Good morning, and welcome to the second meeting in 2026 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee. This morning we will continue our scrutiny of the Scottish Government’s draft climate change plan, and then we will commence our stage 2 deliberations on the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill.
Laurie Macfarlane, who had been due to join the panel of witnesses this morning, has had to give his apologies, and Claire Greer from GMB Scotland has been held up but should join us. However, I am pleased to say that we are joined by Dougie Maguire, lead officer for the passenger sector in Scotland, from Unite the Union, and Ryan Morrison, just transition officer, from the Scottish Trades Union Congress.
I will open up the questions by handing the floor to Lorna Slater.
I thank the witnesses for coming to the committee this morning—it is lovely to see you. I am a member of Unite the Union, and it is always good to have the unions before the committee.
My first question is about how the transition to a net zero economy will change the shape of our economy. I have been reading that, globally, investment in clean energy is double the current investment in fossil fuels. What does that mean for economic success in Scotland as we transition? How does the climate change plan affect our competitiveness, and how does it compare with what other countries are doing? Is it how we will move forward and improve our economy, or are we disadvantaging ourselves? What are the opportunities and how do we make sure that we seize them?
The changes to the economy will be wide ranging. There are interesting specifics to focus on, in particular in the energy sector, and the climate change plan and a lot of the discussion of the just transition do so. Some of our main concerns in that regard, which we feel are not fully appreciated, or are not having action taken on them, are about the level of investment, the return in jobs and the local benefit from renewable energy sources compared with oil, gas and nuclear. Some of the figures that we published recently in our analysis of the Office for National Statistics low carbon and renewable energy economy figures show significantly lower job returns per million pounds of turnover in offshore and onshore wind compared with those in oil and gas as well as with those in other forms of renewable energy in other parts of the low-carbon economy.
Focus on the manufacturing side is needed, as we are not in the right place to take advantage of the opportunities. The climate change plan talks about the position that Scotland is in to capitalise on emerging opportunities—we would probably disagree about whether we are in such a position. Scotland is in a good position to develop renewable energy capacity and build a transition to alternative energy sources, but we would probably disagree that we are in a good position for a just transition in that respect. I think that that is what workers are feeling and experiencing. Dougie Maguire can probably speak to that more directly.
I am happy to give the committee a worker’s perspective. In addition to responsibility in relation to passenger transport in Scotland, we have an overview of the oil and gas and energy sectors. I cannot go into much detail, but the feedback that we have had consistently over the past 18 months to two years, in particular from oil and gas sector workers, is that they absolutely support the drive to green energy through harnessing wind and securing the gigabytes that are required to deliver it for the offshore side.
It is a fantastic vision, but the difficulty is that, as Ryan Morrison mentioned—this fact comes up in every conversation—at the moment, there are no jobs to transition to. Government policy and regulation have a major impact across Scotland; for example, in the past 12 to 18 months, 13,000 jobs have been lost in the oil and gas sector. That has seriously affected workers from the north-east of Scotland down to the north-east of England, because oil and gas sector workers come from right across the country.
Many of those workers have taken advantage of the training that is available, but very few of them have managed to transition into green jobs. Worse than that, in my opinion, is the fact that, last year, SSE, which is a major player in the offshore wind sector, made 450 highly skilled workers redundant because the regulation had not resulted in SSE’s objectives for 2025-26 being achieved. Yesterday, I saw that it is advertising for 600 trainee technicians, so those skilled workers have been lost. Wherever they lived, those communities have lost that income, as people have had to move abroad to find similar work. We find that many people in the oil and gas sector end up plying their trade in the Scandinavian countries, Africa or the middle east. That situation comes on the back of the on-going issues that we have with Mossmorran and what has emanated from the disastrous closure of the last oil refinery in Scotland.
I do not think that anyone with any common sense would argue with the position that we have opportunities in Scotland and that the drive to green energy is absolutely imperative, but that is not matched up—I do not think that we are anywhere near being able to deliver the number of jobs that are required to offset the jobs that are being lost, in particular in oil and gas, and neither do my members.
We are also finding problems in the manufacturing sector because of the contraction across the world due to America’s tariffs. Employers are having issues, and some are trying to move manufacturing to other countries. Recently, we were involved in a bit of a battle with a company in Glenrothes that is trying to implement fire and rehire, because it could have its work done cheaper elsewhere.
I do not know how we arrive at where everybody wants to be, but it is clear that the biggest issue for workers, and the big problem that we all have, is that it seems to be jam tomorrow—it is not happening quickly enough to fill the gap. Until we get to that point, how do we manage to create a more equal society? That is the issue, as I see it.
We heard from witnesses last week that they felt that the plan was more of an emissions reduction plan than a climate change plan, because it did not incorporate things such as resilience building and adaptability—which goes back to what Dougie Maguire was saying about what we do in the meantime, until jam tomorrow arrives. I am curious to hear your thoughts on the credibility of the plan as a climate change plan and what it means for the people you represent.
I agree with that comment. There is a pretty simple analogy for me—I will speak about passenger transport. The public and our members who work in the bus industry welcome the fact that new electric buses have been arriving at speed. They seem to be working, they seem to be comfortable and they seem to be doing the job, and they will mean that there will be a reduction in emissions. The issue for us is that those buses are built overseas, not in Scotland, which will not help our future economy. Secondly, although we are trying to reduce emissions in the passenger transport industry and from heavy goods vehicles, that is only one part of the issue, is it not?
Until we come to a fairer position in society where we provide communities with the transport that they need, when they need it, at an affordable price, there will still be—at least for the next five to six years—higher-emission vehicles travelling on the roads.
