Chamber and committees

Good morning, panel. To follow on from Murdo Fraser’s question, the impact of the budget was hugely deflating for many businesses in the south of Scotland. Hospitality businesses were looking for that additional rates relief. The concerns over that are obviously well documented. What may not be as well documented, though, are the wider issues around business rates, which I know that you have strong views on. Leon Thompson touched on that at the beginning when he said that turnover has risen among a lot of businesses, which is positive, but not to the same scale as costs—energy costs, staff costs and everything else—have risen, so profit margins have fallen. Obviously, that has a big impact on business rates, given that we calculate business rates for hospitality on the basis of turnover. Given those issues, can you say a little bit more about what the sector is looking for from the wider reform of business rates?

So, the idea of using turnover should continue. If you were to reduce the poundage—

Thank you for that, minister.

One of the challenges that the committee has had is in fully assessing the likely impact on jobs should the refinery close in spring 2025. It has been suggested that there will be a net loss of 400 direct jobs, but it is clear that the potential job losses will include indirect, supply chain jobs, particularly in the local area. Does the UK Government have clear figures for how many direct jobs and, crucially, indirect jobs are likely to be lost if the refinery closes in spring 2025?

Crucially, many of the opportunities that you talk about are in offshore wind, for example. You talked about Robert Gordon University in the north-east of Scotland. What is the UK Government able to do to ensure that those opportunities in the Grangemouth area exist for the workforce, particularly the supply chain workers in the local community? With the best will in the world, a transition should not be about workers having to leave their communities to find opportunities. We should be trying to create those opportunities in their local communities.

Good morning, minister. I want to follow up on the point about when the UK Government was first made aware of concerns about the future of the refinery. It has been suggested in recent days that, two years ago, the Scottish Government held talks with Petroineos in which the then Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport, Michael Matheson, was warned of the refinery’s potential closure because of the market pressures that the company faced. Is it therefore fair to say that the UK Government was aware two years ago of the potential closure of the refinery because of market pressures and the direction of travel that we are following for the energy transition?

It seems strange that, if we are trying to support the company and the community to transition, we do not really have a full grasp of the number of jobs that we need to support. Are you confident that the new opportunities in the energy sector will be available in time to allow the workforce—whatever the number of people in supply and direct jobs is—to transition to new opportunities in the Grangemouth area?

Is the end of March a target for introducing a skills passport or simply for reporting back on the work?

Okay. In its evidence, Scottish Renewables pointed out that many workers in the sector have had to fund reskilling or upskilling out of their own pockets. Unite the union estimated that that had cost workers about £2,000. Skills Development Scotland stated that there is capacity in the skills development pipeline

“if we get the financial resource to apply to it”—[Official Report, Economy and Fair Work Committee, 15 November 2023; c.59.]

to support apprenticeships, for example. Is the Government doing enough to support workers to reskill, given the fact that they have to fund that themselves in many cases? What further action does the Government plan to take to support them?

On the issue of skills, during the committee’s evidence taking, we heard criticism from the Just Transition Partnership that a skills passport has not been delivered despite its having been committed to in 2021. Why has progress towards delivering the skills passport stalled? When can workers expect to see it delivered?

Funding is crucial to this. Unite the union has pointed out that workers have had to pay £2,000 to reskill themselves. You mentioned Skills Development Scotland and apprenticeships, but we have seen that provision being reduced. I will again quote the evidence of SDS to the committee. It stated:

“for skills, we need more revenue resource for training activities.”—[Official Report, Economy and Fair Work Committee, 15 November 2023; c.69.]

The recent budget proposes a £4.1 million cut to the SDS budget, and the skills budget is being cut from £50.6 million to £36.9 million. We are also seeing cuts to colleges’ budgets. If we already have a problem whereby workers are effectively funding their reskilling themselves, and reductions are being made to funding, where do you see the funding coming from to support workers?

Kevin Stewart raised the point about the transition fund but, again, Skills Development Scotland told the committee—this is the point that Kevin made—that that is mainly capital, when it is revenue that is needed. I am curious about where the funding to tackle the issue will come from. What sort of proposal does the Government have?