Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Official Report 806KB pdf

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First Minister’s Question Time

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Engagements

1. To ask the First Minister what engagements he has planned for the rest of the day. (S3F-2978)

Today, I have great pleasure in joining Doosan Power Systems in Renfrew to welcome its planned £170 million investment in an offshore wind research and development centre of excellence for renewables which, along with the jobs announced by Steel Engineering for the same site, will deliver more than 300 jobs for Renfrew. As the memorandum of understanding that we have signed with Doosan sets out, we expect to see 1,700 new jobs for Scotland in this great technology in which we lead the world.

Today, we meet to squeeze in two bills at the end of the First Minister’s time in government. However, thousands of Scots are still waiting for his bill to abolish their student debt. What happened to that? That was a bigger promise than the one that Nick Clegg made to students in England. It was a £2 billion promise—or, as the First Minister likes to have it, a £2,000 million promise. Did the bill just slip his mind or did he never have any intention of ever bringing it forward?

As Iain Gray well knows, this Government moved in legislation to abolish Labour’s back-door tuition fees in Scotland. [Applause.]

Order.

I am glad that the chamber is keeping up with the Labour Party positioning on the matter. In a matter of weeks, tuition fees in Scotland have gone from being “inevitable”—or so said the Labour spokesman a few weeks ago—to being the subject of a pledge on Labour’s pledge card. I welcome Iain Gray’s conversion to the principle of free education in Scotland, which the Scottish National Party has fought for, defended and introduced.

No, Presiding Officer. Tuition fees were abolished by the Parliament in 2000. I was there, as was the First Minister, as it was just before he ran off to Westminster. I voted for the abolition of tuition fees; he abstained.

We are still waiting on the First Minister’s crazy local income tax bill, too. What happened to that? Did he run out of time or did he just realise that the idea is unfair, unworkable and unwanted? Working families would have had a 30 per cent hike in their income tax. Does he still think that that is a good idea?

Let us start with the record, which is important in these matters. Labour introduced back-door tuition fees. If Iain Gray had not voted for the back-door tuition fees that Labour introduced, we would not have had to abolish them in 2007. Iain Gray is not going to persuade many students that they were not paying back-door fees under the Labour Party. Of course, if the Labour Party’s position is that it introduced front-end fees only in England and just back-door fees in Scotland, it will have some difficulty with the student population, who will believe no more than anyone Labour’s last-minute conversion to free education.

Another recent Labour conversion is on the council tax freeze, which also appears on Labour’s pledge card. Labour will have to be very careful in terms of the Trade Descriptions Act if its pledge card turns out to be what the SNP delivered in office in Scotland.

Labour introduced support for students from low-income families. That is what the First Minister abolished. If he wants to, he can speak to students on the matter; they are outside the Parliament. Let us see him explain to them why he did not abolish their student debt as he promised four years ago.

Let us go to the core of Mr Salmond’s beliefs. I always thought that the First Minister was a proud separatist, so why are we still waiting on his referendum bill? We have lost count of how many times it was definitely coming to the Parliament. Now, one of the First Minister’s favourite commentators is writing that the SNP

“is no longer a serious party of separation”.

Is that true? Is that why the referendum never appeared? Has the Scottish Government had a deathbed conversion to the union?

I would have thought that, after so many attempts at First Minister’s questions, Iain Gray would have realised that he should not wander from subject to subject when trying to articulate questions in front of the country. The SNP’s policy of free education in Scotland has now been adopted by the Labour Party in the Parliament. I welcome that, but Iain Gray should pause for thought to wonder whether his deathbed conversion will give him any credibility with the students of Scotland. I am happy to confirm that the SNP will offer the people of Scotland the right to vote on their constitutional future.

After 92 times at this, you would think that the First Minister would have realised that I get to choose what the questions are about, but his turn will come soon enough. Is the referendum not the problem of the past four years? For four years, the First Minister was distracted by a referendum that never was, while unemployment in Scotland raced ahead of that in the rest of the country. There was the nonsense of a national conversation, while youth unemployment soared by 350 per cent. While budgets were rising, the number of teachers and nurses was cut. Now, we have had four weeks of frantic announcements that were held back and timed for party advantage. That does not make up for four years of promises broken, schools unbuilt, projects cancelled, criminals released and thousands extra on the dole. Time is up. Has the First Minister not failed on all the issues that matter to the people of Scotland?

