 Felly, hefyd gwasanaethau hwn ar gynnig ar gynllunio ddim yn ei ddechrau. Ar y cyfeirio i gyd wedi gwneud, wrth gwrs, mae'n ddod. Steeven Boyd, ysgrifftiwch, ysgrifftiwch, ysgrifftiwch, ysgrifftiwch, ysgrifftiwch, ysgrifftiwch, Robert Wright, yn gweithio ar gyfer ymddwyr, yn dda i'r Ffwrddion ysgrifftiwch. Gordon McGinnis, ysgrifftiwch, ysgrifftiwch, ein bod ni'n gallu gynnig ysgrifftiwch, Scotland, Patrick Maguire and Solicitor Advocate with Thomson Solicitors. I'll start off with a question from Liam Kerr. Thank you. Just before I begin, convener, can I just check, just as John Mason did in the earlier session, that what we're doing here, the role of this process is for the committee to understand the impact of Brexit on various aspects of the economy? Is that correct? Yes. We're looking at the impact of the decision to leave the EU in the context of Scotland's economic strategy on exports, inward investments, labour and employment rights, et cetera. The role of the experts is to help the committee to understand things that they wouldn't perhaps otherwise have specialist knowledge of. Well, I think it's for them to give evidence in their areas of expertise. Yes, thank you. I have a number of questions for Mr Maguire. You've provided a paper, the economic impact of leaving the European Union. Can I just ask, as it's not signed off, is this something you've prepared yourself? This is something that I prepared in conjunction with various colleagues within the firm, as my firm's position. I'm looking at the second page at paragraph 8, and you say, the last 20 years, we have seen a revolution. It is no longer lawful to discriminate against workers on the basis of their race and to pay women less than men. It's no longer lawful to discriminate to pay women less than men. That's in the last 20 years. Can you help the committee with what was the first race relations act brought in? You're referring, of course, to the fact that that was prior to the involvement in the European Union. I'm just asking for the date that it was brought in. Sorry, Mr Maguire, could you answer the question, please? 70. It had not 1965 or 68. Sorry, Mr Maguire, the questions are directed to you, not to the gentleman sitting behind you in the public gallery. You may be correct. I'm just looking at some of the assertions made in your paper, Mr Maguire. When was the equal pay act brought in? I can't answer that question. Forgive me, I thought you were the expert on employment law here. I am here to address what has occurred as a solicitor in a firm specialising in employment and personal injury law dealing with trade unions and how the law has impacted on trade union members over the last 20 years and beyond. That's not the extent to which the law that now exists is underpinned by European law. That is principally what I am here to talk about and therefore to look forward and to see what happens when the European law underpinning is removed and when the UK Government and, if it is appropriate, the Scottish Parliament have the opportunity to change the laws as they currently exist. The starting point is what are the current laws in this country, what are they underpinned by almost inevitably and invariably entirely currently European law and then we look to see what happens as a result of Brexit. There is no question about anything that is in this paper. In paragraph 9, you say that, in fact, the only workers' rights that are not derived directly from European law relate to the right not to be unfairly dismissed and to be paid the minimum wage. Does that statement hold true for the Sex Discrimination Act as it was? The Sex Discrimination Act, as it currently exists in UK law, is underpinned by European law. There is some deliberate obfuscating of lines here. There is UK law and UK regulations that relate to all of these matters. The reasons why they are on the statute book, the reasons why they go to the extent to which they do, is because of the UK Government's current requirement to provide effective and diswasive remedies in terms of European directives. That is the point. Does that statement hold true for the Disability Discrimination Act as it was? The UK Government went further in certain legislations, including the Disability Discrimination Act, as it was, but that law no longer exists. We have one unified approach to equalities that is underpinned by European law. We keep coming back to the same point. The current UK legislation is underpinned by EU law. Your statement with respect is false. Can you explain what you mean by underpinned by European law? The position applies as much to employment rights as it does to equalities, as it does to health and safety. There are various and large numbers of UK forms of legislation, primary and secondary, regulation statutory instruments and some primary legislation acts of Parliament. With the exception of the ones that we have highlighted in the paper, as the law currently stands, unfair dismissal and national minimum wage, every other piece of legislation is on the statute book because of European union law and because of the UK Government's requirement. It is wonderful, Mr Kerr, that you shake your head at me, as I speak. It is nice to be invited to this committee and to have someone staring at me and shaking his head at me. Mr McGuire will try to restrict ourselves to the evidence rather than political statements. There was no political statement. I have been invited here to give evidence. As I try to do so to the best of my ability, I have a colleague of mine who has shaken his head at me. I do not think that that is true. Is it not the case that we should be treating witnesses in a civil manner? Yes, there should be robust questioning, but it should be done civilly. I certainly accept that. My point in asking what you meant by underpin my European law was to try to clarify your position, which I felt we were not perhaps getting clarified in terms of the questions being asked. I did not mean any disrespect to either yourself or, indeed, any other committee member. Perhaps it would help if we tried to keep our questions and our answers a bit more tightly focused, if I could say that on both sides, because we have other witnesses here and other issues that we want to come on to. Liam Kerr, you want to come back and perhaps we will try to focus on specific points, and I am sure that the witness will do the same. Yes, Mr McGuire, you talk about a Brexit Tory Government will unquestionably set about reversing these protections and have only been restricted from repeal by the UK's membership of the European Union. Are you able to explain to the committee what gold plating of legislation might look like? Perhaps I can explain firstly why I have made the assertion that I did when we look at the changes that have been brought forward by the current UK Government and the previous coalition before it. Many changes which sailed incredibly close to the wind in terms of European Union law. We have had the introduction of employment tribunal fees, which has been challenged and continues to be challenged in the Supreme Court by unison. A certain that that breaches both human rights and European law. We have the increase in unfair dismissal qualifying period to two years. We have the cap on the compulsory award for unfair