The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-12154, in the name of Fergus Ewing, on partnership action for continuing employment—supporting individuals out of redundancy into employment.
15:27
To be made compulsorily redundant is one of the most unpleasant experiences that one can have in life. It can be grim, bruising and a cause of stress and anxiety. It often has an immediate impact on the ability to make ends meet. For the vast majority of people, losing one’s income causes real financial problems; it can also damage one’s sense of self-respect and self-esteem. Therefore, it is essential that our Government response to redundancy is as effective as possible.
The Scottish Government’s initiative for responding to redundancy situations, partnership action for continuing employment—or, as it is better known, PACE—is one of our most effective interventions. I want to state the evidence to support that claim.
Research published in June last year indicated that of those surveyed who had received PACE support, almost three quarters—72 per cent—had obtained employment. That compares to the figure of 51 per cent in the 2010 survey.
Our research also shows that users are highly satisfied with the package of support that the PACE service is delivering.
We work closely with our partners such as local government and the business gateway. I am working with Councillor Steven Hagan—I spoke to him yesterday—and Hugh Lightbody on the issue. They have both provided positive feedback from across the country about PACE and the staff involved.
From April 2013 until March 2014, PACE supported almost 12,000 individuals. Many members across the chamber have contacted me over the past four years or so about PACE support for their constituents. One purpose of the debate is to hear the thoughts of members from all parties on how we can build on PACE’s success and make it even more successful.
The economic climate is relevant. Employment levels are at an all-time high and Scotland is the best-performing United Kingdom nation across all headline labour market indicators. That will help some of those who lose their jobs through redundancy to enter alternative employment.
Of course, we also want to minimise the number of people who face redundancy. Our programme for government sets out our commitment to boosting the economy, building a fair society and tackling inequality. Our business support policies focus on ensuring that businesses can grow and thrive and on working to help companies to avoid situations in which there is a risk of redundancies.
Through their account management systems, our enterprise agencies, who are PACE partners, provide a range of early preventative measures to negate potential closure and alleviate difficulties. Measures are tailored to the network and involve banks, which help to raise finance, business organisations, professional bodies and relevant public sector representatives, including United Kingdom institutions such as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the enterprise agencies. Work in the early prevention field, which operates on a confidential referral basis, almost always goes on behind the scenes—and rightly so.
When the issue is tax payments, we work effectively with HMRC, which is a PACE partner. HMRC might offer time to pay, which is a temporary option for viable businesses that are experiencing short-term difficulties in paying tax in full and on time.
The challenge is to encourage a business to engage early to address potential difficulties before they become insurmountable. The Labour amendment sets out the need for such a function, and I assure Labour and other members that preventative work is done—it is done well, it is done thoroughly and it is a priority. We carry out a great deal of work—I work with partners in local government, in particular, and the enterprise network, to that end.
Does the minister agree that there is a case to be made for forgiveness of Scottish-level taxation in the circumstances that he describes, as well as for forgiveness or relief on taxes that are due to HMRC?
As a lawyer, I should say that there is a difference between forgiveness and deferral. What I am talking about is HMRC not writing off debts but permitting more time to pay, when that is required for cash-flow reasons. For example, the sudden liquidation or insolvency of a main customer who owes a company a couple of million quid can trigger a cash-flow crisis. In general, we expect businesses to pay their debts in full, over time.
I stress that PACE is available for every individual who is affected by redundancy and not just for people who are caught up in large-scale redundancies. Perhaps more can be done to reach out to companies who make redundant one, two, three or a handful of people, as well as the headline cases.
Skills Development Scotland delivers PACE on behalf of the Scottish Government, in conjunction with key partners, including the Department for Work and Pensions. There are 18 PACE teams across the country, with 12 in the central belt and south of Scotland and six in the Highlands and Islands.
SDS also provides services to the unemployed and to people who are in employment, through the employability fund, which I think is of the order of £52 million, and flexible training opportunities, which offer in-work training. The employability fund caters for the consequences of redundancy at a human level.
In the 2014 to 2020 structural funds programmes, £115 million has been allocated to the 32 local authorities across Scotland.
I ask, in the hope of a positive response from my Labour friends, whether there is really a need for a resilience fund, in light of the fact that two substantial existing public sector funds—of £115 million and £52 million—cater for the consequences of large-scale shocks to parts of the country. I suggest that the existing funding deals with the situation adequately. However, if Labour members argue that there has been insufficient funding to deal with matters appropriately, I will of course be more than happy to discuss the cases in detail with Mr Macdonald or his colleagues.
Scottish Government funds and structural funds have to be applied very carefully. European Union rules are stringently applied and penalties have been imposed in many cases in other jurisdictions. The Scottish Government funds and structural funds ensure the continuation of employability pipelines and offer substantial support and back-up to communities.
On 23 June 2009, John Swinney established the ministerial PACE partnership, which now includes 21 organisations, together with the Scottish Government, and oversees a continuous improvement programme to enhance the operation of PACE.
Each PACE response is tailored to meet the needs of the individuals involved. In some cases, there will be time for a planned phase of support to be developed. For example, at Philips Lighting, working closely with the employer and Unite the Union, the local PACE team delivered a comprehensive programme of support services over seven months.
Trade unions play a key role. The Scottish Trades Union Congress is a PACE partner and I thank the STUC for its support. Just this morning, speaking at the first of two conferences in Aberdeen, I discussed with Stephen Boyd our co-operation in cases such as the Scottish Resources Group, Scottish Coal, Freshlink and Remploy. In those and other cases, we have worked closely together and have built up an excellent personal working relationship. That is what we have done with the STUC and we hugely value it.
Similarly, our colleges across Scotland—another PACE partner—form a key and integral part of PACE. Many of the individuals who have received help have received the right help to retrain, in part because of the opportunities that they have been able to get in our colleges.
Experience shows that the earlier PACE support can be provided to individuals, the more effective that support will be. I make a plea to employers: despite the commercial considerations involved, earliest possible notification to PACE of potential redundancy and a formal redundancy period means that it can provide a period of three months or even longer for employees to adjust to the consequences—financial and other—of proposed redundancy.
Much of my work relates to liaising with insolvency practitioners, and my prime concern is to make every effort to seek a positive outcome in order to preserve jobs. For example, in the case of City Link, I spoke with the administrators to offer support, but they were of the view that the business could not continue as a going concern. I also met representatives of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers in relation to City Link and we subsequently held five PACE redundancy support events across Scotland for affected employees.
Another recent case was West Coast Capital (USC) Ltd, where both I and my officials had difficulties in contacting the parent company. Despite that, we were able to provide some PACE support for those who were being made redundant.
I thank insolvency practitioners for all the support that they have given to our efforts. I spoke to Derek Wilson of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland yesterday and I will be meeting him and Michelle Mullen of ICAS to discuss further joint working in the next couple of months.
No one welcomes insolvency and the horrendous impact that it can have on individuals and employees, but there are some instances of a positive outcome emerging and it is important to recognise that that can happen in a minority of cases. For example, there can be an injection of substantial capital and a stronger business case for the future, as happened in the case of Ferguson Shipbuilders and in the case of Hargreaves taking over from Scottish Coal. It can lead to a more secure, better, more robust and more profitable business replacing one that was ailing.
Across Scotland, I see local authorities and national agencies working together effectively to deliver business support and responding to particular situations. It is a very good example of team Scotland in action—21 different bodies acting well together.
Sometimes, circumstances require the intervention of national Government—not in every case, but in some cases there can be value in intervening directly. We have established task forces to bring together national and local politicians, public sector agencies and company and workforce representatives.
This week, we see the first meeting of the energy jobs task force, which is focused on supporting jobs across the energy sector, including jobs for apprentices. It has an initial focus on oil and gas, given the current challenges that are being faced in that sector. I am delighted that Lena Wilson, the chief executive of Scottish Enterprise, is chairing that task force and is personally committed to driving forward that work. I spoke to her yesterday about it and will be working closely with her on that.
Over the past two years, I have chaired the Scottish coal industry task force, which was established in April 2013, when two major coal operators—ATH Resources and the Scottish Resources Group—went into liquidation, resulting in more than 700 job losses and significant restoration liabilities. In that case, the work that we did together resulted in around 500 people resuming employment. That is not a bad result, given the difficulties and the scale of the task.
I have mentioned just a few specific cases. There are many others; perhaps members can talk about them when they speak about what has happened in their parts of Scotland.
I pay tribute to the PACE team, which is led by Margaret Sutor, and to her 18 teams of colleagues around the country. They provide very strong support to people at a rough time in their life in a human, sympathetic and effective fashion. It is no surprise that that support is genuinely appreciated by the substantial majority of people who receive their services. Much of the PACE team’s work is done under the radar—it is unseen, unreported and unappreciated. Today’s debate is, among other things, an opportunity to pay tribute and to give credit to its members.
I believe that PACE is an excellent example of the Scottish Government working in partnership with all our other partners and bodies to maximise the benefit for individuals, for communities and for Scotland’s economic growth.
I move,
That the Parliament recognises that the Scottish Government’s initiative for responding to redundancy situations, Partnership Action for Continuing Employment (PACE), with teams around Scotland, brings 21 organisations together with the Scottish Government; considers that it has performed well in its core function of helping those made redundant gain other employment or opportunities; notes that the most recent figures show that nearly three quarters of those who received PACE support went into employment, and urges the Scottish Government to continue to work with industry, workforce representatives and the third sector to provide the best possible and practicable assistance to those who have been made redundant and to spread awareness and knowledge of what PACE is and does.
15:41
The debate is timely, because the Scottish economy is facing the threat of thousands of job losses as a result of the falling price of oil. Partnership action for continuing employment clearly has a part to play in responding to that threat, but PACE is not enough on its own. That is why Scottish Labour’s amendment proposes a resilience fund to strengthen the response to economic shocks at a local level.
