Chamber and committees

The current provisions seem to make exceptions for the tail docking of working dogs and the declawing of cats. In the light of those exceptions, are you satisfied with the legislation? Does it go far enough?

I thank the minister for advance sight of her statement. We recognise that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs position on VAT is challenging, but VAT deposits have not been a barrier to implementation of deposit return schemes in other European countries.

The minister says that the Scottish Government

“is committed to the scheme being operational as soon as practically possibly.”

Can she confirm that there will be no delay to the July 2022 implementation date?

We know how concerned the minister was about industry lobbying causing delays to the scheme, so can she confirm what discussions she has had with large-scale producers to ensure that they, and not local authorities, will foot the bill for any delay?

We acknowledge that the minister has committed to come back to the chamber to outline the final timeline, but can she confirm today when she will return to the chamber?

Only the Tories would lodge a motion in the wake of COP26 that focuses solely on road building without any reference to public transport or active travel. Domestic transport continues to be the largest source of net emissions. Cars account for almost 40 per cent of those emissions and car dependency is increasing at unsustainable levels, with the proportion of single-occupant journeys reaching 66 per cent.

However, there is an alternative. A double-decker bus can replace 75 single-occupant cars, but to get people out of cars and on to buses requires public investment, democratic ownership and socialist ambition—things that we cannot rely on the SNP or the Tories to deliver. By all means, let us debate road infrastructure, but let us speak about connecting our communities with accessible and affordable public transport, making our pavements and cycleways safer for everyone and restoring biodiversity through a network of green corridors.

Road infrastructure must focus on delivering accessible and affordable public transport and creating an integrated transport network that seamlessly links communities and promotes active travel. It must also focus on making such a network environmentally sustainable, but the reality is that private control of our public transport is a barrier to achieving that. Tory-driven deregulation in the 1980s led us to the broken transport system that we have today—it is expensive, disjointed and fragmented.

Bus operators extract profit from the most commercial routes while failing to invest in the wider network, despite receiving more than 40 per cent of their income from public subsidies. They continue to hike up fares, which have risen by more than 10 per cent above inflation over the past decade. All that has led to a decline in bus journeys, so it is no wonder that the Tories do not mention public transport in their motion, given their toxic legacy of deregulation, which they continue to champion.

However, the Scottish Government’s amendment is no better. It acknowledges

“a need to encourage more people to use more sustainable travel options and reduce their car use”

but offers no practical steps to make that a reality. The Government has a target of reducing car kilometres travelled by 20 per cent by 2030, but has yet to outline what steps will be taken to achieve that.

The Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 allows for publicly run bus services, but it is not backed by sufficient resources for local authorities, and the Government’s proposed bus service improvement partnerships will leave control of fares, routes and timetables at the whim of private companies. Instead of capitulating to private interests, the Scottish Government should take innovative action, such as providing start-up capital through the Scottish National Investment Bank to enable the development of publicly run local bus services. Public ownership is key, because it means that profits that are generated can be reinvested to support non-commercial routes, deliver affordable fares and improve workers’ pay and conditions.

To conclude, I contrast the empty rhetoric of the SNP Government and the lack of ambition from the Tories with the action that is being taken in Wales. The Welsh Labour Government has announced that it will suspend all future road-building projects, and the money that is saved by not building new roads will be used to improve existing ones, including creating new bus and cycle lanes and infrastructure for sustainable transport.

That is the kind of ambition that Labour in Government has, and is the kind of ambition that we need in the Scottish Parliament if we are to meet our climate change targets.

Who is paying?

The bill seems to be quite narrow in scope, specifically focusing on the good food nation plans. What was the thinking behind that? What are the practical implications of having such a focused purpose for the bill?

I think that a lot of people expected that a right to food would be included in the bill. Can we expect to see that? If not, why was that decision taken?