dismissals at 12 months. We have the limiting or, frankly, suffocating of the two European Court of Human Rights Justice decisions in relation to holiday pay, where, as soon as those two judgments came out, the UK Government legislated to change the ability to claim looking forward. We have the entire trade union act. We have the ability of employment tribunals to make recommendations that affect the entire workforce. We then have section 69 of the enterprise act. Another matter, which many commentators said was in breach of European law, the framework directive, and many complaints were made to the European Commission and were being very seriously taken by the European Commission, but, of course, Brexit changed that. We then have, as recently as the announcement last week, Thursday, with the increase in the small claims limit from £1,000 to £5,000, a paper that was aimed on the face of it at Whiplash, but which, in fact, applies to all cases, including crucially work-related cases. That is why the very next day, the General Secretary of United, Len McCluskey, came out and pointed out if that was truly about Whiplash. Why have you not excluded work-related cases? As with all things, these are underhanded attacks on workers' rights. There is a litany of changes that has been taken forward by the UK Government. It stands entirely to reason that, as soon as the powers entirely in their hands go further, they believe that they could not go any further in section 69 of the Enterprise Act. It is as clear as a pike staff, as they say, what is going to happen as soon as the powers are in their hands. So, too, is the position for qualities. It is absolutely plain. Mr Kerr, come back on the numerous points that you have raised. I had asked about gold plating of legislation. If we accept, since you declined to answer that, that the committee will understand or inform itself what that is, do you accept that the UK Government, at some points, does gold plate European legislation? Of course, the UK Government has, in the past, gold plated legislation. Let us not forget that I referred several occasions to the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act. That was an act of a Conservative Government. The world has changed. The view of the Conservative Government has changed. Gold plating is a myth in this current environment. Of course, we know what it is and if it is possible. However, the changes that I have highlighted show that there is no prospect of that whatsoever moving forward. Would you accept that CHUPI is a gold plated legislation? As it stood, yes. Is it going to change? Yes. Was there a consultation on CHUPI and the gold plating a number of years ago? I believe that the European debate in Brexit was about the concept. If we are talking concepts, let us talk sovereignty of Parliament. You raised the concept of gold plating. You asked me whether there was a consultation on it. However, I was making the point about sovereignty of Parliament. That is the whole point of Brexit. That is what people allegedly voted for. Sovereignty of Parliament is so. The gold plating that you talked about, the consultation that you spoke about, is utterly irrelevant in the context of sovereignty of Parliament. We look at the changes that have been. It is inevitable that the changes will come. I am not sure that I understand the inevitable changes that will come. If the Prime Minister has said that workers' rights will not be lessened, indeed, there is a consultation on further possible improvement workers' rights, but there is no inevitability about it, is there? That there will be workers' representatives on company boards. That changed rather quickly, did it not? The Government announced a consultation process on Thursday of last week that related, apparently, on the face of it to the compensation culture and to whiplash claims, and yet it dealt possibly a death blow to the trade union movements ability to prosecute health and safety claims on behalf of other members. What is said publicly and what appears in terms of legislation have been different things throughout the entire duration of the current government, so it shall continue. I want to bring in Ash Denham at this stage. Sorry, Mr MacDonald. 20 minutes attacking a witness is a good use of this committee's time. We are here to ask questions. There are 10 of us in this committee who are here to ask questions of the whole panel, and I do not think that it is acceptable for one member to take up a vast proportion of the time attacking one witness. I was just about to move on to Ash Denham, but I think that a great proportion of the time has been the witness himself giving evidence. If I may, I will move on to Ash Denham. Fortunately, my question is for the same witness. In your submission, you have explained from your viewpoint that you feel that if the powers return to the UK Government, there may be a deterioration in some of those. Employment laws, equality laws, et cetera, and you have cited some evidence here. I do not think that that is an unreasonable assertion to make. You have stated here that there is no right without the ability to prosecute those rights, so you would like to see some of those powers come to the Scottish Government. Things like employment, equality laws, control over tribunal processes, et cetera. Would you explain what impact you think that would have? There are two separate issues. One is the black letter law. I do, for the reasons that I have set out, but I can explain in more detail. I think that there is a strong case to be made that, at the very least, there is a debate to be had as to where those powers should vest. That is because this has raised an incredibly important and previously unthought of constitutional issue. I make the point that, when the original Scotland act was drafted and each subsequent extension of that act, no one thought for a second that any real power in relation to employment law, health and safety law or equalities vested anywhere other than Europe, and that, according to what that vote to exit has done, has completely changed the balance, the relative legislative balance in power between the two parliaments that, effectively, against that analysis, the Westminster parliament has been handed powers that no one previously thought it had, no one previously thought it would have and in previous votes and discussions around the constitutional settlement it was always thought it vetted only in Europe. There is therefore a very, very serious constitutional issue here for the two governments and perhaps the two parliaments have to look at that seriously and take a view on what that means for where those powers should lie in terms of the devolved settlement. That is the black letter law. There is something perhaps equally fundamental but far easier to achieve, because that involves a political discussion and perhaps more. That is the administration of, principally, the employment tribunals. We know that, on occasion, the right is utterly irrelevant if there is no means by which to prosecute that right, or if the ability to prosecute that right is effectively removed. Certainly, there is no better example of that than the introduction of employment tribunal fees, punitive £1,200 fees for an ordinary member of the public to take a claim