Chamber and committees

If the cabinet secretary thinks that an email shows respect to this Parliament, he is looking at it in completely the wrong way, because it does not.

The fact is that case rates in Manchester were very similar to those in Dundee. He has not addressed that point.

I move on to another point. Because of the First Minister’s edict, some people have lost hundreds of pounds, but it is not just individuals who have lost out; the travel sector, which has been hollowed out, is also the loser here. Will the Scottish Government compensate individuals and businesses who have lost money because of the decision?

I notice that the cabinet secretary gave no figures whatsoever in his answer, so the public will be quite bemused by it.

The legislation is completely incoherent. It says that a person has to leave Scotland with the “intention” of going to Manchester in order to be in breach of the law. I do not know how anyone could prove that. I could set off from my home in East Kilbride, go down to visit my mother in Carlisle, suddenly decide to pop down to see a mate in Manchester and not be in breach of the law. How can it possibly be enforced? Will we have police at the border asking people where they are going? Of course we will not. The law is unworkable and unenforceable.

Is the proposed permanency bill—this is the first that I have heard of it; I apologise—likely to cover things such as travel restrictions and wearing of face coverings?

To ask the Scottish Government on what basis it has introduced a ban on non-essential travel between Scotland and Manchester and Salford. (S6T-00090)

How does the cabinet secretary answer the fair point that infection rates in parts of Greater Manchester, such as Bolton, are lower than those in Dundee? Bolton has a Covid rate of 269 cases per 100,000. How is that consistent or fair?

To ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to support local government in the delivery of community services. (S6O-00029)

The minister will be aware that concern has been raised by the Scottish Information and Library Council that many libraries that have been closed during the pandemic will not reopen. In my Central Scotland region, 13 libraries are closed at the moment and there are concerns for their future. Councils have a statutory duty to provide such services, so what is the Scottish Government doing to ensure that all libraries that have been closed by the pandemic will reopen?

I have just outlined a host of ways in which people can come here. They are welcome to come here and Mr Rennie should recognise that fact. Net migration from non-EU countries has risen to its highest level for 45 years. For the year ending March 2020, an estimated 316,000 more non-EU citizens came to the UK than left; the figure for EU citizens was 58,000.

I was interested to read a paper from the Construction Industry Training Board. Its research shows that 8 per cent of the construction workforce in Scotland was born outside of the UK and that 23 per cent of construction companies that operate in Scotland employ non-UK-born workers. The CITB says that the dependence of employers in Scotland on migrant workers is low—its words—and that only 3 per cent of employers that operate in Scotland feel dependent on migrant workers.

Most construction industry employers that operate here do not expect the introduction of the points-based immigration system to have an impact on their company. Of those that employ migrant workers, 91 per cent do not expect the number of non-UK workers that they employ to change over the next 12 months. That is what they have told us.

That is not to say that there are not challenges. As Willie Rennie said, it is not a black and white issue. I have been speaking to hauliers, too. There is a shortage of lorry drivers, which the UK Government could help to address by relaxing some of the rules—we have to be honest about that. However, with well-paid jobs such as a lorry driver, I have to ask why we cannot train enough of our people to do it and get youngsters interested. The skills gap in the haulage sector has existed for a while and cannot be blamed solely on the UK leaving the EU.

Age Scotland has highlighted the number of vacancies in the care sector, although those figures are quite out of date, given that we have been through the pandemic in the meantime. I suspect that, whatever the current figure is, it will have more to do with the pandemic than with anything else. However, it is a challenge to fill vacancies in that vital sector, and it has been for a long time. That is where our amendment comes in, as it talks about the need to create more apprenticeships, to reverse the trend of decreasing college student numbers that has occurred under the Scottish Government, to set out plans for a return to in-person small-group learning in higher and further education, and to introduce individual learning accounts, as called for by the Confederation of British Industry Scotland.

The Government needs to concentrate less on trying to score cheap political points and more on filling the skills gaps that we have had for years, which is something that should unite us all. All parties will have ideas, and Mr Lochhead should be reaching out rather than trying to stoke grievance.

My biggest fear is not Brexit, which I see as a land of opportunity; it is that we will have a large group of young people left behind because of Covid. The unemployment figures do not tell the full story. Many thousands of people do not show up in the figures. Those people are not claiming benefits; they are just waiting, often in desperation, for things to open up again. Let us give them the hope that they deserve.

My first speech as an MSP, five years ago, was about Brexit and my first speech in this session is about Brexit. The difference this time is that Brexit has happened. Some of us have moved on from that, but the SNP has not.

The title of the debate is negative and the contributions from the SNP have matched that tone. For a party that is built on division and grievance to stage this debate takes quite a collective brass neck. We are having the debate against a backdrop of an economic calamity that has been caused not by Brexit but by Covid, and we do not know how it is going to play out. The signs are that the UK economy could come back very well, but responding to Covid is the biggest challenge that employers face right now. At least the Government motion mentions that.

On the UK bounce back, the unemployment rate has been falling and the employment rate rising, but to listen to some of today’s speakers, one would think that it is impossible for anyone to come to Britain to work. EU citizens who are already here could apply to stay under the EU settlement scheme, and should have done so, and there is a host of other visas and work permits that are open to the world. We have the skilled worker visa, the health and care worker visa, the temporary seasonal worker visa, the youth mobility scheme visa, the global talent visa and the frontier worker permit—Britain is not closed.

The cabinet secretary says that he wants to phase out new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. Can he say how he plans to do that? In doing so, will he tell the chamber what progress has been made in delivering a hydrogen highway in the north-east?