Chamber and committees

Thanks very much.

The Labour Government’s changes to visa regulations, including those relating to salary thresholds, visa fees and sponsor licences, have created chronic staff shortages. What discussions have Scottish Government ministers had with their UK counterparts regarding caring roles being added to the shortage occupation list in order to ease visa restrictions?

Scotland’s defence sector, which covers aerospace, defence and security, is valued at £3.2 billion and directly supports more than 33,000 jobs. I acknowledge the sector’s importance, although I believe that it should, over time, diversify towards commercial activities, ensuring that Scotland remains a hub for manufacturing and innovation. However, what I cannot accept is that parts of Scotland’s defence industry are manufacturing components such as systems for the Paveway smart bombs that are used by the Israeli air force in Gaza.

A 2021 investigation by The Ferret website revealed that Scottish defence companies have supplied components for Israel’s F-16 and F-35 aircraft, rocket systems and engines for G550 surveillance aircraft, all of which are likely to have been deployed over Gaza. Over the past decade, the UK Government has licensed hundreds of millions of pounds in arms exports to Israel, including bombs, drones, grenades, small arms, tanks and missiles.

Despite public pressure, the UK Labour Government has suspended fewer than 10 per cent of arms export licences to Israel. I urge the UK Government to halt all defence-related export licences to Israel until the killing of Palestinians stops.

What is happening in Palestine reminds me of how, from 1974 to 1978, the workers at the Rolls-Royce factory in East Kilbride refused to work on Chilean air force plane parts because of the atrocities that were being committed by the Pinochet dictatorship. That boycott—a powerful act of solidarity with the people of Chile—grounded half of Chile’s air force, as the film “Nae Pasaran” documents. It is time that trade unions across the UK took a similar stance to those East Kilbride workers 50 years ago in order to stop the genocide that is being committed by Israel.

Defence is an important sector, but it is important to recognise the size of the industry, as it accounts for just over 2 per cent of Scotland’s economy, as measured by gross value added, and is worth 5 per cent of the UK’s £62 billion defence budget. Thankfully, Scotland’s economy is diverse and resilient, and non-defence sectors drive nearly 98 per cent of GVA. All key parts of Scotland’s economy—land use, energy, construction and non-defence manufacturing—are worth more than, or equal, the defence sector’s contribution.

As with most parts of the UK, Scotland’s economy depends on the service sector. Individual sectors—such as information and communications; finance and insurance; professional, scientific and technical research; tourism and hospitality; retail and wholesaling; real estate; health; and education—are worth more to the Scottish economy than the defence sector is when it comes to GVA. I welcome the support that the Scottish Government provides in order to encourage that continued diversity. I also welcome the fact that, since it was first elected, the Scottish Government has invested £45 million in companies that are involved in defence contracts.

The motion refers to a Scottish Enterprise grant that was not awarded to Rolls-Royce to support

“specialist naval welding”

training

“for submarine construction”.

However, it overlooks the fact that most expenditure and work on the nuclear submarines will occur in Barrow-in-Furness in north-west England. It also fails to note the Scottish Government’s £2 million investment in engineering skills in the Glasgow city region, which was developed by the Clyde maritime cluster in partnership with Skills Development Scotland. I question why Rolls-Royce Holdings, which has a turnover of £18.9 billion and £2.5 billion in net profit, requires public funding of £2.5 million for a skills centre to fulfil its contracts.

To ask the Scottish Government what proportion of care home providers have reported recruitment difficulties since the United Kingdom left the European Union. (S6O-04808)

I accept that there must be a certain number of empty houses, but what is driving the demand for additional social housing? Is it family breakdowns or is it the fact that 62,000 households in Scotland are facing repossession due to mortgage costs?

I have a quick supplementary question. I am trying to understand why there is a housing emergency. I had a look this morning and found that the National Records of Scotland highlights that there are 2.7 million dwellings in Scotland and just over 2.5 million households. That is an excess of 150,000 houses over the number of households in Scotland, according to the National Records of Scotland.

Why is there a housing emergency when we seem to have 150,000 more houses than we need? I am happy to hear from anybody. Any volunteers?

I accept that, but the difficulty for me is that the City of Edinburgh Council declared a housing emergency when it was sitting on 1,500 empty council houses. The council has, in recent months, managed to halve that, which is a fantastic achievement, but why declare a housing emergency when it was sitting on 1,500 empty council houses?

I want to return to my favourite subject, which is empty homes. I want to know what is working well and what is not working well. I have already highlighted that there are more than 150,000 empty homes. While I accept that there is a need for some empty homes, we have: more than 90,000 empty homes in the private sector, about half of which have been empty for more than a year; more than 24,000 second homes; and more than 20,000 short-term lets. We talked about the council voids, which at one point were at 12,000. We also have roughly 1,000 empty Ministry of Defence properties across Scotland, including some in Edinburgh recently. Among the various schemes—the doubling of the council tax, the additional dwelling supplement, and the funds to purchase empty homes for the private sector—what is working well and what is not working well in getting empty homes back into use?

Thank you.

Do you have any information about the proportion of spend across the bodies that are listed in the bill? I am talking about local authorities and the health service for example. Have you guys done any work on that?