Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 11 November 2020
I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in the debate, and I am very pleased that the Labour Party has chosen to lodge a motion on the topic for debate.
As others have said, we are all painfully aware of the impact that the pandemic has had on the hospitality sector, on tourism and on the people who work in those businesses. A survey that I carried out in my constituency showed that 80 per cent of respondents who work in the sector are working fewer hours; half are extremely concerned about their income security and jobs; and a great many either are calling on the Government to support employers to pay the real living wage or are already looking for work elsewhere and do not see that they can have a future with decent prospects while working in the industry.
We need to take that reality very seriously. However, we also need to see it in context. The industry has a very long track record of endemic low wages and exploitative working conditions. We need to be realistic about the need to drive up standards. Those employers that have taken a responsible approach to issues such as the living wage should not become the ones that are tipped over the edge and lost.
When I first saw the motion, I was a bit surprised that it does not go into much detail about matters that Richard Leonard mentioned in his contribution. Those include the great work that Unite hospitality has done—not only in its charter but in the tourism and hospitality rescue plan that it has produced. Therefore, I lodged an amendment stating that, although some of those actions concern reserved matters, others clearly concern devolved ones that the Scottish Government could and should take forward. I hope that members will agree with the content of my proposed amendment, even though it was not selected for debate.
I worry about the intentions behind the Scottish Conservatives’ amendment and the possibilities that it suggests. The kind of advisory group that it calls for would end up simply becoming a lobby group against the public health measures that we know are necessary. If the question were how best to implement or to mitigate such measures, I could understand that. However, I am deeply concerned that such an advisory group carries the risk of becoming a lobby group within the Government against public health measures.
The Government’s amendment addresses some of the issues that I have mentioned, including the work of Unite hospitality. I might well have found myself voting for it had it not also asked us, uncritically, to welcome the recommendations of the industry’s task force. Far too many of the recommendations in the task force’s report were just reheated grievances from the Scottish Tourism Alliance. The report calls for the abolition of air passenger duty. Do we really think that that is the reason for the pandemic having had such an impact on tourism and hospitality? Of course not. The report also calls for the abolition of the transient visitor levy. That is not yet in force, and no local authority is even close to proposing its use. Such issues are therefore a distraction. The only mention of wages that I could find in the report was a call for a relaxation of the requirements for the living wage. Perhaps that is what we get when a task force has 36 members, only two of whom represent the workforce—the people who actually work in the industry.
I am afraid that I will be voting against the amendments, but I will support the motion. I hope that members across the chamber will support many of the issues that Scottish Greens raised in our proposed amendment, even though it is not being pressed to a vote.
16:52