Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Official Report 1189KB pdf

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Urgent Question

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Amazon (Gourock)

To ask the Scottish Government what its urgent response is to the reported announcement regarding the closure of the Amazon Gourock site.

We are very disappointed to learn of the announcement today by Amazon to consult on closing its distribution centre in Gourock. I know that it will be a difficult time for the workforce, their families and people in the local area. Scottish Enterprise spoke with the company today to better understand the situation and the issues involved. I will meet Amazon tomorrow to discuss further and to understand better the decision that it has made and the impact on the facility at Gourock.

I welcome the fact that the minister is to meet Amazon tomorrow.

The news that Amazon is to end its 19-year association with Gourock, which will cost more than 300 jobs, is a hammer blow for Inverclyde and West Scotland. Those workers were the unsung heroes of the pandemic. Those employees face losing their jobs only a few weeks after making sure that the rest of us got our Christmas presents.

The Scottish Government is well aware of the challenges that face Inverclyde. It is a community that has lost major employers in the past, the consequences of which have been economic decline, deprivation and depopulation. What new steps will the Scottish Government take in response to the announcement, and how will the Scottish Government support Inverclyde Council’s socioeconomic task force, of which the minister is a member, to minimise the impact of the decision and to attract new jobs to Inverclyde?

We will continue to work with everybody, wherever we can, to support further investment in Inverclyde and across the whole of Scotland.

Neil Bibby is right that I am a member of the Inverclyde task force. I attend that group and am keen to contribute and to work with others who have the interests of Inverclyde at heart, in order to attract as much investment as we can. He will be aware of the work that we are doing to support activity in the area through the Clyde mission, and of the work through the Glasgow city region deal, as well as the investments that we have managed to attract to Inverclyde over the years—and will continue to attract—including the investment in Diodes. I was very proud to be involved in landing that deal to bring Diodes to Inverclyde.

I thank the minister for that answer and for his commitment to continuing to work with Inverclyde Council. I hope that we can leave no stone unturned.

We have, in the past, debated taxpayer support for Amazon. The company has been a welcome source of jobs for Inverclyde and other communities, but at some cost. There are concerns about its employment practices, the impact that it has had on our high streets and its tax bill being a fraction of its profits.

In the light of today’s news, will the minister commit to publishing in full the extent of taxpayer support for the company, detailing the full commercial relationships that the Government has had with Amazon for provision of services to the public sector? Will he also tell us how the Scottish Government intends to engage with Amazon going forward? Finally, does he agree that at some point the state perhaps needs to treat Amazon with the same respect that it treats the people of Inverclyde and Scotland?

A total of £2,137,000 of financial support has been provided to Amazon in Gourock. The previous support that was given to the facility in Gourock stretched over the period from 2005 through to 2011.

Neil Bibby knows that we take fair work very seriously; it is a central tenet of our national strategy for economic transformation, and I am very keen to support it across all the sectors that I work with. The Minister for Higher Education and Further Education, Youth Employment and Training met Amazon in September 2021 and made those points and stressed the importance of fair work issues in his previous role as Minister for Business, Fair Work and Skills.

In my most recent meeting with Amazon to consider how it could continue to invest in a wide range of activities in Scotland, I made it very clear to it that the centrality of fair work in our approach to economic development in Scotland is absolutely critical. We will leave no stone unturned in doing what we can to support the people of Inverclyde and the people who work at Amazon Gourock at this time. As always, we continue to look for more inward investment, and to stress the critical importance of fair work practices.

I speak in place of my Inverclyde colleague Stuart McMillan, whose mother sadly passed away this morning. Nevertheless, his staff and Ronnie Cowan MP met Amazon management this afternoon. Some of the 300-strong workforce are my constituents.

Amazon has claimed today that the Gourock facility is one of the older sites and questioned its suitability and viability. Those concerns have never been raised directly with the local MSP or MP on past site visits. I am pleased that the minister will meet the company tomorrow. Will he facilitate talks between the landlord of the site and Amazon to see what improvements or investments can be made there to prevent closure and ensure that the Gourock site continues to be a part of Amazon’s future business plans?

