Chamber and committees

This is my final question. The CBI-KPMG report is pretty blunt in certain areas. It flags up that we have huge educational potential and that the skills agenda has potential in terms of green jobs, and all that is good news. However, when it comes to the traffic light—red, amber or green—on how we compare with other parts of the UK in terms of what our short-term and long-term bases are, there are some really worrying statistics about our weakness in business investment, exports and in-work training. I suggest, cabinet secretary, that those are related to issues in the structure of the Scottish economy. Can you say a bit more about how you intend to deal with those concerns?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I am sorry to interrupt the debate, but it is my understanding that quite a lot of members across all the political parties are having great difficulty in accessing the debate online because BlueJeans seems to have frozen. I know that that was a problem during question time, too. Could the matter be investigated, please?

I add my thanks to Mark Ruskell for bringing this important issue to the chamber. I also welcome the acknowledgment from the minister at last week’s portfolio questions on transport that there is a problem here. I heard him comment about driver shortages, and they undoubtedly exist, but that is not the whole story and I think that the minister is well aware of that.

As we try desperately hard to make it easier for people to go green when they make their transport choices, I worry that the situation with the X53 bus is yet another barrier in the way. Jackie Dunbar and Jim Fairlie made interesting points about trying to change people’s behaviour, and it is true that we must. If we are going to go green, it is important that we do not have too many barriers in the way of that.

However, the context is also important. This debate comes at a time when Stagecoach has reduced the Edinburgh to Perth X56 bus service by around half. Yesterday we learned that Stagecoach is announcing a merger with National Express and the loss of its Perth headquarters. There are worries about the sustainability of some of the Stagecoach services.

It also comes at a time when ScotRail plans to lengthen the rail journey time between Edinburgh and Perth by 10 minutes because of the new diversion via Dunfermline. That journey time is already pretty lengthy when compared with other UK and European journeys of the same distance—and, indeed, when compared with the rail journey time between Edinburgh and Perth over a century ago. As we know, there have also been issues around services at Kirkcaldy, Inverkeithing and Dunblane stations. The context is not great for passengers in Mid Scotland and Fife just now, especially for those who are based in our very rural locations.

The cross-country X53 bus service is a lifeline for many rural passengers, who will feel badly cut off by the loss of the bus service—that is certainly the message coming from Mid Scotland and Fife constituents. Mark Ruskell cited many examples of that, and he is quite right about people who have essential business to do but cannot get where they need to be quite so easily. Alexander Stewart made an interesting point about Stirling Council, which is obviously also worried about the situation, and I think that we need to pay a lot of attention to it.

I do not think that this decision sits well with modern transport policy, as we are supposed to be doing all that we can to encourage more people out of their cars and on to public transport. Neither does it sit well with the demographic changes that are happening across Mid Scotland and Fife, which in some key areas is seeing substantial growth, particularly along the M90 corridor. There has been extensive house building in Milnathort and Kinross.

I recently saw a statistic that suggested that Dunfermline is expected to grow by 30 per cent between 2016 and 2026. That is an awful lot of extra people who will be working in Edinburgh, Stirling, Glasgow, Perth and so on, and I hope that many of them will want to make use of public transport.

I thank Mark Ruskell again for highlighting this issue. Like many members, I have received a lot of communications on it, and I hope that the Scottish Government will address it. I know that there are extenuating circumstances with regard to some of the causes of the situation, but this is a very real issue that we need to do something about.

I am here, Presiding Officer.

I listened carefully to the answers that the minister gave to Jamie Halcro Johnston and Daniel Johnson, but I do not think that I heard him tell them what they asked for. When did he find out that there had been a breach of the contract?

On a further point of order, Presiding Officer. Would it be possible to have a short suspension until the issue is sorted out? There are members who would like to participate in the debate.

That leads into my final question, which is about the participation rates and the changing demography in the labour market. There are concerns, particularly in relation to the number of young people, who perhaps have more transferable skills for the future, coming into the market. To what extent do you feel that those are significant issues with regard to projections for the future?

I am thinking about two things in particular. It is quite clear that there are people who are able to work but are perhaps not able or willing to work in certain jobs. That is why the vacancy rate has stayed higher than we might have expected at a time when unemployment was supposed to rise. There is a skills mismatch, and we might need policies to address that.

Do we also need education policies that allow younger people in particular to get a wider range of skills, so that they are more flexible in the jobs that they can do? We have seen increasing flexibility over the years, but do we have sufficient flexibility to fill some of the gaps?

You could end up as a politician.

I thank the witnesses for giving us a bit more information about the trends.

You have been predicting a fall in income tax receipts; I want to ask, first, about data. Economists talk about the Laffer curve. The Laffer curve has been a bone of contention politically, but it is important, because it is the relationship between the tax rate and the revenues that are actually collected. In your updated data, do you have information about taxable income elasticity—in other words, the change in taxable income in response to changes in the rate of taxation? The issue is obviously important for policy; do we have good data on it?

My final point—