Chamber and committees

I simply do not agree with Mr Johnson. I think that Brexit presents real opportunities for people right across the UK and, in years to come, I believe that we will see that it was the right decision.

I do not expect the SNP to let the facts get in the way of constitutional grievance. I will not say who does gloomy better, but it is clear that Michael Russell has passed the baton of Brexit doom-mongering on to Richard Lochhead. That trademark tactic is a sure-fire sign that the SNP is in trouble, and it is no wonder that it wants to create a smokescreen, because its record on skills speaks for itself. The SNP promises future action, but talk is cheap.

The member makes an important point. Those things are all parts of the package, but skilled job opportunities already exist in our economy. We have to find a better way of supporting people to move into the jobs that exist, and we need to help them to train to take advantage of those opportunities.

That does not mean just dipping our toe in the water; it means getting behind system-wide change and acknowledging that the SNP Government’s plans for apprenticeships do not go far enough. That is why the Scottish Conservatives want unlimited apprenticeships for Scotland’s young people. We want a demand-led model that ensures that funded places reflect employer and economy needs, not just arbitrary and unambitious SNP targets.

It also means recognising that progress is all but impossible in an environment where college funding has been cut to the bone and our further education sector is looking at how to survive in the here and now rather than helping to drive future strategy or supporting learners to gain the skills and knowledge that they need to fulfil their potential and benefit our economy.

If the SNP Government is serious about skills, can it explain why we have a trend of decreasing college student numbers on its watch? Rather than hang their heads in shame, SNP ministers come to the chamber and defend the indefensible. They hide behind grudge and grievance. Why did Richard Lochhead not turbo-charge the college sector when he was responsible for it? Was Brexit to blame?

Likewise, in the here and now, colleges and universities are being badly served by this Government, which seems not to understand the urgency of getting back to face-to-face, small-group learning. It is almost impossible to see how we can properly prepare learners in technical and science-based subjects without enabling some in-person tuition.

Thousands of short-term, part-time places have been cut. That is not the feedback that I get from my constituents. The minister says that members should go away and listen to people. I think that he should reflect on what people in the college sector—and, I suspect, many of his constituents—are saying.

At the height of the pandemic, we needed to be cautious, and we need to be cautious now, but we also need to find a pragmatic balance that recognises the consequences of holding back another year of learners in our further and higher education settings. With lead times for starting up new courses being anywhere from six to eight weeks, we urgently need a plan to be set out now. We were able to do it for schools, so let us not pretend that it is impossible to set out a detailed route map for further and higher education.

I turn to the most ridiculous and hypocritical part of the motion. Let us remember that we are in the midst of the greatest challenge that humankind has faced in generations and the whole planet is continuing to grapple with the effects of Covid-19. Here, in Scotland, the Scottish Fiscal Commission has forecast that our economy will not return to pre-pandemic levels until at least 2024, and businesses that have been unable to trade for over 400 days are still being forced by law to close their doors. Many people continue to experience the health consequences of Covid.

In that context, most Governments are rightly focused on protecting jobs, remobilising health services and making sure that young people catch up on lost learning, not to mention trying to roll out vaccinations to their populations.

The huge difference between Brexit and Scottish independence is that we had already set an exit date for leaving the EU before the pandemic started. Throughout those negotiations, as we have seen during the vaccine debacle and in Northern Ireland, the EU was probably the least reasonable negotiator on the planet, so the idea that we could have knocked back our exit from the EU and got a better deal than the Government delivered is fanciful.

Meanwhile, the Scottish Government is willing to put our recovery at risk by continuing unnecessarily to dangle over our country the prospect of a further divisive referendum, which the people of Scotland did not vote for—unlike the people of the UK, who did vote to leave the EU. There seems to be no acceptance of reality or the huge uncertainty and instability that a referendum would fuel. I cannot see how SNP ministers have the bare-faced cheek to come to this chamber and tell us that Brexit is having a negative effect on the labour market but that, somehow, putting up a hard border at Gretna would be a positive. Not only would it be a huge betrayal of the many people, families, businesses and organisations across the country who are treading water just to survive; it would be a massive distraction from tackling the issues that we are discussing today.

