Bold pledge on shared cabins
On 10 April 2026, it was revealed in an FOI request that the feasibility of removing seasonal fares for islanders on the NorthLink Ferries was already being discussed in summer 2025.
This was, of course, a good few months before SNP candidate, Hannah Mary Goodlad, spoke of her strong support for abolishing peak fares on our lifeline ferry services.
Since January, we have been led to believe that Hannah Mary’s resolution at the SNP conference on 13 October was what secured flat ferry fares for locals. We can now clearly see, though, that that is not actually the case whatsoever.
The truth is that this was quite visibly a done deal almost a year ago, months before her NorthLink Ferries motion passed. Hannah Mary and her party have spent the last few months claiming that this recent development of significantly lower ferry fares was somehow her achievement, when the reality is that it wasn’t.
In fact, if anything, the people who really deserve credit for the seasonal fares being removed are the outgoing MSP for Shetland, Beatrice Wishart, and the current MSP for Orkney, Liam McArthur, both of whom are Liberal Democrats.
Those high fares “were one of the key issues raised in the public NIFS4 consultation and have been raised regularly in parliament by Orkney and Shetland MSPs”, the FOI states. The only mention in these documents of the NorthLink Ferries motion at the SNP conference was of the “generated local media coverage” that it resulted in.
The impact that it has made on the situation has clearly been hugely exaggerated.
In stark contrast to this, Emma Macdonald and the Liberal Democrats are making it one of their top priorities to improve Shetland’s transport network. The party that I proudly support has long been committed to the reintroduction of shared cabins on NorthLink Ferries. These were in place for decades before Covid – this is why I strongly believe that it would hugely improve people’s ferry experiences.
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Beatrice Wishart and Liam McArthur have consistently advocated for the reintroduction of shared cabins on NorthLink Ferries, whilst diligently representing their constituents. Emma Macdonald now states that she will fight to restore shared cabins if elected to the Scottish Parliament in May.
The only candidate out of eight to make such a bold pledge, Emma says that her party “will keep up the campaign to restore shared cabins on the north boats after the SNP allowed them to be removed”. They all, quite rightly, argue that the removal of this option, initially implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequently retained, has increased costs for travellers and reduced available capacity on our lifeline services.
Reinstating shared cabins would be the best way to cut ferry prices, in my view, as it would heavily split the cost of really dear cabins down to one-quarter of the current price.
This evidence has been reinforced by numerous survey responses from islanders, indicating strong support for making this policy change back to permitting a return.
This out-of-touch SNP government has totally refused to acknowledge these local sentiments and failed to serve the public interest in the process.
It really speaks volumes about a worn-out and centralist government in Edinburgh that professes to be ‘on Scotland’s side’ when they repeatedly ignore the wishes of Scottish islanders. This alone suggests that they are absolutely not ‘on Scotland’s side’ at all.
To coin a familiar phrase, we should really expect much better than all this, because I certainly do.
Bertie Summers
Former MSYP for Shetland
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