For me, the simple issue is that, while we are concentrating on passenger transport, HGVs, ferries and airports, the absolute boom in white vans running about every street in every town and city in Scotland delivering parcels is probably creating more emissions than the rest of the industry put together. We have completely skewed the economy. Town centres are no longer the place to go, but they are where the majority of bus stations are, despite the fact that the majority of people who still go out shopping go to retail parks, which do not have the same bus services or facilities. I am not having a go at people who are trying to make a living delivering goods in a white van, but the truth of the matter is that there has been an explosion in that activity. Have we ever quantified the emissions that that produces? That is probably more of a question than an answer—sorry about that.
Lorna Slater mentioned the climate change plan being seen as more of an emissions reduction plan. We have done a lot of engagement on the Scottish national adaptation plan—SNAP3—in the past year. What it covers is probably not particularly well covered in the climate change plan, but maybe that is an appropriate distinction between SNAP and the CCP.
We have concerns on that point. We have seen significant issues during recent severe weather and have had contact from trade union members about their experiences in storm Éowyn and the recent snowstorms, in particular in Aberdeenshire. We find that workers are often poorly protected in extreme weather events. Employment law and workers’ rights are not very clear on the issue, so it is not clear to workers whether they are able to miss work or not travel when it is dangerous and there are red weather warnings, or whether doing so would lead to deductions in pay, for instance. We know of examples of workers being told that they have to travel or they will lose pay. That puts them in a situation where, even during a red weather warning, they need to decide either to travel, even though the expert advice is that there is a severe risk to life, or to forgo their pay. That is just not a viable choice for people to have to make.
We are keen to work to improve that situation. We have been trying to build on the fair work charter for severe weather that was agreed after the beast from the east; we think that it could probably be updated to better reflect the expectation that severe weather will become more frequent and perhaps more severe. That issue is not reflected in the climate change plan, which, to me, looks more like an emissions reduction plan than something that addresses wider issues such as adaptation or resilience.
In the second half of your question you mentioned credibility, Ms Slater. Dougie Maguire, Claire Greer and I will inevitably come back to that issue, because I do not think that we are in a particularly strong position on credibility with trade union members when it comes to these policies and the general just transition agenda, for the reasons that Dougie has outlined. A lot of workers feel nervous about the conversation and do not feel confident when they read the plan. I would not feel confident if I were a worker in one of these sectors reading the plan. I do not think that the plan offers the level of security that workers would expect in relation to their jobs and the future of their jobs as part of a just transition.
Thank you.
I will bring in Murdo Fraser.
Good morning. I would like to follow up Lorna Slater’s questions and ask more about the costs in the plan, and costs to the wider economy.
We have seen an element of deindustrialisation in Scotland in the past short time, with Grangemouth and Mossmorran closing. Many of the things that we used to produce in Scotland are no longer produced here, because of high energy costs. We are still using those things, but we are importing them from other countries, so all we have done is export our carbon emissions elsewhere. That makes us look good because it reduces our emissions, but it does not deliver any net benefit in terms of reducing CO₂ emissions worldwide, and it means that we lose the jobs that are here.
I have just been looking at prices in the contracts for difference allocation round 7. For offshore wind, the latest price is £90 per MWh.
Of course, that does not include the cost of building the new transmission or the cost of the storage back-up that is required for wind. Compared with that £90 per MWh figure, gas is priced at just under £55 per MWh. If we are trying to decarbonise, we need to move away from gas, but what does that mean? Is there a real concern that we will lose our industrial capacity because we are going for higher-priced energy?
09:15
I am happy to speak to some aspects of that. The deindustrialisation that we have noted has been quite a consistent theme over the past few decades, in particular with manufacturing jobs being lost to overseas. From our perspective, there is a range of reasons for that, most of which come back to the way in which we view the manufacturing sector and how we have managed these industries.
We see ownership as a fairly key component. I do not think that we should be waiting for decisions to be made overseas by particular companies when we could have a greater stake in those sectors and greater control over them. Climate change is going to result in a significant industrial and economic transformation—
Can I interrupt you just for a second? Regardless of who owns the companies, they are going to face the same challenges with energy costs, are they not?
Yes, and we have had conversations with some of the sectors included in the climate change plan—that is, energy-intensive industries such as glass works and cement works. You mentioned electricity prices; they are a massive issue, and they make those industries extremely uncompetitive, not just domestically but in comparison with European counterparts. Our electricity use, by industry in particular, is higher.
It is something for those companies to look at. The message in the plan is that they should be looking to pursue electrification; we support that as part of the general climate change agenda, but it is important that we talk about the pricing issue and whether it has been adequately resolved, because there is a risk that those companies become uncompetitive.
What is your view on the costs set out in the plan and how it is all to be paid for? Do you think that the plan deals with that sufficiently?
I cannot say that I have gone through the plan with a fine-toothed comb, but it does talk about the balance of net costs and the potential costs of climate inaction, which is an interesting comparison to make.
What I think is interesting on the finance side is the commentary on the net benefits to households, and the section that outlines where and in which sectors those benefits are most likely to come from. A really significant proportion of them will come from the transition to electric vehicles. I would say that, from a just transition perspective, we would have some concerns if the primary economic benefit is to come from that transition. As Dougie Maguire has mentioned, we are interested in the expansion of public transport, and buses in particular, given that they are used predominantly by lower-income households. Moreover, who will have access to the brand-new electric vehicles that might be coming on stream?
There is not sufficient detail in the plan on who will benefit from this transition. From what it says, it appears that the net costs will be factored into the wider cost of climate inaction.
Thank you.
I have a brief supplementary. You mentioned glass making and cement works. It is my understanding that this is a question not just of the price of electricity, but of the fundamental technology for electric heating. The fact is that, in its current state, the technology is not sufficient to provide enough heat for those processes. Has there been sufficient effort to look at the fundamental technology, especially for those high-heat processes for which, right now, we do not have any practical, let alone cost-effective, alternatives? Do we need effort to be put into research and development, and does that need to be part of the plan?
