Chamber and committees

A lot of the questions that I was going to ask have been covered, but I would like clarification on a couple of points. We have talked a lot about upskilling and reskilling the existing workforce, but the SDS submission highlights that the percentage of Scottish businesses that provide training for staff has fallen from 70 per cent to 59 per cent over the past seven or eight years. Chris, as a starter, will you provide some background to that data?

The number of businesses that were training staff was fairly consistent over a long period before that so, if the figure is an outlier, are we roughly where we were pre-pandemic?

We spoke earlier about problems with the supply of people. There are vacancies in agriculture, hospitality, manufacturing and construction, and for HGV drivers. What should the Scottish Government or, indeed, the UK Government be doing immediately to try to address those issues? We have had various calls from VisitScotland, Scottish Chambers of Commerce and the Royal Society of Edinburgh for the UK Government, predominantly, to intervene, but what are your views on how we improve the supply of people?

Does anyone else want to respond?

Richard, do you have anything to add?

For more than 100 years, the Army has played an important part in the area of Edinburgh that I represent, with Dreghorn barracks and Redford infantry and cavalry barracks located in my constituency. I thank Paul Sweeney for reminding members that the MOD is due to close Redford infantry and cavalry barracks in 2025. The soldiers and their families are very much part of the community, and I take this opportunity to thank those individuals in our armed forces who are helping out during the pandemic, either by driving ambulances or by helping to accelerate the vaccine roll-out across Edinburgh.

For a number of years, I have raised the issue of MOD family accommodation units lying empty across Scotland and the UK. The figures from earlier this year highlighted that 11,000 homes lie empty across the UK, of which 900 are in Scotland and 160 are in Edinburgh alone. Given the housing pressure in Edinburgh, those homes could be used to house veterans or, indeed, the Afghan refugees who worked with our armed forces, instead of those people being housed with their families in hotels by the airport.

I welcome the Scottish Government’s commitment to housing veterans through its military matters project, which has received 266 new housing referrals in the past year alone; the £6 million that has been spent since 2012 to build 100 homes for veterans; and the £1.8 million Government grant for Riverside Scotland and Hillcrest housing associations to provide much-needed housing in other parts of the country, including new homes in Edinburgh, which are due to be completed in January 2022.

The transition from Army life to civilian life can be eased when there is enough housing available, and I welcome Scotland’s first long-term housing strategy, housing to 2040. Its implementation will, I hope, alleviate the housing pressures on veterans. I also welcome the allocation practice guidelines encouraging landlords and local authorities to consider giving priority to service personnel when allocating homes.

I will take this opportunity to talk about the symbolism of the poppy and pay tribute to a family member in this remembrance commemoration. The remembrance day symbolism of the poppy started with the poem “In Flanders Fields”, which was written by world war one Canadian brigade surgeon Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae while he was serving in Ypres in 1915. He was struck by the sight of the red flowers growing in the ravaged battlefields, among the dead. His poem channelled the voice of the fallen soldiers who were buried under those hardy poppies.

Among the dead of that war are 147,690 soldiers whose names are recorded on the Scottish national war memorial at Edinburgh castle. One of those names is that of my maternal great-grandfather, John Maclauchan, of the seventh battalion Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, who was killed in April 1917 in Arras. The date of his death is recorded as 5 April, but the battalion chaplain wrote to my great-grandmother to say that he died on 4 April. The circumstances in which ordinary private soldiers died was not normally recorded, but in that instance it was referred to in the regimental war diary, as the regiment was in a rest area away from the front line. The diary says:

“From the 3rd to the 7th of April the Battalion was billeted in the cellars of the Grand Place, Arras, preparatory to the battle. The shelling by the enemy was now considerable, but we only suffered two casualties.”

My great-grandfather was one of the two killed during that period—no name recorded, nothing. I still have his dog tags and a letter from the chaplain to his widow. I was also the first in my family to visit his grave in Arras and lay a poppy wreath in his memory.

That war was supposed to be the war to end all wars—a phrase first used by the author HG Wells, who felt that that war would finally put an end to the sort of Governments and attitudes that brought war about. It is important that we remember Scotland’s war dead by wearing a red poppy in the hope that, one day, Governments across the world will no longer send young men and women to war.

Poppies are worn in many countries around the world as an act of remembrance. We should remember that it was a French woman, Anna Guérin, who was the originator of the remembrance poppy day. Initially, her poppy days benefited the widows and orphans of the war-devastated regions of France. She was christened “the poppy lady from France” after being invited to address the American Legion, at its 1920 convention, about her original inter-allied poppy day idea.

Artificial poppies were first sold in Britain in 1921 to raise money for the Earl Haig Fund and were supplied by Anna Guérin. Selling poppies proved so popular that, in 1922, the British Legion founded a factory to produce its own. The first Scottish poppy factory opened in 1926, in the grounds of Whitefoord House, across the road from the Parliament, in an old wood-chopping factory. Since 2019, Poppyscotland’s temporary home has been located at the Redford barracks, in my constituency, to allow the refurbishment of the factory at Canonmills. The team of 34 veterans hand produces more than 5 million poppies and 15,000 wreaths every year. The staff will move back to the place in Canonmills that has been their home since 1965 after this year’s poppy appeal ends.

The red poppy is a simple and minimal tribute to those who have laid down their lives in the service of their country. The 2020 Scottish poppy appeal raised £2.3 million, which supported the armed forces community in six areas, providing financial support and advice, as well as help with employment, mobility, housing and mental health.

Like many in the chamber, I will be attending a community remembrance service on Sunday to remember my family members who paid the ultimate price.

Do other witnesses want to come in on that question?

I am glad that we have started to talk about labour shortages. I will address this question to Melanie Simms, to start with. The Office for National Statistics produced figures last month that showed that vacancies across the UK had passed 1.1 million for the first time in history. The number of payroll employees was a record 29 million, which surpassed pre-pandemic levels. Do we have a problem with a labour shortages or a skills gap? What can the Scottish Government—or the UK Government, for that matter—do to address those issues?

What can the Scottish and UK Governments do to address labour shortages?

I want to put the same question to Paul Hunter. We can look at vacancies by sector. Vacancies have increased by 50 per cent since 2016.

We are looking at sectors that have been hit hardest by inefficient supply chains. We have already heard that in transportation and storage the number of vacancies is between 76,000 and 100,000. In manufacturing, vacancies have increased by 63 per cent, and in construction they have increased by 79 per cent since 2016. In written evidence to the committee, the Construction Industry Training Board said that 26,000 more people will be required by 2025. Can Paul Hunter give some indication of how we can address that problem as it hits us in the next couple of years?