forward. What was the purpose behind that legislation? It was to utterly reduce the number of claims being taken forward. Was it effective? It was absolutely effective. In one year, the number of claims taken forward reduced by 70 per cent. Job done, as far as the Tories are concerned, shows just how important the procedural aspect is to rights. We have this debate at a crucial time because it is at a time when the Scottish Parliament is being handed certain powers in relation to the employment tribunal administration. That is still being discussed. There is a draft order in council and I say thank goodness it is only a draft order in council, because the powers currently being handed to the Scottish Parliament, crucially the Scottish Parliament, in terms of that order in council, are not enough. The hand powers in relation to employment tribunal fees, but really that is pretty much it. All of the other important procedural issues that the Scottish Parliament I think would want to have at this juncture given Brexit, I certainly say should have given that power, are not being handed to the Scottish Parliament at all. Therefore, it is imperative that the Scottish Government redoubles its efforts to beef up pump steroids, if you will, into the order in council and get as much powers in terms of the administration to the Scottish Parliament. Perhaps you could move on to some other issues and bring in the other witnesses as well. I would like to turn to Gillian Martin. My question is for Gordon MacGinnis. We have just been hearing not just today but over the last few weeks from various sectors with their varying concerns over recruitment issues regarding Brexit. This morning, we had the care sector, nursing sector and soft-fruit sector. I just wanted to ask about your forward planning in terms of skills, given that we might have really significant skills gaps. We also mentioned constructions. We had someone in earlier talking about Polish businesses and he mentioned construction in an awful lot. How have those conversations impacted on your forward planning and your role? We are working through our industry leadership groups just now to try and assess the scale. There is some data available through the labour force survey, which indicates the scale of European Union migrants in the workforce. In areas such as hospitality and food and drink manufacture, that is significant. Through the industry leadership groups and the skills groups, we are doing more detailed analysis of that. It is still unclear what the impacts will be in terms of EU migrants, those who could stay here, but there is more work to be done. There has been some interesting work done by people at EIS through the university sector, calling the universities to deliver joint support, advice and guidance for organisations. We will probably look at three strands to what we will do and think about how we can assist companies to retain existing European staff in areas such as agriculture and others. There are some significant challenges there. Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board had a September publication and it flagged the scale to them. That is obviously a challenge because much of what the Conservatives and UK Government have looked at just now in terms of future skills or immigration policies have been based on skills. Obviously, a lot of agriculture is seasonal and it would be lower-skilled and more manual work. Previously, immigration stands in terms of the tiers that the UK Government had, but because of access to European Union residents, those were the moves. I think that there will need to be a rethink at the UK or Scottish Government level in terms of immigration policy around those activities. Too often, everything is entwined into one issue and you need to set out the different structures for skilled workers, both for me, you and international and for non-skilled workers, and to think about different policy lines within that. Looking ahead, there are some challenges. The UK Government is looking at introducing a skills levy for immigration from April next year. In conversations with the business community, that is not well known or publicised of what the implications of that might be. That could be an additional upfront fee of £1,000 per year for an individual. Your typical visa would be for three to five years, so that could be an upfront fee of £3,000 to £5,000 for a company recruiting, and there are additional charges on top of that. There are some issues there in terms of tactical support, but they are also getting a better understanding of how it will impact in specific sectors and helping them with plans around how they are going to be a wee bit more resilient there. Essentially, we need a clearest year from the UK Government in terms of what will happen to the EU migrants who are currently here. One of the things that was mentioned is that the length of time that it takes to train people for certain sectors is far and above that as to what this time period is for before we actually, from article 50, have been triggered. Do you have whatever the eventuality is? Could you respond to that? I think that that is a real challenge. Again, until we are clear and the policy that will come from the UK Government around that transition phase is a difficult one to predict. We are doing some work around areas such as financial services and digital and ICT. That is where the skills-related issues are much more apparent. I think that there is also a move at the UK Government level to make sure that, where they are granting visas for applicants, there is a plan within the home nations to address those skills-related issues. Again, I would come back and say that a natural way for us to do that would be to work through the industry leadership groups and get a clear picture of what the skill challenges are moving forward, then work with the funding council and other training organisations and employers to make sure that there are firm plans in place. However, I do not doubt that it is going to be a challenging transition phase. A final question that many of my colleagues have made the point that if there is a skills shortage in certain areas or there are recruitment issues, what are we doing to target those who have Scottish nationals who have not been economically active? There is obviously a move in terms of welfare powers, more of that. Coming to Scotland, we have our employability fund and we will work in partnership with local authorities and tailor programmes where we can. There is obviously a bit of pressure on the employability fund, so if the challenges that we face through Brexit and some of the changes to migration might need to think around the resources that are applied to that policy area in terms of providing solutions for Scottish nationals and UK nationals to access employment here. Is it fair to say that the volume of Scottish nationals is nowhere near the volume of people for EU nationals? I do not think that a good match of supply and demand has come back into areas such as agriculture, where it is really physically demanding work, so is there a natural match there in terms of some of the people who will be coming from a longer term unemployment? I do not think that we have a balance here, so there will be some real challenges, I think. That