Chamber and committees

If there was one subject that kept me awake at night—other than the impact of climate change if we do not deal with it—it would be our plans in Scotland for people and skills. Why is that a concern for me? In Scotland, we are in the strange position of having low unemployment but significant labour shortages, particularly in some sectors.

We have enormous economic opportunities. If we get the energy transition right, we will be able to make Scotland one of the most successful economic countries in the world, but we need the people and the skills for that to happen. A lot of people ask where we will get the skills from, but you are right to ask where we will get the people from. It is not just a question of whether people have the skills; it is about where we will get the people from. We have certain demographic trends in Scotland, we have no power over immigration policy, and we have had Brexit. That has tightened things up and has made the situation quite challenging.

You said that every company mentions the issue to you, and I speak to companies about it all the time. Some companies are confident that, if they get the go-ahead for X or Y project, they have the people to deliver it, but other companies say that they have vacancies. Scottish Power and other companies have said that they have hundreds of vacancies in certain areas that would help with the transition to net zero. They say that they could employ people tomorrow in those roles if they had the people to fill them. There is therefore quite a varied picture.

I am sorry to dwell on the CCS Acorn project, but the position in which we have ended up with it is so frustrating. One of my key concerns is that, if we are not the first mover, skilled people leave. The feedback from the CCS sector in Scotland and the rest of the UK is that, because the UK Government is taking so long with things, a lot of the skilled people are going to work in America or other European countries that are racing ahead of Scotland and the rest of the UK on CCS. We cannot afford to lose those people. We must be first movers and get going, otherwise we will lose thousands of skilled people who will say, “I’ll just go and work over there, because there’s no job for me here.”

There is a lot of work going on in that area, which is important. The big picture is that, as I said, we have really good companies that have perhaps grown out of the oil and gas sector or other sectors in Scotland and are now looking to the future and gearing up for the green energy revolution, for instance. They are all gearing up for that, but they need the projects to happen. Some of the orders are beginning to come to fruition.

Offshore Energies UK, which is the trade body, is mapping out the supply chain at the moment. That is a really good exercise, and I think that it will share the results with us shortly. The committee might wish to speak to that body, because the supply chain is a crucial aspect, as so many jobs are in supply chains. If we want to get the just transition jobs and new jobs in new industries, we need new supply chains. That trade body is mapping out all that in the private sector.

The Scottish Government is working on the local content agreements and the commitments on the £1.4 billion-worth of business that is expected to come from each ScotWind bid, of which there are 20. That could be a lot of money for supply chains and the Scottish economy, if we get a big chunk of that. I am sure that we will not get it all, but we will get a big chunk of it. There is £1.4 billion from each project that could come to Scotland if we get that right.

Finally, there is the collaboration space that the Scottish Government is pushing in order to bring the supply chains in Scotland together with the offshore wind developers. The aim is to ensure that they are collaborating and forging a close relationship before we get to the later stages, so that we capture more of the business. That collaborative area is important.