Chamber and committees

I thank Colin Smyth for the question; it is a very important issue. The Scottish Government takes the development of a skills passport very seriously, and, of course, there is cross-party support for it in the Parliament as it will make it easier for people working in, for instance, the oil and gas sector to transfer their skills and employment into the renewable energy sector and other green technologies.

Progress is being made. A few weeks ago, I had a catch-up meeting with some of the stakeholders on the working group that is dealing with it, and the Scottish Government gave the working group a deadline of the end of March to get it concluded.

A lot of work is being done. Stakeholders will meet in the next week or two. Aligning standards among the various sectors that are involved has been a big task, particularly between the renewables sector and the oil and gas sector in this case. Standards and training requirements have to be aligned. Some areas have clearly taken a lot longer to be ironed out than we would have hoped, but I am hopeful that we will have a conclusion by the end of March.

It is the deadline for the working group to give us the solution. It is working on it now to enable us to introduce the passport. We are asking the group to come back to us with the final version of the digital passport.

The skills issue and ensuring that people can transfer their skills into different sectors as smoothly as possible is at the heart of the just transition. A lot of work is under way. Skills Development Scotland has been doing a lot of work on apprenticeships in green industries, and good progress is being made with that. A number of initiatives in north-east Scotland that also address the issue are being funded through the just transition fund. We also expect companies to play a role in funding training for their workforces, which is always the case and certainly should be so for the just transition.

I assure Colin Smyth that we are actively looking at a lot of this. We have our commitment to refresh the climate emergency skills action plan and the work that flows out of that, and we are looking at how it joins up with the rest of the skills issues in this space.

The James Withers report has energy transition and net zero at the core of its recommendations on how we change the landscape for skills and training in Scotland. That is all being looked at and is very active.

Attracting green investment for the world’s move towards net zero is a massive issue in Scotland, as well as a global issue, and we need to realise the energy potential of offshore wind and other technologies to create the jobs that we want to see in the future. Activity is under way to attract more capital investment to Scotland; we have a capital investment plan. The First Minister’s recent panel has also reported on how to attract international investment to Scotland to fund net zero, and the Government is considering its recommendations to see what we can do to deliver them. In the past few months and years, there has been a lot of activity in that space among the private capital markets and players, as well as in the public sector and Scottish Government initiatives.

On the challenges, I go back to my previous answer. Obviously, we are in a time of high interest rates, and we have seen some economic instability at the UK level in the past year or two, which does not help that stable environment. I am also the minister for trade and, when I speak to inward investors from around the world, they are full of praise for Scotland. I am not just saying that because I want to sit here as a minister and say good things. It is eye-opening to hear what people outside Scotland say about Scotland. We do not hear enough of that, because we hear a lot of negativity in our own country. When I speak to companies overseas, they are very positive about Scotland. They tell me that they are attracted to investing in Scotland and our energy transition in particular—not just that technology but lots of other sectors—because they have seen that Scotland has a stable, long-term and committed net zero policy. The Government has been in power since 2007, and that has helped greatly because we have been able to make such a long-term commitment. That is what I hear from international investors, and it will deliver a lot of dividends for Scotland.

I should have addressed that point in my earlier answer to your question about challenges; it is a very important point. Ensuring that the grid can deliver is clearly a massive challenge. In order to deliver the just transition, we need projects to be up and running. That will deliver the jobs, the activity and the revenues, but in order to get those big projects up and running we need access to the grid. That, of course, is one of the biggest challenges.

My colleagues Gillian Martin, the Minister for Energy and the Environment, Neil Gray, the Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Fair Work and Energy and others have been doing a lot of work on that as part of the development of the energy policy. The final strategy will be delivered and published by the summer. National Grid has been adapting its policies, and a lot of initiatives are now under way to prioritise renewable energy developments.

You have raised a very important point, and I am happy to write to the committee about that. I am not the minister who is dealing directly with National Grid on the issue, but there has been a lot of activity in the past 12 months.

Skills Development Scotland does its own skills assessments. Representatives of that body gave evidence to your committee but I am not sure whether that issue was raised with them directly.