is why that wider immigration policy is important, because it is part of the solution, not the whole solution. I am just wondering if either of other witnesses Professor Ryder has spoken on that, and if any of the witnesses wish to come in on an issue, please simply indicate by raising your hand. I think that Gordon Sands will answer those questions very well. The only comment that I would make is that there is a slight danger that we are talking about the future once Brexit has happened. There is already quite significant anecdotal evidence that the falling real value of remittances is leading to, if not significant constraints on labour supply in some sectors, then fears that those constraints might start biting before Brexit actually happens. Yes, Professor Wright. No, in fact, the sound desk will take care of all that. Great, thanks. I have a lot to say on this, so I basically agree with Gordon. We have to look at the current situation now. What you have at UK immigration policy is the responsibility of the UK government. There has been no discussion at all or no promises about somehow, after Brexit, Scotland will get more control of immigration or some control of immigration, so I think it is just a status quo with respect to the decisions on immigration policy being made in London as opposed to Edinburgh. Now, the other thing to remember here is that if you are right when we say there is a lot of A8 migrants in low-skilled jaws who have relatively high skills themselves, so this is a big mismatch. This is a problem because it leads to labour market turnover, which is a clear cost to this, so this is not an ideal match, an ideal policy. It is just one that has evolved because there is this free movement of people. Now, what you need to do is the current system in the UK is very flexible, in a way, because there is this Tier IV, which was focused originally on low-skilled migrants, but that is not an operation because it could be easily put into operation, and that would attract your low-skilled people, but again, that is for the UK as a whole, and there will be no, as I can see, any input from Scotland specifically. I believe that that will work quite well because that is what most countries use, that have an immigration policy that has a shortage of low-skilled workers. They do not attract high-skilled workers to take low-skilled jobs, they attract low-skilled workers. So, I do not think that we have to create a new system, or we have to create a complicated set of visas. There is a tier there, it is going to have to be reactivated and people are going to have to think about it. Now, the next issue is what does Scotland do here? We know that the demography of Scotland is different. The workers of the future have never been born. You are not going to be able to reskill or provide skills for people who leave school with no basic qualifications, or people who have been long-term unemployed. The evidence is out there, it is very difficult to get these people back into work and keep them in work. This is something that is not speculation, it is known from research both in the universities and in the parliament. In terms of numbers, the stuff that we have been doing over the years, this number of people that you were mentioning is relatively small anyway. No, that is not going to fix the problem if we start hiring our own that don't work at the moment and we can argue or discuss why we think they don't work, but basically they don't have skills to work. What they have on offer is not in demand. Now, for the Scottish situation, again we don't have to recreate the wheel, we can learn from other experiences like Canada, Australia. If we want more control over immigration then we have to adopt a system similar to Australia or Canada where we have more say in it and you have to issue visas that are conditional on people living, working and staying in school and up to the minimum of time that they comply for UK citizenship and I don't think that's going to change with Brexit. This works well and what it does is it gets people who are a better match rather than very high school Polish people coming here and staying one year and returning. Again, I don't see a big change in UK immigration policy before or after Brexit. I don't see any real serious problem of attracting all those skilled or middle skilled workers UK, but how do we deflect and convince some of these workers to come to Scotland where they're basically needed more? That is still the big unknown, but that was unknown 10 years ago. It was unknown yesterday and it's going to be probably unknown after Brexit, so I think that's where the discussion will have to be. Scotland's demographic situation, its labour force growth is much lower. Relatively speaking, you need more people in this lower-skilled, middle-skilled group than the UK as a whole, which is effective in England because it's 98 per cent of the population. I'd like to follow up on Gillian Martin's question, although before I do that, as the first Labour member to speak, I must point out that the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act was piloted through Parliament by Michael Foote and was enacted by a Labour Government, Patrick Maguire. Gillian's reflected this. Brian Buchan from Scottish Engineering observed at an earlier session that he'd been to recite Dockyard and was watching construction work being carried out by Polish workers on an MOD contract. The GMB trade union yesterday published a report on the employment opportunities from decommissioning in the North Sea. I wonder whether people might reflect on perhaps we could be better at not just skills, development and labour market planning, but on a broader-level economic planning, not least in looking at areas where there is a large amount of public money being expended in the economy to try to better match the existing skills base with the future work demands that there would be. Who would like to come in on that? Start with Gordon McGinnis. I mean, the Scottish Government have produced their labour market strategy and we're going to be working on that. I think it's been an area that historically, when you look back Mr Leonard's 10, 15 years, that alignment between the supply within certainly higher and further education, unless with apprenticeship schemes, there perhaps not being as closely aligned as we can in terms of trying to future proof the economy and the type of skills that we have in it, and that's something that the SDS has been working with, along with partners in terms of the work that we've put into skills planning, but it takes a bit of time to infect that into the system and get the type of changes that we want. Are you always going to be able to deliver the needs of the economy from within Scotland itself? We'll probably not, but it's getting a balance within that and certainly that's the main focus of our work. I've been working with people like Brian Burkin at Scottish Engineering. We've got an engineering skills leadership group to take that kind of forward look in terms of where the economy is going, the impact of digitisation in it, but also an increase in focus on STEM and technology-based apprenticeships, so have we got a perfect match just now? Obviously not, but it's a hard thing to plan out for the future, but I