We recognise the role of PACE, and I echo the minister’s comments about the personal qualities of the staff in the PACE teams. We welcome the fact that the Scottish Government has brought forward a debate on a report on PACE that was published in June of last year.
The news release at the time—which had the headline “Scottish Government PACE initiative five years on”—told us that
“the Scottish Government established the PACE Partnership”
in response to the economic downturn
“In June 2009”.
At first glance, that might seem curious, given that the first-year review of PACE was published by the then Scottish Executive 14 years ago, and that PACE was launched under that name in March 2000 but, of course, ministers know that they did not invent PACE, and that what we are debating is an initiative that is almost as old as devolution itself. However, it is true, as Mr Ewing said, that PACE has been around in its current form only since 2009, and that the changes that were made then were more than simply a minor rebranding for public relations purposes.
Last year’s report highlighted enhancements from a continuous improvement programme that included a PACE helpline, a new data capture system, an evaluation framework and improved support in a number of fields for people who are made redundant. Helplines and data capture systems can be very significant, but the most substantial changes that have been made to PACE, in comparison with its operation a decade ago, have been to who leads the partnership action and to the scope of ambition on continuing employment.
When it was first established, PACE was seen as an economic intervention tool, the role of which was to bring together Government agencies to protect existing jobs as part of a wider approach to supporting the productive economy. That is why Labour’s amendment highlights the original remit of identifying companies or sectors that are in difficulty at an early stage; promoting partnership working between public sector agencies and private companies to mitigate that difficulty and avoid job losses; and, when that joint working fails to avoid job losses, working to get people back into employment as quickly as possible.
Because PACE’s role was originally about the wider economy, the lead was taken by the enterprise agencies, and the real strength of PACE in its first few years was that leadership and delivery were provided by local response teams that brought together the local enterprise company, the local council and the then equivalent of Jobcentre Plus. Local enterprise companies were done away with in the Scottish National Party’s first term, and local response teams are no longer under the aegis of the enterprise agencies, although, as the minister said, PACE now encompasses the business gateway. Instead, Skills Development Scotland leads on the delivery of PACE on behalf of the Scottish Government, and that shift of focus is reflected in the Government’s motion.
The motion describes
“helping those made redundant gain other employment or opportunities”
as the core function of PACE, rather than as one of a number of equally important tasks, as was the case in its original remit.
Getting unemployed people in those circumstances into jobs is rightly a very high priority on which the national skills agency should provide a lead, but the original vision that inspired the creation of PACE was also a vision of preventing those redundancies from happening in the first place. Prevention is better than cure; indeed, the Government has said that it is in favour of preventative spend rather than simply picking up the pieces. The Government’s ambition must be about continuing employment for whole sectors and workforces, and not only about enabling individuals to find alternative jobs, highly important though that is.
All the agencies and organisations that are involved in PACE are doing their best to help, but we believe that the Government needs to look at the bigger picture. The Government, or the enterprise agencies on its behalf, should assess the effectiveness of early intervention to prevent redundancies to see whether the change of focus over the past five years has reduced the ability of public agencies to prevent redundancy situations from arising in the first place.
I agree on the need to intervene early, but I assure Mr Macdonald that the enterprise network is also absolutely persuaded of that need and that it devotes a considerable amount of the time and effort of its officers, account managers and leaders to that end across a range of activities, including the co-ordinated support mechanism and the early intervention network.
I do not doubt that the will and the good intention exist; the question is how far the enterprise network is able to deliver early intervention, given the strength of focus on post-redundancy situations.
For example, what has taken the place of the local enterprise companies in providing early warning or local intelligence of what is going on in the local economy? How far are local trade unions or, indeed, local employers engaged on a routine basis in sharing their knowledge of risks or threats to local jobs? We need to know whether the appetite or the capacity to address risks that have not yet become threats has been significantly affected by moving PACE from having an enterprise focus to having a skills development focus.
For all those reasons and given new threats to jobs in the Scottish economy, the Scottish Government should look again at PACE’s role and remit to see whether it is fit for purpose, rather than simply saying that we need to do more of the same.
The most serious new threat to jobs in Scotland is posed by the prospect of low oil prices over an extended period, of course. In the view of some in the sector, they will possibly be low for as long as two or three years. Yesterday, Aker Solutions followed Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips and Talisman Sinopec in announcing hundreds of further job losses in Aberdeen and across the UK.
I heard what the member said about how to help individual companies when they are in difficulties, but still I cannot think but that the Scottish Government is going about things in the right way by helping sectors rather than individual companies. It is very important that we are not seen to use public funds to help failing companies. We should use public funds to help the sectors. Does the member support the Scottish Government in wanting a change of taxation in the oil and gas sector that will help the sector rather than individual companies?
I will reimburse Lewis Macdonald’s time.
In a sense, the point that I am making is that it is not simply about picking up the pieces when a company goes bust; it is about intervening to assist sectors by using early intelligence—it is about making such interventions.
As Mr Allard will know, besides the headline figures of hundreds of jobs going at major oil companies, many other jobs have gone quietly in many of the smaller companies in the sector. We need an assessment of the impact of those job losses on the wider economy before we can make a sensible estimate of how many thousands of jobs have already gone and how many more are at risk.
My question is this: how far has PACE contributed to anticipating or mitigating the loss of jobs in the oil sector in the north-east and beyond? The Scottish Government certainly seemed to underestimate the impact of the falling price of oil on the Scottish economy for a long time and to regard it as merely cyclical or a blip rather than as a serious threat to future production and employment.
We welcome the offer to protect oil industry apprenticeships, of course, but it is worth noting that all the companies that have announced major redundancies so far have gone out of their way to avoid including apprentices in those who are losing their jobs. We welcome the establishment of a task group, but it is critical that it makes serious proposals very quickly.
As the minister acknowledged, Labour’s amendment promotes one such proposal—to establish a resilience fund as part of the next Scottish budget. Just as a local council that is faced with an environmental shock such as major flooding can apply for extra funding under the Bellwin scheme, so a local council that is faced with a sudden and unforeseen economic shock could apply to the Scottish Government for support from such a resilience fund. It could then use that funding to make a real contribution to local economic resilience, for example by providing short-term rates relief to help supply-chain companies survive an initial economic shock.
It seems to us that a budget of £10 million would be enough to get such a fund under way and to make a difference, for example in areas that are affected by the current position in the oil industry. However, the resilience fund would not be specific to any one region or sector. It would be part of a renewed PACE and would be an additional tool for partner agencies to use to anticipate and, where possible, prevent job losses in their local area.
If ministers were to take that proposal on board through the budget process, we would of course work with them to set the right criteria and conditions to get real added value from such an additional fund.
I ask Mr Macdonald why Labour has come to this so late in the day. He might recall that, two years ago, the coal industry suffered a major crisis, with two of its main companies going bust. Why was there no resilience fund for the coalfield communities that I represent?
I ask you to begin to conclude, Mr Macdonald.
Mr Ingram is absolutely right. The coalfields, particularly in East Ayrshire, are a very good example of exactly why a fund should happen. If he is chiding me for not coming to this sooner, I hope that he will chide his front bench as well and ensure that ministers now get behind the proposal and ensure that what was not done two years ago is done now and can make a difference.
We will continue to support partnership action for continuing employment and its work not just after redundancy but in seeking to prevent redundancy, in line with its original remit and purpose when it was set up 15 years ago. I hope that we can work with members of other parties to ensure that every mechanism that can help us to do that is in place.
To that end, I move amendment S4M-12154.1, to leave out from “considers” to end and insert:
“recognises that PACE was originally created with a remit to ensure the early identification of company or sector difficulties, to undertake partnership working with companies in order to mitigate difficulty and, only where redundancies are inevitable, get people back into jobs as quickly as possible; recognises that more needs to be done to support companies, sectors and regions faced with sudden economic shocks and difficulties to avoid or reduce the number of job losses; agrees that the work of PACE should be reviewed in order to identify where more pro-active interventions can be made at an earlier stage, and calls for the establishment of a resilience fund to assist with these efforts with an initial budget of £10 million in 2015-16.”
15:52
I welcome this afternoon’s debate on partnership action for continuing employment. We have become used to hearing the term “PACE” when redundancies are announced, and it is good to have this opportunity to debate in more detail PACE’s work, how it functions and indeed how it might be improved.
With the overall economic picture improving, we hope that the requirement for PACE intervention will diminish. Since 2010, employment in Scotland has increased by 175,000 and unemployment has fallen by 61,000, and although there was a slight increase in the latest quarterly figures, our unemployment rate is still lower than that of the rest of the UK. Since 2010, some 265,000 new private sector jobs have been created in Scotland. All of that is, of course, testament to the economic stewardship of the UK coalition Government, which has delivered the fastest growing economy in Europe by pursuing a policy that was opposed at every turn by members on both the SNP and Labour benches.
However, even against that successful backdrop, the reality is that we have a dynamic market economy in which we will continue to see business successes and failures. Even at a time of overall economic success and growth, sectors will from time to time be hit by a downturn, just as we are seeing today in the oil and gas sector. In the past few weeks, a number of redundancies have been announced in that sector—the minister will be familiar with those—and I suspect and fear that others may come in the months ahead.
Does Murdo Fraser agree that the main element that the oil and gas industry requires from government at present is for the UK Government to take urgent action to introduce the tax reductions that are needed to send a strong message, as Sir Ian Wood has said, throughout the world and to prevent irreversible damage from being sustained? Will Murdo Fraser, in a spirit of consensus, agree that the headline rate should be cut by at least 10 per cent and that an investment allowance and substantial exploration measures must be introduced as soon as possible?
