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I thank the Deputy First Minister for making that announcement. That will be welcomed by the workers. Has there been any conversation with Chris McDonald and the UK Government about what they might bring in alongside that to support communities and the workers?

ExxonMobil’s Fife ethylene plant closed on 2 February. Some of the skilled workforce have already left Scotland; others, with the support of their unions and the partnership action for continuing employment initiative, are trying to make sense of their future options.

Fife communities already bear deep scars of unmanaged industrial decline. They have been here before, when the Tories shut the coal mines. Despite the operation of Mossmorran for 20 years longer than its original lifespan, there has been no proactive planning for transition or reinvestment. That is a reckless, head-in-the-sand approach. As the Just Transition Commission has stated, what we are seeing at Mossmorran is

“another major disorderly and unjust industrial closure”

in Scotland.

When I met ExxonMobil executives in 2022 to discuss my report on a just transition plan, they were bullish. They told me that, even if North Sea gas production were to decline, that would not worry them, because they could always import ethane feedstock to keep Mossmorran open. Four years on from that meeting, the announcement to close was sudden and brutal. Contractor workers were simply locked out of their workplace on the same day.

Although ExxonMobil tries to blame high taxation, it paid out some $37 billion to shareholders in 2025. Let us be clear: it is cutting and running from Fife, earlier than planned, with—so far—no industrial legacy for communities and workers who deserve so much better.

What was needed was to bring the stakeholders and operators together to look at the future. The report that I issued in 2022 laid out four clear options for investment in the plant, which could have given it a life. It did not have to close. There were options. Both Governments needed to come together and work to deliver a plan. We knew that the threat of closure was coming. For years, the Greens called on both Governments to prepare for that future, but no work was undertaken. Responses to freedom of information requests revealed that the Scottish Government has not undertaken any work to develop a just transition plan for Mossmorran, despite committing to delivering that work in April 2024. Although the UK Government was in touch with ExxonMobil from April last year about threats to the site, nothing was ready for delivery when the site finally closed.

Over past years, in the absence of a site-specific plan, I have commissioned research. I have held summits with Unite the Union, the GMB, Fife Council, the Scottish Government, Fife College and others to plan for the future. Both plant operators declined to attend. Only after the closure announcement were formal, Government-led task forces hurriedly convened.

The £9 million, three-year funding package that has been promised by the Scottish Government is warmly welcomed, but it is not enough to support a proper just transition. A commitment from ExxonMobil is needed to deliver a real legacy. Funding from the United Kingdom Government is also needed, and that funding needs to hit the ground running. I will listen carefully to the Deputy First Minister’s speech for detail about when the funding streams will be open, what conditions she will place on funding recipients and how that money will directly support individual workers and the wider communities.

Although the Prime Minister stated that workers at the Fife plant were going through a hard time, we still do not have any targeted funding package from the UK Minister for Industry, Chris McDonald. There has been ample time to come forward with an initial package. A first step is needed—not a cap on the UK Government’s funding but a contribution to what is needed right now in communities.

Hundreds of millions of pounds have been invested into Grangemouth by the UK Government. The workers and communities at Mossmorran deserve a similar commitment. As a minimum, the UK Government needs to step up and at least match the £9 million that has been committed by the Scottish Government at this very early stage. The ExxonMobil site has closed and no targeted funding for a just transition is available or in place. The cycle of too little, too late must stop. A proper legacy must be built now.

Over the decades, the community has made huge sacrifices. The disruption caused by flaring caused misery for decades. Sleep was impossible at times, houses shook with vibration and community councils even campaigned for rates reduction as compensation in the 1980s. It is therefore right that the community should shape the legacy alongside the generations of workers who served at the site. The legacy should be a complete reset for the Mossmorran site and an opportunity for the communities to help to choose their own future.

With an excellent grid connection and water supply, Mossmorran could have a fresh industrial future. The Grangemouth task force drew up dozens of potential industrial projects, some of which might be more suitable for Mossmorran, but communities need to be able to steer their future. Simply replacing ExxonMobil with A N Other could miss the opportunity for community investment.

We have seen the power of local community enterprise. The Ore Valley Housing Association’s wind turbine delivers big investment for social housing and local charities. Options for genuine community wealth building must be built into the master plan for the site; the days of accepting crumbs off the table have passed.

The skills legacy must also be real. Fife’s industrial future looks bright. The ingredients are all there, from Rosyth to Methil. There needs to be an industrial strategy for Fife that links opportunities from schools right through to colleges, apprenticeships and universities. A training excellence centre could form part of that legacy. It is time for ExxonMobil to step up, with the UK Government and the Scottish Government, and work with the colleges, unions and Fife Council to deliver that.

I also want to mention the elephant in the room—Shell—whose neighbouring plant was linked to the ethylene plant, providing much of its feedstock. The boat was missed to put in place a just transition plan for the ethylene plant and the natural gas liquids plant, but it is not too late to consider how Shell’s plant could survive into the future with investment to decarbonise.

Given the increasing vulnerability of the Acorn carbon capture and storage project, with Mossmorran and the Grangemouth refinery now out of the Acorn business plan, the Scottish Government needs to lead a conversation urgently if it still believes that CCS has a future.

The Scottish Greens have worked with the unions and communities for years to address the problems at Mossmorran and to map out what a future for the site looks like. Now that ExxonMobil has pulled the plug, it is time for both Governments to step up, work together, open up funding streams and build confidence for workers and communities now that Fife has a strong future.

I move,

That the Parliament agrees that the UK Government and Scottish Government must urgently deliver targeted just transition funding for workers and communities following the early closure of the ExxonMobil Fife Ethylene Plant at Mossmorran.

16:08

The member points to my record of calling for a just transition plan for Mossmorran for years. Can he point to a single thing that he, or any of his three other Tory colleagues who cover Fife, has ever done to support the community and the workers at Mossmorran?

You got your picture taken for your newsletter.

For years, we have called for a plan. I produced a research report in 2022 that outlined five options for Mossmorran. Four of those were about reinvestment in the site and would have delivered a future for the site, but the operators simply were not interested. It is not the case that we have been calling for a closure of Mossmorran; we have been calling for reinvestment and a plan.

Are you saying that, if we give it another couple of years, it will be fixed? Is the HSE telling you, “It’s fine; we’ve got it under control”? The industry does not know what it is meant to be collecting right now.

Okay, but the committee cannot see it.

I am finished, convener. I will let other members come in.

I think that this is a mess. The UK REACH process was set up in 2018, and I do not think that it has ever worked. I appreciate the comments that the cabinet secretary has made. This is a situation that Scotland does not want to find itself in with Brexit.