Junior Minister
The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-01575, in the name of Alex Salmond, on the appointment of a junior Scottish minister. Members should note that the question on the motion will be put immediately after the debate and not at decision time.
14:06
I am pleased to seek Parliament’s approval for the appointment of Derek Mackay as a junior Scottish minister. The immediate reason for that appointment is, of course, the decision to create the new post of Minister for Youth Employment, which will be held by Angela Constance.
That move implements a key proposal of the recent Smith Group report. It was clear in the parliamentary debate on youth employment two weeks ago that the establishment of a new ministerial post had considerable cross-party support. In her new role, Angela Constance will build on the work that we are already doing to promote jobs and opportunities. For example, we have made a commitment that every 16 to 19-year-old in the country who is not in an apprenticeship, training, full-time education or a job will be offered a training place. As I announced two weeks ago, we are making available an additional £30 million to address youth unemployment.
Tomorrow, Angela Constance will host a seminar at the Parliament, taking on board various stakeholders such as local authorities, colleges, employers, the third sector and others to develop that new role. I am sure that her appointment will have a positive impact in ensuring that young people have the education, training and employment opportunities that they need to succeed.
Angela Constance’s appointment has created a vacancy in her previous post. Aileen Campbell has done a fine job as Minister for Local Government and Planning since her appointment in May, and I am sure that she will do an equally good job in her new role as Minister for Children and Young People.
To replace Aileen Campbell, I have decided to appoint Derek Mackay to the ministerial team. Although he is a new and relatively youthful MSP, Derek is already something of a political veteran. At the age of 21 he became Scotland’s youngest male councillor in 1999, and he led the Scottish National Party group in the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities from 2009 to 2011. Apparently, that is enough to put grey hairs on even the youngest.
I believe that the changes that we have made to the Government to further raise the priority of youth employment will receive—and deserve—cross-party support. I believe that Derek Mackay will be an asset to the Government in the local government and planning brief, and I warmly welcome him to the Administration, pending the Parliament’s approval.
I move,
That the Parliament agrees that Derek Mackay be appointed as a junior Scottish Minister.
[Applause.]
14:08
Labour welcomes the reshuffle in the ranks of the SNP Government. We congratulate Mr Mackay on his elevation, Ms Campbell on her sideways step and Angela Constance on what I consider to be her promotion.
As the First Minister made clear, Mr Mackay is no newcomer to responsibility for local government, given his experience in Renfrewshire Council. There, he had responsibility for the proposal to replace trained classroom teachers with volunteers; for a 23 per cent pay hike for senior council officials in 2008; and for teacher numbers too, cutting 200 posts in one year alone, which is proportionally the highest amount of any council in Scotland by some distance. He is therefore not so much a poacher turned gamekeeper, but more a ghillie who was always under orders from the big house. No matter. He takes on an important job today, and we genuinely wish him well.
Our welcome for Angela Constance to her post is unreserved. We demanded the creation of the post, as did the Smith report. The disastrous unemployment figures announced today underline how urgent the appointment is. Since we began discussing the appointment, another 24,000 young Scots have joined the ranks of the lost generation. The current figure is the benchmark and we will hold the minister to account in bringing it down. We do so in order that she may better win the arguments inside Government, that she is given the authority and influence required and that she is backed by the budget that she needs. We will be on Ms Constance’s side, although it might not always seem like it.
For a start, we believe that Ms Constance’s budget is not enough and too much of it is not new money—she needs more. Her job is at the heart of what our politics and this Parliament should be about; it must be properly at the heart of Government.
As for Ms Campbell, I hope that she will forgive me if I say that, from the vantage point of my sixth decade, her role as a minister looks to me like a youth employment opportunity in and of itself. The challenges of children’s policy are just as central to the future of our country as youth employment, and meeting those challenges is vital to creating the better Scotland that, across the chamber, we want to see. We therefore wish her success, too, in her vital role.
I have great pleasure in supporting the First Minister’s motion. I wish the new ministers good luck in their new roles.
14:11
I congratulate the existing ministers on their new appointments, but I direct my remarks almost exclusively to Mr Mackay. This is the moment when he finds out the truth of the quotation, attributed to Boyd-Carpenter, that, “Your enemies are opposite you”—[Interruption.]—or, rather, that, “The opposition is opposite you and your enemies are behind,” because this is a black day for many of the SNP members who sit behind the front bench. This is the day when one of the new intake has been promoted ahead of the old.