The minister and I have discussed those points on a number of occasions in the past few weeks. He knows perfectly that we support tax reductions to assist the North Sea oil industry, and Ruth Davidson has made the same point to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on numerous occasions.
The minister mentioned Sir Ian Wood. It is worth reflecting that Sir Ian himself has said that tax changes now would make no difference to the North Sea oil industry, nor would they prevent redundancies—in fact, they would not have any impact for the next six to nine months.
Although I agree that the Westminster Government is required to take action, we should not pretend that that will have any impact in the short term. It should not absolve the Scottish Government, which has responsibility for economic development, from taking action itself to deal with the current situation in the North Sea.
Will the member take an intervention?
No—I hope that the member will forgive me, but I do not wish to be diverted into a debate about the oil and gas industry. We have had the opportunity to debate that in the past, and I am sure that we will debate it in the future. I want to talk about PACE, which is what the debate is about.
Where there are business failures, it is important that the individuals who are affected get the support that they need to help them to access benefits, find new work and retrain, and to make the transition into new employment that much easier.
The experience of individuals who have been involved with PACE teams has generally been positive. The minister referred to the report that was commissioned by Skills Development Scotland. It looked at client experiences of PACE, and found that three quarters of those involved were satisfied overall with their interactions with PACE, although older clients—those aged over 55—tended to be less satisfied than those in other age groups.
Two thirds of users suggested that PACE met or exceeded their expectations. The most useful component of the PACE scheme, according to the survey, was help with job applications and CVs. The good news was that nearly three quarters of clients had found work following PACE’s intervention, although unfortunately more than half were being paid less than they had been paid in their previous position. Around a quarter had undertaken further education or training.
The overall conclusion is that PACE is providing a valuable service that is generally well regarded. Nonetheless, I appreciate that there remain on-going concerns.
I was interested in what the minister had to say about PACE’s involvement with very small employers. There is a general view, which is clearly incorrect, that PACE is there only to help with large-scale redundancies. I wonder—perhaps the minister can deal with this point in responding to the debate—whether more can be done to work with business organisations such as the Scottish Chambers of Commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses to ensure that they are aware of the availability of PACE support for their members and are spreading the message to them.
I read with interest Labour’s proposed amendment to the Government’s motion. I have sympathy with Lewis Macdonald on the point that
“the work of PACE should be reviewed in order to identify where more pro-active interventions can be made at an earlier stage”,
although I note the minister’s comment that that is already happening behind the scenes.
I listened with interest to Mr Macdonald’s speech to see whether he would cite any examples of where there had been a failure to intervene. I did not hear many of those, but perhaps his Labour colleagues will expand on that point during the debate.
I am somewhat less convinced by Labour’s call
“for the establishment of a resilience fund”.
If such a fund is to be established, we need to know exactly what it will be for; in what circumstances it would be called on; what criteria would be required for payments; on what basis a budget of £10 million per annum has been calculated; and on what exactly that money will be spent. It rather sounds like a headline looking for a story to be written to justify it. If Labour is going to attract our support for the amendment, it will need to provide a little bit more detail on those aspects.
With that caveat, I hope that the debate will be largely consensual. The Scottish Government told us in the middle of last year that some 63,500 people had received support from PACE, which reflects the number of large-scale redundancies that occurred in the economy. As I said, I hope that, with the general economic recovery, that figure will decline; unfortunately, the exception of the problems in the oil and gas sector will mean that we will require PACE to be in place for many years to come.
I join the minister in paying tribute to those who work for PACE. Their efforts are clearly valuable and the evidence suggests that they are well regarded by their clients. I hope that we can all agree that PACE deserves praise for its endeavours. I am pleased to support the Government’s motion.
We move to the open debate. I ask for speeches of six minutes, please; I have a little bit of time in hand for interventions.
15:59
I have been reflecting for a few days on what I was going to say and I have been struck by the fact that PACE is somewhat paradoxical, in the sense that it does very good work in communities, but we kind of hope that we will never need to see it do that work. If we do, it means that there are jobs at risk and redundancies in train.
PACE has been active in the north-east on a number of occasions in recent years, despite the fact that the north-east has, largely, been an area of economic buoyancy—it is the only part of the UK that grew its economy during the recession. That said, there have still been instances in the north-east of company insolvencies and redundancies.
In 2012, I raised with the minister the potential redundancies at Hall & Tawse Joinery Ltd in my constituency. During the Donside by-election the following year, I spoke to a number of employees who had gone through that process and had interacted with the PACE team. They spoke very positively about the work that PACE had carried out during that period of great uncertainty for many employees and their families.
I hear what Lewis Macdonald said about early intervention, which ties in with what I said about not wanting to see PACE doing its work because of what that work implies. Much of the early intervention work is work that we really should not hear about, because if it were to become public knowledge that PACE was interacting at an early stage, that would set hares racing in respect of the sustainability of companies and the job security of employees, which could affect potential future contract awards and so on. That, in turn, could have a significant knock-on effect. I understand Lewis Macdonald’s point, but I think that the minister has given us some comfort that the early intervention work that he has outlined does take place. It would be better if we were to work on the basis that we do not want too much evidence of early intervention taking place lest it put companies in an awkward spot.
Mark McDonald has made a reasonable point, but does he accept that there is a period between the point at which a company—or a wider sector—is seen to be in fairly rude health and the point at which redundancies are having to be made, when there is an opportunity for interventions to be made that could stave off redundancies without revealing anything that the market, and those employees, would not already be well aware of?
I take Liam McArthur’s point. I say merely that because of its connotation with dealing with redundancies, if word gets out that a company is involved with PACE there is a potential knock-on effect. However, that does not deflect from the fact that there should be early interventions where possible, and the minister has highlighted that that does happen. We need to have faith in the fact that early intervention will take place and that we will not read about that early intervention taking place.
If there are examples in which early intervention has not happened, we need to hear about them. That has certainly not been my experience when companies in my constituency have gone through situations involving PACE. In those cases, there have been no complaints about the speed and efficacy of PACE’s work.
Opportunities in relation to the on-going situation in the north-east could perhaps be the focus of the work of organisations that are involved in PACE. For example, at a recent briefing at North East Scotland College, it was highlighted to MSPs that the college was having difficulty attracting appropriate people to lecture on some oil and gas courses. An upshot of the work that is taking place in the north-east might therefore be to identify individuals from the redundancy rounds that are taking place who could be directed towards the college, or vice versa, in order, potentially, to fill that skills gap.
I turn to the resilience fund. Murdo Fraser made a strong point in that what happened initially was an announcement that a resilience fund was called for. Ever since, we have heard various stages of detail in relation to a fund. I get the feeling that we might, in another couple of weeks, finally see the crystallisation of exactly what that resilience fund would do. It now appears that local authorities can use that £10 million to provide rates relief in their areas. However, I question exactly what impact that would have in areas such as the north-east, where we have some large multinational companies. We are talking about supply-chain companies, but much of the cost cutting that is taking place in the oil and gas sector is focused on contracted staff and on staff who work within the sector itself—it has not yet started to leach into the supply chain. There needs to be a bit more detail of what the impact of the resilience fund will be.
I appreciate that this is not about just the oil and gas sector. Lewis Macdonald was a little bit unfair to my colleague Adam Ingram and perhaps wilfully misinterpreted what he said; I do not think that he said that Labour should have called for the fund previously. I think, rather, that he was questioning why Labour had not called for it previously if it is such a good idea. The minister has outlined the £52 million employability fund and the £150 million of structural funds that are now available to provide the economic support for communities and regions that Lewis Macdonald highlighted.
Will Mark McDonald take an intervention?
I will if it is brief.
It will have to be very brief.
That is in the gift of Mr Macdonald. I give way to him on the basis that it will be.
Does Mark McDonald accept that the detail of such a fund is one thing but that the principle of enabling councils to apply for support to help supply-chain companies is another and something that the Government could work with?
Mark McDonald, please come to a conclusion.
We had a little exchange on the matter last week. The devil is always in the detail of how such a fund would be applied, in terms of how effective it would be. A large amount of Scottish Government and European Union money is available to Scotland that is doing a great deal of good already in supporting employability objectives in communities.
I welcome the minister’s remarks on the scale of redundancies. Although large-scale redundancies often grab the headlines, we should not forget that small-scale redundancies contain many individual stories and that the support that can be given to individuals and companies in those circumstances is just as valuable to local economies throughout Scotland.
16:07
Like other members, I represent a part of the country where there has been a recurring need for PACE teams. Communities across Scotland are still reeling from the loss of jobs at City Link, whose workers were told at Christmas that they would be out of work by the new year. Although the relocation of Rolls-Royce from East Kilbride to Inchinnan will not lead directly to redundancies, it is expected that it will affect the supply chain and reduce significantly the already declining manufacturing base in the town.
However, it was the closure of the Jeyes manufacturing plant in East Kilbride that prompted me to investigate PACE and to look in detail at the scheme’s effectiveness. Jeyes is one of the country’s leading manufacturers of cleaning products and fluids. Over 130 years, it has grown from humble beginnings to become a manufacturer with global reach. Retailers in over 60 different countries worldwide have Jeyes products on their shelves, and many of us will have some of those products in our kitchens and bathrooms.
East Kilbride shared in the success of the firm, having been home to the manufacturer for over 40 years. Yet, in 2012, Jeyes decided to consolidate manufacturing at Thetford in Norfolk and to close the East Kilbride plant, despite a strong counterproposal from local management, South Lanarkshire Council and the Scottish manufacturing advisory service. It was a profitable plant, and the workers were not just productive and committed; most of them were highly skilled and many had worked at Jeyes for over 15 years. The loss of those jobs was a body blow to the workforce and the manufacturing industry. Workers told me that the experience was most daunting for those who had been with the firm for years, but not long enough to consider retirement.