Iain Gray should get outside. I have no complaints about the questions that he reads out week after week—they are brilliant from our point of view.

Let us take Iain Gray’s claim on schools. I want to be absolutely precise about this answer. Page 26 of the Labour Party manifesto for the previous election promises 250 more schools to be built. As he will remember, we promised to match that brick for brick. I am delighted to announce that, this very evening, Michael Russell will open Goldenhill primary in Clydebank, the 330th school built by this Administration.

Iain Gray should have the grace to welcome the employment announcements that I have brought to the chamber, which are good news for Scotland. I have been looking at his record as the Minister for Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning—yes, he was the enterprise minister. In all the time in which he was enterprise minister, Iain Gray’s top employment figure in Scotland was 2,407,000. Employment in Scotland is now substantially higher than that—2,480,000. If, after a world recession in which the Labour Party played a substantial part when it was in government, we have managed to achieve an employment total—after eight months of rising employment in Scotland—that is higher than the one that Iain Gray achieved when he was enterprise minister, he should learn to welcome that achievement.

As enterprise minister, Iain Gray managed to take Scotland into recession when the rest of the world did not have one. Those employment figures are only one of the reasons why the Government will be re-elected. This morning, the Daily Record had the grace to include the welcoming, terrific announcement that the Government is on fire as it goes to the people of Scotland.

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Prime Minister (Meetings)

2. To ask the First Minister when he will next meet the Prime Minister. (S3F-2979)

I have no plans to meet the Prime Minister in the near future.

When I met the Prime Minister on Friday, the Libyan situation was obviously uppermost in our minds. I know that the Prime Minister’s decisions reflect the overwhelming sentiment of political parties and politicians here in Scotland. I am sure that the thoughts of everyone in the chamber are with our brave men and women in our armed services. [Applause.]

In the past four years I have asked the First Minister almost 300 questions. Occasionally, he has found the right page in his big book of notes, and occasionally he has listened to the sweet nothings of Ms Sturgeon in one ear and the murmurings of Mr Swinney in the other, but rarely has he found the right answer. Let me give him one last chance.

I remember that, at one point, the Scottish National Party was going to give us only 500 more police officers. Then it saw sense and increased the figure to 1,000. What changed the First Minister’s mind?

We determined to have 1,000 more officers on the streets and in the communities of Scotland to reduce recorded crime in this country to a 30-year low. I freely acknowledge that Annabel Goldie’s party voted for and supported that measure in the chamber. There have been other proposals that Annabel Goldie’s party voted for—for example, on the council tax freeze. I was grateful for that, particularly because the council tax freeze did not appear in the Conservative party’s manifesto in 2007. I was therefore slightly surprised to see Annabel Goldie at her conference at the weekend seeming to claim it as a Conservative party policy. One wonders at what point she decided that a council tax freeze was a good thing for the Scottish people.

Just to refresh the First Minister’s memory, without the Scottish Conservatives we would never have got 1,000 extra police; we would have been stuck with the First Minister’s broken promise.

The bottom line is that facts are facts. In addition to voting for the measures on the police, the Scottish Conservatives did indeed vote for a council tax freeze; we also voted for help for small business, for a town centre regeneration fund, for a new national drugs strategy and for a £26 million boost to business, construction and housing. Those were all delivered by Scottish Conservative votes—we have made the difference. All those commonsense policies—and more—have been delivered by the Scottish Conservatives and were credible and costed. Does the First Minister agree that “credible” and “costed” should be the watchwords of all politicians in the weeks ahead, and that all politicians need to be straight with the voters and tell it like it is?

Mr Swinney is the finance minister who has delivered a balanced budget over the past four years, and I am quite certain that, as finance minister, he will be prepared to do that for the next five years.

Annabel Goldie should not underrate her persuasive powers. It is true that, in order to deliver the council tax freeze, the votes of Conservative members were very important. Now, of course, we have the votes of Labour Party members as well. That joint articulation of the benefits to families in Scotland has finally got home to the Labour Party, just a few weeks afore we go to the polls.

I do not wish to say that Annabel Goldie’s support is redundant or superfluous in any sense but, as the next Government, we in the SNP can confidently look forward to the Labour Party’s support in opposition in implementing our policies.

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Secretary of State for Scotland (Meetings)

3. To ask the First Minister when he will next meet the Secretary of State for Scotland. (S3F-2980)

I have no plans to meet the Secretary of State for Scotland in the course of today.

