Chamber and committees

I have a final question on that point. Do we have any idea how much that change would mean for councils if it were made?

I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests: I am still a member of Aberdeen City Council, which is a member of COSLA.

I go back to the question that Michelle Thomson asked about capital concession regulations. Granting that approach does not appear to present a risk to the Scottish Government. I am trying to dig down a bit deeper into why that would not be allowed. I presume that councils could borrow more if that were allowed. Is that the case?

I thank the member for that intervention, but she obviously has not read the notes that were released earlier today, which say that there is no definition of a nightclub and that it is still being worked on. How we can vote on the proposals when that definition is not in place is a strange one on me.

The proposals that the Government has presented to us have more holes than a Swiss cheese. They are meant for nightclubs, but we cannot define a nightclub. The medical exemption process is still being developed. Under-18s will be exempt, but that might be changed to under-16s, and young people going to a concert will now have to prove that they are under 18 and if they do not have a driving licence or a passport, I am not sure how they will do that.

We have no idea on costs to businesses. Guidance on “reasonable measures” will come later. We are being asked to approve so many unknowns today!

I am also extremely concerned by recent reports that events organisers are abstaining from coming to Scotland and moving existing events to England as the measures proposed by the devolved Government will prove too costly and too difficult for them to operate in Scotland.

The events industry in Scotland is worth around £1.5 billion a year. If that income were to be lost or substantially reduced, that would have a major economic impact on many regions, including the north-east. Of course, we have a major event coming to Scotland in just seven weeks’ time: the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—COP26. We have no idea how that conference will be impacted by what is proposed today; we will just have to cross our fingers and hope for the best.

There is one final concern that I want to highlight, which is to do with the timing of the introduction of the proposed scheme. If its introduction forces someone to get vaccinated, the soonest they will be allowed into a venue will be 10 weeks after their first injection. If they got their first jab today, it would be 18 November before they were able to go to a football match or a concert, which does not seem fair.

This is an ill-thought-out policy from the coalition of chaos. The screeching U-turn by the SNP-Green devolved Government is a sight to behold. Where is the once-principled view of Patrick Harvie, who was so ardently against the policy but has now fallen into line just to protect his ministerial salary? There has been no planning, no discussion and no consultation. No thought has been given to the policy; it has been written on the back of an envelope without the information technology systems to support its being in place. Once again, the people and businesses of Scotland will be left to suffer and to try to cope as best they can.

Okay. Yes, the report is there, but it also mentions that the fund is now in a much stronger position because of that UK Government guarantee.

The conclusions of that report state that

“the Scheme has continued to produce strong returns despite the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.”

All parties agree that that is only due to the guarantee that the UK Government continues to provide for the scheme.

In 1996, a report by Binder Hamlyn concluded that no one expected future surpluses of that extent. The trustees and the Government agreed a 50-50 split in good faith, and all parties signed up to it and were content with it. The split was agreed on the understanding that the UK Government would guarantee the scheme, as has already been said, and it was that guarantee that meant that the trustees could invest in more high-risk investments, which has undoubtedly paid off. It is widely accepted that the bonuses would have been less, or non-existent, had the scheme not been guaranteed. One witness at the inquiry even suggested that the pension payout might have been smaller if the Government’s guarantee had not been in place.

I thank Christine Grahame for securing this important debate. I am pleased to see her focus on Westminster and the importance of the work that the UK Government has done on behalf of mining communities across the United Kingdom.

There is strength in that partnership, which has brought benefits to our miners through the pension scheme. It has been mentioned already that the select committee conducted an important inquiry and heard evidence from all sides. One thing on which all participants agreed was that the guarantee that the UK Government offered was essential to securing the benefits that the scheme has enjoyed.

Indeed, the report states that the pension scheme made gains of 6.2 per cent in 2020, far outperforming other schemes, and that

“the typical member’s pension”

is

“‘around 33% higher in real terms than it would have been had they received only their actual earned pension up to privatisation’.”

Does the cabinet secretary agree with the First Minister’s adviser Mark Blyth that

“unwinding centuries of economic integration could prove devastating to businesses”

in the short, medium and long terms? Would he further agree with me that Scotland is best placed to succeed in the short, medium and long terms politically, economically and socially with the monarch as head of state, and with the union as the defender of Scotland’s interests?