think we've made good strides forward since we've come into being in terms of the skills development in Scotland. Professor Wright? Sorry, I always get myself in trouble when I answer this question because I work at a university, but yes, of course, you can always do more to provide the skills that you need, but providing the skills to young Scottish people is not enough. You'll need to bring in skills from elsewhere, but certainly I've been here since 91 and I worked in London before that, and there's been a massive increase in higher education at the expense of further education, so it's hardly surprising that you have some skill shortages because the emphasis was going into higher education, and it's free as well, so it seems like a good deal for parents to send your kids to higher education, yet we see that around 6% of higher education graduates in Scotland leave as soon as they graduate. So there's a clear mismatch here, and I'm not saying turn universities and further education colleges into skills factories, but I think there can be a better match than what's taught at state money for free than there is now, and we have a declining number of young people in Scotland, the demography is there, it's fewer and fewer, 17 years old, which is the core business of universities, and you have a very large higher education sector, so there's going to have to be a change somewhere along the line, and my view would be to do it now, is to start, you have several problems that are going to become worse by ignoring them, free tuition, declining number of young people, skills shortage, labour shortages, brexit, whatever, so again I think there can be a reorientation of further and higher education policy to make it more relevant with the skills that are in demand, but I see very little discussion of that because letting people study for free in Scotland for Scottish Dalmasal students is a vote winner, changing that is a vote loser, and until that political dilemma is addressed, then we're going to have this current system, we're going to have conversations like this, and probably a little happening, but we shall see. Well, perhaps Stephen Boyden then, Patrick Maguire? Yeah, I mean, I think Richard's question raises a number of points, I mean first one, the Polish workers at Ross Heights scenario does that worry me, it doesn't for the reason that I don't think there is any serious evidence that in migration to Scotland has led to higher unemployment or lower wages amongst the indigenous Scottish workforce, I think we've got very good evidence to show that that's the case for the UK as a whole, I think we've got less good evidence in Scotland, but certainly nothing that I've seen that leads me to be particularly concerned about that. Secondly, the point that you raised about economic planning, forecasting and meeting skills demand, I mean I've got no ideological opposition to that approach whatsoever, as you will not be surprised to learn, but I mean I think you have to understand that it's tremendously difficult, I mean I know Godwin as colleagues in the Scottish Government for a number of years, I've been putting a lot of work into this here, but if you take as an example the oil and gas industry now four or five years ago then there was huge problems in that sector, and it was the public sector that was meant to come in and solve those issues then, the global price collapses, lo and behold it becomes a completely different scenario. The sector behaves in the current crisis in a way that's only going to exacerbate future skills demands, and therefore there's a limit to what the public sector can do to fill that gap. The third point that would make me round about the scale of future opportunities, I mean I heard Gary Smith from GMB on the radio yesterday morning, I subsequently looked for the report, which I couldn't find anywhere, so I can't give you a kind of detailed response to that, but again I mean to use that as an example, I think there is a insufficient understanding at the moment of the nature and scale of the jobs that will flow from decommissioning, we're talking about a process here, and I think at one end and probably the higher end of that process decommissioning natural platforms at sea, I think there's a lot of evidence at the moment that Scottish firms are doing quite well there and well placed to make benefit from future opportunities. I think that the other end of that process, breaking up these things at yards, then certainly an opportunity there, there's one that we should be working very hard with the Scottish Government to maximise, but you know I think when the banding numbers about a hundred billion pounds and suggesting all of that is going to be spent breaking up bricks at yards possible in Scotland, I think that's very unlikely to be the case, so I think we have to be quite forensic when we look at future opportunities and be realistic in the evidence base that I think we'll be more addressing on. Yes, and then Patrick Maguire. Yeah, I mean, I mean, well let's look then at renewable energy where many people expected there to be a jobs bonanza and it just really hasn't materialised. I don't know whether Stephen Boyd has got any particular reflections on that experience and whether there are lessons to be learned from that briefly perhaps. Blimey, that's a whole other evidence session, I think. I mean, I think there's lots of issues there. I mean, I think certainly, you know, I think I've mentioned at this committee before that when I attended the first meeting of the Forum for Renewable Energy Development in Scotland in 2003, we published that there report in Marine Renewables in Scotland which was talking about 12,000 jobs in waving tidal by 2010. Now I just think these reports were much too optimistic at that point and I think that that was unfortunate because I think it embedded some skepticism and resentment there about workers who therefore, who didn't see these opportunities begin to flow as quickly as they had been promised. I think there is a lot of issues there that, you know, kind of get to the heart of energy policy at a UK level about how we kind of subsidise these sectors but also industrial strategy at both UK and Scottish level. And I find it very difficult to be particularly well concise than that, but I think, you know, the fact that we haven't generated the levels of employment that were being discussed kind of 10, 12 years ago is a massive question that requires, well, it doesn't really benefit, I think, from very brief responses. To bring in Patrick McGuire here and then perhaps Professor Wright. Thank you very much. I'm just a very brief point in terms of skills generally and opportunities, in fact, that there may be, I'd firstly say, Richard Leonard, you're absolutely correct. I was flustered, I was of course referring to the first regulations under the 1974 act were taken forward by the Conservatives under the six pack, but you know, point well and truly noted. But in terms of skills shortages, strangely, despite everything else I said earlier on, there are actually opportunities. There have been moves by various members of various parties within this Parliament to harness some of the power that the Government has in terms of procurement, whether that is to impose conditions on paying the