Chamber and committees

Glasgow has the lowest car ownership rates in Scotland, yet it was discovered this week that the M8 motorway through central Glasgow has noise pollution levels equivalent to standing on the runway at Glasgow airport. The minister may be as shocked as I was to discover that. Will he urgently instruct officials from Transport Scotland to investigate the issue and to bring forward proposals to address that emergency level of noise pollution in the centre of Glasgow?

I thank the minister for bringing the debate to the chamber. I struggle to think of a more serious issue that we could discuss in Parliament. As colleagues have outlined, there were 1,339 avoidable drug-related deaths last year, and I fear that, without action, the number will increase again in the next set of figures.

I read the Government’s motion with interest, and I would struggle to disagree with much of it. It is probably fair to say that there is broad consensus on the measures that are needed to tackle the crisis. My concern is about the pace of the change that is required.

I intend to keep my remarks to the subject of what I believe is not the only but the single most important change that we could make, which is the introduction of overdose prevention sites. That will not come as a surprise to the minister, given our previous interactions and my personal experience of volunteering at the unofficial pilot project in Glasgow. I welcome the minister’s intention to take a revised proposal for an official pilot in the city to the Lord Advocate in due course.

Lots of questions are asked about whether overdose prevention sites can be established within the existing devolution settlement, whether they are effective and whether they will save lives. To put it simply, the answer to all those questions is yes. They can be established within the current devolution settlement, they are effective and they will save lives. How do I know? Because I have seen it at first hand. I volunteered with Peter Krykant, week in and week out, and I was never arrested or charged with any offence, meaning that such sites can clearly be established within the current legal framework. If they were illegal, I would have been lifted and charged, meaning that I likely would not have been standing here. The fact is that I was not.

I saw overdoses being reversed and more than a dozen lives being saved in front of my eyes, so I defy anyone in the chamber to tell me that overdose prevention sites do not work. The evidence is incontrovertible. I saw vulnerable young men and women who had been failed by many other aspects of the state being shown dignity, compassion and respect for the very first time, regardless of what traumas they had endured that led them to substance misuse.

It cannot be left to volunteers to fill the gap. As part of the unofficial pilot, Peter took into his care a 21-year-old girl who overdosed in front of him three times. She was sleeping in a tent in an alleyway in Glasgow because she had been sexually abused, and she was fearful of reaching out to any sort of care or official service because she had suffered so badly as a result of having done so previously. Peter frequently broke down because he was terrified that he would turn up the next day and she would be dead. That culminated in his being triggered—because he is a recovering addict—to the point where he relapsed and his own life was then at risk. I had to feel the fear that my friend potentially would not pick up the phone to me. That is a lived experience for hundreds, if not thousands, of Scots and it is something that we cannot tolerate any more. That was another learning experience from the unofficial pilot in Glasgow.

My heart breaks whenever I hear politicians from whatever side dismiss overdose prevention sites or, worse, hide behind constitutional grandstanding, because, every time that they do so, critical time is wasted.

I am not standing here to make the point that overdose prevention sites are a panacea or that they will be suitable in every set of circumstances. What I am saying is that the approach works. Evidence from more than 90 cities in the world demonstrates that it works. The international body of evidence is incontrovertible, as is the evidence from the unofficial pilot in Glasgow. Lives are saved and, for a relatively modest investment, the impact is significant. The approach also leads people into a sense of engagement, which potentially leads them on to a path to recovery. So, let us not make the perfect the enemy of the good, raising expectations and setting standards that we are doomed to fail to meet. We have to meet people where they are at with their lived experience. The drugs are either taken in filthy alleyways or they are taken in sterile conditions—that is the choice before us today.

Every six hours in Scotland, someone dies a drug-related death. That means that, by the time we go to bed tonight, at least one more person will have died such a death, leaving behind heartbreak and agony for their loved ones.

The frustrating thing is that we know that overdose protection sites are now possible. In evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee in the House of Commons, the Law Society of Scotland stated that, in order to establish overdose prevention sites, there would need to be either a change to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, which is within UK Government competence, or there would need to be

“prosecutorial discretion from”

the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service

“not to prosecute in certain circumstances.”

We now have that prosecutorial discretion. A matter of months ago, the Lord Advocate stood where the minister is sitting now and said that possession of substances classified under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 would no longer be prosecuted.

So what are we waiting for? Although I welcome the minister’s intention to bring forward revised pilot proposals, we already have that body of evidence and we need to expand the pilot rapidly into a national network. I do not doubt the sincerity of the Government or the minister when it comes to this issue; I just think that they are down a deep hole, having taken their eye off the ball for so long. The reality is that they are not moving fast enough, and some of the most vulnerable people in Scotland need them to move much faster.

My message to the Government on overdose prevention sites is pretty simple: it must set them up or I will introduce to this chamber legislation to make it do so.

To ask the Scottish Government when it next plans to revise the conditions of eligibility for the bus service operators grant. (S6O-00603)

It is clear that the bus service operators grant was no longer fit for purpose. In looking to the future, can we look at alternative ways of providing support? For example, we could look at the provisions and powers in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 to enable local authorities to regulate private providers of regional franchises and invest in publicly owned and accountable bus companies. Previously, operators have been provided with financial support while they continued to withdraw, extract and reduce bus services from communities across Glasgow and Scotland.

It is a pleasure to open the debate for the Labour Party.

It is impossible not to see the impact that labour shortages have had on the Scottish economy. That was clear from the cabinet secretary’s speech. We see it in our supermarkets, at the petrol pumps and in many other scenarios that we encounter daily. I start on that point of consensus.

