Meeting of the Parliament 25 October 2023
It is a pleasure to follow Pam Gosal in this debate, because she highlighted an issue that is so important—the fact that there are unconventional routes through education. There is not one system that works for all our young people, all our people in work or, indeed, all our older people. The need for flexibility sits at the very heart of the reasoning behind today’s debate.
I echo what Colin Smyth and others said in their contributions about the importance of colleges and the need for, if not intervention or urging on the part of the Government, its facilitation of settlement of the current dispute.
All the discussion about skills talks to an issue that is so important to Scotland—the public finance picture. The Scottish Government’s medium-term financial strategy, which was published in May, estimated that there would be a funding shortfall of £1 billion in 2024-25, which would rise to £1.9 billion by 2027-28. The updated fiscal framework might have reduced that headline figure but, as we have heard, the Fraser of Allander Institute estimates that the cost of the First Minister’s announcement on council tax will come in at some £417 million.
It is in that context that we need to have a Government that is focused on economic growth and creating more well-paid jobs. That will be achieved through the dissemination of skills, whether that involves reskilling, the newly skilled or the pointing to skills for our young people and those who are already employed. That way, we can achieve an increased tax take to fund the public services on which we all rely. I welcome the minister’s commitment to matching young people to skills, but perhaps that could be extended to matching people who need to be reskilled to the correct and proper level of skilling.
I also welcome the announcement about the simplification of funding streams, because the current landscape has created a situation in which our SMEs and other companies find it almost impossible to support people through an apprenticeship, which so many of those who run our SMEs went through when they were younger.
Addressing the skills shortage in our economy is our fundamental strategy for growth. It would be a good Government that was serious about growing the economy and addressing the skills shortages, but we have a situation in which many sectors that are integral to our growth are not planned for at all. That is particularly the case when it comes to our digital skills. There is a widening of that gap, and I can see no bridging that will cover it in the near or the foreseeable future.
As a result, do we have the ability to develop a resilient domestic supply chain? We do not. Let us look at the capital projects that are being held back by staff shortages. I welcome the briefing paper from the Construction Industry Training Board, which points out that the lack of a construction skills plan for Scotland, with a clear overview of existing delivery arrangements for upskilling and reskilling and specific funding programmes, is a significant omission from the skills delivery landscape.
Time is short, but it is worth pointing out that the independent review reported that there has been a lack of clear leadership and direction on skills delivery. There is an opportunity for the minister to change that, but that failure lies in a succession of Government ministers who have neglected that responsibility and who have not acted in the way that a good Government would have done. We are now paying that price.
The question of why it is taking so long for the Government to respond to the report is pertinent, because time that is spent waiting for a response from the Government is time wasted for our young people and those who are seeking change. We have heard about the benefits in the north-east, but we need to see those across the whole of Scotland.
We have a falling birth rate and an ageing population here. Our way round that is to support those people who are coming into work and who are in work to reskill. That is how we can build an economy that works for all of us.
16:09