living wage, or in this context, when we talk about skills shortages, minimum requirements of apprentices, and similar conditions they need. If you're going to get a Government contract, you need to pay a certain price in terms of the money that you're prepared to pay, and the people you're willing to bring on into training to plug skills gaps. That has always floundered in the past because of the framework directive itself, there's also the posted workers directive, there's various strict rules in terms of stated the list goes on. Now that of course is one area where the Brexit represents and presents massive opportunities to the UK, and this Parliament has shown itself particularly willing to go down that road, and therefore massive opportunities to the Scottish Parliament and to harness the power of procurement. Could I just Patrick McQuire ask, is that because the current procurement rules are European Union-based, just like following on your last point? The procurement rules have certain barriers put in their way via the various European rules. From the framework directive itself relating to the need to have a quality among employers, but there are specific rules as well in relation to stated when the Government cannot support a business, and the posted workers directive relates to workers in different parts of the community being treated the same and relating to the free movement of trade. So it's a very long way of saying that it's European rules that have prohibited or prevented that in the past, yes. Thank you very much. No, Professor Wright. I want to say something about this renewable energy bonanza that we haven't experienced. I mean, I don't think this is all that complicated to understand. It's not a big puzzle, right? We don't need a special session, right? There was two factors that caused this. The first is that we went into a massive recession, and for once it wasn't caused by OPEC or somebody jacking up oil prices, so it wasn't an energy-driven recession. And the second is, unless you believe the price of oil is going to stay low forever, then this has just been shifted into the future. I mean, do you believe there'll be enough oil in the world to last forever? No, it's just a matter of time. And I think the Scottish Government is what they're doing is correct policy. It mimics what Canada is doing with respect to the Athabasic guitar science. It's keeping its investment in some of these activities going. And that will pay big dividends in terms of economic growth and employment in the future. But it's very hard to say when. But when the price of oil goes up again, which it will, then these investments will be made by the private sector as they were promised before the recession and the price of oil nosedived. And so I think it's a policy that the Scottish Government in fact got right at the moment. But again, it's hard to say when the price of oil will rise to high levels again. I'll bring in John Mason at this stage. Thanks, convener. I think for myself it's to go back to some of the issues that Gillian Martin raised and perhaps maybe yourself, Professor Wright, to start with. I mean, you gave a slightly discouraging picture, I think, of where we are. And I'm just wondering, there's the kind of short term, because for example, we heard in the last session that if we want a new GP, it's going to take 10 years to train them, so we can't do that very quickly. But in the medium to the longer term, can we change social attitudes, do you think, in our population so that people are willing to go out and pick the fruit who aren't at the moment? We heard that nurses are willing to be nurses, but they don't want to work with older people. Can that be changed? Do doctors want to be doctors, but they don't want to be GPs? Am I over-optimistic thinking that we can change that and make our own workforce more adapted to the needs? Or do we just have to say that medium to long term, we will always need to bring people in to do some of these jobs? I want someone else to go through, so I'm just picking on me now. I think it's the latter. It's clearly the latter. I mean, it's a numbers game. It's not being optimistic. It's not being pessimistic. It's about the numbers of people. If you look at the population projections under a reasonable set of assumptions, the Scottish Labour Force is going to shrink. That means fewer potential workers. The people aren't there to retain in the scale up in the scale that's needed. I think what you should be thinking about a little bit is what other countries are doing. For example, in Canada, they don't educate or train now nursing assistants. They spend all their money on nurses and they bring the nursing assistants in from abroad. That was a decision they made. They couldn't get, for reasons you've mentioned, young female Canadians to study being a nursing assistant, which is a further education degree, a nurse is a higher education degree. Most of them come from the obvious places, Philippines, Indonesia, Asia, where their level of training is high enough to work in the Canadian hospitals. These are the type of decisions. Of course, would you like to have Australian doctors or Scottish doctors? Well, perhaps Scottish doctors know more about Scotland and Australian doctors, so then you focus on training your doctors. You can't focus on training everybody and you just have to make a decision. We don't have to make this decision at the moment because we're in this pre-Brexit period where a lot of people just come to Scotland because they're allowed to come to Scotland from the EU. We don't have to think about these questions, but in the future you're going to have to think about these questions because these people will not be coming under the same conditions they were before. It's a very different proposition. If you say, I'm going to go work in Scotland and if I like it, I'm saying having to pay a fee and only limited to be, say, three to five years after the visas look like. It's not a matter of optimism, pessimism. It's a matter of making hard decisions about where you want to spend your money and what type of people you want to educate and what type of people, quote, you want to import. So is the problem that we just don't have enough people to get through both the higher and the further education systems? That's right. The number of 17-year-olds, young people in Scotland is shrinking, right? The number of people in the same age group in England is increasing, so that's why the problem is different between the two countries, right? Okay, but it's also the problem. I think you were suggesting that we've put too much emphasis on higher education and I think there's been a tradition in Scotland that if you got a degree that was a success, whereas actually we should be putting more emphasis on further education. I think that, I mean, my personal view is there should be a rebalancing away from higher education to further education, mainly because you lose 6% of your higher education graduates to somewhere else. You're in a situation where you're under demographic pressure, your labour force is not growing at all or very slowly, and it's only growing because the number of people coming here is more than the number of leaving, and yet these domestic people, Scottish-born people, Scottish-domicide