As happened eight years ago, the parliamentary session ends with men and women from our armed forces in conflict. This time, however, the war is not illegal but is based on a United Nations Security Council resolution. That is the difference between what is happening now and the illegal war in Iraq that the previous Labour Government prosecuted, which split the nation.

This week, the First Minister issued a Government statement on Libya. Will he tell us his position on the Scottish military bases?

I strongly support our air bases, which are under threat.

I will respond to Tavish Scott’s broader point. I think that every member in the Parliament supports the position of our armed services who are called into combat, particularly when they are called into combat to protect the lives of others, as in the present circumstances. I fully accept and support Tavish Scott’s point about the importance of the UN mandate and the legality of conflict, as he well knows. That is important in terms of getting not just international support, which is of course reflected in the UN resolution, but as much domestic consensus as possible.

Tavish Scott and I agree that there is a world of difference between a situation in which brave men and women are sent into battle and conflict to pursue a UN mandate, with the united support of the population, in pursuit of the international community’s obligations, and a divisive and illegal conflict such as the Iraq war. That seems to me to be the most substantial difference of all: not just the honesty of purpose but the legality of the conflict.

I support those words on the legality of the current position and I will continue to make that case.

There is broad cross-party agreement about the importance to Scotland of our soldiers, sailors and air crew, and about the military and support jobs that are important to many Scottish communities. The First Minister will know that a Royal Navy Trafalgar-class submarine has launched cruise missiles at anti-aircraft defences in Libya this week. Trafalgar submarines and their successor Astute-class submarines are to be based in Scotland, at Faslane. Does the First Minister welcome and support those submarines and all the associated jobs being based on the Clyde?

As Tavish Scott should well know, we have never argued against conventional weaponry in the Faslane base. Indeed, he and I, along with the other party leaders, put forward that point of view in our joint submission to the armed forces review.

At a time when our armed forces are being called into conflict, we should be careful not to trespass into party-political arguments on the matter, particularly because the bases that are under threat in Scotland are not under threat from this Parliament or this Administration.

There is a supplementary question from Jack McConnell.

With your permission, Presiding Officer—and I expect that I am speaking for all retiring members of the Scottish Parliament—in advance of my question I take this opportunity to thank the staff of the Parliament for their support, in my case and in the case of some others, for these past 12 years. I thank the civil servants, ministers and special advisers who supported us, particularly Elish Angiolini, who is in the chamber, who will retire in the spring after breaking new ground as Solicitor General for Scotland and Lord Advocate. I thank my constituency and research staff and MSPs of all parties, who at many times have been kind and have given me great support over these 12 years in the Parliament.

I particularly want to thank the people of Scotland for the opportunity that they gave me to lead their Government and this country, for the honour of being First Minister and for the privilege of being MSP for Motherwell and Wishaw. I hope that at the end of these 12 years more Scots walk a little taller, cringe a little less and occasionally have ideas above their station.

Last week, my 17-year-old constituent Jayne Copeland won two awards: youth volunteer of the year and youth worker of the year. She assists the local Girls Brigade and Boys Brigade and the local dancing class; she volunteers in a nursing home for the elderly and in the paediatric unit of Wishaw general hospital; she learned British Sign Language so that she could talk to her deaf granny; and she raised more than £600 for the Teenage Cancer Trust last year, after she had personal use of the trust’s services. She represents what is and can be good about young Scots and the future of our country, and I ask the First Minister to congratulate her. [Applause.]

I willingly congratulate Jack McConnell’s constituent. That is a tremendous and inspiring story for us all and an example that we should all follow.

In a few minutes’ time I will have an opportunity to say a word about departing MSPs in general, but first I pay particular tribute to my predecessor as First Minister, Jack McConnell. Perhaps we agreed on rather more than we were ever prepared to admit when we were crossing swords, but there is no doubt that as First Minister and as a member he has made a substantial contribution to the Parliament and a very substantial contribution to Scottish society. We wish him well. [Applause.]

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Job Creation

4. To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government has done to support job creation over the last four years. (S3F-2982)

We have taken a range of measures because job creation and employment are at the forefront of our policy programme. I point in particular to the 300,000 training opportunities that we have provided since May 2007, including next year’s record 25,000 modern apprenticeships. The range of employment provisions, that level of training and that level of modern apprenticeships will fit the country well for the future.