A lot of work is under way, and Skills Development Scotland continues to do regular skills assessments for the green energy sectors and the rest of the sectors in Scotland. The Energy Transition Zone in Aberdeen, for instance, is creating five skills hubs, and the cabinet secretary, Màiri McAllan, was at the recent launch of the key hub at North East Scotland College. The Scottish Government is putting, I think, around £4 million to £5 million towards that. There are a lot of exciting initiatives happening.

The Robert Gordon University has carried out a lot of work on the monitoring of skills, which the Scottish Government often refers to, laying out the challenges of the skills requirements between now and 2040 to 2050. RGU showed that, if we play our cards right, we could have more energy jobs than we have now in north-east Scotland and across the country.

Many companies that speak to me talk about shortages in skills and labour. It is not just an issue of people transferring from one sector to another; there are quite often jobs available for people who are looking for them. It is about making sure that we have upskilling in place. RGU, the University of Aberdeen and others in north-east Scotland are doing a lot of work on upskilling, short courses and so on, so we have to support that.

From the word go, we were persuaded that participatory budgeting was an important element of delivering the just transition fund in north-east Scotland and Moray. It is important for engagement with communities, the bottom-up approach and allowing communities and groups to come together to decide what the just transition means for them before coming up with projects that will help to deliver it in their communities.

A lot of really good, exciting, innovative and creative thinking about the just transition is going on in communities. It has been very helpful in increasing engagement and raising awareness. I indicated that, the first time, 10,000 people voted for the projects; then it was 19,000. That is evidence that awareness is rising, as is engagement. We are committed to delivering at least £1 million a year over this session for participatory budgeting, so that will continue.

I am the MSP for Moray, so I meet the groups in my area in particular. It is inspirational to see how they are addressing the just transition and to hear the debates and discussions that are taking place and what it means for communities in the area. Likewise, that is happening for Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen city. The third-sector organisations help to run that process for us; in fact, they run it on our behalf and are funded to do so. They are playing an important role.

I assure the committee that many projects are being funded. I have a list here—obviously, I can only hold this up at the moment. These are lists, which run over many pages, of the projects that are being funded through the north-east and Moray just transition fund alone. There are many other funds that are not covered—

You are right that the Scottish National Investment Bank is at arm’s length from ministers. We allocated £25 million of financial transactions funding to the bank, and decisions on how and in which projects that money is invested are for the bank. However, one of the bank’s objectives is to support the net zero agenda, and the £25 million allocation is for the just transition. The projects will be delivered and chosen by the bank, not ministers, because it is an arm’s-length body but, clearly, our expectation and agreement is that the £25 million will be funded from the just transition fund.

The reason for using the bank is that it has a lot of experience with financial transactions, which is a resource provided to the Scottish Government by the UK Government. They are complex—they are, in effect, very long-term loans—but they are a way of supporting capital investment, and that is why they are part of the just transition fund. Clearly, we do not have the capital to fund everything that we would like to fund, so that is why we use financial transactions and, in turn, why we use the bank.

As for its transparency, that is an issue to raise directly with the bank, which, I think, you have taken evidence from. I will certainly reflect on the question for our next conversation with the bank. Once the announcements are made, these things will be in the public domain.

I am certainly conscious of it. It is a bigger issue for applicants who do not have the capacity or other sources of revenue to make an on-going commitment to particular types of projects. The smaller the organisation, the bigger the challenge that it will face.

I come back to my original point that the just transition fund has to be transformational. In 10 years, we will have to be able to look back and think, “The public purse invested £500 million in the just transition in north-east Scotland and Moray, and we can see how it has been transformational.” We have to look back at that point and see that it has been transformational, and we can do that only by supporting transformational projects.

As part of the just transition principles, it is not just big shiny projects that have to be funded—we want to fund community projects, too, which can come in a variety of types. However, capital is clearly needed for transformational projects. The emphasis is on capital, and, as I have said, the financial constraints that we face just now obviously mean that on-going revenue commitments are not necessarily affordable. So, yes, I am conscious of the issue, and yes, I am always keen to investigate what more we can do, particularly for smaller organisations.