Yes, certainly, but one of the reasons for that situation might be that the industrial electricity price is such a significant barrier at this point in time that it is not worth considering until we know for certain that those prices are going to change.
Even if we were to look beyond electrification to other energy sources such as hydrogen—under certain plans, we might be looking at using, say, green hydrogen—we still come back to the same issue of the cost of electricity, in particular for industrial use. Some interesting work could be done on power purchase agreements and more localised purchase of electricity, which is something that the major industrial energy users might consider, in particular with the growth of offshore wind electricity generation.
The question for our energy-intensive industries is one not just of energy sourcing but of the raw materials and feedstocks, and I do not think that that conversation is happening in a particularly comprehensive way anywhere. That is of significant concern to us; after all, the sector is also included in the green industrial strategy. It is not clear to us, from a just transition perspective, whether the workers would have confidence in how the sector is being described or discussed within the plan.
That was helpful. I call Sarah Boyack.
As a member of the Unison and Community trade unions, I want to note that is good to have you in front of us today.
There is a real issue around who pays for what and when, and you have talked about job losses and people not having opportunities. How can we ramp up the potential opportunities across every community? You talked about energy, too. I have seen a comment on the need for regional just transition planning, so that people are involved across the country and know where the new jobs are. What is your thinking on that? You mentioned the manufacturing opportunities in new transport infrastructure and sorting out people’s homes to make them energy efficient. How do we ensure that there are jobs that go with those opportunities, now and in the future?
In relation to the whole conversation and plan—which I believe is a climate reduction plan more than it is anything else—we have been in a chicken-and-egg situation for long enough. I say that because, as Ryan Morrison explained, if energy is too costly, things will not be manufactured here and the work goes abroad. The price has to be right.
Communities are clearly struggling. As for who pays for what and when, it is pretty clear to the general population of Scotland that we are paying for electricity prices at the moment, through our electricity bills. The contracts for difference programme means that, despite the fact that the megawatt numbers will not get to where they should be up in the north and up the east coast for years—probably not until well after 2030—whether or not the turbines are operating, the grid providers make money. I have seen a summary that says that that will potentially increase private consumers’ bills by about 20 per cent. On who pays for what and when, I think that we are all paying for it at this moment in time.
We have no sorted oot the manufacturing side of this for two decades, as Ryan said. It seems that we manufacture everything abroad, and everything to do with green energy is also being manufactured abroad at the moment. From a worker’s perspective, our part in manufacturing is in putting stuff together when it arrives, which gives no one much confidence that we will have highly paid, well-skilled jobs that are covered by collective agreements for our members.
I think that the plan is a vision, but there is not enough detail on how we get there. I genuinely believe, and Unite the Union believes, that we need a competent industrial strategy that delivers real jobs in a graduated manner that works hand in glove with the green energy sector in making the transition, but we seem to be just running towards the transition and leaving workers and communities behind.
Sorry, that was a bit convoluted, but I was speaking off the top of my head.
I refer back to the ONS analysis that we carried out, which not only focused on the race to benefit from our renewal energy potential but looked at some of the sectors in the low-carbon renewables economy that have had fairly decent performance with jobs, including low-carbon transport and infrastructure, energy-efficient products such as energy-efficient lighting, and, last year, renewable heat, which had a fairly substantial increase.
There is a distinction to be made, which we would be looking for when we are considering the just transition in the context of the climate change plan and which involves taking the planning for how we meet our emissions reduction targets to a much more granular level. Effectively, we need to know what we have now that needs to be protected and transitioned, what doing that will look like and how intensive the support will need to be, based on the expected level of change. Where there are emerging opportunities, we need to consider how we secure the job opportunities that might come from them. When it comes to offshore wind, that looks much more like manufacturing than operation and maintenance. However, the second part of that is about how we can benefit from the potential wealth generation of those emerging opportunities, which takes us back to the question of ownership.
With ScotWind, the Irish investment bank has stakes, as do a company comprising 94 towns and municipalities in Belgium, for example, and a company that is owned by the German region of Baden-Württemberg. Those companies stand to benefit from the income that they expect to make from the ScotWind round. Scotland does not have a share in those projects so, as well as not seeing the jobs—which will predominantly be in manufacturing—the economic benefits and wealth generation of the projects are likely to bypass us. The plan does not do that level of detail or analysis on just transition planning, but that is what we want to see.
Similarly, with transport, the plan mentions the potential financial savings from the transition to electric vehicles, and it very briefly touches on the reason for that, which is because of the reduction in maintenance and repairs that is expected as a result of using electric vehicles rather than combustion engines. However, the plan does not go into more detail on what that means for people who work in garages—the mechanics who predominantly make up the sector—or what it means for the supply chain that supplies the components and parts that are needed. There is a statement that electric vehicles will lead to financial savings, but there is none of the analysis that would get us into just transition planning.
We need that distinction across the board on those issues and for each of the sectors in order to feel confident that we are going to ramp up the benefits. Right now, that is not clear.
My next question develops that point. To what extent are workers and unions able to influence the discussion to deliver the transition to net zero? Last night, at a meeting of the cross-party group on renewable energy and energy efficiency and the CPG on islands, we focused on community-owned projects and community benefits. We heard that, if you frame it as decarbonisation, people are not interested, so we need to talk about jobs, lowering bills and investing in communities.
You have just talked about ownership. Can we do more to get the benefits that other countries are getting through renewable energy companies in Scotland? How are you involved? Is it about municipal ownership or planning changes? What are your thoughts on how to involve workers across the country in delivering this so that they benefit?
Who wants to come in on that?