The Scottish Government refers to the impact of exiting the EU on labour supply and calls on the UK Government to scrap its “damaging migration policies”. I whole-heartedly agree. Brexit is a causal factor in the labour shortages that we are experiencing, and they will undoubtedly be exacerbated by the—frankly—risible and harmful attitude to immigration that dominates Tory thinking. It is telling that the Conservatives would, despite the Conservative spokesperson’s conciliatory language, remove any mention of Brexit with their amendment. I find that troubling, given that the Conservatives have just admitted that Brexit is a major issue with which we have to contend. Although Brexit is, undoubtedly, a crucial factor, it is not the only factor. That much I agree with.

The pandemic has exposed the underlying vulnerability and fragility of the Scottish economy. Although the pandemic has exposed fragilities, they are, in part, caused by the underlying lack of an industrial strategy—one that underpins upskilling, increases productivity and makes strategic public investments.

It is also just not credible for the Scottish Government to blame that challenge entirely on Brexit. For 15 years, the Scottish Government has been in power, and for 15 years we have had a slow erosion of Scottish economic sovereignty. Domestic ownership of industry has steadily decreased and there have been low business start-up rates. Predatory foreign investment has dramatically increased, at the expense of public investment, and there has been complete overreliance on imported labour that is largely low skilled and un-unionised, thereby generally exerting more downward pressure on wages.

We have had warnings from the Scottish Fiscal Commission that illustrate the scale of the challenge that faces the Scottish economy as a result of the pandemic. As a country, we have lagged behind the rest of the UK on pay-as-you-earn tax, employment, pay growth and labour market participation. Employment has been growing more slowly in Scotland than it has in the rest of the UK. In Scotland, the number of employees per head of population has grown by just 0.6 percent compared with growth of 2.3 per cent in the rest of the UK.

Some of my colleagues will elaborate on other challenges that are facing the Scottish economy, particularly in relation to productivity, and on the inequalities that are observable across many sectors of industry.

Will the member give way?

I would like to focus very much on what it is in the grasp of this Parliament to achieve. I will focus particularly on the skills gap, on which, I am sure, we can find some consensus.

In the past 15 years of this Government, there has been a steady decline in Scottish employees receiving job-related training. Persistent sector-specific skills gaps, some of which were referred to in earlier speeches, are becoming increasingly prevalent. That is not just my partisan assertion. In June 2020, the Scottish Government’s own advisory group on economic recovery stated that

“there are persistent skills shortages sitting alongside graduate under-employment.”

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that upskilling and skills development have fallen by the wayside under this Government.

Just before Christmas, the budget revealed further cuts to Skills Development Scotland—more than £5 million has been cut from its budget. Some £10 million has been cut from the employability and skills budget. There has been a real-terms cut to the education and skills budget.

Our colleges, which should be the engine room of a resilient, adaptable and highly skilled workforce, face similar financial pressure. I was speaking about that to Glasgow Kelvin College only yesterday. It is concerned that new skills training funding is tied up by bureaucratic red tape and cannot be drawn down to meet the challenges that the college faces daily, including redesigning its provision of tailored training for local businesses and industries and getting people reskilled and into the workforce. The college is also finding it very difficult to keep people in training programmes because of the domestic pressures that they face due to lockdown restrictions.

It is quite straightforward: we cannot build a motivated, skilled and productive workforce on the cheap, a flourishing industry through neglect, or resilient economic growth through complacency. Our amendment attempts to address some of the issues. It urges the Scottish Government to provide a robust industrial strategy that is fit for the 21st century, for which I have been advocating for nearly a decade.

Our amendment recognises the need to address the gross inequalities that arise as a result of low pay, poor conditions and a failure to fully utilise fair work practices, which are all entirely within the remit of the Scottish Government. Finally, it urges the Government to fundamentally reconsider its relationship with employers, business organisations, trade unions, colleges and universities.

For far too long, we have been content with our public sector and its development agencies being passive and investing public money as a last resort. I know about that because I worked for Scottish Enterprise for two years. I have personally seen Scottish Enterprise’s weaknesses as an organisation, despite the great people who work for it. That has resulted in numerous failed industrial interventions, such as at Ferguson Marine in Port Glasgow, the Caley railway works in Springburn and, most recently, Prestwick airport. Why are we hesitant to use the power of the state to improve the lives of people across our country and to bolster our economy?

We need a shift towards a far more entrepreneurial state that makes proactive investments and sees such investment as an opportunity to improve people’s quality of life and to further their potential, and as a way to seed economic sovereignty in Scotland.

I urge colleagues across the chamber to support our amendment. It would refocus our collective efforts to address the skills gap, to increase productivity and to make investment-led growth our fundamental and singular economic priority.

I move amendment S6M-02740.2, to leave out from “believes” to “fair work” and insert:

“notes the finding from the Scottish Fiscal Commission that Scotland’s economy is lagging behind the rest of the UK, partly due to factors that predate the COVID-19 pandemic, such as declining labour market participation, weak investment in productivity and insufficient flexibility in skills development; considers that building a more sustainable and resilient economy will require an industrial strategy that addresses regional inequalities, low pay and poor conditions, and the skills gaps across Scotland; believes that the Scottish Government and its agencies must do more work with employers, business organisations, trade unions, colleges and universities to address recruitment and retention, promote fair work and offer more flexibility in reskilling opportunities for workers”.

The minister will be aware of the problems that are faced by the travel sector, particularly companies with retail stores. Glasgow-based Barrhead Travel, which is the largest travel agent in Scotland and an employer of more than 500 people, contacted me this week to say that business has been badly hit by the recent announcements but, as of yet, there has been no indication of specific support from the Government. What discussions has the Government had with the travel industry about extending support to the industry? Will he meet me and representatives from Barrhead Travel to hear at first hand how the lack of support from the Government is suffocating one of Glasgow’s biggest companies?

Will the minister give way?