Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 16 June 2021
I think that Mr Lochhead is incorrect in that recollection. Although it is true that our immigration system needs to work better, many sectors of the Scottish economy value having a UK-wide immigration system. We need proposals that work not only for people here in Scotland but for the United Kingdom as a whole. That is what the people of Scotland backed when they voted to stay part of the UK back in 2014.
The SNP forever promises that it will act. It forever promises new plans and proposals on skills, but it does not back them up with the level of commitment or investment that is needed. We know that a skills revolution and mass retraining is possible. To see that, we do not need to look much further than the events of the past year.
I do not claim that this is a positive example, but it shows that it can be done. There are literally thousands of people across Scotland who have shown that it is possible to reskill and retrain in a heartbeat—sadly, not because they wanted to, but because they had to. Throughout the pandemic, we have seen numerous examples, including the bar workers who started driving delivery vans, the chefs who moved into construction, the beauticians who worked in supermarkets, the tour guides who became home carers and the theatre costume designers who turned their hand to manufacturing face masks. Each and every one of them are unsung heroes of this pandemic who have gone above and beyond, not just to look after their own families, but those of others, too.
However, the truth is that that type of thing should be normal and not exceptional. In normal and not exceptional times, it should be driven by individual choice and not just by economic need, and it should be supported by the Government, because gone are the days of a job for life.
It is time to get serious about supporting people to retrain and upskill, and that means moving past a point where we expect the majority of learning and training to be completed by the age of 22. It means adopting much more innovative and flexible policies such as the individual learning accounts that CBI Scotland is promoting, which would mean people being incentivised and financially supported to enhance their skill sets at key points in their lives.