I also thank Elena Whitham for bringing forward the motion for debate. The motion rightly highlights the essential injustice that sex workers face under the current legal framework. They face criminal sanctions for soliciting, under section 46 of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982. The threat of criminal sanctions deters many sex workers from seeking support, including support to leave sex work altogether. That is an untenable position, which is why we must remove the burden of criminality from sex workers.

To explain why that is the case, I will highlight some of the consequences of criminalisation. It prevents sex workers from accessing essential healthcare services, impacting on their health. Concerns about the link between criminalisation and poor health among sex workers are shared by international bodies including the World Health Organization and UNAIDS—the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. The World Health Organization found that female sex workers were up to 30 times more likely to be living with HIV than other women of reproductive age.

Human Rights Watch has found that criminalisation makes sex workers more prone to violence, including assault and rape. That is because criminalisation stigmatises sex workers, reducing their likelihood of seeking police help and increasing their use of unsafe locations for work. Human Rights Watch surveyed South African sex workers who said that they were less likely to report crimes to the police because of the illegality of sex work. That, in turn, left them at risk of suffering violence that they then did not report to the police.

We can break that vicious cycle by taking a decriminalisation approach. That does not mean abolishing laws that protect sex workers from exploitation, human trafficking and violence; it means removing the laws and policies that criminalise the selling and buying of sexual services. Decriminalisation is supported by a broad range of organisations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women and is increasingly backed by evidence from international bodies including the World Health Organization and UN agencies. The World Health Organization estimates that decriminalisation could lead to an almost 50 per cent reduction in new HIV infections in sex workers over 10 years.

Decriminalisation alone is not enough. We must also tackle the underlying material issues that often drive people into sex work in the first place. For some, it is a lack of employment or educational opportunities; for others, it is rising living costs including those of rent, food and heating. Some sex workers have chronic conditions or disabilities and turn to sex work because of inadequate social security provision. Until there is a concerted effort to improve material conditions, we will see people turning to sex work.

Continuing the criminalisation of sex workers will not help individuals to leave sex work. The evidence shows that it will not reduce violence against sex workers. Criminalisation serves as a barrier to sex workers accessing essential services such as healthcare. We need a new approach, which is why I believe that we should pursue decriminalisation.

I will conclude by sharing a worker’s testimony that I received. Kim, who is an Edinburgh-based migrant worker, said this in response to the proposal to criminalise buyers:

“We are just out of a whole year of Covid, which showed that taking our clients away does not magically deliver us into a new life free from exploitation, but rather makes us poor and hungry and heavily dependent on the few clients that are left.”

I thank all the members who supported the motion, which allowed it to be brought forward for debate at today’s members’ business.

I think that we all agree that our economy must shift from reliance on carbon-intensive sectors to greener alternatives and that failure to bring about such economic change will weaken our efforts to tackle the climate emergency. However, we cannot pursue that at the expense of workers such as those in the offshore oil and gas sector.

I represent offshore oil and gas workers in the north-east, so I know the importance of delivering a worker-led transition. That means a transition that will not only deliver well-paid and secure green jobs but empower workers. We are far from achieving such a transition in the offshore energy sector. In fact, offshore oil and gas workers are left in a position where their transferable skills go unrecognised. They are often asked, and at great personal expense, to duplicate skills and qualifications that they already have. Workers continue to find themselves in that position because of on-going market failure coupled with Government inaction.

Left to their own devices, the sector’s major training bodies have failed to agree common standards. They have instead developed rival standards, training modules and qualifications. Although the Scottish Government provides warm words about a skills guarantee and a just transition, there is no hint that it is willing to meaningfully intervene. That is why I have been engaging with climate campaigners from Friends of the Earth and with trade unions such as the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers.

Workers’ futures can no longer be left to the whims of the market or remain unsupported by Government. Workers need Government intervention. That is why I am calling on the Scottish Government to commit to creating an offshore training passport. When I raised the issue with the First Minister last month, she described an offshore training passport as a “constructive proposal”. However, when the Minister for Just Transition, Employment and Fair Work later wrote to me, he failed to offer any firm commitment that the Scottish Government would support the creation of an offshore training passport. I therefore have three key asks that I hope a minister will respond to when they come to close the debate. I cannot see a minister here.

