Chamber and committees

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. The First Minister mentioned that strike-breaking activity took place in 2009. For the record, no such strike-breaking action took place, and the statement that the Glasgow City Council issued to that effect is inaccurate. I would be happy for the chair to confirm that that is the case.

A constituent of mine fell ill with Covid in March 2020. It is now November 2021 and my constituent continues to suffer from long Covid, with no long-term care plan for his recovery, as was promised in a Scottish Government paper that was published in September. He is living from sick line to sick line. When will the Scottish Government give national health service care providers the appropriate resource and guidance to help people with long Covid?

It is interesting that policies are now being adopted in the Government as a result of a new agreement with the Green Party. Over the past decade, my former colleague Neil Findlay moved amendment after amendment in the chamber, calling for payment of the real living wage to be a minimum requirement in public sector procurement contracts, but the Government voted them down every time. With the recent agreement, the Government’s hiding behind lawyers has been exposed as a sham. With only eight of the SNP’s 45 MPs having turned up in the House of Commons to vote for Barry Gardiner’s bill to ban fire and rehire, the rhetoric rings rather hollow.

There is an element of irony in all this. A few weeks ago, I asked the Minister for Transport to join me in condemning ScotRail for locking its workers out of their depots. He responded by suggesting that I am incapable of being impartial because I am a member of a trade union. We also have cleansing workers on strike in Glasgow during COP26, over a pay dispute with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities; the minority SNP administration in Glasgow tried to use Tory anti-trade union legislation to break the strike.

How can it be that this Government, which is apparently so committed to workers’ rights, frequently finds itself involved in industrial disputes with those workers? How can it be that a Government that is apparently so committed to trade union rights can include a minister who brazenly disparages members of Parliament in the chamber merely for being members of a trade union?

Thank you. I will do my best, Presiding Officer. I have been a bit effusive.

In 2019, the Fair Work Convention looked at the experiences of workers in the social care sector, and it is fair to say that its findings made for grim reading. The convention described the tender methods that were being used as “untenable” in direct response to the use of zero-hours, low-hours and seasonal contracts, all of which undermine job security.

On the question how we would pay for an increase in pay in the social care sector, I will give an example of how we could raise wages. The Feeley report highlighted that every £1 that is spent in the social care sector creates a multiplier effect of £2 of gross domestic product in the wider economy. My question for the minister is simple. When will we ban zero-hours contracts and pay Scotland’s social care workers the £15 an hour that they deserve?

I believe that the Government is being short-sighted. Rather than looking at wages of £15 an hour as a way of reinvesting and pump priming our economy’s recovery from the biggest recession in history, it sees them as expenditure that would somehow be lost. Let us be clear that the workers would not siphon the money off into offshore bank accounts; they would spend it in their local communities, thereby driving up economic growth and tax revenues.

I am a firm believer in the role of the circular economy and the importance of community wealth building, which we see in the economic model in North Ayrshire Council, where the Labour council leader, Joe Cullinane, is using the power of the public sector to invest in local community-owned energy generation, social housing and sustainable businesses. That is often described as radical, but I argue that it is not radical at all; it is entirely reasonable and is increasingly essential, if we are to improve living standards.

There is undoubtedly more that the Government can do to drive that agenda. That is why I am committed, along with my Scottish Labour colleagues, to prioritising local communities and enterprise with a “local first” approach. Although there is much to welcome in the Scottish Government’s public procurement plans, it has taken—

I welcome the gentleman’s intervention. It is apposite, because I will offer an analysis of the subject. I hope that the Presiding Officer will be somewhat generous to me, given that I have taken several interventions—

I am at my peroration, Presiding Officer.

It has taken far too long to get to where we are today, and it is still too far short of where we need to be. Progress has been painfully slow; we should have been doing it long ago. We need less self-congratulatory rhetoric and more ambition, firmer commitments and quicker action.

I note that the Labour Party has not been in government since 2010, but has since adopted, as policy, support for devolution of employment rights as a floor, in order that we can level up. That is a welcome measure. I hope that Maggie Chapman will, as a democrat, welcome that development in our politics, rather than trying to retread history that is long past.

We should look at the context for how the Government is behaving. Many left-wing voters who put their faith in the SNP to uphold their values might be pausing for thought as the true colours of certain ministers shine through.

I welcome many of the measures that were announced in the programme for government—I just do not think that they go far enough. For example, there is still no ban on zero-hours contracts in public procurement. We need only look at the situation that faces thousands of workers in the social care sector, many of whom would be helped by a commitment to ban zero-hours contracts.

We also need to go back to the point that I raised at the outset and ask what role the public sector should play in our economy. Should it actively drive standards up, or passively stifle them? We see the issue playing out across the UK when the Tories discriminate against young people by excluding under-23s from the increase in the minimum wage.

Today’s debate requires us to consider what role the public sector should play in our economy. For me, the answer is straightforward: it should be a role model for the private sector by pushing standards up and creating minimum thresholds and requirements, while harnessing the huge economic power of the state to drive innovation and sustainability.

The minister proclaimed what an excellent job the Government is doing on fair work and procurement, citing the commitments that were made in the most recent programme for government. My main query is this: why has it taken the Government all this time to commit to that agenda? It has taken 14 years for the Government to recognise that the measures that I have just mentioned would help to improve conditions for workers in Scotland. The Government can hardly claim that it is a pioneer in the area, because those measures have been the norm across Europe for years—although, sadly, not in the case of the British Government under the Conservatives, who have ripped £1,040 a year out of the poorest households in work through their cuts to universal credit. In the context of the UK, we will not take lectures from the Conservatives.

I commend the motion in Mercedes Villalba’s name.

I congratulate my good friend Ms Villalba on securing the debate and speaking with such expertise, insight and passion about an issue that is critical to skilled workers throughout Scotland.

With COP26 just a matter of days away, our transition to a green economy, with a detailed plan for a green new deal, is more important than ever. The topic of this debate will be vital if Scotland is to keep pace on its climate targets while ensuring a just transition for workers and communities.

We all know how important the oil and gas industry has been for the country, and particularly for the north-east of Scotland. The latest “Workforce & Employment Insight” to be published by Oil & Gas UK estimates that, in 2020, the industry supported almost 120,000 jobs across the UK, 36 per cent of which are based in Scotland. Of those workers, 55 per cent are under the age of 45 and 92 per cent are under the age of 60. All those people will have to live through the transition, and we must be there for them.

Just this week, the Scottish Government announced that unlimited extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea is “fundamentally wrong”. I completely agree with that position, and I only wish that the First Minister would be more steadfast in her opposition by opposing the new Cambo oil field.