Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 03 March 2021
I thank Monica Lennon for bringing the debate to the chamber and welcome her to her new role, although I know that it is not the one that she had hoped for. There is not long left in this parliamentary session, but, in the time that we have available, I look forward to any exchanges that we may have.
The debate is an opportunity to highlight the work that is being done across Scotland to support a fair and sustainable recovery and for me to restate the Scottish Government’s absolute commitment to making Scotland a fair work nation. In that regard, I say at the outset that, as Monica Lennon has indicated for Labour, we will not be supporting the Tory amendment for the very same reasons as those that Ms Lennon laid out. I welcome her support for our amendment. I will not linger too long on the point that Sandra White made about where we could be right now if those powers had been taken forward as part of the Smith commission process and vested in our hands, but it is welcome, if somewhat belated, that the Labour Party’s position has changed.
Suppressing Covid-19 and ensuring the safety of Scotland’s population more widely and Scotland’s workforce more specifically is, rightly, a priority and may remain so for some time yet. Since March 2020, to protect jobs during the pandemic, we have committed more than £1.2 billion to drive recovery by, for example, bringing forward capital investment, and we have invested more than £3 billion in direct support for business, including for the newly self-employed. As Ms Lennon mentioned, they are people who have been overlooked by the UK Government’s approach.
I recognise that we have an opportunity not simply to go back to how things were, but to address many of the deep-seated and structural challenges that our country faces in building back greener, fairer and stronger and ensuring an inclusive, resilient and more equal wellbeing economy for Scotland. We moved swiftly in the spring of last year and, as a first step, established the independent advisory group on economic recovery to advise us on priorities. The group recognised the importance of people to our economic recovery, centred on fair work. Through fair work first we are applying fair work criteria such as payment of the real living wage, tackling the gender pay gap and promoting more diverse workforces to more of our public spending, which is helping to create and support secure and meaningful jobs and driving change across workplaces.