Thank you.

I referred earlier to the significant personal expense that offshore oil and gas workers face in covering training costs. Research by Friends of the Earth Scotland, Platform and Greenpeace UK suggests that an offshore oil and gas worker will pay up to £1,800 a year in training costs. Most of those workers receive no financial contribution from their employer towards training costs. As the sector offers largely insecure work, workers are often forced by new employers to duplicate training that they have previously completed.

The impact of those training costs on the lives of workers should not be underestimated. Take James, for example, who worked in the offshore oil and gas sector for almost 25 years but took the decision to transition to working primarily in offshore wind. James said:

“I bear all training costs myself, from my own pocket, and to become competitive with other divers, the more qualifications you have, the better chance you have of working”.

To increase his competitiveness and meet the standards required by offshore wind employers, he has spent £6,000 of his own money on training and certification costs in the past two years.

Like James, Jack has spent a significant period working in the offshore oil and gas sector. He has borne training costs of £3,000 in the past two years due to receiving no financial support from his employers. Jack said:

“The companies used to pay for your training costs. Once you were established with a company, they would pay for your training because they wanted you to work for them. Now it’s very different. You’ve got to cover all these costs yourself, and the training needs redoing every couple of years, so you’re in this constant cycle.”

Those workers have taken a financial hit in the name of transition, but achieving the scale of change that we need will take co-ordinated Government intervention. My first ask to the minister is this: will the Scottish Government commit, in principle, to supporting the creation of an offshore training passport?

Along with the burden of costs, I spoke earlier of the market failure in the offshore energy sector that is exemplified by the two industry training bodies. The Offshore Petroleum Industry Training Organisation focuses on offshore oil and gas training while the Global Wind Organisation covers training for offshore wind. Despite a significant overlap in many of the training modules that they provide, particularly in relation to safety, they have been unable to agree common standards. That means that workers who are looking to make the transition are in the ludicrous position of regularly having to duplicate training and qualifications.

One worker, who wishes to remain anonymous, told me of the duplication of safety training that he would have to undertake if he wanted to transition from offshore oil and gas into offshore wind. He summed it up perfectly:

“Can anyone tell me what the difference is between the GWO and OPITO courses? All it leads to is confusion and very rich training providers”.

My second ask for the minister is whether he will call a summit for OPITO, the GWO and the trade unions to deliver an agreement on common training standards and to resolve other issues such as the lack of sectoral collective bargaining in the offshore wind supply chain.

The Scottish Government regularly talks of its commitment to a just transition for those working in carbon-intensive sectors, but its actions to date have failed to live up to that commitment. It has provided no detail on how its planned skills guarantee will work in practice, and its much-trumpeted green jobs workforce academy has also turned out to be little more than a referral website to job adverts and training courses. In fact, when I used that website yesterday to search for offshore jobs, at least half seemed to be for advisory roles and research posts at universities.

Given that the energy skills alliance has been tasked with creating an all-energy apprenticeship for new entrants into the sector, my final ask of the minister is whether he will look at tasking the ESA with creating an offshore training passport to benefit the existing workforce as well.

As delegates begin to arrive in Glasgow ahead of the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—COP26—we have an opportunity today to demonstrate Scotland’s commitment to climate justice, underpinned by social and economic justice. I hope that the Scottish Government will grasp that opportunity and deliver the worker-led transition that our offshore oil and gas workers deserve.

The pandemic has caused a sharp rise in rent arrears, which now stand at more than £3 million in Dundee and nearly £8 million in Aberdeen, yet support for landlords has been prioritised—landlords have received around 14 times more in financial support than tenants have received. When will the Scottish Government start to support tenants who are facing rent arrears, given that no money has yet been paid out from its £10 million tenant hardship grant fund?