The other witnesses are better placed than I am to talk about the direct workers’ experience in some sectors.
First, I will touch on the ownership question. There has been a fair bit of attention on community ownership, but we are also interested in national and municipal ownership projects. The climate change plan has a case study on the Orkney offshore wind farm, which is expected to return significant profits to the local authority to use for other services or potentially to expand its energy ownership of other projects. That is listed as a case study, but we do not see any policy that would enable it to be expanded elsewhere. In 2024, less than 1 per cent of the new renewable energy capacity that was added in Scotland had an element of community or local ownership. That is a significant issue if we are looking to build on who is benefiting from renewable energy.
The returns are very different when there is community ownership as opposed to community benefit funds, not least because the voluntary target of £5,000 per megawatt in community benefits has not been met. Other questions are emerging on things such as battery storage, which are not necessarily tied into the same voluntary practice of community benefits. Added to that is the lack of jobs involved in those types of projects. There will be jobs in construction but, from looking at planning applications for some of those very large battery storage sites, it seems that there might not even be one full-time equivalent job for operation and maintenance. There will probably be one remote worker covering multiple sites across Scotland and potentially across the United Kingdom.
If we are not tying in community benefits with those projects and there are no jobs, and given that those projects sometimes have leases for up to 30 years that have already been awarded, that is another significant issue.
Dougie, do you want to come in on that? How do you get involved so that your members get what they need?
Your point was well made. The majority of the people we speak to are absolutely concentrated on keeping the job that they have, rather than wondering how they can benefit from something that is not in their area or sphere whatsoever. It is a battle out there, is it not?
I have seen some evidence recently that community benefits are being talked about in Scotland now, particularly in the Highland area, and there is some good stuff in Lanarkshire as well. When I look around the cities in Scotland, it seems to me that there is not much emphasis from city councils or local communities on trying to engage in the same manner with community ownership of green energy. There seems to be this idea that you have to be near a wind farm to benefit from that. I suppose that the answer is that the conversation is not one that is taking place within the normal workplaces that I deal with.
09:30
That is really helpful, thanks. I will hand back to you, convener.
I have a brief supplementary question. There is a question about whether workers are being engaged at the workplace level. There is also a question about whether the trade unions and the workforce are being engaged at the macro level on skills planning. Ryan Morrison alluded to car mechanics, and I have spoken to people at some sites who say that they could use the skills that car mechanics have in different ways and in different industries. However, that requires to be thought through to identify those opportunities and proactively plan when those changes happen. Is there sufficient focus on that dialogue between trade unions, Government and employers about how those transitions can work? Does the plan elaborate on that sufficiently, and, if not, what more would you like to see on that dialogue and detailed planning between trade unions, Government and employers?
I do not think that it is structurally embedded in how the plan is being approached and how some of those policies are developed. Initiatives have been set up off the back of demands from trade unions, such as the offshore training passport. Through their development, they have changed slightly and morphed into something that the workers and trade unions involved have not necessarily been asking for, and they have not necessarily addressed the full pathway that would be needed.
With the offshore skills passport, we know from the experience of workers in the offshore sector that they find that they can log their qualifications and have a look at alternative qualifications that they might get, but they are still expected to pay for that training and those qualifications and they might still have to duplicate their training and qualifications even where there is significant overlap between offshore wind and oil and gas, for example. Also, once they complete the process, they are looking for work in that sector that they cannot find. The question is therefore whether we are creating a full pathway for those workers that starts with recognising the skills that they have in the job that they are in, understands the timeline of the changes that are expected for them, supports them to reskill and then opens up opportunities for them on the other side.
There are pockets where that has been done better. For example, through Unite’s and GMB’s engagement on Grangemouth, there is a job prioritisation scheme; we would say that that is positive. At Alexander Dennis, there was an intervention to support furlough and to support the company to try to find new orders. Those are examples of things that have come from trade unions as part of trying to support those workers to transition. They are not, however, reflected in the climate change plan, in the green industrial strategy and in the just transition plans that were prepared for different sectors last year. We would quite like to see that type of initiative considered as part of those plans. How can they be part of an active industrial strategy that supports workers, rather than piecemeal responses that react to specific issues?
I should probably have reminded the committee of my entry in the register of members’ interests, as I am a member of Community and of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers.
Would Dougie Maguire or Claire Greer like to say anything about the proactive involvement of trade unions in planning for skills transitions?
To add to what Ryan Morrison said, we spent years actively engaging with oil and wind companies to try to get the offshore skills passport developed. Unfortunately, although it is better than nothing, duplication is still required with a skills passport. For instance, an offshore survival certificate is obviously needed for working on an oil rig, but the same certificate will not be accepted by the wind companies—you have to go and do a different type of survival training.
Is that still an issue?
Yes, it is.
The point has been raised for a long time.
There is no doubt that the skills passport was absolutely a step in the right direction. Skills passports probably need to be developed for the majority of skilled workers across Scotland. However, it comes back to the oil and gas, Grangemouth and Mossmorran problem: although workers might have skills passports or training made available to them—and, often, paid for—the jobs are not there. That is the issue. We are training people now whose training certificate’s lifespan—if it has one, and such things are normally there when it comes to skills training—will run out by the time that the jobs are available. People will therefore have to go through the training again.
Of course it is credible and worthwhile to reskill and retrain workers—we have always argued for that—but whether they are at Grangemouth or Mossmorran, in oil and gas or anywhere else, the workers that we speak to all say the same thing. They say that they have done what was asked of them and got themselves retrained, reskilled or whatever. However, they cannot get a job, because the jobs are not there, and if they do get a job, it pays half of what they were earning previously. The jobs do not need the same high-quality skill set. People with high-level skill sets need to use their skills—we need to use their skills—otherwise, it is a complete waste of talent.