people that the taxpayer pays for to educate 6% of them are leave. It seems like kind of madness to me, right? So why is this happening? Well, the evidence suggests they're moving from Scotland because the job opportunities are better and they move to the rest of the UK and farther afield, including the EU, and the EU may be no longer a destination country for these few people in the future, so there may be more than most day, or maybe more than most leave till I go to Australia, and then if you leave to go to Australia or Canada or the United States somewhere else, the probability of returning is much lower than if you go to the EU. So, again, I mean, it's all this kind of joined up thinking about thinking about what kind of people you need in the future and what numbers and where they should be come from or whether they should be skilled up here or let someone else do the skilling up, and then you just say, well, we need, this is the minimum standard that we need, and either have it or don't. Mr McGinnis, this whole area about are we, you know, are we doing too much in higher education? Should we switch a bit away from that? I think that there's certainly been a significant move, and if you went back to the 70s, it was probably about 70-30. 70 per cent went into the wider labour market, and 30 per cent went into higher education and further education at that time, and that balance has shifted significantly. We've been working with partners around the development of foundation apprenticeships and graduate apprenticeships, and that's probably the one to give a better experience of vocational education to a work-based education at schools, but to try and show that there are different paths into careers, and I think, well, for the good, pick up both from further and higher education. It's not to say that further or higher education is wrong, it's getting people into the right types of disciplines, thinking about how you can multi-skill them, so is it just a nursing assistant, or can you add value to that? You need to think about the potential roles that automation would play in terms of both healthcare but wider services, and then you need to obviously think about preventative measures if it isn't around healthcare, but certainly we would advocate for more of a balance and more thinking around work-based learning. When Serine Wood undertook his review, that was certainly his view that had to be much more of a focus on technical and vocational skills, because that was the way that economy was moving. Does Skills Development Scotland want to make sure that we can uncover the whole range of skills using as many local people as we can? Is that the assumption? Or do you take the assumption that, like Canada, apparently does, that there are going to be certain sectors that will just not bother training people for that and will bring them in from outside? I don't think that the Skills Development Scotland would have a view in terms of importing skills in that way. What we've tried to do is work through our industry leadership groups and identify where the key priorities are for them, where there are skills gaps and where there is volume issues. We're doing some work just now around early years childcare in terms of the Government commitment and getting a better understanding of what does the current system currently provide and what might that look like in the future, doing likewise in areas like digital and then into other sub-sectors like things like road to college. Where are the shortages and where does the pressure start to build and what type of feedback do we get from employers? There's also an emphasis on what employers are doing. I think that Steven said earlier that this is not just a challenge for the public sector to sort. This is a challenge for employers both in the public sector and private sector to think about their own workforce planning, what it means for their needs for the future and how they are investing in the workforce. Mr Boyd, I don't know if you feel that we should be assuming that there's a long-term net immigration or is that not an issue that affects you? I think that for the reasons that Professor Wright has already set out, I think that we should be assuming that the Scottish labour market will require immigration in the future. Whether or not the post-Brexit scenario allows for that to happen is clearly another question. Do you do, like apparently they're doing in Canada, that we have certain sectors that we think we just have to take immigrants for that or people to immigrate or would you not look at it that way? We should always be seeking to learn from what other countries are doing, so I'm going to be certainly interested in finding out more about that. I think that we're forecasting into the future to what our skills demands are going to be. I think that it's quite difficult at this moment to be precise about. One of the areas where there's going to be big demand in the future for low-skilled people is because of the ageing population. You're going to need a lot more semi-skilled, low-skilled health workers, and you're not generating them now. Where are they going to come from? The other thing to remember is Scotland is no different or the UK is no different than the United States or Australia. There is basically two groups of workers that are growing. Low-skilled workers and high-skilled workers. Why is because the low-skilled workers provide the services demanded by the high-skilled. There's not much in between. This is the disappearing middle class. We know this. This is happening in lots of countries. We get higher levels of inequality because we have this big long discussion about this, but reality, that's the reality. Those two groups are growing. The thing is skills policy, immigration policy, whatever should be in place to help those groups that are growing grow. Agricultural workers, right? Why would you want to skill up agriculture workers when you can bring people in to temporarily pick tomatoes or whatever? When I was growing up in Canada in the stone age, they used to bring people in to pick strawberries from around the world. Again, it's making these decisions on who you're going to skill up yourself with taxpayers' money and your institutions and who you're not. There's no discussion of this. There's no thinking this way. Remembering that there are basically two groups growing. Low-skilled and high-skilled. That's it. I suspect we could discuss that for a long time, but I'll leave it at that. I'm just wondering, Patrick Maguire, if this may not be something you can comment on because you may not be responsible in your own firm for employing people, but I'm just wondering if you had any comment on the legal profession, this area that we've just been talking about? Yeah, I'm a partner and therefore I'm involved in employment as much as any of my other partners, but my observations on the legal market and migration in and out, I don't have any particular observations. However, we're beginning to touch on the growing atypical employment situations that exist across the UK and across Scotland. When one considers the views that there are now just two types of employees, that may be correct, but there are more and more different types of employment situations from fixed-term to agency workers, to