Meeting of the Parliament 12 March 2019
I stand corrected; I thought that the minister had referred to a pilot. He still did not say, however, how many businesses will be covered in the first instance. The fear is that implementation will take some time, so I am concerned about the minister not moving fast enough. For some time, we have plagued the Government to make progress in the matter, and it has resisted doing so, so Mr Hepburn must forgive me for being a bit sceptical about how fast the Government will move.
The House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee found that although employment
“significantly reduces the chances of reoffending”,
only 50 per cent of employers would consider employing someone who has come out of prison. I encourage the minister to include, in the future, something for ex-prisoners in the business pledge, so that we make sure that we maximise the potential contribution of ex-prisoners to our economy.
The business pledge is commendable, but I question its impact on business practice. Given that only 500 businesses have signed up, its impact is pretty limited. The minister has failed to persuade more than 99 per cent of Scottish businesses to sign up, and most of the 25 largest businesses in Scotland have not been convinced of its worth.
I will list some of the companies that the Government has not got on board. They include Scottish Widows, RBS, Bank of Scotland, Scottish Power, Aegon UK, William Grant & Sons, Chivas Brothers, the Weir Group, Aggreko, Life Technologies, Arnold Clark, Chevron North Sea, Stagecoach, and Tesco Bank. The list of major businesses in Scotland that have not been convinced by Jamie Hepburn and his business pledge goes on and on. I want to know why the minister has been incapable of getting the top 25 businesses to sign up to the business pledge. Scottish Business Insider has set out the top 25 companies. Has the minister been to see those businesses? Has he encouraged them to sign up? Why have they not signed up to the pledge?
The business pledge has been around for some years now, so the Government has very few excuses. Having a conference and holding cross-party talks is no cover for the Government’s inability to find a solution. The business pledge needs to be much more successful if we are to make sure that businesses across Scotland engage with the fair work action plan and the worthy principles that the minister set out at the beginning of the debate. There is no point in having a fair work action plan if no one takes part in the action plan and no one steps up and says, “We’re going to improve the conditions of our workers in our companies.” The biggest 25 companies in Scotland have not signed up to the pledge. The minister needs to explain why in his summing up.