Extract from Scottish Parliament statement on Covid-19 (Next steps) - July 9

I thank the First Minister for advance sight of her statement, and I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests.

In June, the Scottish Government announced that it was establishing a Rolls-Royce working group to protect jobs under threat at Inchinnan in Renfrewshire. Further, on 3 June, the First Minister told Parliament that she would 

“work very closely with trade unions”

and spoke of 

“a team Scotland approach”.—[Official Report, 3 June; c 19.] 

I am sure that the First Minister believed what she said at the time, but she was wrong. The Scottish Government’s Rolls-Royce working group does not include one Rolls-Royce trade union representative. If it was a team, it was a team that did not include the players.

This is not just about the future of a site; it is about the future of jobs, at a time when Scotland is on the precipice of a major unemployment crisis. It is about the future of work in Scotland and the future of workers in Scotland. 

Rolls-Royce workers are lobbying Parliament today. Just a few minutes ago, I spoke to Tam Mitchell, who is Unite the union’s convener. He has worked for Rolls-Royce for nearly 35 years. He asked me to directly ask the First Minister this question:

“We face the loss of 550 jobs and a business closure in a matter of weeks. Can you NOW share with the workforce what has been done to secure their jobs?” 

First of all, if there is a concern about the membership of the task force, I will take that away and we will look to address it. The Scottish Government has no interest in not having everyone involved in a collective effort to do everything that we can to secure jobs and, if it is at all possible, to secure Rolls-Royce’s presence in Scotland.

On what has been done, I spoke to the chief executive of Rolls-Royce a few weeks ago. We have established a working group with the company, which is looking at a number of matters. First, it is considering what the Scottish Government can do in the short term to try to protect jobs. Globally, Rolls-Royce faces huge challenges, given the fall in demand for its products, and I cannot stand here and pretend otherwise. We cannot magic that away, unfortunately, but we have committed to look at what can be done in the short term.

Importantly, the working group is looking at the medium to long term and whether the Rolls-Royce presence in Scotland can be repurposed into, for example, electric provision and technology in future and at what we may be able to do together to provide a bridge between the short term and the medium to longer term. That work is on-going, and, of course, the task force will have a role to play in feeding into that.

We should not see this as the point of tension between us, particularly not between Richard Leonard and me. We are, I hope, absolutely on the same side on the issue.

As we have done in the past with other major parts of our industry that have been under threat, the Scottish Government will leave no stone unturned and will do everything that we can to protect jobs and to retain as many as we feasibly can. However, neither Richard Leonard nor I do anyone any favours if we underplay the particular challenges in the aviation sector right now.

I hope that we are able to work together. As I said at the outset, if there are genuine concerns that we have not got some things right along the way, particularly when it comes to the membership of the task force, I am happy to address that quickly.

Tam Mitchell also said to me that he had been told officially by the company that maintenance, repair and overhaul—MRO—is not even on the agenda of the working group’s meetings, because the First Minister’s office was told by Warren East, the chief executive officer of Rolls-Royce, that “those jobs are gone”. A Scottish Government and Rolls-Royce working group to protect jobs at Rolls-Royce should not have written off 700 Rolls-Royce jobs.

Today, Parliament is also being lobbied about jobs by aviation workers from Scotland’s airports, organised by the GMB trade union. Some of them are employed by Menzies Aviation. That company continues to claim 100 per cent rates relief from the Scottish Government while attempting to fire and rehire its workers with their terms and conditions slashed by almost half.

Pamela Ritchie, who is demonstrating outside, has worked at Glasgow airport for 15 years. She works for Swissport. Some 800 out of 1,000 Swissport jobs in Scotland are at risk. She told me:

“Everyone understands how difficult the situation is for air travel, but to be losing so many airport jobs without any action from the Scottish Government to help us just feels like we are the collateral damage in the coronavirus crisis.”

We cannot continue to see more workers feel like they are “collateral damage” during the pandemic. Will the First Minister work with the aviation trade unions and not just the airport owners and operators? Will she make 100 per cent business rates relief conditional on good employment practices? Will she listen to and meet those workers before more jobs are lost?

I do not know where Richard Leonard has been this week, but I am not sure that I am the most popular person in Scotland with the airport owners either. That is the nature of the difficult decisions that we have to take.

Before coming on to aviation, I want to round off on the subject of Rolls-Royce. What Richard Leonard quoted at me from Warren East, the chief executive, to whom I spoke a few weeks ago, relates to the fact that the demand for MRO services has plummeted. That is part of the challenge. 

We want to work to ensure that, if there are things that can be done to protect jobs in the short term, we do them. There is an even more important responsibility to work with the company to repurpose the facility for the longer term, so that we can secure that presence, not just in the short term but for some time to come. We will continue to examine every option there. However, I am not going to stand here and pretend to anybody that the challenges are easy to overcome, given the global circumstances that are contributing to them.

A similar point has to be made with aviation. For reasons on which we have just been reflecting, there has been a collapse in demand for international air travel. I hope to see that recover as we come out of the Covid crisis, although we also have climate change responsibilities that we need to meet. The recovery element is the most important. We will work with all companies to do everything that we can to protect jobs, but we cannot just snap our fingers and take away the global reasons why these challenges exist. I will listen to any practical suggestions that anybody wants to make about the things that the Scottish Government can and should be doing.

On the issue of business rates relief, there are always difficult decisions to make. We want to support as many companies through this time as we can. We have been very clear about this. Indeed, Fiona Hyslop and the Scottish Trades Union Congress agreed fair work principles at the start of this period. We are absolutely clear that any company that is in receipt of public funding—not just through this crisis but generally—should have fair work practices embedded in what they do. We will continue to send that message loudly and clearly to all companies, both during and after the crisis.