Meeting of the Parliament 18 June 2025
Yes. I welcome the fact that the UK Government has stepped in, because those jobs and that investment would have gone elsewhere. Steve Carlier, president of submarines at Rolls-Royce, made it very clear:
“the project cannot continue, and the facility will not be built and resourced in Scotland”.
If the UK Government has stepped in, that is good news, but it is no thanks to the SNP Government. The project did not involve weapons or munitions; it was simply the building of submarines. The SNP’s approach is naive and immature.
The approach does not make any logical sense either. SNP policy is for Scotland to become independent. In that case, presumably, we would need armed forces, and those armed forces would need to be supplied with weaponry and equipment. Is the SNP really saying that, in that event, it wants all that to be imported rather than manufactured here, and the jobs to go elsewhere? None of that makes any sense.
What we see from the SNP is the politics of the student union, not of a grown-up Government that continually tells us that it is supportive of the Scottish economy and Scottish jobs. That is why the SNP needs to think again on its short-sighted and destructive policy. Scotland needs a grown-up Government, not one that is run by wannabe student politicians playing silly political games at the cost of real jobs and real wages. If the SNP cannot provide that leadership, it should step aside for the Scottish Conservatives, who will.
I have pleasure in moving,
That the Parliament recognises the significance of the defence industry to Scotland’s economy, in providing secure, well-paid and highly skilled jobs and in driving innovation in the science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) sector; notes that proposed increased spending on defence provides a substantial opportunity for growth; regrets that Scottish Government policy has meant that a Scottish Enterprise grant to support the Rolls-Royce specialist naval welding skills centre in Glasgow for submarine construction has been refused, and calls on the Scottish Government to drop the policy, which prevents public funds being invested in projects such as this.
16:09