PACE teams were deployed. They provided assistance with CV preparation, interview skills and benefits advice—the practical support that we know is most valued when workers are being made redundant. I brought the factory workers who faced redundancy to my own jobs fair in East Kilbride and secured extra support from Skills Development Scotland at that event to reinforce their job-seeking skills. I also met the PACE team to hear in detail about how they approach workplaces such as Jeyes. The lessons that I took away from that experience are broadly reflected in the client experience survey, which has been mentioned.
Help with CVs and applications is overwhelmingly appreciated, and information about training and funding for training continues to rank among the most popular of PACE services. The initial presentation to workers could be delivered earlier, especially when a workforce is forewarned about an employer’s intention to make staff redundant. Two thirds of those who were surveyed had to take a pay cut in their first job after the PACE intervention, and half continued in lower-paying work.
I want to stress that last point. PACE is our way of supporting workers who face redundancy to get back into the labour market, but the labour market is changing. To give workers the best chance of securing continuing and meaningful employment, we need to influence those changes. We need a strategy that insulates Scotland against economic shocks such as that in the North Sea oil and gas sector and which reverses the decline of our manufacturing base in places like East Kilbride.
If we believe in a strong, resilient, higher-waged and better-skilled economy in which growth is more evenly distributed, we must ensure that we do not simply replace the good-quality and secure work that we lose with less well-paid and less secure work. Indeed, our aim should be to retain the jobs that contribute most to the economy and to prevent painful and wasteful redundancies in the first place.
I believe that PACE services could be delivered sooner and that we must do more than respond to redundancy: where we can, we must prevent it. As we have discussed, there is a strong and compelling case for an economic resilience fund. For those reasons, I will support the Labour amendment. However, I say to all members that we cannot separate the issue of how we support people who face redundancy from that of how we reshape and rebalance the economy as a whole. For the sake of those who are faced with redundancy and those who are struggling with unemployment, we must ask ourselves whether the economy that we have is really the economy that we want.
16:12
I welcome the debate and I will support the motion.
Some years ago, as a young manager with NCR, a manufacturer in Dundee, I had the privilege of working with a team of individuals and a company whose workforce increased from 1,100 to 6,500 on the back of demands resulting from decimalisation and the simultaneous creation of a new computer range. Sadly, because of changing technology and demands, the number eventually fell back to 1,500 over six years and seven periods of redundancies—the consequences of which still live with me today. Not once or twice but seven times, I sat opposite good colleagues, who were wives, mothers, husbands, fathers and others, and advised them that their job was redundant. That still hurts to this day and it is why, in every election since, I have made job creation and continued employment my major driver.
PACE did not exist then but, happily, it does today. It draws together local and national bodies such as SDS, Jobcentre Plus and local authorities along with the STUC and affiliated unions to provide a rapid response to redundancies. Change is constant and redundancies are a consequence—a limited one, we hope—of change, whether it be economic, competitive or financial change. How we address redundancy is absolutely critical, and it must be done speedily.
Of course, our first objective has to be to minimise the risk of redundancy. That is done by having a focused economic strategy that is underpinned by a business support infrastructure that embraces our enterprise agencies, by the security of capital investment—we have invested £11 billion over the past four years—and by the creation of opportunities for young people through modern apprenticeships and things such as the youth employment fund.
As I said, change is constant, and the strengths of our economy—our small business sector, our exports and foreign direct investment—will not buttress us wholly against the business circumstances that end in compulsory redundancies, such as those that I mentioned. However, a rapid response task force such as the PACE partnerships, of which there are 18 in Scotland, is the appropriate vehicle to mitigate the challenge of those redundancies.
Without such a vehicle, how would the 63,500 individuals throughout Scotland who have been made redundant over the past five and a half years have responded to their situation? Members should imagine the landscape of Vion and Hall’s of Broxburn. The serious impact of the closure of the opencast coal mines in East Ayrshire and elsewhere has been mentioned. Now, we have redundancies as a consequence—albeit, I believe, a short-term consequence—of the downturn in the oil and gas sectors.
What would people have done without the support of PACE? Those and other redundancy challenges demanded the construction of that Government-led initiative, which proved to be successful. I pay particular credit to the role of the STUC and the unions in PACE, because of my experience with NCR. At that time, when there was no such partnership, the unions did what they felt that they had to do to protect jobs.
PACE is an important ingredient in getting people back into work—not least our young people. However, I suggest that our horizons should not be limited.
In an increasingly confident economy, we need new entrepreneurs and new businesses. PACE emphasises greatly training and bringing people back into work, but I would like it to place a greater emphasis on the creation of new small businesses through facilitated investment and meaningful business mentoring. How many embryonic engineering services or export supply companies could be set up by people who currently face redundancy? Our international network and competitiveness might secure more rapid jobs and employment growth with the creation of such productive small businesses and/or social enterprises in anticipation of the recovery of whatever sector they are in.
Notwithstanding the basis of, and need for, PACE’s creation, it has had success in achieving what it set out to do. More power to its elbow.
I support the motion.
16:17
With the publication of this week’s figures on exports and growth, all the indications are that our economy is continuing to emerge from the depths of the difficulties that it faced in the not-so-distant past. We see relatively strong progress on employment, unemployment, business confidence and a range of other measures as the economy in Scotland and throughout the UK continues to recover—thanks in no small way to the tough decisions that the coalition Government is taking. Even average wages are starting to show signs of improvement, which is particularly welcome.
Nevertheless, no one would reasonably argue that we are out of the woods yet, and circumstances will remain challenging in a range of sectors. That is borne out by a series of disappointing announcements by a range of companies over recent months, notably—though not exclusively—in the oil and gas sector.
In that respect, the Scottish Government is to be congratulated on the debate’s timing. Whether the debate proves useful will depend on the minister’s willingness to reflect on the constructive speeches that have been made and to make changes where they are necessary.
The motion was not initially encouraging about that. It demonstrates a legitimate element of self-congratulation about PACE and an absence of any recognition that improvements might need to be made. However, to be fair, the minister corrected some of that in his opening speech.
I acknowledge the contribution that PACE makes and its strengths. Mr Ewing’s motion rightly points to the collaborative approach, which is a genuine strength and is integral to making the interventions work. Of course, that involves not simply collaboration across the public, private and third sectors—including the trade unions, as a number of colleagues have said—to which the motion refers but joint working within the public sector. Under the constitutional set-up that exists and in a post-Smith commission context, there is an imperative for both of Scotland’s Governments to work closely and constructively together. Turf battles do nothing to help the people whom PACE exists to serve.
It was therefore disappointing that the First Minister initially chose not to specifically include UK departments and agencies such as the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Work and Pensions in the task force that was set up in response to the challenges that the oil and gas sector faces. That said, I welcome the apparent change of heart that there has been following the representations that my colleague Willie Rennie made at First Minister’s questions earlier this month.
The task force’s establishment is nevertheless welcome, as is the decision to guarantee apprenticeships across the oil and gas sector. Although it would be unfair to draw comparisons between that sector and others in our economy, I wonder whether the commitments that have been given will be expected to be matched elsewhere in the future. Perhaps the minister can come back to that in closing.
Mr Ewing is entitled to point to the statistics on those who have been helped into employment and other opportunities as a result of PACE support. Nevertheless, that rather glosses over some of the shortcomings that have been highlighted by at least some of those who have experience of PACE. Whether or not those are minority views, they represent valid and valuable feedback that we should note and on which we should take action.
As more than half those who have had PACE support have confirmed that they have moved into employment with salary levels that are lower than those that they had previously, concerns have been raised about the lack of personalised support. There is a reduction—albeit slight—in the number of people who rate the PACE support as relevant and useful and, as PACE is often a signpost to other services, it is a concern that more of those who rely on it might be finding it less effective at meeting their needs than it previously was.
Those findings are not wholly surprising to me, as they reflect some of the feedback that I have had recently from constituents who have been on the receiving end, as well as complaints about a lack of early contact post-redundancy. Offers of help with sprucing up a CV were seen as inadequate in the circumstances.
It will certainly be interesting to see what overall feedback there is from those in the wave energy sector who have found themselves in need of PACE support in recent times. Two months after Pelamis Wave Power went into administration, it appears that the problems that the sector faces are not deemed sufficiently important to merit a debate in the Parliament—frankly, I find that situation inexcusable.
As Mr McArthur knows, we have had a private meeting, and I am happy to have a further briefing session with him. I assure him that Highlands and Islands Enterprise is working very hard on the future of the wave energy sector in Scotland. I am happy to confirm that that is receiving a great deal of my attention and the attention of Alex Paterson of HIE, and that it is very much a priority for the Scottish Government.
I thank the minister not just for that intervention but, as he said, for the time that he has committed to discussions with me and Alex Paterson. However, it is remiss of the Parliament not to have taken the opportunity to debate the wider issues, notwithstanding the commercial sensitivities that relate to some of the discussions on Pelamis and the establishment of wave energy Scotland.
Another area flagged up in recent feedback reports on PACE as requiring attention is the need for a more timely point of intervention. Those in the wave energy sector would perhaps agree with that assessment, which in essence speaks to the points in Lewis Macdonald’s amendment. I note Mr Ewing’s reassurances, but I observe that it is not good enough for PACE to be seen as something for ministers to refer to when MSPs ask them what they are doing in response to major job losses in a constituency or region.
Originally, part of PACE’s purpose was to identify key companies or sectors that were experiencing difficulties and to intervene to mitigate difficulties, reduce any job losses and help those who were made redundant into new employment. That is not always possible, of course, but we must absolutely guard against PACE coming to be seen as a response after the fact, rather than something that is activated much earlier in the process. I have even seen ministerial responses that refer to PACE standing ready to provide whatever support is needed, which suggests a level of reactivity that does not altogether inspire confidence.
