This is one of the rare occasions when we have a short time in which to debate something of vital importance to a great many of my constituents. My hon. Friend said with some confidence that the new scheme should lead to a more satisfactory basis. It could not conceivably lead to worse than the one we have at the moment.

In my 15 years as Member for Argyll, I have not had on any other subject such a flood of complaints as I have received about these services provided by the Scottish Transport Group, whether it be MacBrayne's or Caledonian MacBrayne's or a combination of the two. It used to be said about the game of shinty that if one could not hit the ball one hit the man, and if one could not hit ball or man one hit the referee. That is the sort of game MacBrayne's ships have been playing for the last 18 months. They have run into each other, into rocks and into piers. They have done everything a responsible shipping services should have been able to avoid.

This may cause some amusement to the House, but it has had a deplorable effect on the whole range of islands these ships serve. It may be due to bad management or to bad luck—that is not for me to decide. It is for the courts of inquiry and the proper procedures in the intervening period. Whether one happens to live on Mull, or Coll, or Tiree, or Colonsay, or Islay, or Gigha or elsewhere, one has had a thoroughly bad service for the last 18 months.

When I suggested to the chairman that it might not be a bad thing to hold a small lunch party in Oban, paying a few people's fares, not to explain why MacBrayne's has made such a total mess of things in the past—let him forget that if he could—but to try to give encouragement that it would try to do better in future, he sent me a letter of staggering complacency. He said that MacBrayne's had carried more passengers than ever before and had consulted admirably with the people before it broke down. This sort of thing is so lamentable that it makes one wish that we could debate it for several hours.

On the day the chairman said MacBrayne's had consulted everyone very well, one of my constituents wrote to tell me that it had not consulted him on something it should have done, and there were another two calls from Mull saying that, having promised to take cattle to the sale last Monday, MacBrayne's had, only on the previous Saturday, said that a vessel was not available and that the farmers must change the whole of their arrangements. MacBrayne's has behaved abominably, and I am certain that no system of the future could be less satisfactory than what we have had over the last 18 months.

It does not surprise me that the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Strang) says that he sees no virtue in viability. That has been a passionate belief of the Socialist Party for a very long time and, my goodness, when the Socialists come to power they prove it. But there is virtue in encouraging people to try to be viable. If one looks at what has been happening on the west coast of Scotland over the past few years, one sees that the ships which the MacBrayne's of the day, with the concurrence of the Secretary of State, have built are unlikely ever to produce a profit. That is what worries me a little.

When my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary said that the Secretary of State has abandoned his power of control of charges to existing areas I listened to the list which he read. In the existing areas, where the service is said to be viable, there is included—if I understood my hon. Friend correctly—both the Island of Islay and the Island of Mull. It is very interesting that the charges to Islay are enormously less than the charges to Mull, though the distance to Mull is much shorter and the service is just as important. The reason is quite simple. In the case of Islay, Western Ferries provides some competition, whereas in the case of Mull there is no competition. Therefore, the company is able to charge a great deal more for that service, to the great detriment of the people on Mull. They feel very strongly that they should not be charged a great deal more for a service than their fellows just a little further south. Naturally, they object very strongly.

If the Secretary of State is abandoning all direct control over this matter, may I be assured that a comparable service will be charged at the same amount per ton-mile, per passenger-mile or per car-mile, or whichever method is adopted? If not, undoubtedly MacBrayne or Caledonian-MacBrayne, or whatever name it may suffer under at the time, will use its commercial judgment very often not in the best interests of the islanders concerned.

In general, I welcome the scheme. I hope very much that the Scottish Transport Group, instead of patting itself on the back about the number of passengers carried, will go out, as most of us have to do, to the islands to which it is supposed to be giving a reliable and satisfactory service, talk to the people there and hear what they say. These people—not just individuals; the complaints come from Tobermory and from every main user, including the branches of the NFU—are sick of the expensive, incompetent and, frankly, lousy service they are receiving.