I agree the with committees at Westminster, and I often see differences between the Westminster committees and those here. The findings are there and that is commendable. The minister has also said that her door is open and that she will talk with the trustees, as Christine Grahame said.

The trustees of the scheme have always prioritised the protection of the bonuses, and it is right and proper that they do so. However, for this to take place, the Government has to have a means by which to secure those bonuses in a time of deficit. No one knows what the future holds. In her evidence to the committee, the minister was eloquent on that point. We do not know how the fund will perform in the future or whether there will be future deficits in the fund that require the guarantee to come into effect. No one could have predicted the success of the fund.

I turn to the question of a review. At the committee, the minister was very clear that her door is open, and she met union representatives on 21 June. At that meeting, the minister asked the trustees to consider whether they would be willing to include the Government’s guarantee in any future discussions around surplus sharing and the investment reserve. I believe that the minister is still awaiting a reply.

The Government has been open in its discussions. It is more than happy to discuss a change to the surplus that would mean removing the guarantee. Up to this point, the trustees have not been open to that.

Scottish miners in all our constituencies have benefited from the strength of the guarantee offered by the UK Government. Their bonuses have been more than they could have expected without that guarantee, and the strength of the scheme is clear.

Vaccine passports are a contentious issue that has raised a substantial amount of correspondence from individuals and businesses across North East Scotland. People are expressing a huge amount of anxiety about the pace of, and the lack of consultation on, the scheme, the form that the passports will take and the impact that they will have on businesses and those who attend events.

The SNP-Green Government’s screeching U-turn has led to confusion, chaos and concern for many of my constituents, born out of a deep distrust of the devolved Government and its ability to deliver projects. We have already seen the fiasco over the new information technology system for the farming sector and the promising of apps that were never delivered. Businesses and citizens simply do not trust the devolved Government to implement a system that works for them and their customers, particularly when they have not been consulted on that sudden U-turn.

A year ago, the Conservatives called for a business panel to be established to be a sounding board for the Government on Covid measures. That never happened and I am positive that, on reflection, the minister is now wishing that he had listened to the Conservatives and implemented such a business panel, so that we could have heard what businesses need instead of working through what looks like a dog’s dinner of a policy without the knowledge of business on the ground.

This devolved Government has a habit of talking down to business and telling it what is best rather than listening to understand its needs and requirements. In my discussion with business leaders, this is what I have been told. I have been contacted by the chairman of a football club, who said:

“clubs with over 10,000 attending are going to be severely challenged financially. We have already had a huge number of season ticket holders state that if we force them to get vaccinated, they want their money back. We have done everything not to make anyone redundant at the club. Our initial estimate is that this will cost us at least £1.5 million in lost income.”

Clubs have gone through all the pre-season planning, jumped through all the hoops, put in place Covid measures and adhered to all the guidelines, but with this ill-thought-out policy the Government is putting all of that in jeopardy.

We heard earlier from Douglas Ross that getting test and protect working would be more effective.

When I read the proposals—if we can call them proposals—I can understand the concerns that football clubs have. The paper says that staff at a venue can download a free QR code verifier. Has anyone from the Government ever been to a football match? There is not one orderly queue for 50,000 people; there are hundreds of turnstiles, most of which are unmanned. There is not a guy at each turnstile with an app on a phone.

A couple of days after the regulations are due to come into force, four matches will be affected. The proposal will be a hammer blow to those clubs that have already suffered hugely during the past 18 months—[Interruption.]

If the Government does force this measure through today, I urge it to work closely with those clubs and not hang them out to dry.

The Night Time Industries Association has also written to MSPs and put forward some helpful suggestions on how the impact of the policy could be mitigated. It asks the Government to pause and reflect on where the numbers are going. As the First Minister suggested yesterday, the case numbers might have peaked and are now starting to fall again, so surely it is premature to bring the policy in quickly and without the necessary infrastructure in place.

The NTIA also raised with me another issue that is also touched on in the proposal, and that is the definition of a nightclub. The Government does not have a definition for them yet, so I suspect that many pubs will be in for a big nasty surprise.