The final aspect that I will reflect on is the role of colleges in helping to deliver pathways back into employment. Although some former employees can be taken on by competitor companies in similar roles and on similar terms, in general, some retraining and reskilling is inevitable. Colleges are crucial to that, so the cuts to college budgets that we have had over the past two or three years are a concern. Everyone knows that the cuts have had a disproportionate effect on older learners.
It is right and welcome that the Scottish Government has given Parliament the opportunity to debate PACE’s work and consider its strengths and weaknesses. The collaborative approach is essential and those involved can feel justifiably proud of many of the interventions that they have made. However, we owe it to them and to those whom PACE is there to serve to ensure that we acknowledge where things are not working as effectively as they should; otherwise, this well-motivated motion and debate, on a valuable and generally well-regarded service, will be seen as a missed opportunity.
16:25
As I have been made redundant twice in my career, I can vouch for the authenticity of the introduction to the PACE guide that is issued to people who face that prospect, which states:
“Redundancy can be one of the most challenging and stressful things you’ll ever face. And you’ll understandably feel daunted and unsure of what to do next”.
Thankfully, nowadays, PACE is there to help with all the support and advice needed to move on and out of that crisis.
As an Ayrshire MSP, I can vouch for the effectiveness of the PACE response to the all-too-frequent calls on its services. Some of them involve large-scale job losses, such as those at Johnnie Walker’s bottling plant, which were especially painful for my colleague Willie Coffey and his Kilmarnock constituency. The notice that was given at that plant and the long lead-in time allowed PACE advisers to reduce the final redundancy figure to just over 10 per cent of those who were initially expected to be seeking work.
More difficult issues have arisen when companies have wilfully failed to engage in the PACE process or entered suddenly into administration. I will highlight two cases that illustrate problems that need to be addressed, perhaps through better company regulation.
The first case relates to the collapse and liquidation of two major companies operating in the opencast mining sector, Scottish Coal and ATH Resources, neither of which was willing to engage with PACE at the appropriate time. That inevitably resulted in more than 700 workers nationwide and 311 in East Ayrshire alone being left with neither work nor any immediate sense of support from the public sector. To his great credit, the minister acted swiftly and set up the coal industry task force to rescue the industry’s viability, and East Ayrshire Council set up a local response team, which significantly enhanced the public sector response.
The effectiveness of the PACE partners’ response is best illustrated by a survey a year after the event of those who were made redundant, which showed that only 13 per cent of the workforce were still unemployed and looking for a job. That was despite the fact that Scottish Coal had failed to train and certificate levels of competence in its workforce, which would have allowed employees to secure equivalent jobs outwith the company.
The second and truly scandalous case is that of USC in Dundonald, in my constituency, which I raised at First Minister’s question time a little over two weeks ago. That establishment is part of the Sports Direct group of companies, which is owned by billionaire Mike Ashley and is the UK’s biggest sporting goods retailer. The facility was summarily closed without warning or notice to its workforce on 7 January. Even before employees knew that was happening, a fleet of Sports Direct trucks had arrived at the warehouse to remove its stock. I say to Lewis Macdonald that there was no chance there for early intervention.
That blatant breach of statutory duty was further compounded by management’s refusal to allow PACE to access the site. Despite repeated attempts by the Scottish Government and the minister, Sports Direct ignored offers of help for USC workers, and access was not granted until administrators were on site a week later.
That is deplorable behaviour and it should not escape severe legal sanction, but it probably will, given the weakness of UK employment law. A loyal workforce of 88 people has been treated with contempt by an extremely wealthy employer who appears content to wash his hands of any responsibility to pay redundancy pay or even wages due. That truly is the unacceptable face of capitalism and it makes a mockery of our industrial relations system.
As the minister highlighted, the Scottish Trades Union Congress is one of the PACE partners, and I was pleased to attend a meeting organised by it for the USC workforce with Thompsons Solicitors, which specialises in employment law. The aim of the meeting was to inform people of their rights under the law to seek compensation for USC’s failure to consult on redundancy by way of protective awards through an employment tribunal. Even if that process is successful, it can take six months to a year to complete, and it clearly does not deal with the immediate financial crisis that many of the redundant workers face. That area of employment law needs to be strengthened.
There is an unanswerable case for the powers over employment law to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament to bring about a much-needed enhancement of workers’ rights. Exploitative employers such as Mike Ashley require to be held to account for their actions.
16:31
Over the afternoon, there have been perhaps two dozen of us in the chamber. We all have different experiences and skills, and of course there are differences in our political outlooks, but we have one thing in common that separates us from any similar-sized gathering of the people we represent: we are all well paid; we are all reasonably secure in our jobs, at least until election time; and the chances are that most of us enjoy or receive some fulfilment from our work.
Some of us have experienced unemployment, as Mr Ingram said, and others, such as me, grew up in families who have had shorter or longer periods where one or two parents were looking for work. For the moment, as a representative gathering of people in Scotland, we are unique in that none of us is unemployed, none of us is at risk of unemployment and none of us is suffering underemployment or enduring unfulfilling or even exploitative employment.
I say that to put in context the rest of my speech. It is all well and good to thank those involved in efforts to secure continuing employment for others, and I absolutely do so, but we should remember that a lack of work is a deeply personal and debilitating thing that can render an individual humiliated, to the point of contributing to mental illness. It can put stress on a family to the point of family breakdown. It is quite simply a social evil and it should be regarded as such. It is not just a matter of policy, whereby we view redundancies as an undesirable outcome that is to be minimised, a cost that must be borne or—worst of all in my view—a tragedy that is somehow unavoidable or unpredictable.
Redundancy is not an act of God, although there are situations where the person or company making the decisions about redundancy behaves in that way. That is the reality—they are very clear about who is playing the role of deity in those situations.
I absolutely agree with what Lewis Macdonald and Mark McDonald said in support of PACE, but we need to do much better than this. Redundancy is an outcome that society has come to accept too readily as a normal part of the economic cycle. I accept that there are situations where it is the only option and where the employers involved pursue it with genuine grief and after strenuous efforts to prevent it. In those circumstances, initiatives to advise redundant workers of their best chance of being re-engaged are necessary, but in most circumstances they are still reactive.
I have to question why the lead partner for PACE is still Skills Development Scotland, which is a training body, rather than Scottish Enterprise, which is the jobs and economic development agency. I agree that encouraging workers to reskill for a job other than the one for which they have been trained is necessary in some situations and that it can be positive—some people might never look back after that experience—but we need to face other facts that follow from pursuing only that approach or from pursuing it first. Some workers will not be reskilled at all and will in effect be deskilled, because they will discover that their period of unemployment or instance of redundancy leads not to an opportunity for career development but to being underpaid in a new occupation for which the qualifications or skills are not comparable to those of their previous employment.
We need to remember that one of the important purposes of PACE is to ensure continuity for the household or family affected by redundancy. However, someone does not have continuity by having another job for which they are paid substantially less than they were before, which can have a severe impact. They also do not have continuity if they are moved on to a job in which job security is low, which could be the result of various things that we talk about regularly in this place that are happening in the economy, such as zero-hours contracts, being asked to work without a contract and collective bargaining being non-existent.
I listened carefully to Mr Ingram’s point about USC in Dundonald and I agree with what he said. One reason why the STUC and Thompsons Solicitors needed to step in was that there was no collective bargaining in that workplace, no recognition of a union and no density of union membership, which meant that people were unaware of their employment rights at the time of redundancy. I agree that employment rights should be improved, but there also needs to be greater understanding of the rights that people have now and respect for them from employers.
As I have said in the chamber before, the world of work consists of good employers and less good employers, just as the workforce is made up of good workers and not-so-conscientious workers. The point is not to denigrate all for the sins of a minority but to recognise that the necessity of selling our labour in the workplace has a fundamental potential for exploitation. It is for that reason, and not because of the circumstances of particular companies, that employment requires to be regulated.
There is no greater example of the potential for exploitation than the situation of redundancy, the threat of which can be and—frankly—is used to ensure that workers comply with working practices that employers wish to promote that generally lead to greater job insecurity. I mentioned temporary contracts in that regard, and among plenty of other examples there is bogus self-employment.
When a workforce as a whole or a substantial part of it has been declared redundant, we need to recognise that it is not the work that is redundant but the workers; the work is simply moved elsewhere, more than likely to where the company will term it to be more competitive, which basically means that job security, pay or safety regulations will be weakened.
I would be grateful if you began to conclude.
We need to go back to first principles on PACE. We all accept that it is doing good work, but it is mainly a reactive service. I hear what the minister and others have said about the wish to protect companies from revealing information about their situation, but we need to have a greater deal of confidence and expectation that companies will engage early with the service so that redundancy is avoided rather than just mitigated after it happens. I therefore support the Labour amendment.
16:39
With partnership action for continuing employment, the partnership aspect is very pertinent. We must look at how we use that partnership within the communities where we live and the constituencies that we represent.
Murdo Fraser raised the important aspect in his speech of the smaller agencies and companies—the small and medium-sized businesses. At the PACE conference in February 2014, Colin Borland from the Federation of Small Businesses mentioned that very area and the individual support that seemed to be lacking for that particular group. I recall that the minister, Fergus Ewing, responded positively to the issue.
The interesting thing about the conference—I think that the title was “A Change of PACE?”—was that it looked at all the aspects of PACE and how it operates in the sector in order to enable early intervention. I concur fully with Mark McDonald: it would be wrong to advertise the early intervention of PACE in a sector or an organisation, because that would undermine the confidence of the area. It is okay to say that PACE is involved once redundancies have been announced and the matter has hit the headlines. However, my understanding is that PACE can be and is involved at an earlier stage. When we are looking at continued employment, we are sometimes looking at preventing the redundancy from happening in the first place. That is about looking at alternative means to secure work for the employee.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the energy sector, given that I represent the Aberdeenshire West constituency. As the minister knows, I often mention Westhill when I am in the chamber because it is Europe’s subsea sector capital.
