Chamber and committees

To ask the Scottish Government what actions it is taking to measure the progress of its Covid-19 recovery policies. (S6O-00168)

At the recent Scottish elections, all political parties spoke about a jobs-led recovery. What action is the Scottish Government taking across all departments to support the creation of jobs? In which sectors will those jobs be created? What can the Scottish Government do to ensure that support is in place for people who may lose their jobs in the coming months as furlough comes to an end?

A Scottish Trades Union Congress report has estimated that 350,000 jobs could result from green policies. Actually, we do not have a choice. I suspect that, in the coming weeks, there will be a great deal of debate about the climate emergency. The challenge that the Parliament faces is how we deliver a net zero economy and how we create jobs so that the issue that the member is raising is addressed.

There are a number of ways in which we can do that, but we need to be more ambitious. We need to look at how we retrofit homes in the way that the Government is speaking about. That should be delivered by councils on a universal basis, which would address not just the challenge of the climate emergency but the rising cost of fuel and the cost of living crisis that many people have to live with. As Monica Lennon said, a publicly owned energy company should be central to our energy strategy.

Job creation and decentralisation go hand in hand. Liam Kerr referred to one particular bit of evidence, but there is a great deal of evidence that green policies create a huge number of jobs.

As we approach COP26, Scotland needs to lead the way. The Parliament needs to put out a very clear message—on a cross-party basis, I hope—that we must be more ambitious and decisive and that we need faster action. I call on the Scottish Government to heed those calls. I believe that, in the coming weeks, there will be many people on the streets making that challenge. We need to live up to that and do what is required for the sake of humanity.

I welcome this timely debate on how we move towards a net zero society and support for a just transition. The cabinet secretary said that it is a matter of consensus; indeed, many parts of society are already working on how they decarbonise.

The concept of a just transition came from the trade union movement, although we all have to accept that there has probably never been a just transition. When there have been economic changes in the past, there has been no just transition, and working people and their communities have suffered. Therefore, the challenge of delivering a just transition is not easy.

Employment in Scotland’s low-carbon and renewable energy sector fell from 23,000 in 2012 to 21,400 in 2019, and that was before Covid. The Scottish Government has promised to deliver 130,000 green jobs by the end of this year but, so far, it has delivered only 21,000. A Friends of the Earth report that was published last week showed that North Sea production has increased by 15 per cent since the climate emergency was declared. I say those things not to make political points but to highlight the scale of the challenge.

The Labour manifesto for the 2019 general election committed to guaranteeing a job with equivalent terms and conditions to those of workers in the oil and gas sector who lost their jobs as a result of the move away from the sector. I have called for the use of furlough for oil and gas workers until equivalent alternative employment can be created. We need to show that level of ambition to ensure that there is decisive action to address the climate challenge.

I add my voice to the tributes to all NHS and social care workers. In the short time that is available to me, I will focus on the national care service.

It is right that we recognise that social care, like the health service, is an essential component of the welfare state, and there is much that is positive about the Scottish Government’s proposals. However, my concern is that the proposals are for a national care commissioning service, not a national care service, which will lead to a huge rise in the amount of tendering and further centralisation, with an erosion of the powers of councils.

The idea of a national care service was modelled on the NHS. The NHS employs doctors, nurses, lab technicians, porters, cleaners and many others. It provides a service, and a considerable amount of effort has gone into preventing it from being privatised. The proposed national care service will not employ care staff but will commission services from the private and third sectors—and, I presume, from the public sector, too. It is not clear that the bodies in the public sector, such as councils, will even have preferred bidder status.

Last year, the First Minister said that she supported calls to remove the profit motive from the care home sector. However, the consultation does not mention the word “profit” once. In the consultation, there is no acknowledgement that the private sector’s explicit obligation is primarily to shareholders, not the needs of residents. Yet, in the proposals, outsourcing is encouraged and nothing is done to challenge the current private sector-dominated model.

I therefore have a number of questions to put to the minister. Are there any companies that currently deliver care that will not be allowed to bid under the new care system? A 2019 investigation by The Ferret found that at least 44 Scottish care homes were owned by companies based in tax havens such as Jersey, the Isle of Man and Gibraltar. Will the Government follow the example of countries such as Denmark and ban offshore ownership?