As we know, the path to office previously was to drink copiously of the First Minister’s bath water. In the previous session of Parliament, Mr Neil and Ms Cunningham succeeded, against all their instincts, in doing what they had to do to get into office. What now for Mr Hepburn, Mr Doris and Mr Gibson, who for the past four and a half years have toiled to invent new ways to prostrate themselves before ministers? They have emulated the hyperbole of their predecessors with soaring crescendos of unadulterated sycophantic drivel in support of ministers, but all to no avail.
The First Minister has created a new fringe group of the great disappointed. Some of the new intake have watched with interest. Mr Yousaf, who may very well aspire to office before long, thought that getting noticed meant wearing more bling than Mrs Grahame, and Mr Stewart, who is not with us, had a cape and train that was longer than Her Majesty’s.
Mr Mackay has opted for a different course: charming, reasonable, modestly attired and quietly loyal—his first utterance in the chamber was to look to the front bench and say, “What’s my line?” Bless. Those of us in the west know that he is capable and believe that he is capable of going much further. We are relieved that there is now the opportunity for, it would seem, a right-wing presence in the Government, because Mr Mackay has made it clear that his ideal dinner companions would be Margaret Thatcher and George Bush—a wise choice.
In wishing Mr Mackay all the best, I quote to him the words of one former Prime Minister, Churchill. He stated:
“it is not enough to do our best; we must do what is required”.
Good luck.
14:15
Presiding Officer, I was just reflecting on my disappointment that there was no Liberal contribution to welcome the ministerial presence, but they can always intervene during this closing speech.
I was struck, of course, by Jackson Carlaw’s contribution. Boyd-Carpenter—who, incidentally, delivered the line rather better than Jackson Carlaw did—was Minister of Transport in Winston Churchill’s Government. I reflect on this merely because I have been doing some comparisons between the efficiency of the Scottish National Party Administration in Edinburgh and the overstaffing of the various departments in London. I note that we have one transport minister in this efficient Government, whereas the UK Government has four ministers in its transport department. That overmanning, incidentally, goes right through the entire catalogue of the 110 ministers in the UK Government. I know that they had to make places for the Liberal Democrats, but when a Government in London has almost as many ministers as this entire Parliament has members, perhaps it is time to call a halt to ministerial appointments down south.
Boyd-Carpenter’s line about your enemies being behind you was a great one, but I would have thought, given that Boyd-Carpenter sat for a London constituency, that David Cameron is the one who should be reflecting at the present moment that his enemies are behind him, in the Mayor of London.
I turn to Iain Gray, who supported the appointments. I have to say that, if that was a supportive speech, I am intensely relieved that Iain was not being critical. Let me take the substantive point before I make some remarks about Derek Mackay, about whom I think that Iain Gray was less than gracious. The substantive point was about Angela Constance being appointed Minister for Youth Employment, attending Cabinet, and reporting directly to the First Minister and the two relevant cabinet secretaries. That is a substantial move, which was recommended by the Smith Group, and I like the fact that it has cross-party support. We are doing that because everyone in this chamber has to be aware of the pernicious evil of youth unemployment and has a personal responsibility to address it.
Iain Gray referred to a lost generation. I would love every full-time student in Scotland to have access to a part-time job, but let us remember that the headline figure in youth unemployment is far too high and includes 35 per cent of people who are in full-time education. People in full-time education are not part of a lost generation. On the contrary, they are people who are investing in the future of themselves and therefore in the future of the country.
As for Iain Gray’s ungracious remarks, let us cast our minds back a few months. Derek Mackay, after his period as the group leader in Renfrew Council—one of the longest-serving group leaders in Scottish local government history—put himself before the electorate in his own area and achieved a sensational double-digit swing, to everyone’s surprise, swept the Labour Party out of the seat in Renfrew and became a member of the Scottish Parliament. Iain Gray put himself before his people in the same election and scraped through by 150 votes. I think, given the comparison and the evaluation that local people made of Derek Mackay on one hand and Iain Gray on the other, that Iain Gray should have been rather more gracious in welcoming Derek Mackay’s ministerial appointment.
That concludes the debate on the appointment of a Scottish junior minister. The question is that motion S4M-01575, in the name of the First Minister, on the appointment of a junior Scottish minister, be agreed to.
Motion agreed to,
That the Parliament agrees that Derek Mackay be appointed as a junior Scottish Minister.