Meeting of the Parliament 12 September 2024
The member is experienced enough to know that that is a live application, so I will not comment on it, but I will comment on the principle. It is absolutely right that we want to build clusters where there is an activity that attracts more businesses to locate and invest in Scotland.
That is what we are seeing near the Port of Cromarty Firth. On top of the £300 million of investment by the Quantum Capital Group, there is a further £100 million of joint investment by the Scottish National Investment Bank and the UK Infrastructure Bank to put the Ardersier port at the forefront of Scotland’s energy transition and offshore wind capability. We hope that that will inevitably create more activity in the area.
Just today, the Scottish National Investment Bank has announced a £20 million investment in ZeroAvia to bolster the aerospace supply chain and kick-start the market for hydrogen electric engines in Scotland. That is hugely exciting stuff.
I make it clear to the chamber and to those who are listening that Scotland is open for investment and that we are open for business. We want to work with industry to capitalise on the opportunities that are in front of us and, where we agree on the way forward, to work constructively with the UK Government and its institutions, too.
Businesses across the country have told me of the importance of speeding up our planning processes to unlock investment. That is why we have created a new planning hub to make quicker decisions on renewables and housing developments, and launched a planning apprenticeship programme to build a pipeline of skilled future planners. The planning hub will be based in the Improvement Service and will provide direct and immediate support to planning authorities. In this first year, it will focus on practical action to improve consenting for hydrogen developments, increasing capacity in the system and giving investors confidence. We are also bolstering our resourcing across planning and consenting teams to improve engagement and introduce better guidance, and, ultimately, to increase the pace at which we determine applications.
We are creating a business environment in which Scottish entrepreneurs and innovators have the support that they require to take risks, to start up, and to diversify and expand. That includes maximising the impact of the Techscaler network, which already stands at more than 700 businesses, raising more than £70 million across them all since they joined the programme.
We must not forget that Scotland’s greatest asset is, ultimately, our people. We know that the transition to net zero will continue to create demand for new skills, while our current businesses require a skilled workforce. That is why we are ensuring that workers in carbon-intensive industries can access the skills development that they need to seize new opportunities in growth sectors, and why we are supporting a range of initiatives through the just transition fund, such as the energy transition skills hub.
We are also undertaking a significant reform of the skills and education system, a core aim of which is to make it more agile and more responsive to the skills requirements of Scotland’s economy. We are taking the lead on national skills planning and strengthening regional skills planning approaches. We are empowering people to join the workforce, taking important action to support women’s participation in the economy—for example, through policies on funded early learning and childcare—alongside tackling workplace inequalities through the fair work first approach in public sector funding. We have prioritised the actions that will deliver the underlying conditions to enable our economy to thrive and deliver in the net zero future that we all want to see.
That also requires us to make substantial investment. The Scottish Government has limited borrowing powers for capital investment, and the strategy does not seek to compete with the scale of public investment, spending and subsidies attached to recent industrial strategies in the US or China or to the European green deal. We need a UK Government that recognises and keeps pace with the level of capital investment that is required for net zero. Labour, I believe, once pledged that it would invest an additional £28 billion a year, recognising the importance of that capital investment.
Our strategy applies focus and sets a clear direction. It prioritises opportunity areas where Scotland has existing strengths and where those strengths are most likely to lead to growth, including our exports. We want to target those opportunities that have the potential to reach significant scale in terms of value, and create high-quality jobs and the capacity to unlock and enable other industries’ markets and opportunities, with growth at home and abroad.
That strategy prioritises five key opportunity areas: wind; carbon capture, utilisation and storage; professional and financial services; hydrogen; and clean industries. Offshore wind is the single most important, and immediate, opportunity.