I totally agree with what has been said. One of the problems of getting people to engage in things such as the skills passport is that there are so many initiatives. At one of the last meetings that we were at, it was said that there were about 80 initiatives to get people from the oil and gas industry to retrain in renewables. When so many things are on the table, their integrity is diluted. As Dougie Maguire said, by the time people have completed one of those training programmes or skills passports, it is outdated, because the jobs are not there to move into. That is a real problem.
You spoke about communities. The people who live in those communities are the people who work in the oil and gas industry or the nuclear industry. They do not see a way out—they do not see a pathway or where they are going to go to next. Their skills have been wasted. They either move abroad to other jobs or they go down south to—dare I say it?—Hinkley Point. As I have said in this room before, that is not through design; it is through fault, because of the amount of delay that has gone on. That is the only reason: there are jobs at Hinkley Point at the moment.
We need to make sure that a plan is in place. If you do not have the workers on board, you will not have the communities on board and you will not get the revenue income. It is a complete failure right across the board. We need to make sure that what we have in place for them works and is understood by the people who will take part in it. There also needs to be a route out at the end; at the moment, it just seems to involve numerous incentives and numerous organisations coming in and saying, “Here is what we can do for you” despite there being no jobs at the end of that. There is no clear path.
Kevin Stewart has a supplementary question on something that has just been said.
I declare an interest as a member of Unison.
The climate change plan has to be delivered by not only Government but others; it is all about delivery and delivering for people. Dougie Maguire mentioned inaction from local authorities when it comes to grasping community benefit. However, there is probably also inaction when it comes to following the likes of Baden-Württemberg in investing in the future and using the likes of local government pension schemes to boost manufacturing for jobs for the future—which, certainly, I want, coming as I do from the north-east of Scotland, where an unjust transition will hit hardest.
Should we be more open than we have been, thus far, to investment from local authorities, particularly from their pension schemes, in order to deliver?
Dougie, since I mentioned you, please go first.
Absolutely. I am no gonnae say we should be using local government workers’ pension schemes to fund anything. That is completely outwith my gift.
I take the point you are making, which I think is valid. Why are we no using the best examples from across the world of how to gain a stake in the green energy vision? How can we use the benefits of that to ensure that we are working in tandem and delivering quality jobs at the same time as reducing carbon emissions? That has to go hand in glove, does it not?
I am no an expert on pensions or pension schemes.
I will give you an example, Dougie. Not so long ago, I heard that one local authority scheme in Scotland had made an investment in offshore wind in Vietnam and in the manufacturing base there. It would surely be far better, and would likely give a more guaranteed return, if that money had been used to invest and create jobs in Scotland instead of elsewhere around the globe.
That is a hypothetical question for me, but it may be that the investment is not available in Scotland. It is a case of, “Build it and they will come.” I would suggest that the only way forward is through this country finding ways to make the maximum impact on communities and oor ain economy by reducing carbon emissions at the same time as manufacturing goods and looking at the new skills required for that. I have no doubt that there will be an explosion of work, but it will no be any time soon. That is the problem.
I am particularly interested in the Highland area, and we have had a number of proactive conversations wi the chief executive officer of the green freeport in Moray. The vision and the plan look good, but, as far as I am aware, not one company has committed to coming in and building anything in that area. Highland Council and SSE are spending money building social housing and workers’ villages, but there is no work. How do we get there?
When it comes to pension schemes and other funds, we really need to start thinking about how we fund. That is what is missing from the whole document. There are some examples of money that is already available, but where do we find the money and how do we use it?
I have just given one alternative.
Ryan, what do you think?
When the information is published each year by the Energy Saving Trust, we look at the number of renewable energy installations owned by local authorities. There is quite a broad range of ownership: some local authorities have 20, 30 or 40 installations, but South Lanarkshire, Stirling and Aberdeenshire are sitting at the higher end of the list, with several thousand. We have tried to build an understanding of why and how that is happening.
In South Lanarkshire’s case, the local authority made a decision to try to fit photovoltaic solar panels on council buildings. The initial approach was to look at one project to try to understand the financial business case. Once that had been paid back and the repayment period—which I think was about four or five years—was clear, the council decided to reinvest some of those savings and to scope out all the buildings that had the potential for solar PV. The authority has upskilled its building services team to be able to fit and maintain the solar panels. Some of those staff are apprentices, but a couple have been involved in the local authority for a number of decades. The authority is now seeing the benefit of those savings, which can be reinvested in other services.
We have not seen that being particularly well reflected in Scottish Government planning, so we have tried to feed back that we think there are good initiatives that could be supported and that there is no reason why local authorities could not be on a more equal playing field regarding the number of installations. We think the issue is that not all councils are aware that they could, or should, consider that or that it might pay back. It is a risk for councils, but the experience of South Lanarkshire has been that it paid back fairly quickly and the council is confident about moving forward with that.
09:45
In terms of the pension funds, my position is similar to that of Dougie Maguire—I am not going to try to suggest what local authority pensions should be investing in. However, I think that there are other sources of funding that we could be considering that are meant to be supporting a just transition. The Scottish National Investment Bank is a fairly obvious one. A number of years ago, one of the first investments that the bank made was in the Iona wind partnership, which is effectively an asset management firm, and that investment helped to close the gap for the partnership in terms of securing new projects in Scotland. It is difficult to understand why that money should not be used to support local authorities to become part owners of offshore wind projects instead of going towards asset management firms overseas.
