Hansard

The Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee has produced a pretty comprehensive and effective report. The committee took a huge amount of evidence, with 11 panels of witnesses, by my count, a full day away in Paisley, and more than 600 responses.

The committee engaged with academic experts but, importantly, it also engaged with those who would not be considered experts and a number of people who were probably speaking to the Parliament for the first time. All that engagement should be welcomed, and it is reflected in the overall quality and substance of the report that was ultimately produced.

Some of the report’s conclusions were predictable—some of them disappointingly so. I suspect that all members across the chamber will recognise the overall deterioration in job quality since 2008; they will have seen it in their own constituencies. We should all be doing what we can to try to reverse the statistics.

However, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. About a month or so after the report was published on 14 January, the most recent statistics—the February 2016 labour market statistics from the Scottish Government—had at least some elements that made us think that we might be on the right track at last.

Up until the 2008 recession, underemployment hovered at around the 10 per cent mark. Then it shot up to 13 per cent, where it broadly stayed for a five-year period. However, the most recent statistics that we have show that, last year, it appears to have dropped from 13 per cent down to 12 per cent. That does not sound a huge amount but we are talking about tens of thousands of people. From the shape of the graph, it appears that if the statistics follow in the same vein over the next year or two, we could have at least a fighting chance of getting back to the underemployment levels that we had prior to the recession. Therefore, although the statistics that the committee had were correct when the report was published, on the face of it—at least according to the most recent set of statistics—it looks as though we may be moving in the right direction.

I particularly liked Murdo Fraser’s earlier comment about “paving the high road” and “blocking ... the low road”. When he used the phrase, he did not—today, at least—try to claim credit for it himself; he quite rightly attributed it to Professor Warhurst, unlike in previous private conversations, when he gave the impression that it was his own idea. I just wanted to put that on the record.

The committee as a whole quite rightly wanted to see fair pay, security, safe conditions, respect, training and engagement.

I would be genuinely interested to hear in the closing speech from the Government just a bit of the detail on the Government response to some of the report’s specific recommendations. I am aware that there is no formal written response yet—I understand that the deadline is some two weeks hence—but given that we are debating the subject today, it would be useful for the Parliament to get a flavour of the likely Government response to some of the specific issues in the report and to other issues on which we can make progress now instead of waiting until the next parliamentary session.

Clearly, some of the issues will take until the next session to address, and some of that may well rely on the report that we get in a couple of weeks from the fair work convention. However, perhaps there are items in the committee report that the Government can respond to positively today and say quite clearly that it backs them; indeed, perhaps it can say quite specifically that there are items that it will not back.

For example, the committee report asked about how we can genuinely extend and improve the labour force data that we get. The exchange between the cabinet secretary and Mr Gray highlighted some of the difficulties. However, if we put our heads together, can we find a way of getting a more Scotland-specific workforce and job quality survey? I think that all parties would welcome that, because if we want to propose the right cures to the ills that we face, we need to ensure the accuracy of the data so that we get an accurate diagnosis. If we are getting the wrong data, or if we are not getting the right level of data that we require, it is more difficult for political parties and the Government to get the right results. I am interested in hearing the Government’s response to that point.

What is the Government’s response to the recommendation that there should be a national indicator in the national performance framework? On the face of it, the conclusion that we ought to have some form of fair work index as one of the national indicators seems pretty sensible and fair. We have 50 national indicators, so can we have 51, if the Government sees fit, or do we have to remove one of the current indicators because the number is capped at 50? I am not sure what the answer is to that, but what is the Government’s response to that recommendation in principle?

My time is running out, so I will close by saying simply that the report is excellent, and the more details we get from the Government today, the better informed the debate will be.