Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 25 May 2022
Well, that excites me greatly. I am ecstatic that the minister has now got the pilots actually working. What about doing stuff?
What about doing stuff up in Lochaber? We were promised 2,000 jobs on the back of the £586 million financial guarantee that was provided to GFG Alliance Ltd for the aluminium smelter. What do we have? We have a handful of jobs—nowhere near the 2,000 that were promised.
The First Minister went to Fort William and promised that there would be a community land transaction, which is exactly what the minister was talking about today. Jahama Estates Mamore Holdings Ltd, as it is known, was supposed to benefit the people who live on or near the estate. I will tell the minister what we have had so far: the transfer of a quarter-acre car park. That is not community wealth building.
Let us take offshore renewables. The Scottish Government sold ScotWind on the cheap. The value of the successful bids in Scotland is far below what we have managed to get elsewhere in the United Kingdom. In this country, we got £100,000 per square kilometre. Round 4 in England and Wales achieved £879 million, which is £361,000 per square kilometre—almost four times as much as we got here. The leases here were sold off on the cheap.