Chamber and committees

I am glad that Gillian Martin has raised that point, as I was just about to come to it. That is what we should have spent the past two hours talking about—the regional unfairness.

In some ways, the debate was summed up by a combination of Willie Rennie and Alasdair Allan. Alasdair Allan highlighted the very real difference that the EU structural funds made. What we should have been talking about is how we can ensure that such funding continues so that we see delivery of the investment in roads and infrastructure that our remote and rural communities need. To be frank, the amount that has been offered will not do that.

Similarly, we should have been focusing on how we can deliver in partnership. Willie Rennie might want to call it federalism; I call it redistribution and the pooling and sharing of resources. That is what unions are based on, and, if the Conservatives are serious about defending the union and making sure that we do not see the break-up of the country, they should be seeking to strengthen devolution, not undermine it or thumb their nose at it. They know that they have bypassed it, and they should be careful before they continue in that manner. Simply annoying SNP ministers is not a great outcome. They should be seeking to make a real difference in our communities, because we have real inequalities.

SNP ministers often cite the example of the south-east of England and the way that it draws disproportionate resource, but we have our own south-east problem here, in Scotland. In Edinburgh, gross domestic product per head is £38,000. Just 60 miles away, in Dundee, it is £20,000, and with that comes economic inactivity at 27 per cent. Over a third of children in Dundee grow up in poverty. In Scotland, we have inequality such that the wealthiest areas deliver 2.5 times the level of gross value added of the least wealthy areas.

That is what we should be talking about—how we level up our regions and tackle those inequalities, which result in poverty, loss of opportunities, shortened life spans and gross social injustice. That is the debate that we should have had this afternoon, and that is what we should be discussing. We should be hearing about Scotland’s levelling up programme rather than disagreeing about constitutional grievances.

Will the minister take an intervention?

Will the minister give way?

Will the member take an intervention?

We are, without doubt, facing the greatest moment of economic upheaval in about 80 years. In that context, Labour welcomes a debate about industrial strategy, the role of patient capital and the role of the state in investment. The issue that we have is that, one year on, rather than just celebrating the creation of the Scottish National Investment Bank—which, indeed, we do—we really need to ask what is next. We need to ask what role the bank should play in the recovery that we must ensure happens. We need to ask ourselves what its role is in transition further to the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—COP26.

Instead, however, we have a Government motion that is a little complacent. I listened to the cabinet secretary’s speech and I would not disagree with a word that she said about the need for the investment bank. She rehearsed the logic of its creation instead of exploring its strategic challenges and how they will change, as they need to, in the light of COP26 and the pandemic.

Even in narrower terms—I was grateful for the cabinet secretary’s response to my intervention—there are serious questions about the bank’s long-term financing, because, even at £2 billion, it is questionable whether the bank will achieve the scale that she correctly identifies as being critical to its success.

Without doubt, that is important. The ability to draw in wider private investment is critical, but that is not really my question. My key question is how we are going to achieve that £2 billion of capitalisation. We cannot have patient capital if the bank is not sufficiently capitalised.

There are broader issues regarding enterprise support and policy in the round. Despite the creation of the bank, the Government is spending approximately 40 per cent less, in real terms, on enterprise support than it was spending 10 years ago. Nor has the focus of enterprise support improved. Five years ago, the Government spent a great deal of time discussing the need to streamline and simplify the enterprise support landscape, but, since then, we have seen the creation of two new agencies and three new boards. The truth is that enterprise policy has seen an erosion in funding, and the bodies and the system that the Government has put in place are more confusing. We need to address that, but the Government has failed to use the opportunity of this debate to do so.

The motion mentions a role for the Scottish National Investment Bank in the drive to net zero. That is important, but we need to develop more detail on precisely how it should do that and what the focus should be. I welcome the investments that have been made to date, such as that in Nova, which was name-checked by the cabinet secretary, but I met renewables firms yesterday and they were clear that much more needs to be done to encourage innovation and growth in the sector.

We are simply not learning the lessons that Denmark learned 30 years ago, when it seeded the creation of the wind turbine industry there. Nor are we seeing any proposals, as suggested by agencies such as South of Scotland Enterprise, for the investment bank to act as an aggregator so that this crucial sector—and, indeed, others—can benefit.

The Scottish National Investment Bank was created to provide finance where the market fails to do so. The past 20 months have seen the greatest disruption to business as usual that we could imagine. The impacts of Covid, which in turn have created supply chain challenges, have left businesses in turmoil. We need to understand the role that the bank can play so that businesses can weather the current short-to-medium term instability and realise longer-term success. Once again, however, we see nothing on that in the Government’s motion for this debate.

The Scottish National Investment Bank is welcome, but we must be clear: the motion and the use of parliamentary time for it are a missed opportunity. We face big challenges. We need to make big changes, and a state investment bank has a critical part to play. That is why we have raised the issues in our amendment. The Government should be using its parliamentary time to discuss those big issues and to invite big ideas. We will not always agree, but the Government might find it useful to dare to use parliamentary time in that broader and more ambitious way.

I move amendment S6M-02127.2, to leave out from the second “notes” to end and insert:

“considers that the inadequate progress made by the bank in creating green jobs for the future has hindered Scotland’s wider economic recovery from the impact of the pandemic and the transition to net zero; believes that the bank will be unable to make the socio-economic impact it was intended to achieve due to insufficient funding; further believes that other enterprise agencies have also faced real-term cuts at a time that they should be focussing on Scotland’s economic recovery, and calls on the Scottish Government to repurpose Scottish Enterprise as a business recovery agency to work in partnership with other regional enterprise agencies in order to grow Scotland’s economy.”

The cabinet secretary is quite right about scale, so I note with concern that the amount of financial transactions money coming through in the coming financial year is significantly down on previous years. Given that that money is the primary source of financing, does that call into question the ability to scale? If so, what is the Government’s plan to address that?

I will in a moment.

We need to see £200 million or thereabouts per year, but we know that the financial transactions money is reducing. That is a headache, to quote the cabinet secretary, but there is a not a word in the Government’s motion about how it is going to address that. If the cabinet secretary has something to add on that, I would be grateful and I will take her intervention.

I would be grateful if the cabinet secretary would explain that a little. In the amendment, I explicitly address the wider context. Forgive me, but I fail to understand what bit I do not understand. I was not commenting on the detail of the investments.

I begin by expressing my condolences to all those who have lost a loved one to the virus, and I pay tribute to all those in the health service who are on the front line of battling the pandemic.

What the Deputy First Minster stated in relation to the prospect of rolling out vaccination passports in more contexts will be of significant concern to those who run hospitality businesses, especially given the broad and non-specific nature of his statement. Will he clarify the following things? What process and timeline will the Government adhere to in examining the roll-out of vaccination passports? Will the Government publish further evidence on transmission in hospitality settings and will the Deputy First Minister confirm whether a negative test will be accepted in lieu of a vaccination passport?

In relation to enforcement, the hospitality industry raised the point with me last week that, although nightclubs have door staff and therefore have a natural point to check such things, cafes do not have door staff, so the practicalities of checking vaccination passports in those contexts is hugely more challenging.

I also ask about the booster programme. I, too, welcome the landmark that we have reached in the programme, but its progress continues to be variable. In my area, people are waiting two to three hours to receive their booster. The accessibility of the location of vaccination sites is problematic, and the promise of combined flu and booster jabs being given at the same time is not a reality. There are very variable roll-out rates across health board areas, so what steps will the Government take to support health boards that are struggling to roll out the booster vaccines?