Seòmar agus comataidhean

Will the member take an intervention?

I welcome the legislation. To put the issue in practical terms, the First Minister will be aware that in many small towns, such as Galashiels in my constituency, town centres are blighted by many long-term vacant large retail outlets, whose actual owners or landlords cannot be traced, which prevents organisations such as Energise Galashiels and the local authority from redeveloping the town centre through either voluntary or compulsory purchase. Is that the type of difficulty that the legislation will, at long last, help to resolve?

Following on much the same strain, does the First Minister agree that Douglas Ross should remember that we wear face coverings not just for ourselves but mainly to protect the stranger next to us on the bus or in the supermarket who might be, for example, undergoing cancer treatment and be immunodeficient without us knowing and who needs us to wear our masks so that they can at least go out and shop?

I congratulate Sarah Boyack on securing the debate.

I recall my early years at primary school, many decades ago, when school atlases had huge areas denoted in orangey red showing all the countries that then comprised the British empire. Over the years, countries of the empire won their independence. For example, India won its independence in 1947, but it was partitioned, forming Pakistan, with that division resulting in a huge number of conflicts.

There is no doubt that the legacy of the British empire is hard to avoid, and it is with us here and now, as the recent uncomfortable visit of the royal couple to Jamaica demonstrates. Memories remain fresh there of the capture and shipping, in horrific conditions, of slaves, many of whom died to provide cheap and expendable labour for the profitable sugar market.

The merchant city in Glasgow, one of our main cities, has fine buildings that are memorials to the riches of assets that were plundered from the empire and enforced slavery. The merchants of Glasgow traded in slave-grown produce. In effect, they cut out the Africa leg of what was known as the triangular trade, buying slaves in Africa with exported goods, shipping them in horrific conditions to the likes of the West Indies and further enslaving them as forced labour. They went instead directly to the plantations. Plantations were given Scottish names such as Hampden, Montrose and Dumbarton. Many slaves were given the surnames of their masters: Buchanan, Dundas and so on, which are names that people carry to this day. Buchanan Street in Glasgow was named after Andrew Buchanan, a plantation owner from Virginia who was believed to have owned more than 300 slaves.

Why do I say that? Like all empires, the British empire’s reach declined as it collapsed from within when nation after nation demanded self-determination. However, British influence was kept with the formation of the British Commonwealth of Nations with five members; it is now known as the Commonwealth of Nations. This is better. Members have common values and goals, including democracy, human rights, good governance, the rule of law, individual liberty, equality before the law, free trade, multilateralism and world peace. Those are still promoted through multilateral projects and meetings, the most obvious being the Commonwealth games, which are held every four years.

As other members have said, the Commonwealth now has 54 members and is a voluntary association with no legal obligations. All members are of equal status and are linked by their historical use of English and historical ties that I have already mentioned. The Queen is retained as head of the Commonwealth countries but, for most of them, she is not monarch. However, even that is under challenge, not just in Jamaica but, for example, in Canada. It will be interesting to see whether, once Charles succeeds, the final few remaining retain her as a titular monarch.

All is not lost for the Commonwealth, which has had its up and downs, with countries being expelled and allowed back in—South Africa—and others suspended, including Fiji, Nigeria, Pakistan and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe, of course, is still out of the Commonwealth.

Absolutely. It is not a pre-condition that a country was part of the empire. It is a voluntary arrangement.

Our connections with the Commonwealth are also through family and friends. There was a spate of emigration in the 1950s, and I recall working-class neighbours on all sides seeking a better life, ironically. They took advantage of assisted passages and left for Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Like many people, I have Grahame family members in all those countries. Indeed, one of my sons has just emigrated with his family to Nova Scotia. It was not a family fall-out, by the way; it was a friendly departure.

We have inherited and, rightly, must acknowledge the bad and good of the once empire. We must hope that the Commonwealth, in its many and continuing transitions, and with its goals of promoting human rights, equality before the law and so on, continues in one form or another. I fully support the relationships that this Parliament has with the Commonwealth family of nations, which, like any family, will have its disagreements but has more in common with its aspirations. We must all work together now, particularly as we look at the challenges of poverty, climate change, the rights of women and, of course, Covid.

I put on record my support and thanks to all the small retailers in Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale for coming through the terrible challenges of Covid. Given the vital contribution that small business retailers in my constituency make to the wellbeing of our town centres and the local economies in Melrose, Galashiels, Peebles and Penicuik, for example, how can they contribute to Scottish Government thinking and the strategy?

Constituents have contacted me because they were unsure what was meant by Scots in the question on how and when they use Scots. The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body recognises that Scots includes Doric and Lallans as well as Glaswegian, Shetland, Orcadian and so on. Does the cabinet secretary share my concern that the data may not be accurate because people wrongly believe that they do not use Scots?