The Government proposes extending the scope of the national care service to children’s services, community justice, alcohol and drug services, social work and an element of mental health services. Will those services be open to tendering processes, too?

Will the Government legislate to ensure that no contracts will be awarded to companies that fail to recognise trade unions or that do not apply union-negotiated rates of pay, in line with the demands of the Scottish Trades Union Congress?

The principle of setting up a national care service that operates like the NHS is right, and, as I said, there is much that I hope will be positive in the Government’s proposals. However, as they stand, the proposals would not deliver a national care service in the public sector that would be free at the point of use. I believe that that is the kind of social care service that we should be continuing to campaign for.

It would be useful if the cabinet secretary could keep Parliament updated on the number of refugees who come to Scotland. Could he give more detail on the money that was announced last week and how it will be spent? As he knows, previous work on refugees has been funded by the Home Office. Will he outline what he is doing to look at the pressures on councils, and outline what can be done by the Scottish Government to provide help with wider support services?

7.

To ask the Scottish Government what work it has done to assess how many Afghan refugees can be housed across all local authority areas. (S6O-00121)

I congratulate Christine Grahame on securing the debate and bringing the campaign to Parliament. She is absolutely right to raise the issue and the work of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. I am pleased that the Scottish Government has already made its position clear, and I hope that the issue will be given as much attention as possible.

There has been much discussion of history in today’s debate. The history of mining in Scotland is a brutal one. It begins with what was called thirlage, which was basically a form of slavery. Conditions for miners and people in mining communities were absolutely appalling. That applies not only to coal mining, but to mining for tin and iron ore. The communities that many of us represent exist because people often lived beside their workplaces and had often moved, perhaps by walking, from another part of the country to live beside the mines.

The select committee report makes clear the principle that the Government should not benefit and profiteer from miners’ pensions. I have always argued for the trade union position, which is that pensions are deferred pay. The principle is that those miners paid into their pension scheme. We have heard a number of contributions highlighting the poor amounts of pension that many miners receive from the scheme. I understand that some widows receive as little as £8.50 per week. Many of the miners receiving those pensions are struggling with work-related illnesses as they get older.

There are many issues of justice. I listened to the Conservative contribution, and I appreciate that the Conservatives find anti-Tory rhetoric tiresome and are attempting to detoxify themselves. The UK Government, and Conservatives here, should be facing up to the consequences of the actions that they forced through in the 1980s. The pit closure programme caused devastation to communities up and down the country.

Those communities are not benefiting from the socioeconomic justice that the UK Government claims to stand for. Nor are they benefiting from levelling up, as we see from Boris Johnson’s reaction to the select committee’s report. Those communities are still suffering from decades of de-industrialisation, poverty and lack of economic justice and jobs. Generations have campaigned for economic justice for those communities since the 1980s.

I am grateful to the gentleman. I appreciate the point that he makes, but I point out that—unfortunately—it is now more than a decade since Labour was in power, and the reality is that, as time has gone on, it has become clearer that the balance of risk is very much against the miners. I understand the point that Stephen Kerr’s colleague made earlier when he said that the Government has taken on risk and acted as a guarantor, but the principle is surely that it should be those who paid into the scheme who benefit from it.

The select committee looked at the issues in detail and came to the conclusion that the Government had been negligent at the time and that the only just solution now is for the benefit to be given to those who paid into the scheme, who live in some of the poorest communities in the country. I say to Mr Kerr that, if his Government at UK level is serious about its levelling-up agenda, there is a very simple step that it could take that would put money into those communities. The act would show clearly that it wanted to right some of the wrongs of the past and ensure that those communities are given a fair chance.

There are many other steps that should be taken, but the proposal is a simple step and I hope that, at the end of the debate, we will be united in saying that it is one that the UK Government should take. It would make a significant difference to many people’s lives.

The “Scottish Government Ferry Services Procurement Policy Review Interim Report—Emerging Findings”, which was published in December 2017, said:

“We will build a case for making a direct award to an in-house operator”.

Is the Government still taking that approach?