Hansard

To be frank, what I regret is that after the minister’s constructive opening—and invitation for us to have a consensual and constructive debate—Maureen Watt has dug up what I can only assume to be a very obscure reference somewhere in an Official Report from the second session of Parliament. I recommend that she refer back to the first session of Parliament, when the Scottish Parliament met in Aberdeen and debated oil and gas. We had a debate similar to the one that I hope we will have this afternoon, with parties around the chamber recognising our common interest in getting the maximum economic and employment benefit from that vital industry.

Sometimes, the oil industry is debated in the wrong way, as though it were a cash cow and the oil produced itself, meaning that all we have to worry about is which Government gets the money, how much it is worth and what will happen when it is gone. The reality is that the energy and the revenues will be maximised only if the policy framework is right, and I welcome much of what the minister has said about that this afternoon.

The industry is also about the people who work in it. We must keep them safe at work and give them the skills that they need. The defining moment in the history of North Sea oil came on 6 July 1988—the day on which the Piper Alpha platform went on fire 120 miles off the Aberdeenshire coast. The disaster cost 167 lives. My friend, Bob Ballantyne, who was an electrician working on the platform on that day, escaped from the inferno by lying on his back in the burning sea, hoping that the current would carry him in the right direction. Some people who survived never really recovered from the trauma; others, like Bob Ballantyne, dedicated themselves to campaigning for a change in the culture of the oil and gas industry—a change that would put safety first. Critical to that, in their view, was that workers should have their own safety representatives offshore and access to trade union representation. In that campaign, the labour and trade union movement worked alongside the Piper Alpha families and survivors and made a difference.

Thanks also to the recommendations of Lord Cullen following his Piper Alpha inquiry, offshore safety for the past 20 years has been the responsibility of the Health and Safety Executive rather than the Government department that is responsible for maximising production. Offshore workers now elect safety representatives to speak up on safety issues on their installation, with the backing of their unions.

The industry itself supports Step Change in Safety, a pan-industry body that seeks to address health and safety issues as they arise and to put safety at the centre of the agenda offshore. Indeed, only last week, more than 70 safety representatives came together from companies across the UK continental shelf under the auspices of Step Change in Safety to address current issues in the industry.

Oil & Gas UK, the employers association, will affirm that the workforce are the people who are best placed to drive down the number of accidents and improve safety, and the majority of offshore workers are now covered by trade union agreements for contractors and construction, catering, drilling and other sectors.

So, the industry today is a far cry from the industry in the days before the Piper Alpha disaster, when there often seemed to be a wild-west mentality about the North Sea frontier, and a cavalier disregard for the first principles of safe working. In those days, trade union activists were liable to be told that they were not required again. We are living in a different world and should thank those who made the effort to make that happen.

Nevertheless, that change does not mean that there is room for complacency about health and safety or about environmental integrity in the offshore workforce. Offshore oil and gas production remains a major hazard industry that is subject to strict regulation on and off the platform. The unions remain concerned to ensure that nobody cuts corners on safety because of commercial pressures on contractors, and that workers do not find themselves unfairly penalised when lost-time incidents affect production offshore.

In recent years, even the journey to and from work has proved to be particularly hazardous. For example, 16 lives were lost when a Super Puma helicopter crashed a few miles from the beach in 2009. Following that catastrophe, urgent work was undertaken on helicopter safety, which has produced important changes in that area, too. Although the hazards still exist, the culture of the industry is very different from how it was in the early days, and that is why I believe the industry can have a productive future.

Such incidents should remind us of the human cost of North Sea oil. The sector is not simply a source of ready money for shareholders or, indeed, for Governments. We should not forget that offshore in northern waters is one of the world’s most hazardous workplaces and that the men and women who work there regularly brave conditions that most of us will rarely, if ever, experience.

It is equally important that we are not complacent about skills for the offshore industries, in relation to which our amendment highlights two areas: the oil and gas industry skills development body, OPITO, and the Scottish further education college sector.

OPITO is at the centre of identifying the skills needs of the oil and gas sector, offshore and onshore. It estimates that about 15,000 new people will be required over the next five years in the oil and gas sector alone, even without taking into account the growing demand for skilled labour for offshore renewable energy. To find those people, the sector looks to the Scottish Government and its agencies, among others, to ensure that they are delivering the skills mix that employers want. That means engagement with the post-16 education reform agenda. It means working to ensure that curriculum for excellence has enough oil and gas content to provide meaningful support for pupils who could go on to work in the sector.

That also means ensuring that training in relevant skills in further education colleges does not fall victim to what are clearly going to be significant cuts in the funding of further education as a whole. We know from the spending review that there is to be a 13 per cent cut in cash terms in funding of further education. If we add to that the impact of inflation, there is no doubt that there will be real impacts on either the quantity or the quality of further education provision, or on both.

The Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council is currently examining the way in which it supports units of learning in further education. Broadly speaking, students of engineering, such as those who are training as oil industry technicians, attract twice as much support as social science students in further education. That is for the very good reason that engineering students are expensive to teach, requiring smaller numbers per teacher and more equipment per class. This year, Aberdeen College, if I may use it as an example, is training a total of 89 full-time students, either on OPITO schemes or on Engineering Construction Industry Training Board schemes, and it is vital that the Scottish funding council do nothing to undermine that approach. Colleges must continue to be funded by the Government so that they can deliver the quality of training and the number of students that the industry needs. In turn, the industry must ensure that it is supporting skills providers by paying enough to meet training and employment costs.

There are important areas where the Scottish Government as well as the UK Government can act to enable the oil and gas industry to continue to produce energy, create skilled jobs and grow the economy.

As I mentioned in response to an earlier intervention, Labour led an oil and gas debate in the first session of Parliament, when we were in government. I spoke from the front bench in that debate. I was vice-chair of the oil and gas industry body PILOT for a number of years and worked to ensure that Scotland's devolved Government was engaged and made a difference in respect of the issues that affect the industry and the people in it. We acknowledge the work of the present Scottish Government in continuing to build on that work and to stay engaged. We welcome the fact that oil industry trade unions and employers are involved in the Scottish Government’s advisory group on oil and gas, as well as—at UK level—in PILOT.

There are, of course, other issues in the debate about the future of the sector on which we have views that differ sharply from those of the SNP. However, where we agree on the economic and policy priorities that are necessary in order for the industry to flourish, we will be able to work together; I hope that we will see that spirit prevail in the chamber this afternoon.

I move amendment S4M-1349.3, to insert at end:

“; recognises that health, safety and environmental standards must continue to have the highest priority in the next phase of North Sea exploration and production and in the development of a wider energy mix, including carbon capture and storage and offshore renewables; believes that trades unions as well as employers and regulators have key roles to play in maintaining these standards; acknowledges that the demand for skilled labour from both the oil and gas sector and offshore renewables will increase as the technical challenges become greater; believes that the Scottish Government should support the efforts of the offshore energy industries and of the oil and gas skills academy, OPITO, to recruit, train and retain skilled workers, and, in particular, calls for further education funding to be maintained in order to allow Scottish colleges to meet future demand for skilled labour both onshore and offshore.”

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