According to Scottish Enterprise, between May 2005 and May 2007, 1,733 jobs were lost in North Ayrshire through 28 major redundancies. During that time, Cunninghame North was represented in the Parliament by the Deputy Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning, Allan Wilson, and Labour controlled North Ayrshire Council, held power here in Holyrood and was in government at Westminster. So many livelihoods were lost before the recession—which was caused by Labour’s chronic mismanagement of the world’s largest financial centre, the City of London—even began. [Interruption.]

Order. Please come to a question, Mr Gibson.

Does the First Minister agree that that litany of Labour economic incompetence shows that Scotland’s economy is not safe in the Labour Party’s hands and that it is vital to secure the re-election of a Scottish National Party Government that is committed to investing in skills, infrastructure and our small businesses to tackle the scourge of unemployment?

Yes, I agree with that. [Laughter.] We should all welcome eight months of rising employment in Scotland, as we should welcome the considerable number of positive and major jobs announcements.

As the Parliament and our society look to the future, we should be able to demonstrate, from the position that Scotland now has in some of the cutting-edge technologies that will generate the 21st century’s energy future, that the nation is well placed across a range of those activities. I hope the Parliament will increasingly unite behind getting the financial and economic powers that will allow us, as a lucky country with huge natural resources and a talented people, to maximise that great opportunity.

The First Minister recognises the need for job creation in Ayrshire. Nowhere is that more important than at Prestwick airport in my constituency. Does he agree that, in light of its recent strategic use for Royal Air Force purposes, its role in keeping Scotland’s commercial airspace open over the past two winters and the jobs that it supports directly and indirectly, the airport’s strategic importance needs to be recognised at a Scottish Government level and a United Kingdom Government level?

John Scott knows my interest in Prestwick airport and that I visited recently. Vital though the airport is, we should think of it not only as an airport but as part of an aerospace hub. I know that he particularly welcomed the major £8 million investment by Ryanair, which makes Prestwick its engineering hub for the whole of Europe. Investments such as that will secure the future of Prestwick and Ayrshire.

Three of the jobs that have been created in the past four years have been the highest paid in the public sector. I refer to three top bosses of Government bodies, who are under contracts that were signed by the First Minister’s ministers, with terms and conditions that his ministers set. Does he believe that a combined salary of £600,000 plus bonuses is the fair amount or is there a case to reduce the pay of the top paid in the public sector?

Jeremy Purvis well knows the measures that John Swinney has announced to freeze the pay of top civil servants and people throughout the public sector. I hope that those measures have Jeremy Purvis’s support.

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First-time Home Buyers

5. To ask the First Minister what support the Scottish Government is offering to first-time home buyers. (S3F-2986)

The Scottish Government has supported a variety of schemes over the past four years to help first-time buyers, such as the new supply shared-equity scheme, the open market shared-equity scheme, shared ownership and schemes to provide ownership support in rural areas. Over that time, we have supported more than 6,400 households to buy a home, compared with just over 4,000 households in the previous four years.

The First Minister did not mention the Scottish National Party’s 2007 manifesto commitment to introduce a grant of £2,000 for first-time home buyers. He could not mention it because he did not offer it. When we return to this place in six weeks or so, will the First Minister—from the Opposition benches—support Labour’s plans to offer real support to first-time home buyers to get a foot on the property ladder, which is a measure that is supported by many in the financial services and construction industries?

How churlish: Andy Kerr forgot to mention SNP-led East Lothian Council, which has introduced just such a scheme in the last week. Our investment of £300 million over the past four years was made through the schemes that I mentioned, such as the new supply and open market shared-equity schemes, shared ownership and the rural home ownership grants.

As Andy Kerr well knows, we put the “Firm Foundations: the Future of Housing in Scotland” document out to consultation and a range of experts and organisations told us to devote the resources to those schemes. They also told us to restart a council house building programme, which is why we have provided funding over the past four years for 3,300 council houses. The Labour Party, as Andy Kerr will well remember, managed to build six.

Does the First Minister agree that getting on to the housing ladder would be considerably easier had Labour ensured a proper supply across all tenures during its time in office? The Scottish people will examine the SNP Government’s record on housing, as well as that of the previous Labour Executive. Which record does the First Minister think offers a more promising future for housing in the next parliamentary session?