I welcome Lena Wilson’s appointment to the energy jobs task force. With her expertise and knowledge from Scottish Enterprise, she will fulfil her role remarkably well in reporting back to the minister on her discussions with the energy sector, and specifically those on oil and gas.
We must ensure that we do not create a situation in the sector that does not exist. If we say that there is a crisis in the sector, our young people going to college or university or our graduates looking for a future in oil and gas may look instead at alternatives for their education and training. We cannot afford for that to happen.
We have a well-recognised skills shortage in the industry. If we continue to highlight that there is a problem in the sector, it is only right that our young people will start looking at alternatives. I suggest to the sector that we ensure that there is a very positive message out there about there being a future in the energy sector. We must get the balance right. We must ensure that those coming through the college sector have the prospect of employment and that those graduating from the university sector have an opportunity, too.
We cannot and do not control the oil price, but we can control the message that we portray about the sector to our young workforce. The PACE initiative is important in that regard. It is important that our young people have appropriate skills. SDS provides a great opportunity to upskill some of our young people or those who have been made redundant. Those people should be given the opportunity not to deskill but to upskill with new skills to make them more employable in the sector, because the sector will need them.
What can be done? I take on board Murdo Fraser’s comments about Sir Ian Wood. However, I say to Murdo Fraser that I have heard it said on more than one occasion—and I think that this is still the case—that the oil and gas sector is seeking stability in its taxation. The sector is looking for a reversal of the tax hike that happened in 2011. It is looking for incentives to explore difficult areas in the North Sea.
Something can be done now. I hope that the Labour Party will work with the Scottish Government in trying to ensure that George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, makes an early announcement to assist the sector by giving it stability and the confidence to move forward. That would make the jobs of the PACE partners much easier as they talk to people in the north-east about prospects for a bright future, especially given the current situation.
Let us welcome the work of PACE and the opportunities that remain in the sector, because that is the future.
16:45
I am delighted to follow Dennis Robertson, with whose comments I agree whole-heartedly.
It is important that we understand where we are at. Scotland’s economy continues to grow and our unemployment rate is the lowest in the UK. We have to understand that, and we must be careful when we talk about job losses. Many jobs are available across sectors.
All that success is the result of the Government’s understanding of businesses and use of the economic levers at its disposal. I wish we had more economic levers, such as control over employment law, as Adam Ingram said.
Members talked about the situation in the energy sector. Half the oil and gas operatives have reported a reduction in contractor staff and almost two thirds expect further reductions in contractors this year, according to a survey by Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce.
Along with other people, Dennis Robertson and I attended a meeting last week at which we were told that a lot of the job losses had been planned, following Sir Ian Wood’s recommendation that the industry be streamlined. We have to understand the context: the job losses are not all due to the fall in the oil price, although further job losses might be due to that.
There is an easy answer to all of this, as Dennis Robertson said, but the chancellor’s response has come a bit late. In 2011 the Government decided to hike up taxation of the sector; we should have reverted to the previous situation straight away, rather than waited until 2015. We need to help certain sectors upstream, not when it is too late—that is important. It is the Government’s job not to wait until jobs are being lost but to ensure that we provide the conditions, particularly in the context of taxation, in which companies can grow and prosper.
In a sense, Mr Allard has made my point. If many of the job losses and redundancies that are affecting people in the North Sea sector were predictable, as he suggests, is that not all the more reason why PACE and Government agencies should have got in early to work with companies and with people who were facing redundancy, to reduce the economic impact?
Action should have been taken earlier: it should have been taken in 2011. As I said, taxation is the area on which the Government can act. A resilience fund would be coming too late and is not what is needed.
As Mr Ingram said, if at some point a Labour Government decides to have a resilience fund, it should ensure that the money does not go to the wrong people. It might go to the employers, who deserve it the least, as opposed to going to help companies upstream when that is needed, at taxation level.
Members talked about other sectors, and it is important to understand that other sectors face problems. We face great skills shortages, not just in Scotland but throughout the UK. From time to time, we may have the problem of people losing their jobs, but—as some of my colleagues talked about earlier—the most important thing is to make sure that we can upskill those workers, not only while they are working but when they lose their employment.
For example, with the recent growth of house building activity, Scotland’s construction sector will expand steadily over the next five years and thousands of new tradespeople will be required to replace those who are retiring. We are an ageing population and a lot of people are going to retire in the next few years, so not only are there jobs available but plenty jobs are going to be available. It is very important that PACE recognises that. Of course, with SDS, it is well equipped to work on skills and to make sure that people have the proper skills to respond to the sectors that need those employees.
The farmers in rural Scotland are getting older and older. The average age of Scottish farmers is about 60 years old, and a large proportion of them have no successor in place, so it is very important that the Scottish Government deals with that issue, which it does through the Scotland rural development programme.
The fishing industry is also important. Next month, Aberdeenshire Council is launching a fisheries project, pending the development of a modern apprenticeship in maritime occupations. It is not only about providing new skills for our young people; as Mr Robertson said, it is also very important for people who change careers. We need to understand that we are in the 21st century, where people are not going to keep a job for life, so they need the skills to make sure that they can progress in different careers during their lives. Most of us have had other jobs before we came here. I myself had at least two or three jobs before I became a parliamentarian. It is very important that we have a skilled workforce.
The people who are part of PACE are working behind the scenes all year round on the issue—let us not forget that it is a partnership and it is doing that work. That is important. We need to have the facilities and the people to retrain and upskill our workforce, and that is what this Government is doing. That collaborative approach works well because this Government understands businesses and how they work. For example, the business rates relief package from this Government is making Scotland the best place to do business in the UK.
The Scottish Government’s initiative in relation to responding to redundancy situations is strong and delivers for people when and where they need it the most. With this Government’s business support policies, businesses in Scotland keep on growing and thriving.
16:52
I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate. Like others, I recognise the good work of the PACE scheme, which helps people back into employment. However, it should go without saying that we should be looking at all the resources that are available to us in Scotland, whether that is through the Scottish Government, the Westminster Government or local authorities. We should all agree that, when people are faced with a redundancy situation, we should provide that expertise and support.
Touching on a point that Drew Smith raised, I note that, if someone is faced with the position of potential unemployment, they do not want to see us debating a congratulatory motion; they want us to improve the possibilities of gaining employment. That is what we should look at today.
In Glasgow, there have been a number of examples of companies serving redundancy notices on their employees. On Christmas day last year, nearly 2,500 workers at City Link received the news that the company was going into administration; 165 of those workers were based in Scotland, many of them in the east end of Glasgow.
One aspect that I do not think we have debated is the impact on the local economy of those redundancies. In the case of City Link, we have seen the negative impact on the local community, particularly in the east end. That is an aspect of PACE’s work that I would welcome some feedback on from the minister. Of course we should consider how we support those who are faced with potential redundancy, but we also need to look at how we can support the local community, which faces many challenges during that process.
Another example relates to the Internacionale clothing retail group on the Queenslie industrial estate in my constituency. Last year, the management stopped operations and more than 40 jobs were lost. Desperate staff were told that they had no entitlements and no redundancy payments were offered. Were it not for the intervention of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, the plight of the workers would have been much worse. We should pay tribute to the important role that trade unions play in the partnership in ensuring that people receive advice.
In that case, 40 jobs were lost. I cannot recall PACE being involved. I would welcome some feedback from the minister on what the threshold is for intervention by PACE. I say that to be constructive.
Will the member join me in congratulating Stephen Boyd of the STUC on the work that he does? He has been working in partnership with the Government. At last February’s conference, he was involved in the workshop on how to develop partnership working within and between the Government and local authorities.
Dennis Robertson makes a good point. It should be recognised that the trade unions require significant resources to play the role that they play. To ensure that that partnership can continue, perhaps the Government could consider what resources it could provide to the unions to ensure that they can continue to perform that supportive role. I expect the minister to address that issue in his closing speech, too.
Many members have spoken about the prevention of potential redundancies. Adam Ingram talked about the situation that USC employees found themselves in and made some powerful points. He mentioned Mike Ashley. There are many other individuals and companies that look at the opportunities that are available to them to play the system. I am not referring only to the tax system; there are many aspects of current law in relation to which such people play the system. They call themselves employers and investors, but I think that they should hang their heads in shame, given some of the practices that they have engaged in. They reinvent themselves almost on a daily basis in an effort to identify further asset-stripping opportunities.
Whether through the Scottish Government, the Westminster Government or local government, we should intervene in such situations to provide support to the affected employees. At every opportunity, we should highlight the practices of such individuals, who should hang their heads in shame, and we should consider what action we can take in that respect.
The debate has been important in highlighting some of the challenges that people face every day. Drew Smith made that point very well. We should not just congratulate ourselves on everything that we have done so far; we should take it as read that resources and support should always be available to people who find themselves in such a position. I am talking about not just the individuals who face redundancy but the communities that face challenges as a result of companies going into administration.
Before I call Linda Fabiani, I point out that she is the final speaker in the open debate. I note that a number of members who took part in the open debate are not in the chamber, and I expect them to be here by the time we come to the closing speeches.
16:59
It has been a really interesting debate, to which many members have contributed. Paul Martin summed it up when he said that when events such as redundancies—whether on a large scale or a small scale—happen, they do not affect only the workers concerned; they affect their families and the wider community. Sometimes, entire communities can be devastated. That is why it is so important that partnership action for continuing employment exists. The fact that it involves partnership action and includes everyone is extremely important.
There is really nothing at all in the Government motion that I would take issue with. However, I was interested in Mark McDonald’s point, which my colleague Dennis Robertson spoke about further. Early intervention is fine, and of course we need it, but sometimes we can end up with self-fulfilling prophecies if we are seen to be talking too quickly about things such as work coming to an end and redundancies. I worked in the construction trade for a while, where we very often saw that happen when the rumour mill about things going wrong started.
