Seòmar agus comataidhean

That was a separate process!

The First Minister has known for weeks about the scale of potential job losses at the University of Dundee. He has not been blindsided, and he cannot say that he is shocked. The question now is: when he will act? Today, Dundee’s newspaper, The Courier, says:

“The Scottish Government’s response thus far has been slow, evasive and utterly inadequate.”

With every day that goes by, the pain for families in Dundee will only get worse. What will the First Minister’s Government do, in the next seven days, to take action to save jobs and protect livelihoods in Dundee?

Yesterday made clear to all those who did not already know that the University of Dundee requires a Government response equivalent to an industrial bailout. The lack of urgency from and visibility of the Government is clear.

I have a specific ask, and I know that the university will welcome it. Will the Scottish Government increase the £15 million loan that was previously committed to with a further £30 million loan across 15 to 20 years, and will it underwrite a £30 million credit facility to allow the university to obtain bank finance, via the SFC or otherwise? That would allow the university to open a voluntary severance scheme far sooner and at long last stop the bleeding that threatens the existence of my city’s most important institution. [Interruption.] Thank you, First Minister.

It has nothing to do with it.

The minister will recognise that, instead of what he has described, what we got from some back-bench SNP members was talk of what happened in the days of empire and the East India Company. That is an illustration of where, unfortunately, the Government’s motion took us.

With regard to speeches that UK Government ministers have made, I draw attention to what the Prime Minister said just last week, when he was announcing the £200 million for Grangemouth, about how integral Scotland is to our ambition for a clean power mission to transform the energy sector by 2030. Scotland is the energy capital of Europe and it is integral to those plans, and it will be invested against on that basis. Surely the minister sees that that is a positive signal of the UK Labour Government’s view of and vision for Scotland.

It was with genuine disappointment that I read the motion that we have been asked to discuss. That said, I agreed with almost every word in the first half of the minister’s opening speech. There is huge potential in the Scottish economy, whether in the vast opportunities in innovation or the strength of many of the institutions in our university sector and the knowledge that is learned there, although, at the moment, too many of those institutions have been weakened by the 22 per cent real-terms cut in funding for Scottish students and the financial situation that they continue to find themselves in.

However, the second half of the minister’s speech was far below par in that regard. It was a sad indication of a lack of a change of mindset on the part of the governing party, members of which have frequently told me that they have seen a transformation in the attitude of the UK Government over recent months with regard to its ability and willingness to work with the Scottish Government. When I speak to members of the UK Cabinet, they say to me that they simply think that they are doing their jobs. The comparison there is with their predecessors, who, frankly, were not doing their jobs. We need to work together and make sure that we have the best interests of Scotland ahead of us.

Last July, the whole of Scotland voted to put years of grievance and division behind us. It rejected the symbiotes of shared grievance, who are invested in mutual failure and rancour. I suggest that today’s debate is timely, because it gives a very good example of what can be done. In the past two hours, the UK Labour Government has announced a major investment of more than £55 million in the port of Cromarty Firth. That will drive growth and create hundreds of jobs in floating offshore wind. The expansion of that port will make it the first port in the UK that is able to make floating offshore wind turbines on site and at scale. That is exactly the kind of first-mover advantage that the minister said that Scotland should be securing as a country and as an economy.

I simply do not recognise that description of the chancellor’s approach, and I can set out exactly why that is the case. As the chancellor for the whole of the UK, she makes speeches in different locations across the country, so she will not constantly speak about Scotland. Clearly, that is the role of ministers here. It is right that she supports Scotland, and I will set out exactly how she does that.

I certainly will, sir.

No, thank you.

After that, we strode, bizarrely, across a range of cod economic theorising—none worse, I have to say, than the bizarre Malthusian fantasies of Kevin Stewart, recalling the worst warblings of physical resource constraint, based on, frankly, pre-technological views of the world. For all his railing against empire and the East India Company, his view is profoundly ahistorical and, frankly, it is irrelevant to the people of the north-east and of Scotland today. What they want to know is what the money will actually be spent on.

I am happy to defend the idea that, after eight months, the UK Labour Government has brought £200 million to the table to invest in the local community, whereas the Scottish Government sat on its hands for 18 years and did absolutely nothing.

Beatrice Wishart continued by making an articulate case for her community rather than against other communities. I will close on a quote from Beatrice. She said that it would be better, frankly, for people to bring a “can-do and enterprising attitude, which recognises where the future lies.”

If only, sir—if only.