Chamber and committees

Normally, I would take an intervention, Mr Kerr, but I have absolutely no time.

I am aware of the 46 per cent capital cut that Labour and the Liberal Democrats made in the time that they were in Government.

Given the investments and actions that I have laid out, it is simply puzzling that we continually hear from across the chamber calls for more funding for everything, including transport infrastructure, healthcare, justice and education. The list never ends, but I am still waiting to see what any of the Opposition parties’ budgets would have been. I have seen neither sight nor sound of where they would cut funding in order to fund their endless calls for money. It is very easy to make those demands when they do not have to balance the books every year. If the Opposition parties joined our calls for full fiscal autonomy for this Parliament, they would at least have a basis for their uncosted financial demands. Coming from a local authority setting, where most Opposition parties provide an alternative budget, I was amazed that none came forward in this chamber.

The Scottish Government is committed to undertaking the first comprehensive review of the ferry network. The islands connectivity plan will replace the current ferries plan and look at aviation, ferries and fixed links, to ensure that all potential options for connecting our island communities are considered. As part of that plan, it is key that the Scottish Government consults the users of the ferries and learns from the experiences of other countries and other modes of transport, and I ask the minister for an assurance on that.

I welcome the fact that the Scottish Government will produce and maintain a long-term plan and investment programme for new ferries and development of ports, in order to improve resilience, reliability, capacity and accessibility, increase standardisation and reduce emissions to meet the needs of island communities.

In 2005, when the Ferguson’s yard faced closure because of the inaction of the previous Labour Government, the SNP joined Labour rebels to demand that the yard be saved. In 2014, when the yard faced closure once more, the SNP Scottish Government stepped up and helped to save it, rescuing more than 300 jobs. Today, there are almost 500 permanent and temporary staff at Ferguson’s. Let us contrast that against the recent developments with P&O Ferries, a multimillion-pound corporation that benefited from taxpayer Covid-19 funding and has just made 800 staff redundant with absolutely no notice.

Will Labour join me today in supporting the Scottish Government, which shows clear support for P&O Ferries employees and calls for those fire-and-rehire practices to be outlawed?

From what you say, we need people in local authority planning departments to step across the corridor and speak to people in the education departments and ask them to plug the planning department.

I think that Robbie Calvert talked about skill sets needing to be in the right places. Is it doable for local authorities to grow their own, especially if we could get apprenticeships off the ground? In my local authority, we grow our own environmental officers. Could local authorities do that for planning?

Chris Brodie mentioned that we need more folk to move back to work and that we need more routes for training, upskilling and retraining. I have a really simple question. What do you mean by retraining? Is it about folk who are already in an industry or folk who are coming into an industry for the first time? I ask that question because, putting aside the just transition stuff, folk out there may not know how to find out whether they need to retrain or upskill, or what the difference is. I hope that that makes sense.

Also, what can our local authorities do to build the capability and capacity that we have talked about, not only in their own workforce, but also to help the private sector?

Pam, you spoke about local authorities sharing expertise in best practice. Will you explain briefly what arrangements are in place and what could be done to improve sharing of best practice among local authorities?

Good morning, panel. I will follow up on a couple of points that have already been touched on.

Jane Tennant has spoken about planning as a career and mentioned that we should try to ensure that school pupils are aware of planning as a career. What more could schools do to ensure that that happens? There are still career days and so on, but I am sure that, for people in S3, for example, becoming a planner might not be top of their list. What could schools do to encourage young folk to come forward?

Simon Hewitt said that we need to blur the lines of who is responsible for what in education and training. I could not agree more. I said earlier that education on the subject should be started at primary school level. What are local authorities doing to work with you to make sure that that happens? Are they informing you of their priorities when they set their budgets so that you know what to expect from them?

I am not sure who would be the best person to answer my last question, so whoever thinks they are best placed should shout out.

We saw in the Covid-19 pandemic that decisions were made and things were put in place in super quick time. What lessons can we learn from that as we try to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions?

The report says that

“One of the main barriers is a lack of visibility of the population of people with learning disabilities.”

Can the minister set out how individuals’ and their families’ lived experience of complex care needs will be factored into the creation of a new national care service?