I thank Kenneth Gibson for raising that issue. As I said, we will leave no stone unturned in trying to understand what is possible in order to save the Gourock facility. If Kenneth Gibson, Stuart McMillan or any other member has information that would be helpful in that regard, I would be very keen to receive it before my meeting with Amazon tomorrow morning, or even following it.

If there are opportunities for further investment to be made to get the site to a position in which, in Amazon’s view, it contributes to the company’s operational footprint, I would be keen to explore them in whatever level of detail is required.

I convey my condolences to Stuart McMillan.

As a Greenock resident and someone who has been to the Amazon site, I know how much of a blow today’s news will be to employees, their families and the entire community. Inverclyde is resilient and will survive any economic challenges that it faces, but Amazon is such a major local employer that closure would surely have a devastating impact.

Will the minister give serious consideration to setting up immediately a bespoke multi-agency task force that would bring together Amazon, the local authority, the Government and other public bodies, agencies and political parties to sit round the table and see what could be done in the immediate term to support the people of Inverclyde? There is precedent for that, as the minister knows, with Texas Instruments, and it would be a positive way to get everyone in the room together.

The member will be aware that an Inverclyde task force is already in operation. It is a fabulous initiative that was started locally. I and others were invited to be part of that group, and I am delighted to be able to work with it. That forum, which will meet again shortly in the next few weeks, is probably the best place to have the discussion about what can be done.

If that group decides that a subset of it is needed for detailed discussions, I would be happy be part of that. However, I would prefer to work through the task force that is already in place, rather than setting up a separate group at this stage. I think that the most effective way is to use the mechanisms that already exist to take matters forward.

Jamie Greene will, of course, be aware that Scottish Enterprise and the partnership action for continuing employment—PACE—initiative have engaged with the business to see what support can be offered to employees should the business decide, following consultation, to close the facility.

I associate myself with the comments in the urgent question of my regional MSP colleague Neil Bibby. The impact of the Amazon closure on the local economy in Inverclyde cannot be overestimated, and it is a huge concern to local people.

As we have already heard, the issue raises broader concerns about how public money is used and, indeed, about Amazon failing in its moral obligations to provide safe, stable and well-remunerated employment to the people of Inverclyde.

I accept what the minister said about leaving no stone unturned in trying to protect a future for the site, but it is clear that Amazon is suggesting that people will be redeployed. That does not seem to be likely, so what discussions has the minister had with West College Scotland, Skills Development Scotland and others about retraining and reskilling people in Inverclyde to have well-paid and secure jobs?

As I have said, the financial support from the Scottish Government that went into the Amazon Gourock site was over the period 2005 to 2011: that was the last support that was given to the site. As I have also said, I would be very happy to engage with anyone who can come forward with solutions, and to work together to facilitate support for the site in order to secure its future.

On skills and training, my colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills is, of course, engaged in programmes throughout the country on an on-going basis to ensure that we upskill people—in Inverclyde and elsewhere—to take advantage of the many opportunities that are being created in all parts of Scotland across a range of sectors. As part of the discussions about the facility in question, I would be quite happy to engage with the local college and others, as required.

Amazon is a monumentally profitable company, and its founder, Jeff Bezos, is the definition of corporate greed. It is also infamous for hostility to its own workers when they try to organise through trade unions. Will the minister engage with unions including the GMB, of which a number of the workers at the Gourock site hold membership?

I would be very happy to engage with the GMB and to include it in discussions about how we will look for ways to find a secure future for the Amazon Gourock site. I reiterate that our message to Amazon that we support the fair work agenda has been relentless and clear. That is absolutely central to our economic policies, as a Government. We always impress on Amazon the importance of that and raise any issues that are raised with us when it is not treating workers fairly across any of its sites, to ensure that it understands how important those issues are to the Scottish Government.