Therefore, rather than stoking up the arguments of the past, whether they be on Brexit or independence, we need a Government that is willing to pull its finger out and get on with using the powers that it has to do something to address the skills shortage that it has overseen.

I move amendment S6M-00382.1, to leave out from “that employers in sectors” to end and insert:

“the changing labour market and the potential skills shortages created and highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic and calls on the Scottish Government to take further action to mitigate these shortages, including creating more apprenticeships, reversing the trend of decreasing college student numbers that has occurred under the current SNP administration, setting out plans for a return to in-person small group learning in higher and further education and introducing Individual Learning Accounts as called for by CBI Scotland; notes the need to work constructively with the UK Government to maximise the opportunities for Scotland outside of the EU, and calls on the Scottish Government to avoid needless disruption to the labour market by abandoning its plans to hold a divisive independence referendum while Scotland is recovering from a global pandemic.”

Will the member give way?

Listening to the minister, it would be all too easy to forget that we are assembled here in the world’s most powerful devolved Parliament—a Parliament with the power to change the lives of people in Scotland for the better. In a tidal wave of doom, members would be forgiven for letting the fact that we have a Government that is answerable to this chamber, and that could act not tomorrow but today, wash over them.

The people of Scotland deserve better. They deserve better than a Scottish National Party Government that has had coming on for 15 years to do something about such issues, and better than ministers who have the brass neck to come here and voice disquiet about the action of others, but who have nothing to say about the fact that they have been caught out doing nothing themselves.

Although the events of the past year—whether we are talking about the global health pandemic or the decision of the people of the United Kingdom to forge a new future outside the European Union—have made the skills shortage more visible, the truth is that those events did not create it. No—our skills shortage was created here in Scotland, and telling us that someone else is responsible will not solve it. Instead, we need a bit of humility and honesty from the SNP. Of course, I am not expecting us to get that.

Does Daniel Johnson agree that it is a good thing to see tariffs on Scotch whisky removed?

Will the member give way?

Certainly.

I think that Mr Lochhead is incorrect in that recollection. Although it is true that our immigration system needs to work better, many sectors of the Scottish economy value having a UK-wide immigration system. We need proposals that work not only for people here in Scotland but for the United Kingdom as a whole. That is what the people of Scotland backed when they voted to stay part of the UK back in 2014.

The SNP forever promises that it will act. It forever promises new plans and proposals on skills, but it does not back them up with the level of commitment or investment that is needed. We know that a skills revolution and mass retraining is possible. To see that, we do not need to look much further than the events of the past year.

I do not claim that this is a positive example, but it shows that it can be done. There are literally thousands of people across Scotland who have shown that it is possible to reskill and retrain in a heartbeat—sadly, not because they wanted to, but because they had to. Throughout the pandemic, we have seen numerous examples, including the bar workers who started driving delivery vans, the chefs who moved into construction, the beauticians who worked in supermarkets, the tour guides who became home carers and the theatre costume designers who turned their hand to manufacturing face masks. Each and every one of them are unsung heroes of this pandemic who have gone above and beyond, not just to look after their own families, but those of others, too.

However, the truth is that that type of thing should be normal and not exceptional. In normal and not exceptional times, it should be driven by individual choice and not just by economic need, and it should be supported by the Government, because gone are the days of a job for life.

It is time to get serious about supporting people to retrain and upskill, and that means moving past a point where we expect the majority of learning and training to be completed by the age of 22. It means adopting much more innovative and flexible policies such as the individual learning accounts that CBI Scotland is promoting, which would mean people being incentivised and financially supported to enhance their skill sets at key points in their lives.