A number of members have made that point, and I understand where they are coming from, but surely employers who know that they may be putting their employees at risk of redundancy have a duty to engage with services, to approach the Government and to make it clear that action should be put in place to minimise the risk for those individuals.
Absolutely. There is nothing in that statement that I can disagree with. Perhaps that is why the STUC was so disappointed when the Smith commission report came out followed by the draft clauses. Aspects of employment law at least could have been transferred to Scotland so that we could work with trade unions and be a beacon for the rest of the UK in how employment law should be operated. I would like to see that happen. I would like true partnership working.
We have already established a fair work convention. It is important to work for people’s rights with trade unions. We should consider what is happening at Westminster. The UK Government is trying to end check-off facilities and is reducing trade union facility time. We should be standing against the UK Government in Scotland. One way in which we can do that is by saying, “Give us the powers. We’ll take them and work for the good of people generally.” That is what I would like to see.
I have looked at the Labour Party’s amendment and, even having listened to Lewis Macdonald, I am not quite sure why it felt the need to lodge such an amendment. It says that
“PACE was originally created with a remit to ensure the early identification of company or sector difficulties”,
which is happening. PACE also undertakes partnership working all the time. However, the bit of the amendment that really intrigued me was the bit about
“the establishment of a resilience fund”.
Murdo Fraser mentioned that and said, I think, that he would not say whether he agrees with having a resilience fund until he heard what it would be for. I do not mind admitting that I am even more confused by the Labour group than Murdo Fraser is.
Siobhan McMahon will close the debate for Labour, I think, so I want to know whether that is the same resilience fund that will help the health service, local government and the oil industry. Will we have resilience funds for every single sector in Scotland, or will we simply have a resilience fund every time that a headline is wanted in a national paper? I would appreciate a response to that question.
When the minister was talking about helping businesses before the crunch point, he said an interesting thing about the ability to have HMRC, for example, on board and to defer payments. Constituency MSPs very often get calls from businesses—generally, small businesses—that have issues around that. It is good that the PACE team can help with that.
The minister asked for suggestions. I sometimes find it quite frustrating when a sole trader or a very small business hits a trough. There should be a joined-up approach, with the benefits system, for example, being able to kick in to help people over a bad time. They can be considered and payments can be made up later. What is the point of making people unemployed and putting them on benefits if the business will pick up again maybe six or eight weeks down the line? Sometimes businesses end up going out of business because there is not joined-up thinking right across sectors.
Margaret McCulloch made a very good speech in which she talked about how PACE had helped in East Kilbride. When Freescale went down, the local college certainly worked with the PACE team to help with that. She also mentioned Rolls-Royce. We have issues about people leaving and relocating from East Kilbride, and an East Kilbride task force was set up, headed up by South Lanarkshire Council. However, despite letters from the then cabinet secretary back in July about the council engaging more with elected representatives, seven months on, nothing has happened.
I ask the minister to agree to look into the East Kilbride task force to see what is happening and perhaps to suggest to the local authority that we should be working in partnership—all working together for the good of the community.
We move to the closing speeches. Before I call Alex Johnstone, I note that Chic Brodie, who contributed to the debate, is not back in the chamber—[Interruption.] I am sorry—he is. My apologies, Mr Brodie. How could I possibly have missed you?
17:05
I am delighted that Chic Brodie is back in the chamber. I am going to mention him, and it would have been lost had he not been here.
Members will have observed that there is no Conservative amendment for the debate. They should not be surprised about that, because on this issue, as on many others, if we can keep the whole issue of Scottish independence off the agenda, I find myself more or less in agreement with the minister.
At the beginning of the debate, we heard from Murdo Fraser, who pointed out that Scotland’s economy is strong. Like the rest of the UK, we are seeing improvements in the number of people in employment and reductions in unemployment, and we are beginning to see wages rise once again. It is against that backdrop that we have the unusual position that we are in at the moment.
When we debated independence, I and many others in this Parliament took the position that we were opposed to separation because of the risk of shocks to key sectors. Little did we know that a shock to a key sector was coming soon after the referendum. The slowdown in the oil and gas industry, driven by the reduction in prices, has demonstrated the risk that we face.
The North Sea oil and gas industry, based in Aberdeen, finds itself in a doubly unusual position, in that many of those who are employed by companies in that area now operate outside the North Sea sector, and we may find that the periodic shocks that go through the industry come at different times in different areas.
To a certain extent, the member has said that we are better together when the shock happens. Can he tell us what the Westminster Government has done? So far, it has done nothing. We are waiting for the chancellor to take the decision. He needs to take it, and he needs to take it now.
The UK Government has been cutting taxes since it came to power in 2010. It has ensured that we have passed through a period in which, to the surprise of many, there have been record levels of investment in the North Sea. What the UK Government is doing today is ensuring that public expenditure in Scotland remains consistent year on year at a time when, if we were reliant on oil revenues, that simply would not be possible.
Let me go on and talk a bit about partnership action for continuing employment—the subject of the debate. The reason why we will support the Government motion tonight is that we agree with the Government that PACE provides a good service, that it is well regarded and that it is improving its expertise over time. The work that is done by Margaret Sutor and her 18 teams across Scotland has demonstrated itself to be effective, and PACE improves in its effectiveness as it understands better the marketplace in which it operates.
However, that marketplace changes, and it changes regularly. This is where I mention Chic Brodie, who came up with an oxymoron when he said that change is a constant. That is an excellent example of the practice, and I agree with him: the only constant is that we are in perpetual change. That was unlike the speech by Drew Smith, which at one point seemed to deteriorate into a demand that no one should ever be made redundant. Perhaps under his leadership we would have seen a long-term result that kept our coal industry, our steel industry and our shipbuilding industry, and today we would have been able to walk across the Clyde on unsold ships. Nevertheless, change is a constant, which is why we need an organisation such as PACE to assist where change requires to be managed.
We heard at some length from Margaret McCulloch, in an excellent and highly relevant speech, about her own experience with the Jeyes plant, which demonstrated one of the positive aspects of such a situation. There have been positives over the years—for example, in the work that was done with Hall’s of Broxburn and more recently with City Link.
Adam Ingram’s speech was very constructive. He spoke about the Johnnie Walker plant in Kilmarnock and how work was carried out successfully to ensure the minimum number of redundancies when the bottling plant closed. However, he also told us some horror stories. He spoke about the companies that were involved in the opencast coal mining industry and how they exited at very short notice, and he recounted the story of the USC plant at Dundonald and the associated horror stories.
We have heard no shortage of examples of how PACE has worked constructively with employers to minimise the impact of closures and downsizing. However, we have also heard about companies that did not take the opportunity to avail themselves of the service.
Members have suggested that early intervention is the answer. We all know that early intervention is extremely important but, as Mark McDonald said, we cannot see every job as a potential redundancy. If we go about thinking that every job is a redundancy that has not happened yet, we could undermine the marketplace, which—as I said at the outset—is growing and improving, creating jobs and reducing unemployment month on month.
PACE is providing a great deal of expertise, and improving that expertise over time. At present, it appears to be adequately funded, which calls into question the Labour Party’s demand in its amendment for the introduction of a resilience fund. For that reason, we will support the Government’s motion at decision time.
17:12
This afternoon’s debate has been useful. I am pleased that the Government wishes to draw the work of PACE to the attention of members today. We normally mention PACE in written or oral questions. When a member questions the Government ministers—or indeed the First Minister—on the support that is being offered to constituents who are being made redundant, the response will inevitably mention PACE.
As we have heard this afternoon, PACE was established in 2000 and was originally intended to play a role in preventing closures and redundancies as well as in dealing with the consequences. For far too long, however, the focus has been shifting from prevention to mitigation, which is regrettable.
If the role of PACE in prevention has been or is being replaced by another agency, that would be one thing. I do not think that any of us would have a problem with having one strategy that involves prevention and another strategy for mitigation. However, as we have heard this afternoon, that is not the case. Unfortunately, the Government has concentrated its efforts on mitigation, and the results are not always what we would wish them to be.
I am not clear that the Government has implied—and nor has any member who has spoken in the debate—that that is the case. No business in my constituency that has interacted with PACE has suggested that it has not received appropriate support either as an early intervention or at the redundancy stage, so I am curious to know where Siobhan McMahon drew that implication from.
I do not know whether the member was in the chamber for Paul Martin’s speech. He noted that if intervention had taken place with one of the businesses in his constituency, the outcome might have been different. That is one example.
I would be interested to know what role PACE has played in seeking to prevent recent closures and redundancies, and how successful it has been in that role.
At the PACE summit in 2009, which was entitled “Working Together to Address Redundancies: Partnership, Prevention and Programmes”, there was a ministerial commitment on the need for PACE to become a proactive force for the anticipation and prevention of company closures and redundancies. Is that still the case?
I will also be interested to know when the next PACE summit will be held, and what issues the minister believes will be addressed there. Delegates at the previous summit agreed that a proactive approach to help people from work to work produced more positive results. In order to support that approach, retraining and upskilling need to happen earlier in workplaces, prior to redundancies taking place. It is now six years since the summit took place, so will the minister, when he sums up, tell the chamber what progress has been made?
In the PACE client experience survey of 2014, which was commissioned by Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Government, there was little mention of the prevention strategy that was spoken so highly of during the 2009 summit by the then Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Fiona Hyslop. In fact, the findings of the report were quite concerning. For instance, the survey found that more than one fifth of those who had received a career guidance interview or information about training and funding sources expressed concern that it had come too late.
