Chamber and committees

Was the minister aware that 4,000 tonnes of steel slabs would be coming from outside the United Kingdom and not from Scunthorpe? Did he know that it was going to be turned into a jobbing plant?

For the same reasons as Daniel Johnson, I will support the legislative consent motion.

However, if Ivan McKee will tolerate it, I will return to one of my favourite obsessions: the Dalzell steel plant in Lanarkshire, about which I have deep concerns because of recent developments that I hope the minister will address when he is summing up. As the minister says, it is an important part of the UK steel industry.

The minister knows that the plant has been dormant since 2024, which is now almost two years ago. We were promised that Navantia would be rolling steel plate for the Royal Navy’s fleet support vessels, but because of problems in purchasing raw materials—the slab—production has been intermittent. I understand that a German company will now use the Dalzell plant as a jobbing mill, importing 4,000 tonnes of slab from a foreign supplier outside the UK instead of purchasing that slab from Scunthorpe.

All that raises serious questions about an important part of the steel industry in Scotland. Therefore, while we are discussing this LCM, I want the minister to address the following questions in his conclusion. Why has the plant been dormant for two years? Given that a £7 million loan has been made to the company—to GFG Alliance, Liberty Steel and Mr Gupta—why has the Government allowed it to be dormant for two years? Why will the plant be used as a jobbing plant for slab that is purchased from outside the United Kingdom, rather than Scunthorpe? What will now happen to the £7 million loan from the Scottish Government? Will that be repaid, and at what point? When will we have a proper functioning mill—the only wide-plate mill in the United Kingdom—at Dalzell? When will it have a constructive relationship with the Scunthorpe plant?

All those issues should be at the front of the Government’s mind, but, as usual, it is not paying attention.

18:06

For the past 10 days, I have received regular emails from my constituents who work at the University of Dundee. Those emails are full of pain and frustration about the uncertainty that has lasted for almost two years. The cloud has been hanging over their heads for far too long, and it has been intolerable. I have been working with them to find solutions.

This week’s announcement was wholly predictable. I knew well in advance that £20 million-worth of cuts was coming; it was reported by the media. I was therefore surprised by the shock and horror that the Government ranks expressed when the announcement was made.

Although I welcomed the Government stepping in at the beginning to make sure that the institution survived, that funding was only ever short term. I heard no one setting out new sources of income with margin that would allow for cross-subsidy for the areas that required extra support. This situation was therefore wholly predictable.

Instead of complaining, the Government should come up with solutions. So far, though, I have heard a lot of heat but no solutions. None of that helps staff at the University of Dundee who are about to be made redundant and lose their jobs. I will always stand with them to make sure that they have a future. I was at the evidence sessions at the Education, Children and Young People Committee. Just for the record, I do not think that Professor Gillespie has ever paid back any of his severance payment. I do not think that he was due that payment, because his leadership was shocking and led, in large part, to this circumstance.

The situation at Dundee—although it is unique, it is not that unique—is a sign of a wider broken system. I accept that inflation and the war in Ukraine, which has driven up energy prices, have had an impact on universities, just as they have impacted many other businesses. I also accept that employer national insurance contributions have played a part. However, it is also a fact that the funding that the Government provides to pay for the tuition of domestic students at Scottish universities has fallen way behind the cost of providing that education. As Michael Marra said, that funding has been cut in real terms, which has, in effect, incentivised universities to take ever-riskier routes to find a source of income with margin—for example, international students from what are, sometimes, very risky markets.

When the Nigerian currency fell overnight, the Nigerian students stopped coming. Dundee was overexposed to the Nigerian market. We could have seen that coming; I had been warning for a long time about ever-riskier behaviour by universities. It was not helped by the UK Government. I accept David Barratt’s point that the UK Government exacerbated the problem, but overexposure to international students from riskier markets is not the future for our universities.

I give the Scottish Government credit. The minister’s predecessor acknowledged that the funding system was broken. We now have the framework for the future of our universities, which no one has mentioned today. That is the way ahead for our universities. A cross-party and cross-sector approach is the solution. A lot of work has been done by those involved in the framework. I hope that that work results in a sustainable future for our universities, because one thing is for sure: we cannot afford to repeat what has happened at Dundee, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and many other institutions throughout the country. Our staff deserve better.