Again, I am not going to comment on what we should do with local authority pension funds. What I will say is that I have spent a lot of time in Shetland over the past 12 months and, if you want to see a perfect example of an industry being decimated, Shetland is at the forefront of that. In the time that I have spent there, directors of companies have attended visits with us and CEOs of companies have been standing there, investment in hand—for some of them it was £80 million; for others, it was £40 million. They were ready to invest immediately in Sullom Voe; they were ready to invest in Shetland, within Scotland. At the same time, our Government was celebrating a £28 million trade deal that had been made across the water when we could be doing this in wir own country. We have got people ready to invest, but they are not doing it because they do not have trust in what is going on in our energy sector in Scotland and also because they require there to be an energy mix. They are not looking for 100 per cent renewables; they are looking to invest that money into renewables, but only if oil and gas are in the mix as well, which is necessary to keep us going, although they seem to be getting shut down entirely.
You are asking where else that money could come from—there are many avenues that it can come from. That is just one, which I know about from visits to Shetland. You are asking about the local authorities—the leaders of Shetland Islands Council were there at those meetings. They were welcoming those people on to their island, they were asking how the investment would work on the island, their ears were open and they were listening to what was being said. Unfortunately, once it leaves the island, those decisions are being taken out of their hands, and that is where the problems lie. We need to listen to our communities, we need to listen to the local authorities, and we need to open wir eyes to what else is out there and where else the money can come from.
You are suggesting that there needs to be a logical balance between still investing in oil and gas and moving to the green technologies, in order to sustain jobs for the future and to create a just transition.
One hundred per cent. When we look at the just transition, the focus is on looking after what we already have and then, into the future, ensuring that there are jobs and a place for people to go. At the moment, there are not. We are talking about closing down industries—closing down sectors—in the name of getting to net zero as quickly as possible. We can have that badge of honour in this country, but what is it going to leave? Where are wir people gonnae work? What is going to happen to wir communities? Where are we going to go for energy security?
We need the investment just now, and we need to make sure that, rather than a race to net zero, we have a race to be secure in our own energy in wir own country. To do that, we need to look after what we have. We cannot just keep saying, “Where can we go that’s new?” We need to look at what we have already done. We have world-leading skills and trades in energy; we have world-leading health and safety. We are looking at closing down all of our nuclear, and Grangemouth is hanging on by the skin of its teeth. We are looking at closing down oil and gas. We need to look at the bigger picture, see what other countries are doing and just take a step back and ask, “Are we doing the right thing for the people of Scotland?” I do not think that we are.
Thank you.
My question is a follow-up to what Sarah Boyack was asking about earlier. It is about your view on whether workers and the trade unions are playing a strategic partnership role in this journey that we are on. I am beginning to get the answer, I think, from your comments. Do you feel that you are being carried along in the slipstream of this and abandoned along the way, or do you feel that you are a key partner in shaping and developing public policy on this journey? Could you offer any examples from Europe or elsewhere? Ryan, you mentioned a few places, such as Ireland, Germany, Belgium and so on, where perhaps workers play a more central role in the development of public policy on this whole journey.
I am happy to start.
We have been invited to engage in a number of different areas. For example, last year we were asked to support policy development with regard to the just transition plan, and we did so by ensuring that workers from those sectors, and the trade union officials representing trade union members in those sectors, were front and centre of those discussions. We had the opportunity to facilitate that, but whether what was said, and the conclusions of those meetings, were reflected in the policy outcome is perhaps where we would find some disagreement. We do not feel strongly that what workers have been saying has been reflected in the just transition plan, the green industrial strategy or the climate change plan.
I do not think that it is some insurmountable issue that we could do better in a lot of these spaces. There are other areas where it is not necessarily in the development of policies that the key decisions are being made. Recently, there was a focus on the Scottish offshore wind energy council, which, as far as we can see, is making some fairly significant decisions about how that sector should be developed and what the economic benefits will look like. However, there is no trade union involvement in that council, and we have asked for better representation on it. It has working groups covering skills and other issues, and it is important that we have a tripartite view of those discussions. Similarly, trade unions were not necessarily involved as a delivery partner in the onshore wind sector deal—it was between industry and Government. That approach is reflected in the policies that are chosen, because we are not seeing workers or communities getting the right return from the wealth that they can generate from it.
Dougie, do you feel the same? Do workers play an active role in shaping and developing policy, or do you just respond to it?
Personally, I feel that we are just responding to it. I know that the workers in the sectors that we are talking about are really concerned, because they are currently covered by collective agreements that give them some kind of comfort. As Ryan Morrison has said, those agreements arenae forthcoming in the new green energy sectors. It is no because we have not tried to engage with companies; it has just been very difficult, and they have been very reticent. One of my colleagues in Aberdeen recently suggested that the offshore oil and gas agreement that we operate wi all the trade unions in Scotland and the employers should be extended to cover wind, and the suggestion was rebuffed by the wind companies.
We arenae in any way partners. Of course we want to have a seat at the table, but, to be fair, we are no representing that many workers in that industry, because it is a difficult industry and there are no the same numbers of people involved. A wind farm does not need a lot of people to look after it, whereas one oil rig could have 500, 600 or 700 workers on it. That is the issue. I keep coming back to it, but the issue is that massive gap.
Unfortunately, none of what I am witnessing today in relation to trying to reduce carbon emissions and the impact on communities and workers is new. I have been here before; deindustrialisation took place a long time ago in Scotland. I live in a mining community where the pits shut and there were nae jobs to go to. I then lived through the oil boom—or the supposed oil boom. I had on my doorstep an oil rig yard that made one of the first oil rigs in Scotland, and it closed down. It was called Redpath Dorman Long; it became Burntisland Fabrications—or BiFab—then Harland & Wolff, and it is now Navantia, but there were huge gaps in between.
I know that I am no answering the question, but I am coming back to whether we feel that we are strategic partners. We are no; we are reactive to decisions that are being made. Sometimes they are made outside this country, and sometimes they are impacted heavily by UK Government regulation or policy, which we do have an input to.