That was not a new finding, as the same thing had been found in the 2012 client experience survey. It is concerning not only that the same problems are being experienced by those using PACE two years on from when the original problem was identified but that the problem is getting worse and not better. The report states:
“The PACE Presentation and Guide is received by the largest proportion of clients and often represents the first contact that an individual has with PACE. Around one quarter of new clients who attended the presentation felt that this had come too late in the redundancy process”.
Twenty-three per cent of respondents reported that that was the case, which was an increase from 2012, when 17 per cent of those attending expressed that view.
The report does not shine a light on anything new and, in fact, clearly reinforces the point about prevention—a point first brought to the Government’s attention in 2009—and about the greater need for it in workplaces that are at risk of redundancies, which begs the question: what is the Government doing about the matter?
The Government may say that there is only so much that it can do to make the PACE model work. I accept that up to a point. I fully accept that, in order for the Government to have control over prevention, it needs the help of employers. The minister made that point in his opening speech and it was reinforced by Adam Ingram. In order for it to work, the model that we are currently working with requires employers to notify agencies prior to the announcement of redundancies. Given that that rarely happens, I have to ask whether the Scottish Government’s aspiration for PACE is simply one of helping people into new jobs. If not, what is the Government doing to change either its model or its interaction with employers?
In addition to that flaw in the current model, the 2014 client survey also provided further worrying data. For example, only 45 per cent said that PACE had had some influence on their move back into employment, and only 8 per cent stated that it had “made all the difference”. Not only does that mark a fall from 2012, when the figure was 53 per cent, but it is extremely concerning that less than half of clients think that PACE has had an impact on them getting a new job. In fact, the survey found that the top answer from respondents, when asked their views on the benefits of PACE services, was “Don’t know”, at 20 per cent. The third most popular answer was “No benefit”, from 15 per cent of respondents. If PACE’s main objective is to secure future employment or training opportunities for people, it seems to be failing those that it seeks to serve.
The good news from the survey was that around three quarters of clients had secured some form of employment. However, although that figure is to be welcomed, what we do not know from it is what direct role PACE had in helping to secure that employment. Did the PACE team set up the interviews, inform the client of the interviews, help to write clients’ CVs and give them interview tips, or was the job found by the client themselves or through a different agency? We do not have the statistics to answer that, but it is something that should be reported in such a survey.
In fact, that was called for in the evaluation document, commissioned by SDS, following the PACE support offered to the former employees at Hall’s of Broxburn. In the recommendations at the end of the document, it said that it was worth
“Exploring whether or not it is possible to establish a client tracking to capture outputs”.
There are a number of options there, including undertaking a survey of redundant workers and using HMRC data. I would be interested to know whether the Government has considered developing such a model since that recommendation.
As we have heard from Liam McArthur and Margaret McCulloch, the client survey has shown that two fifths of clients moved into a job with lower skill requirements than their previous position. That represents a decrease from the 47 per cent that was reported in 2012. That is good news, although it is disappointing to note that it still occurs in such high numbers. It would therefore be interesting to know what steps PACE and its partners have taken to address that.
The 2014 survey contained information in relation to the way in which clients received information. It was found that one in eight people, 12 per cent, had accessed online PACE support and only one in 20, 6 per cent, had accessed the PACE contact centre helpline. It is clear that more must be done to promote the services to users, and I would be interested to know whether an ad campaign or something similar will be run to promote such services in the future.
I feel that I should conclude my speech with the main asks from respondents to the survey. They have suggested some improvements to the current system, and I hope that those can be achieved for future service users. The recommendations are for a more personalised service; for longer and more frequent help sessions; and for a more timely point of intervention, with interactions starting earlier in the redundancy process. Scottish Labour has its own recommendation, which we have put to the Scottish Government: the resilience fund. We believe that the fund would provide an additional tool for local authorities and their partners, which would help local economies that are threatened by a jobs crisis. The examples that were given by Margaret McCulloch and Paul Martin, and Drew Smith’s comments on the issue of continuity of work, show that the fund could help in those circumstances in partnership with what is already on offer.
The debate has been an important one that leaves us with many questions about PACE and the support that is on offer. I hope that the minister will be able to answer some of those in his summing-up speech.
17:21
I am grateful to members for making this a constructive debate. We have had several thoughtful and informative speeches from all parties in the chamber, for which I record my thanks.
I repeat what I said at the start of my opening speech: for a great many people, the experience of redundancy is one of the worst that life has to offer. It has horrendous financial consequences, but perhaps even worse are the emotional, human and mental consequences that redundancy can cause families, especially if the sole breadwinner suffers redundancy. That can put enormous strain on individuals and families. Although that is obvious, it is easy to lose sight of in the maelstrom of points that we have made about how we can tackle redundancies together. Therefore, the starting point and the central point must be the perspective of people who have been made redundant.
Adam Ingram mentioned that he had been made redundant twice. Perhaps those of us in the chamber who have been fortunate enough not to have suffered that experience are the exceptions. Nevertheless, I know from members of my own family that it is a very difficult experience. Therefore, it behoves us very well to respond as well and efficiently as we can, using taxpayers’ money as efficiently as we can.
Liam McArthur hinted that there is an element of self-congratulation in the tone of the motion. If that is the case, I am entirely responsible for it, although it was not something that I intended to convey. There is nothing more off-putting to the public than politicians congratulating themselves on achievements real or imaginary. However, that has not been the spirit of the debate, which has been very much as Mr McArthur said: it is for me to learn from the speeches that have been made today what further improvements can be made. I undertake that I, Margaret Sutor and other officials in the Scottish Government and Scottish Enterprise will reflect seriously on the speeches that have been made today. They have been many and varied, so I probably will not have time to comment on them all.
I am grateful to the minister for what he has said at the start of his closing speech. As the description that he has given of the impact of redundancy shows, it matters little whether it is a large-scale or small-scale redundancy—the impact on the breadwinner and the immediate family can be equally severe. Is there a minimum threshold below which PACE cannot operate? The minister will appreciate that, in communities such as mine, a relatively small absolute number of job losses can have a pretty devastating effect on the economy and the community.
Paul Martin raised exactly the same point. There is no threshold—PACE is available to everybody, including when only one person has been laid off.
That leads me to an area in which we can make improvements, which Murdo Fraser touched on. In order for PACE to be able to reach out and assist people who have been made redundant, it needs to know about redundancies. If it is not made aware of them, it is, by definition, unable to offer help. Help may not always be sought, as many people will find alternative employment or opportunities themselves. Many people actually prefer to do that, but a large number do not and perhaps do not get that help at the moment.
Therefore, Mr Fraser was right to suggest that we make more use of business representative bodies and perhaps trade representative bodies, which might have a closer relationship with their membership than general organisations such as the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, the Federation of Small Businesses, the Institute of Directors and the Confederation of British Industry. We need to reach out to them further. Two of those bodies, the FSB and the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, are among the 21 PACE partners. Incidentally, I hold meetings of the partners roughly biannually to discuss how we can make practical improvements. I should say to Mr Fraser that we already regularly ask the business bodies for their co-operation, and it is given fulsomely.
We need to reach out to small businesses and make them aware of the initiative. We all have a duty in that regard. This is normally your terrain, Presiding Officer, but I counted about 22 members in the chamber during the debate and I think that almost every one of them has at some point been in contact with my office about redundancies in their constituency—I could not identify anyone who had not been. The issue affects all members and we are all able to inform businesses, especially small ones, that PACE exists, that it exists to help and that it exists to help everyone.
It is true that early notice to PACE can assist. For example, in my former constituency, when I represented Lochaber, there was a model process of closure—if there can be such a thing, and if that is not a contradiction—by British Alcan. When it decided to concentrate activities between Fort William and Kinlochleven, it embarked on a five-year plan and gave staff five years’ notice. That was a model of investment in and consideration for staff in the light of a business decision that had serious consequences. Sadly, the other end of the spectrum was clearly and graphically described by Adam Ingram, in what I thought was perhaps the most interesting speech in the debate, when he described the quite appalling behaviour of Mr Mike Ashley of Sports Direct. Mr Ingram repeated a famous phrase that older members will remember from the 1970s when he said that Mr Ashley
“truly is the unacceptable face of capitalism”.
Mr Ingram’s speech was a reminder that, fortunately, there are relatively few cases such as that one. Almost all the cases that members bring to me are ones in which employers and insolvency practitioners are working together to try to do the best in a difficult situation. However, just occasionally, one is not like that, and that was described very well by Mr Ingram.
One topic that dominated in the debate was that of early intervention. I am afraid that here I must disagree with my colleagues in the Labour Party. I believe that there is an absolutely correct focus on early intervention, and moreover that the function is discharged extremely well by the enterprise network. I can give further details on that to members, but I know from my personal knowledge, and Mr Swinney, who is sitting beside me, knows from his more extensive knowledge, that day and daily a number of devoted public servants in the Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Scottish Development International enterprise network put in huge efforts to tackle very difficult situations.
The reality was highlighted by Mark McDonald, when he pointed out that some companies that face financial problems cannot make those issues public, otherwise their banking terms will change and their customers and creditors will react in a way that exacerbates those problems and perhaps even brings about the most difficult situation of insolvency, which the efforts are intended to solve. Rather than vague and generalised criticism of our public servants, which is not particularly helpful or productive, the better approach is to give suggestions of specific actions that we may take but are perhaps not doing, or actions that we may do more of.
I must draw to a close. I repeat my recognition, and Mr Swinney’s recognition, of the extraordinarily successful and well-intentioned efforts of the huge number of people, led by Margaret Sutor, in the PACE teams throughout the country. I know that they go the extra mile to try to help people in Scotland who face the appalling and harrowing situation of suddenly finding that their livelihood has been terminated and is at an end. Perhaps it is the human face of that effort that has resulted in the resounding vote of confidence from the vast majority of the people who have been recipients of the PACE service.