The SNP’s record, which is what people in the housing sector think, too. When the member was making her point, I heard another sedentary intervention from Andy Kerr, denying the fact that Labour refused to build the houses for its housing policy. I find that quite remarkable because, in an unexpected moment of candour, Iain Gray said in The Herald on 21 August 2008 that the previous Administration had

“the best homelessness legislation in the world, but we didn’t build the housing to make it work.”

Even the Labour Party leader admits that Labour did not build the houses and I think that the Scottish people will come to the same conclusion.

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Renewable Energy (Planning Guidelines)

6. To ask the First Minister whether the Scottish Government considers that planning guidelines for renewable energy projects strike a balance between the interests of developers and those of local communities. (S3F-2989)

The Scottish Government works with planners and communities to ensure that the correct balance is struck between the interests of developers and local communities in considering applications for renewable energy projects.

We are determined to ensure that Scotland’s local communities enjoy the benefits of increased renewable energy generation. I am sure that Murdo Fraser will join me in welcoming the work that has been undertaken by the Scottish Government to ensure that communities do so benefit.

Notwithstanding the First Minister’s response, he should be aware that, in the absence of clear locational planning guidance, communities up and down Scotland feel under siege from speculative wind farm planning applications. The Scottish National Party manifesto in 2007 pledged a nationwide assessment of renewables sites, but that has not been delivered. Should the First Minister be re-elected, will he keep his promise this time, or will this be a matter for post-election negotiations?

As Murdo Fraser should well know, planning guidelines have been substantially clarified over the past four years in terms of that objective. Murdo Fraser also knows well that major renewables developments come to the Government for consent. I am delighted to say that, today, the Minister for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism has approved the 41st major renewables project under this Administration. That is twice the number of the previous Administration.

All that I say to Murdo Fraser is that we believe and expect that, as part of a green economy of over 100,000 jobs that will be created between now and 2020, at least 40,000 to 50,000 will be generated by offshore wind developments and, indeed, the facilities that have been put in place to allow Scotland’s renewables to reach the marketplace.

I am sure that most people—maybe everyone in the chamber—wants to see such jobs. I say as gently as possible to Murdo Fraser that we cannot have the jobs unless we are prepared to approve the developments. If he takes a position against major investments in this industry then, by definition, he takes a position against Scotland having tens of thousands of jobs in the industry.

Does the First Minister accept that the decision to remove the right of communities to automatic notification when plans are outwith a development plan, at the stroke of a ministerial pen and without consultation with the Parliament, has been a retrograde step?

No. I think that the planning guidelines are a substantial improvement on what went before. As Karen Gillon represents communities in which there have been and are to be major projects, I hope that she contributed to the Scottish Government’s consultation on exactly how community benefits can be further enhanced, because that is certainly the way forward.

If she argues that there should be a more defined community benefit onshore and is prepared to join us in arguing for the Crown Estate to be brought under Scottish Parliament control, she will find a willing ear from this First Minister. That would seem to me to be a productive way of securing the benefits of the renewables revolution.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer.

Before I come to Liam McArthur’s point of order, I will deal with the point of order that Jeremy Purvis made earlier, when the Deputy Presiding Officer was in the chair.

I have previously made it clear that, essentially, the matter that he raised is one for the convener of the Finance Committee, but I will reflect further on the point of order and, if I have anything further to add, I will come back to the member in writing.

As the session comes to a close, can you advise on what opportunity exists to rectify the false impression that was created, perhaps inadvertently, by an answer that the First Minister gave to a question at question time last week? In response to a question from me on the circumstances surrounding the resignation of the Rev Graham Blount from the Scottish fuel poverty forum, the First Minister stated:

“It is quite clear from the Rev Graham Blount’s letter that he doubts the effectiveness of the schemes that relate to the £12.5 million for local councils.”—[Official Report, 17 March 2011; c 34610.]

As the First Minister will be aware from the letter that Graham Blount sent to his minister in which he tendered his resignation, Graham Blount made it explicit that he was reacting not

“to the substance of the policy change”

but to the fact that the forum—and he, as its chair—had been left in the dark about that announcement and a range of other matters.

How could the First Minister set the record straight, in the interests of tackling an issue that all of us in the chamber take very seriously?

I have made it abundantly clear over the past four years that the matter of veracity is not a point of order for me; it is a matter for those who speak on the subject.