We are all dealing with the same problem, which is to arrive at a destination where people and communities are looked after while also reducing carbon emissions, but we have no been provided with the detail o a plan for how we will arrive at that destination. The journey is actually more important than the destination, so perhaps the destination needs to come a wee bit further down the road until we have planned out the journey.
Is there time to ask Claire Greer for her view on that?
In the interests of time, I need to bring in Stephen Kerr, but I know that his question is in a related area. I will get Stephen Kerr to ask his question, and Claire Greer can respond to both.
To be fair, convener, many of the questions that I had in mind have, thankfully, already been asked.
It would be good to hear witnesses’ response to the idea that, under the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2024, the climate change plan is supposed to deal in some detail with issues relating to skills, training and employment. What I am hearing from you is something approaching dissatisfaction about the fact that we are going from employment in high-skilled, high-paid jobs but there is no clear idea about what we are transitioning to. Does the climate change plan approach the issue of skills and jobs to an appropriate level of detail? I see that Claire Greer is shaking her head already, so I will come straight to her.
I apologise—I have given you my answer in advance. The short answer is no, but I will expand on that. We are calling it a plan, but it seems more of a very good idea of where we could be if we lived in a perfect world and we had only renewable energy and renewable energy jobs. For it to be a plan, it needs to begin with where we are now. There is no mention of where we are now, and there is no mention of where industries are now. In fact, I think that the sectoral contributions at the end are the first time that the current oil and gas sector is mentioned. It is nowhere else in the plan.
I have a real problem with it being called a plan, first of all because I do not think that it is; I think that it is a very well-written proposal. I do not think that it reflects where we are, what we need to do or where we will end up in five, 10 or 15 years. We have to take into account where we want to be. I know that I have said this before, but it is not just a badge of honour for net zero. Where do we want our country to be? Do we want to be self-sufficient? Do we want energy security? Do we want investment in jobs? If we do, this is absolutely the way to do it. If we get this wrong, we will be destroying what has been built up for years in Scotland.
We talk about our resources in Scotland. Let us look at the resources that we have now and how they can be worked on. If we talk about carbon capture, let us talk about how we can utilise our resources. However, we should also bring in the new guns, such as the renewables. That is fine. There is a place for everybody, but there has to be a mixed energy supply in Scotland to make sure that we are looking after the people, our industry and our security as a country.
What does that mean in terms of energy sources? You say that there should be a mixed basket, and a number of fleeting comments have been made about nuclear energy, for example. What does the transition from a race to net zero to a race to energy security, which you said was your objective, look like in relation to a climate change plan?
In its simplest form, if we go from the top of the country to the bottom of the country, we have to go through the full supply chain, including manufacturing. I listened to the meeting last week, where a lot was said about glass works, cement works and chlorine. We have to include all those people in the plan. They are the people who keep our economy going and those are the sectors that offer good, well-paid jobs.
We go from the top to the bottom and ask, “What do we already have? What can we utilise?” We have a gas distribution network in this country that is second to none. It has been updated and reinvigorated over the past five or six years. It is ready to go; it is ready for us to see what else we can use it for, and to see about hydrogen, or nuclear, in the energy mix.
Let us not get stuck on renewables. We absolutely need to use them, and we absolutely need to reduce our emissions and ensure that we do the best that we can on that as a country, but we need to look after the country and the people who work and live in it as well. Otherwise, what is the point in the whole game?
We need to look at our resources from top to bottom. Let us all work together. Let us not get greedy about what renewables companies can get with as few staff and jobs as possible while making as much revenue as they can. Let us look at what keeps our country going and what works.
10:00
From the way you describe it, it sounds like you feel that in our current approach—I do not want to put words in your mouth—we are on a path of self-harm.
One hundred per cent.
Dougie, I go back to my original point about the issue of skills and jobs in the plan. Is there any substance there that is worth commenting on?
There is no substance there, but I am happy to comment on it.
Please do. [Laughter.] I was counting on that, actually.
I will quickly amplify what has just been said. The Westminster Scottish Affairs Committee has reached a similar conclusion to ours, which is that we are throwing away and wasting a natural resource that is not finished, and that is oil and gas. The committee has recommended that we should decelerate the decline and that the UK Government should not be making any decisions that dinnae dae that.
To come back to the point about training and jobs, I have to say again that I think that a lot of people are making a lot of money out of training and we are not finding any jobs at the end of it. Why would we no divert that money tae somewhere else, which would obviously be job creation? I take and agree with the point that we need a mix of all energy sources at this time, whether they be new or old, because to do otherwise in a really difficult, volatile world is, I would suggest, absolutely crazy. We are on a really difficult planet at this moment in time. The truth of the matter is that the majority of our resources are owned by other Governments, other countries or other countries’ banks, and any one of them could decide to switch off our access or hike the prices, and cause chaos in Scotland and the UK. I think that we are playing fast and loose, not just with people’s jobs and futures, but with the security of the country.
We have an opportunity today to make all-encompassing the move to new industries, new jobs and a better world, but we cannae throw away the natural resources that we currently use and need—oil and gas. We cannae throw away any mair opportunities as we did with Grangemouth and Mossmorran. A huge amount of public money is being spent supporting those workplaces, and we are not getting the return that we deserve and have paid for, to be fair.
You could add Torness to that list.
You could—yes.
You do not substantially disagree with Claire Greer on anything that she said; would you say that you are in the same place?
Absolutely.
I do not know whether I have time for another question.
If it is brief. I would like to move on.
When you were talking about the freeports, you said that you could foresee an explosion of work. Do you have a vision for onshore manufacturing and all of that? We currently do not have anything to look at.