Given the woefully inadequate spring statement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the face of a fierce cost of living hike, does the First Minister agree that for people on fixed incomes such as pensioners, many of whom became housebound in these Covid years, heating costs will be devastating, with the United Kingdom state pension being the worst in Europe? Does she also agree that Anas Sarwar, for example, must wake up to the position that, without power over pensions and other benefits, mitigation has its limitations?

I want to make my points.

During that debate, politicians from all sides of the house appeared to agree that fire and rehire tactics are morally wrong, but Conservative MPs pushed back against the need for legislation, saying that updated Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service guidance to businesses should be enough to tackle the problem. Well, it is not.

The UK Government then voted down a closure motion, which would have allowed the house to vote for or against the bill, and proceeded to filibuster until it ran out of time. Finally, Conservative MP Peter Bone said:

“It seems to me that this is about something for next year. There are 17 Bills to be debated today. Why was it urgent to have this statement in private Members’ time rather than Government time?”—[Official Report, House of Commons, 22 October 2021; Vol 701, c 1065.]

I hope that he lives to rue those words.

I will conclude by reminding Tory members of the ferry contract for ferries that were not or could not be delivered. Let us not forget the actions of the gormless Grayling, previous UK transport minister, who cancelled the ferry contracts that were signed to ensure that critical imports could reach the UK in the event of a no-deal Brexit, costing taxpayers a further £50 million. Contracts worth £89 million with Brittany Ferries and DFDS to secure ferry space for vital goods across the channel were cancelled. According to National Audit Office estimates in February, the cost of compensation to ferry operators for termination would be up to £56 million. As the grand finale, Chris Grayling paid £1 million to consultants for a £14 million contract with Seaborne Freight, but the contract was scrapped after it emerged that Seaborne Freight did not build ferries, ships or boats.

My final comment about Grayling is that, in 2018, he amended UK legislation so that the secretary of state did not have to be notified of mass redundancies on ships that are registered overseas. I wonder why. It could be that, thanks to Grayling, P&O is off the legal hook. With that kind of track record, he will soon be knighted and in the House of Lords, where all the failed ministers go.

This late in the debate, I will focus on the actions of P&O and fire-and-rehire practices, which are referenced in the SNP amendment and have been referenced by some Labour contributors.

I first pay tribute to my colleague Emma Harper, who would have been taking part in the debate, but her energies are used elsewhere as she stands shoulder to shoulder with sacked workers at Cairnryan. She has rightly said that P&O services are essential for the local economy and are critical for many businesses in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland. The services support jobs not only in the port but in local businesses that support the ferry routes.

Incidentally, the local member of Parliament, Alister Jack—reputedly Scotland’s man in the Cabinet—has not had much of an impact on the subject. He does not have much of an impact, generally speaking.

Before the recent events, how many of us knew that DP World, a logistics company based in Dubai, owns P&O? The company sacked 800 workers online and frogmarched them off vessels to be replaced by cut-price agency workers, ruthlessly casting aside the workers who tried to keep the company afloat during the pandemic.

The thing is that P&O insists that it did not break the law when it fired those workers without notice or consultation. Rightly, in Scotland and at UK level, politicians have challenged the company’s claim that laws were not broken with that shock sacking. If it turns out that the company has not broken the law, that raises questions about UK employment law.

The defence may be that all vessels that were involved were registered outside the UK and that the relevant authorities in each case had been notified. However, under UK employment law, workers’ rights are based on the jurisdiction from which they work—in other words, because they work in the UK, they are covered by UK law. On that basis, as there was no consultation, the law may have been broken. However, at the end of the day, even if that is the case, that would be a pyrrhic victory for employees, as the legal dispute would be drawn out while they remain jobless yet with on-going financial commitments such as mortgages and overdrafts, and with the possibility of legal costs.

There has already been a response from CEO Peter Hebblethwaite to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Kwasi Kwarteng, dated 22 March saying that the

“very clear statutory obligation in the particular circumstances that applied was for each company to notify the competent authority of the state where the vessel is registered.”

He wrote that notification had been made to the relevant authorities on 17 March, and that no offence had been committed regarding notification to the secretary of state. I will come on to why that is relevant later.

There has been a lot of hand wringing by Grant Shapps and others, but they are in the very Tory Government that, just last year, blocked an attempt to pass a law that would deter employers from using fire-and-rehire tactics to bully workers into lower-paid jobs. I support Labour colleagues on that matter.

On introducing the Employment and Trade Union Rights (Dismissal and Re-engagement) Bill to its second reading in the House of Commons, Labour’s Barry Gardiner said that his bill

“would require businesses to meaningfully consult with their workers and worker representatives when such restructuring is required”.

In shorthand, that would mean no fire-and-rehire tactics.