S5M-01531 Economy (EU Referendum)

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Christine Grahame): The next item of business is a debate on motion S5M-01531, in the name of Keith Brown, on Scotland’s economy: responding to the European Union referendum. I call the Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work to speak to and move the motion.

14:14
... ... ...
15:52

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

Let me pick up a couple of points that have arisen so far, in particular from Liam Kerr. I will start with a point of agreement with him to set a favourable tone. Change is certainly opportunity for those who have the energy and ideas, but it is also a challenge that we have to respond to. That is always the case, whatever the nature of change. At least I have started with that agreement.

I will briefly pick up the suggestion that the Government has never said anything about the Faroes and fishing. On 10 August 2010, Richard Lochhead condemned Iceland and the Faroes. Then, in an answer to a parliamentary question that was lodged by Jean Urquhart on 10 February 2012—I will give members its number so that they can write it down: it is S4W-05594—Richard Lochhead said that he found

“no access to Faroese waters ... regrettable”. [Written Answers, 9 March 2012; S4W-05594.]

In 2014, the First Minister met the Faroese Prime Minister to discuss the subject. On 9 December 2015, Richard Lochhead said that the fisheries deal in relation to the Faroes was “unacceptable”.

If I had had as much time researching Liam Kerr’s false claim as I have spent rebutting it, I suspect that I could have come up with a 1,000-page book.

I will now move on to Murdo Fraser, who referred to state aid rules. He was, of course, correct. If the UK is outside the EU, the state aid rules of the EU will not be binding on it. That is probably fair comment, but abandoning the state aid rules is not without pain if the country wishes to trade with the EU. It will find that it is unable to do so.

Let me pick up a point that has emerged in the debate about having access to the single market or being a member of it. In particular, I will use Switzerland as an example. It has access to the single market, but it is not a member of it. That means in practice that it can trade in goods across the border by and large, but there are significant restrictions on access for agricultural goods, very little access for professional services, and virtually no access for financial services. That is not a trivial matter. Financial services account for 12 per cent of the UK’s economic output. In considering whether we should be a member of the single market or merely have access to it, we should not imagine that they equate to each other. They are choices that can be made—that is a perfectly proper view—but they are not the same thing; Switzerland tells us that.

I have been talking about banking, so I should declare that, as I voluntarily set out in the register of members’ interests, I have shares in Lloyds Bank that are below the declarable limit.

I want to talk a bit about the area that I represent. Parts of the Aberdeenshire and Moray council areas are in my constituency. Aberdeenshire Council undertook a study that suggests that £11 million of secured EU funding might be at risk. I think that similar scenarios will be repeated across Scotland. In particular, it will affect the north-east Scotland fisheries local action group, which is likely to lose money from the European maritime and fisheries fund. The north-east farming sector receives between £75 million and £100 million in EU subsidies every year. The subsidies appear to be guaranteed for some period of time, but the long-term situation is very uncertain indeed.

I want to talk a little bit about technology generally and about how leaving the EU and being outside the European single market might affect it. In particular, I want to talk about the unified patent court. At the moment, if someone wishes to register a patent in the EU, they can do so once. Outside the EU—outside the court, which is a creature of the EU—they will have to register their patent 28 times. That is a significant burden on innovation in Scotland, which of course invented most of the modern world, and in the UK as a whole. Of course, we will also have far less influence over patent law.

We will also be shutting ourselves off from the European digital single market, which provides data protection and better access to products and services at a reduced cost. That single market is also driving acceptance of and innovation in digital services by setting pan-European standards. For example, there is the debate around the prospect of 5G mobile phone communications. That market is important to Scotland and it is important to the UK.

It is fair to say that some constituencies will be more affected than others. For example, one constituency has the Tesla Motors EU headquarters, the Hutchison 3G headquarters, Informatica and Adobe, which are products that we use every day, Quest Software and a huge number of other companies. Where are those particular companies? They are in Maidenhead, which—as those members who may know a little about it will know—is the constituency that the Prime Minister represents. I hope that, when she sits down with those companies and looks at the problems that innovators and technology companies will experience as a result of the policy that her Government has put in place, she will be challenged about those problems. I hope that that leads to her realising that we have to minimise the adverse impact of leaving the EU by ensuring that we do not simply have access to the single market but stay as a member of the single market.

Finally, a survey of 1,000 Europeans working in the UK that was done by Totaljobs suggests that 25 per cent of them are prepared to reconsider career options outside the UK—another hammer blow if we do not have free movement of people.

15:59