Chamber and committees

The next item on our agenda is to take evidence in relation to the committee’s inquiry into the Scottish Government’s public service reform programme. This session continues the evidence taking that we started before the summer. I welcome David Moxham, deputy general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress. David and I served on Glasgow City Council together a quarter of a century ago.

I intend to allow up to an hour for the session. We have your written submission, David, so we move straight to questions. As well as questions on reform, members may take the opportunity to ask Mr Moxham any questions on the STUC’s pre-budget 2024-25 submission, which has also been circulated with the meeting papers.

I will kick us off on the reform agenda. The Deputy First Minister has said:

“it is for individual public bodies to determine locally the target operating model for their workforces and to ensure workforce plans and projections are affordable in 2023-24 and in the medium term”.

Does the STUC agree or disagree with that?

You touched on Christie. One of the issues that the committee has deliberated over many years has been the preventative spend agenda. How important is preventative spend in relation to reform of public services?

Indeed.

The Scottish Government specifically talked about freeports being different from green ports, so why is it not trying to give itself a competitive advantage by making the period seven or nine years? The Government has put a number of strictures on green freeports, which one might say makes them less competitive, albeit that there are some businesses that one might not necessarily want to attract in the first place. If the Government is looking for Scottish green ports to be a success, why not do something different from what the UK is doing? Are you being prevented from doing that, or is it a Scottish Government decision?

That is very helpful. However, you quoted three definitions, and it would be good if we could boil things down to one specific definition, because, if we do not do that, it leaves room for ambiguity, which we want to reduce as we move forward.

Another issue that came up was the timescale that will be available for investors. Unite the union and David Melhuish from the Scottish Property Federation felt that five years was not long enough. Unite said that the period should be as long as possible, and David Melhuish said that it can take up to nine years for investments to come through. If we want to ensure that green ports are impactful as early as possible and that they attract as much investment as possible, is the Scottish Government thinking of extending the period beyond five years? What is the logic behind choosing five years?

Good morning, and welcome to the 22nd meeting in 2023 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. Before we start, I congratulate all members of the committee who contributed to ensuring that we won the powering change award at last week’s Holyrood awards. It is a committee award, not an individual one for me, as convener, so I thank everyone. I doubly thank Michelle Thomson, who won the political hero award on Thursday night. [Interruption.] I named everyone on the committee to ensure that you were all recognised, including new members such as you, Jamie—you also got the nod.

Let us get on with the meeting and the matter at hand. The first item on our agenda is an evidence session with the Minister for Community Wealth and Public Finance on a draft Scottish statutory instrument—the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (Green Freeports Relief) (Scotland) Order 2023. The minister is joined by Scottish Government officials Laura Parker, who is the land and buildings transaction tax policy lead, and Laura Duffy, who is head of the green freeports policy and delivery unit.

I welcome our witnesses and invite the minister to make a short opening statement.

As you will probably know from reading last week’s Official Report, there was quite a lot of discussion and deliberation regarding all aspects of the green freeport proposals. One issue is the importance of attracting green jobs into green ports. I felt that there was an element of frustration from our witnesses last week that there does not appear to be a definition of what a green job is. For example, on two occasions, Derek Thomson from Unite the union asked whether someone making deliveries on an electric bike counts as a green job. Does the Scottish Government have a definition of what a green job is? We do not want to be comparing apples and oranges in our discussion, with everyone around the table having a different view of what a green job might be.

Thank you. That concludes my questions for now. I open up the session to colleagues around the table. First, we will hear from John Mason, to be followed by Liz Smith.

Assuming that every single job created in the green ports is in a completely new industry, a new manufacturing business or whatever it happens to be, people in other parts of Scotland and beyond who are highly skilled will still want to move there. Will that not exacerbate labour shortages and create inflationary pressures in other parts of the economy?

Okay. Just one last question from me. There was loads of information there and I am sure that other members will want to come in.

According to David Melhuish,

“the officials behind the UK Government’s freeports prospectuses ... were very impressed with the prospectus that was put together by the Scottish Government”.—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 5 September 2023; c 46.]

However, Unite the union seemed frustrated that there did not seem to have been much engagement with the trade unions. Its representatives said that the City of Edinburgh Council was not listening to them or keen to engage with them. There was almost an accusation that that was deliberate. What engagement is the Scottish Government having with its trade union partners on such developments?