Meeting of the Parliament 09 January 2025
I am always grateful for an opportunity to lay out the Liberal Democrats’ pathway to reintegration with the European Union. That starts, unashamedly, with rejoining the single market and re-establishing connections through research, education and the free movement of goods, people, capital and services. Fundamentally, at the heart of every Liberal Democrat is that the country rejoin the European Union. My goodness—our approach to that is pragmatic, but it is remorseless.
To that end, we want the introduction of a UK-EU youth mobility scheme to boost the economy and allow young people to work here more freely. We also want the Scottish Government to provide a replacement for the Erasmus scheme—as has been done in Wales—so that students can benefit from that life-changing educational experience. For years, the Scottish Government has failed to do that.
We also need both of Scotland’s Governments to work together on immigration to ensure that rules are sensitive to the skills that are needed in every corner of these islands and in every sector of our economy. For example, there is a need to lower the barriers to people coming here so that we can fill the gaps in geographically sensitive areas, including rural parts of Scotland, remote places and islands. There are things that the Scottish Government can do in a wider sense to make those areas more attractive to live in and work in. I am talking about ferries that work, long-overdue broadband provision and safe roads.