S4M-11993 Boosting the Economy

The Deputy Presiding Officer (John Scott): The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-11993, in the name of John Swinney, on boosting the economy.

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16:27

Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP):

One of the great achievements in the Scottish economy in recent years has been the great uplift in our exports. Of course, Scotland has been an exporting nation for an extremely long time. I remember standing on the shores of Lake Titicaca, looking at the ferry from Peru to Bolivia, which was built on the Clyde. I visited the biggest Buddha in the world, which is just outside Rangoon in Burma, and saw that it sits on a frame that proudly says that it was manufactured in Kilmarnock. Further, everywhere one goes in the world, one finds bottles of whisky awaiting an appreciative audience to drink them. Exporting credentials are long established and exports continue to be an important and growing part of our economy.

Many of my constituents and those of others who represent the north-east export skills that are based on their experience of the oil and gas industry and, whatever the vicissitudes of the short-term difficulties, that will undoubtedly continue. However, one of the things that I am most delighted about is that we are no longer exporting people in any substantial sense. It is quite ironic that the new memorial to the clearances at Helmsdale, which has a little child holding his mother’s hand and looking back down the glen to a place that they will never see again, is within sight of the oil field just off the coast—the Beatrice field, which has, of course, been a pioneer in the offshore wind industry.

The wind industry is going to be an important part of our future. Harbours in my constituency—in Buckie, Fraserburgh and Peterhead—want to get some of the action from offshore wind. However, the UK Government’s dithering delay and damaging changes to the regime put at risk those new jobs, which are long term and sustainable. Even when oil has ceased to be part of our economy, those will be important to us.

I have heard some interesting things in the debate. It is always a great pleasure to hear Neil Findlay speak, if only for the excitement of watching him wrestle with the internal contradictions in the arguments that he puts forward and wondering which side of him is going to win. When he criticises the suggestion that Scotland should have control over corporation tax, as Northern Ireland will before the general election, he ignores the fact that Gordon Brown cut corporation tax more often than anyone. Clearly, given that Mr Findlay criticises Gordon Brown, I can only assume that he is a Blairite.

In my remaining 60 seconds, let me touch on what Mr Findlay said about employment. I am delighted to hear him argue for our having full powers over employment law. I will join him in campaigning for that at every opportunity. His recent campaigning against the policy, however, was not so good.

Jackie Baillie seemed to celebrate the drop in the oil price, although the price that the UK Government was given by the Department of Energy and Climate Change is exactly the same as the one that the Scottish Government used. We hear that, in a year’s time, the price will be back to that level. Nevertheless, the long-term future of oil is as a feedstock for our chemical industries, so we must get off burning it—that is important.

I look forward to future prosperity and growth in our economy.

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