Meeting of the Parliament 16 June 2015
There are some areas of the Government’s responsibility in which, I am sure, that is an advantage rather than a disadvantage, but in this case it is very important that we clarify the situation before we have ports fall foul of the provision.
The debate has been interesting also in terms of a number of pieces of information that were provided. For example, Mary Fee pointed out that Aberdeen has an extremely good record of sound business practice, in that it has been charging for use of its port since as early as the 11th century. It is no surprise that Aberdeen was the first to come up with that principle. We also, to an extent, had an opportunity missed by Jim Eadie, who is the convener of the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee. He started his speech with a wonderful collection of port-based puns with which I thought he was going to continue throughout his speech. Unfortunately, he went on to talk about serious issues.
I reiterate that the bill is an important piece of legislation that has a very specific function that carries a great benefit for a small number of ports in Scotland and avoids the Government having to take their borrowing into account as public borrowing. The bill is an important step for us to take; I hope that we can, as a result of decisions that are still to be made or confirmed by the Office for National Statistics, carry on without the restriction in question being in place. I therefore pledge my support for the bill at decision time at five o’clock this afternoon.