Meeting of the Parliament 09 November 2023
It has been a rather bizarre debate so far. [Interruption.] We have had one long speech from the cabinet secretary and various interventions. Despite the fact that the debate is entitled “Fair Work in a Wellbeing Economy”, the cabinet secretary’s motion makes no mention at all of the wellbeing economy. The motion is entirely focused on the constitutional question of the devolution of employment powers to the Scottish Parliament.
The cabinet secretary seemed remarkably coy about that subject. He was nine minutes into a 12-minute speech before he even mentioned—in response to my intervention—the question of the devolution of employment law. Maybe he is a bit embarrassed about bringing the issue to the chamber.
The question that many people outside the chamber will be asking themselves, having heard everything that the cabinet secretary had to say, is, “What happened to the new deal for business that we’ve heard so much about?” There was nothing in the cabinet secretary’s speech that gave any comfort to people in the business community who are looking for a new approach from the Scottish Government.
The rhetoric that we have heard from the Government over the past few weeks has been encouraging. The cabinet secretary and his colleagues have said that the Government wants to reset its relationship with the business community, and we have heard that the Government now believes in economic growth. Such a belief was absent for many years; its return is a very welcome development. When the First Minister delivered his programme for government a few months back, he said:
“When businesses succeed, Scotland succeeds. It is on the back of the success of businesses, large and small, that we will deliver a wellbeing economy where good, well-paying, sustainable jobs are created and innovation flourishes”.
That is a tremendous sentiment. What a pity it is that we did not hear much of that in the cabinet secretary’s speech.
I hoped that, in a debate on the wellbeing economy, we would hear more from the Government about how it would take forward its new deal for business and about how it was listening to what business was telling it. I am sure that business is telling the Government what it is telling us. Businesses have said that taxation, excessive regulation and the need to properly consult before bringing in new laws are the issues that need to be addressed. What did we get instead from the cabinet secretary? We got the same tired old message on the constitution.