Chamber and committees

I always listen very carefully to the cabinet secretary. However, the more I listened to him this afternoon, the more I heard echoes of Jacob Rees-Mogg. That is not a throwaway insult. The detail of what the cabinet secretary said contains many similar arguments to those that were made by the Brexiteers. Talk about a deadweight UK and slow economic growth are what Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg said about the EU, at that time. The cabinet secretary’s argument that there is a huge market elsewhere in the world is exactly the same as the one that was made by Jacob Rees-Mogg. Equally, the argument about our democracy being overruled has frequently been made by the cabinet secretary and Jacob Rees-Mogg. There are many similar echoes between the two arguments; those two forms of nationalism are taking over the debate.

One thing that we have learned over the past few years is that putting up barriers causes economic damage rather than creating economic opportunity. The only real and tangible benefit that we have had from Brexit has been the trade agreement with Australia and New Zealand, which was criticised by the former agriculture minister at the time that it went through.

We therefore know that there are no real benefits from Brexit—we have seen none of the tangible things that Jacob Rees-Mogg talks about—and we know that it would be exactly the same if we were ever to be in the unfortunate position of breaking up the United Kingdom.

In recent weeks, I have noticed that several members on the SNP benches have been exercised by the new “Not for EU” labels that are being stuck on to UK produce. That is the consequence of the Windsor agreement—the protocol on Northern Ireland—to deal with green lane issues.

I say that not to point to the failure of Brexit—although I think that it is a failure—but to warn about what would come if we were ever to be in the unfortunate situation of breaking up the United Kingdom. We would be replacing those labels with labels that said “Not for the UK”. That is what would be on our produce in Scotland. The thing that we get very angry about now is exactly the thing that would happen if we were ever to break up the United Kingdom. The SNP should be careful regarding what it campaigns about and what it claims to support.

I think that the cabinet secretary and I agree with the National Institute of Economic and Social Research on the impact of Brexit—the 2 to 3 per cent GDP drop, which is £850 per person. That is a big economic disadvantage to citizens in this country, which comes on top of the damage of Ukraine and Covid. Brexit has also brought difficulties in attracting workers for important sectors such as social care and the NHS, and it has caused division. We saw that tensions were raised again last night in Northern Ireland, with the protests outside the Democratic Unionist Party meeting.

We know that there are tensions, we know that there is economic damage and we know that there is a shortage of workers, and we have to ask ourselves a question: what do we do next? Do we repeat those mistakes or do we learn the lessons? I am determined that we learn the lessons.

I was opposed to Brexit and I am still opposed to Brexit. Of course I want to be in the European Union. I wish that I had not gone through the past few years of arguing endlessly about pointless things that have not given any advantage to our country. I am trying to learn how we can get back to a position where we can reduce the economic damage, get the workers back into our NHS and social care sectors and eradicate the division.

The gradualist approach has to be the one that we are in favour of. The SNP used to be in favour of that, but it does not seem to be any more. We need a gradualist approach to make sure that, for example, we bring the UK REACH—registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—regulation together with the European REACH regulation. There is hardly any difference between the two, so let us get them working together. Let us have mutual recognition of trades and professions, so that a joiner from Auchtermuchty can go off to Brussels and do exactly the same job over there. That should be the opportunity that we are presenting for people. We need to look at veterinary checks and eradicate some of the bureaucracy around that. Those are the practical steps that we should be taking.

We also need to implement powers that we said we were going to utilise. For example, the Taith scheme is the replacement for Erasmus in Wales, but the pilot for the replacement here has been delayed. Young people in Scotland are being deprived of an opportunity that the SNP said in its manifesto that it would provide but that it has failed to deliver. In Wales, students are going to 23 European Union countries and 40 countries in the rest of the world, thanks to the programme that has been put in place. However, in Scotland, it is a case of, “Nah. We’re not interested, because it’s not the slogan that we’re really after any more. We were able to use Erasmus to make our arguments for independence, but we’re no longer interested, because it doesn’t suit our case any more.”

The cabinet secretary said that he would take no lectures from me about Brexit. I am going to lecture him about this, because he needs to remember, as Neil Bibby rightly pointed out, that the SNP was more interested in the Shetland by-election than it was in the European Union referendum. The SNP spent more money up there on that by-election than it did in the whole of Scotland on the referendum. In the whole of Scotland, it spent a fraction of the money that it spent in Shetland. That does not look like a pro-European party to me.

I remember something that happened at the time. Alex Salmond used to be the leader of the SNP—

No—I will take the intervention from Christine Grahame.

I will in a second, but I must finish my point.

In reality, the debate is more about independence than about the European Union. The SNP is desperate to shore up its support across the country, because that is leaking away fast. That will be of deep concern to it, which is why it is scrapping around trying to find issues to shore up the support for the party.