I largely accept what Mr Adam says, but does he accept my point that although the situation at Dundee university is unique, these issues affect many other institutions, which is why we need reform of the funding system as a whole?

There is some concern that the contracts will not deliver significant community and supply chain benefits. Can the minister set out what work has been done in that regard and say what lessons have been learned from the likes of the lower Thames crossing, which provides good examples of the delivery of such benefits?

The cabinet secretary knows that this is going to be difficult because, given that four in 10 pupils have an additional support need, schools are already struggling to cope with the massive demand that teachers face. There is a lack of back-up support from educational psychologists, speech and language therapists and the entire range of specialists that are needed to provide support. Are we drawing on lessons from schools to ensure that the rollout of after-school care and early years provision is taking that situation into account? So far, I do not have an awful lot of confidence that it is going to work, because we are not getting the approach right in schools.

I was very grateful for Alan Brown’s recitation of his bus route. I thought that he was going to go all the way and regale us with the cost of every leg of his trip to Boston. I am grateful that he did not, because those of us who enjoyed the match did not really need to hear about the bus journey.

Craig Hoy, in the last part of his speech, hit on a point that I had hoped that the cabinet secretary would include in his remarks. We must be honest about behaviour on some buses, as it is an issue. We know that there have been violent attacks, but there are also issues about groups of young people congregating around bus stations.

There are certain hot spots, particularly in Fife—around Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes—but I hear that that is also true of Kilmarnock and other places across Scotland. We should be honest about it. This is a good policy, but that aspect is part of what is happening and we must try to mitigate it. I hope that the cabinet secretary will address that in his summing up, because I thought that Craig Hoy made a fair point.

I especially welcomed three contributions. One was from Lloyd Melville, who was appointed deputy convener of the Transport Committee this morning; another was from Dawn Black; and the final one was from Pauline Stafford. They all spoke about how certain communities and groups are cut off from society due to a lack of appropriate bus services. That is not just the case in very rural parts of the country—sometimes that is the case in isolated communities in the central belt. When looking at the use of public funds, we must consider how best to ensure that those routes and those people have the freedom that Dawn Black mentioned.

As I alluded to in my opening remarks, I sometimes worry that, in the race towards the bus fare cap, we are not giving sufficient consideration to the pot of money that we have available to ensure a rounded service across all parts of the country. There is no point in having cheap fares if we do not have a bus service.

The demand-responsive transport that Lloyd Melville talked about is a good way of ensuring that we plug particular gaps, often for elderly people who do not want to go on a general bus service and who want to know that the bus will come to their area when they need it. We should look at expanding that service.

We will, I hope, have the Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Tourism and Transport before the Transport Committee later this year, when we will be considering bus issues, which might be through his new bus bill, which will include provisions on the bus fare cap. That includes mysterious elements that we do not quite know about yet—he is still not telling us about them. I am looking forward to those evidence sessions when he will reveal all about what will be in the bus bill.

I want to consider the cost of all this, because at no point in the debate have we talked about the £5 billion financial hole that will exist in our public finances towards the end of the decade.

Sometimes, when we are talking about nationalisation and expanding the bus fare cap, we did not really think about the cost of all those things. Every member of this Parliament has a responsibility to think—

That is what I am asking us to consider. Rather than just thinking about the headline policy, we need to think about value for money and the impact that we get from the policy. I would sometimes like us to take a step back and look at everything in the round, rather than take a siloed approach to policy. We need to consider the overall cost and how we can best use the public finances.

We also need to consider that the costs for bus companies have gone up. The price of buying new buses is considerable, the cost of fuel has gone up and the cost of providing bus services in some parts of the country is higher than in others. We need to consider everything in the round to make sure that we have a bus service that is available for everybody in every part of our communities.

16:35

I do not disagree with what the cabinet secretary says. However, does he also recognise that people in my constituency and in many other constituencies complain about the lack of bus services altogether, and they want routes developed into more communities so that they can go to work on time, when they are expected to be there?

A brief one, yes.