rigorously assessed and considered by the Government and that, for a range of state aid, procurement and legal issues, we could not accept the proposal.

Of course Jim McColl has views on the issue, and some of his views have more credence than others, as, I am sure, people will say about mine.