The debate has been a bit soporific. The only element of excitement was when Ivan McKee talked about John Mason being turned on. I suspect that he was talking about the microphone rather than anything else but, nevertheless, it was a dangerous double entendre. That was the only excitement in the whole debate.

Of course, I would love to have pragmatic solutions to those medicine problems, but Kevin Stewart needs to face the reality that we lost the argument on Europe and we need to find pragmatic ways of moving forward.

The other thing that the SNP did not talk about is currency, on which Maurice Golden was bang on.

To be fair to the minister, there is consistency on the rhetoric. There are some questions about the policy enactment. The implementation gap, as the former First Minister might call it, is significant. I will come on to those issues.

Here is the first principle that we need to establish: I want to make sure that the communities that I represent—some of the working-class communities on the east coast of Fife—benefit directly from the wind farms that they see being built off the coast of Fife. That has not been the case so far. The collapse of Burntisland Fabrications cost the Scottish Government £50 million. The workers who were rooted in the communities of Fife were not directly benefiting, especially when the people of Fife and the rest of Scotland are paying higher electricity bills in part because of the investment that is being made in offshore renewables. That is the right thing to do, but we need to ensure that the jobs come alongside the electricity supply.

That leads me on to the ScotWind process. I fear that we have granted authority for too many opportunities for wind farm companies all at once and that we will not have the capacity in Scotland to maximise the benefit from that.

I am concerned that Harland & Wolff at Methil, which was previously the BiFab facility, is outside the Forth green port area, and so is not benefiting from the financial incentives that other parts of the Forth are benefiting from. It could be a subcontractor—which was, I think, the minister’s response—but I would prefer it to be fully included in the opportunities in the wider Forth green port area.

If we cannot get that and the minister is unable to negotiate that, I hope that we get some kind of investment zone status to provide a bit of a level playing field between different parts of the River Forth estuary. I hope that the minister will look at that again.

My final point is on Home Energy Scotland, and is simply a plea to speed up the process for applications for grants for home energy, which takes an age. In England, applications are much faster—for what reason, I do not know, but they are much faster there. We need to catch up, because we are putting off customers and causing uncertainty in the supply chain. That means that we are not recruiting the people that we need in order to build the capacity to supply the likes of heat pumps in people’s homes. Let us therefore speed up that process and get it working.

I agree with the cabinet secretary’s criticism of the UK Conservative Government for its flip-flopping and its changing messages and rhetoric about investment in net zero. What Government policy is is important, but how it sounds is equally important.

The indication of the direction of travel is incredibly important for investors, who are considering what to put their money into and which part of the world to put their money in, and for companies that are considering where best to deploy their resources. The mood music is incredibly important, and it was deeply damaging. In reality, the one or two years’ change in some of the policies was probably not significant, but the rhetoric that was wrapped around what Rishi Sunak said was deeply damaging and sent a message of uncertainty, which is the last thing we need when we want people to make long-term decisions.

I will focus on some of the Scottish issues. I will try to be constructive and detailed on ScotWind, as well as on the Methil wind farm, grid capacity and various other issues.

Some progress has been made on the cabling front. It is a technical area, because there are different types of cables for different parts of the process. Nevertheless, that speaks to the challenge of creating capacity in Scotland. It takes time. If we grant authority for too many opportunities at once, we might not have the capacity in the supply chain to exploit that. There might be enough to go round in any circumstances, but I would like us to maximise the amount that we get for Scotland. I am not sure that I have seen a Government investment plan for the supply chain that will ensure that we do not have a repeat of BiFab.

The facilities at BiFab were pretty rudimentary, which is partly why the company was not able to succeed in exploiting the Neart na Gaoithe opportunities. An investment plan is important. That is why I was concerned about the report earlier from the minister that some of the funds from ScotWind have been siphoned off to other parts of the Scottish budget. We need to make sure that we maximise the opportunities and help businesses invest in Scotland so that we have the maximum supply chain.

That leads back to how much we got for the ScotWind licensing round. We did not sell it for enough. The cap of £100,000 was, I think, incomprehensible. The £700 million that we got was about a third of what they were getting for the equivalent in England, and a quarter of what they were getting for equivalent space in California, where there was equally deep water and it was equally challenging to provide and build the wind farms. I therefore do not think that we got enough from ScotWind, and I deeply regret that we will not be able to use that money to invest back into the supply chain to make sure that we maximise the opportunity for Scotland.

Another issue that the minister and I have discussed before is the regulatory capacity. I also worry that companies will see a very narrow opportunity to get their licences and regulatory approvals through. I want to hear from the minister in their summing-up speech about how many more planners and specialists we have recruited to cope with the glut of demand that will come through. It is important that investors know that, if they go forward with a Scottish opportunity, they will get their application through, build the supply chain, and maximise the opportunity for Scotland.

I want to talk briefly—if I have time, Deputy Presiding Officer—about Methil.

If the citizens’ assembly recommends the abolition of the council tax, will the Government back it?