I got really excited about 18 months ago, up in Inverness, speaking to the people from the green port. It was a really exciting meeting. We were looking at the future—at building social housing and at people getting high-paid, quality jobs in the local area, so they would not have to move away; people having to move away to get good work has always been a problem in Inverness and the Highlands.
It is Scotland’s problem.
Well, it is. You kind of buy into that vision, which looks exciting, but now we are 18 months further down the line and there is no spade in the ground in relation to manufacturing happening. You just think, “When is this gonnae happen? When is it coming?”
I am just worried that this draft climate change plan might be putting constraints on the future at the expense of current jobs and the current energy supply. That worries me, because we really need to think about how we are gonnae get to where we need to go and how we take everybody wi us, not just a select few.
Ryan, we have very little time, but do you want to say anything additional?
Yes, I want to comment on the principles in the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 and what we would expect to see in the climate change plan more directly. The section in the 2009 act on the climate change plan says that it should be expected to include projections on how policies and proposals will impact employment, particularly when employment is affected in significant regions.
Yes. That is in that act.
Indeed. The plan takes a very broad-brush approach to that, and what you might see is, for example, an overview of how employment might change across a whole sector, with a specific region pulled out as an issue. With energy supply, for example, there is an obvious focus on Aberdeen and the north-east, but we would have expected far more granular detail on what, with the transition to electric vehicles that I have already mentioned, will happen to those who currently work in car repair, mechanics in garages and so on.
That is the level of detail that we are looking for, and it is the level of detail that workers need in order to feel confident about what is happening. It is not how the requirement in the 2009 act has been interpreted, but, if we are talking about a just transition, that is the level of detail that we need to see. In fact, I think that one of the issues here is that we do not have that detail, and it would be useful if people could begin preparing it so that we can have a better look across the economy at how the different policy interventions will affect employment in the regions and have some understanding of the new opportunities that Dougie Maguire has talked about.
There are pockets of things happening. A positive example is XLCC in Hunterston and its early recognition agreement with the GMB, and there is also Sumitomo, which is involved in cable manufacture in Cromarty. Those are examples of jobs being created, and there has been public support for them; however, we are not necessarily sure about the job profile itself. Will it match that of the jobs that we are losing elsewhere in the economy? Are those opportunities going to be opened up to those people? Do we have the support and engagement of the private sector, and will it work with us on that? That is not clear, and it is that level of detail that we understood would be provided under the principles of the 2009 act.
It sounds as though you are saying that we lack an industrial strategy.
Yes.
Okay.
Very good. The deputy convener assures me that she has one very brief final question.
I suspect that the answer to it might be quite brief. I just want to pick up on a point that my colleague Murdo Fraser made earlier. We have talked a lot about the how when it comes to the plan, but the money aspect is very relevant to that. I just wanted to check, given your areas of knowledge, how much you have reflected on the restrictions of the fiscal framework on the Scottish Government and the fact that it has a fixed budget. Of course, the limits are set in the medium-term financial strategy as a function of that fiscal framework. In your reflections on the availability of funding to deliver all this, how familiar are you with the fiscal sustainability perspective that is produced by the Scottish Fiscal Commission?
You nodded, Ryan, so you can go first.
There are restrictions on devolved Administration and we are not going to suggest that there are not, but I have already touched on certain elements where money could be better spent to generate income and revenue. I have highlighted the example of the Scottish National Investment Bank providing money to the Iona Wind Partnership, which is managed by a private asset management firm, instead of enabling local authorities and other public bodies to get involved in that process and generate income themselves. That is an example of money being spent away, rather than in, and instead of building on the potential that is there.
Similarly, Great British Energy has prioritised public buildings for a lot of its investment—
But that is a different thing. My specific question, which is for all of you, is this: how much do you understand the limitations of the fiscal framework? Having more efficient spend would be a bite of the cherry against the funding requirements set out by the Scottish Fiscal Commission. Have any of you read that report?
No.
Okay. I am not having a go at you. The point that I am trying to make, whether or not it is fair, is that people are not really across the detail of the limitations on Scottish Government spend, whether that is its own spend or spend that has been crowded in, as a function of the fiscal framework and a fixed budget. All the detail of the numbers are set out in the report that I have referred to. My contention is that that is not understood enough, and it is important that we increase that knowledge and understanding.
I should also say that I am aware of the time, convener.
I have not read the report, but my answer is still relevant in the context. Money is moving overseas that could be retained—
But how can it be retained?
Through better ownership shares and equity control.
But what if you do not have the power to do that? That is exactly the point that I am making.
I suppose that that has been the conversation, particularly with regard to energy. The Scottish Government has been saying for a long time now that it does not have the power to take on large-scale energy ownership, but I would note that, last year, as part of its relationship with GB Energy and through the Scottish National Investment Bank, it took an ownership share of the Pentland floating wind farm. So, the power is there.
But that is the Scottish National Investment Bank. I do not want to get into a spat over this.
Sure, but I just want to make a very specific point that goes a bit beyond the specifics of this conversation. The STUC has prepared papers on how we should approach taxation in Scotland and how we could do a better job of ensuring that those with the broadest shoulders contribute more so that we are better able to fund public services and the Government’s priorities towards just transition—
But even that, in terms of scale, would not come anywhere near the quantum of spending needed—but anyway.
I appreciate the point.
I think that what we are demonstrating is that, when it comes to a just transition and the impact on workers, there is a huge amount that we need to focus on.
Like the cost.
Yes, the cost.
I just want to thank all of our witnesses for their interesting contributions, which will be very useful to our work. I just wish that we had more than an hour to cover everything.
I suspend the meeting for two minutes so that we can change the witnesses over and adjust the layout of the room.
10:10
Meeting suspended.
10:14
On resuming—
Air ais
Attendance