Meeting of the Parliament 08 February 2017
I accepted that point when we debated Mr Doris’s motion on 19 January, and I accept it now. I was about to say that, all of that said, as I said in our previous debate on the matter a few weeks ago, even if the nature of the demand and the nature of the work that jobcentres perform are changing, it remains an important consideration that the demand is met locally, where possible. We know that some of our fellow citizens are a long way removed from the jobs market and that it is already enough of a challenge to encourage such people to engage with their work coaches at their local jobcentres. To move jobcentres further away from where those people live may act as a further disincentive to engage and make them even harder to reach. That cannot be in their interests, nor is it in the national interest, which is why I have called for all eight of the Glasgow jobcentre closure proposals to be put out to public consultation. That would enable us to better understand what is at stake.
If that applies to Jobcentre Plus, surely it also applies to other public services. Since we last spoke about jobcentres in the debate on Mr Doris’s motion, I have received notification that no fewer than four police stations across Glasgow are being “reviewed”, as Police Scotland put it. I have been told that
“Police Scotland is currently assessing its estate requirements”—
again, we are talking about a proposal that is driven by estate requirements—
“with many of its buildings no longer meeting current operational requirements ... This means we need to consider the viability and suitability of some of our properties.”