the much-discussed gig economy. I am going to take that back to the European Union and Fundamental Protections that have been brought in via the EU and the significant concerns that I have about what may happen moving forward. I simply say no more than that the rights and great strides forward in the protection of agency workers, part-time workers, temporary workers has all came through Europe and we must vigorously hold on to those protections and not allow them to reduce in any way, shape or form. Gordon MacDonald, thank you very much convener. Just on that point that you raised, Mr Maguire, my understanding of the EU employment law was that it sought to create a level playing field across countries so that one member state couldn't compete basically on the lower levels of protection for workers. Is there a danger that the UK in order to continue to attract new employment and grow the economy that we could end up competing on the basis of lower pay and reduced employment protection for workers? If so, what steps can we do or the UK Government do in order to avoid that potential situation? I absolutely 100 per cent agree with you. It is interesting that when most people discuss the fundamental protections for workers brought in via Europe, it is always in the context of the social charter in that side of the EU. As you have highlighted, Mr MacDonald, it is the complete opposite. It is to ensure that there is a level playing field between all countries, that one country cannot basically out-compete other countries by having worse rights, worse health and safety records, that it is cheaper to employ, cheaper to injure, cheaper to treat their employees. What is at the heart of fundamental protections for EU workers? That is what we have seen. That is absolutely bringing it bang up today in the gig economy and the judgments in relation to holiday pay, etc. That is exactly what underpins it. It is absolutely a risk that without the shackles of the European Union and without the binding obligation under the framework directive to have that equality, it stands to reason that one way of doing it would be to cut where it is easy to cut, whether that is workers rights in terms of health and safety, whether it is immediately pulling back on the protections that have been imposed on the UK in relation to the gig economy. There is no doubt that that would be the first thing that would go. That is just absolutely obvious. Are there signs of that? We have seen several UK Government publications over the years, the best publication in 2011, flexible, efficient, fair, talking about the minimum necessary legal protections, about minimal Government intervention, light touch. We know how badly that went wrong with the banks, do we? That is in reality the vision. If that comes in terms of workers rights, it is absolutely terrifying what would make them out of it. To bring it absolutely bang up today and the negotiations between the Prime Minister and this and whatever they were, is it not interesting that a big, strong employer could go and make demands and get certain concessions? Where does that take us? Are employers going to start going to the Prime Minister and saying that they will reduce health and safety standards and that they will make it easier to pay people less? That is certainly a significant risk in where we are going, so what do we do? It comes back to what I have said in my paper. First and foremost, there is a constitutional issue and we should be, as a Parliament in Scotland and as a Scottish Government, saying that this is a new constitution and we should be bringing these issues into evolved Scotland. Certainly, coming back to your colleagues' comments, we must first and foremost ensure that the current negotiations around the Ordering Council ensures that it is a Scottish Parliament that has all those powers. Professor Wright, you would like to comment on that. That is an important issue. From an economics point of view, I am not a lawyer, but I know a lot about the legislation. One view is that all this employment legislation makes workers more expensive. It is like a tax on labour and it makes us less competitive, so that has just been mentioned. However, the other view is that it makes workers more productive because they are more secure. The thing is that it is not always the case that there is some race to the bottom to get the cost of labour down to some minimum so that you can compete against some low-wage economy. Also, you can get big productivity gains and people just work harder if they feel more secure. It is not one or the other, even though it is couched in those terms. I think that you did a great job of explaining this, but that is the economics of it. It makes people more productive if they are more secure and it makes them cheaper if you have less of this legislation. There is obviously going to be some place in between that would be the ideal place to be. Stephen Boyd, yes. Just very quickly, I think that it is important to highlight that, despite the common minimum standards that Patrick has described, there is already significant divergence across the EU, particularly in terms of employment protection, and the UK is already right at the extreme end in terms of being the least randomly regulated. Dean Lockhart A couple of questions for our guests. Perhaps we will start with Stephen Boyd in relation to workers' rights in and outside of Brexit, sorry, in or outside of the EU. Do you agree with the statement that TUC General Secretary Francis has already made, that workers in Scotland are better off in the UK, even outside of the EU, than they would be inside an independent Scotland? A question for Professor Wright and Mr McGinnis relates to the number of non-educated or not-in-employment, not-in-education, not-in-training 18 to 24-year-olds that we have in Scotland. I believe that there are 67,000 so-called needs in Scotland. What can we do to retrain those young people to get them back into the workforce, given that there is 5 per cent unemployment and we have a skills gap? For me, this is a young generation that has been left behind and we should be doing all that we can to get them back into some form of training or some form of employment. Mr McGuire, just a technical question on your written statement. Given that you appear before us as a Solicitor Advocate, can you highlight what legal advice you have provided on the legal implications of Brexit in terms of your three-page submission? Not so much questions of politics or questions of opinion. It is more on looking for the hard legal advice set out in your submission. The first thing to say, just so that everybody is clear, is that the STC is wholly independent of the TUC and has been since 1897. Why does Francis Fools need to make that observation? I do not know. The STC supported your Nasmith Commission process the devolution of employment law, and whether or not we are better in the UK than being independent within Europe is something that we will continue to consider in the future and address when we need to be answering those questions. Professor Wright, that is a perennial problem. It is not only a problem in Scotland, but it is also a problem in most other countries. Most countries have a population group of young people who leave school with no qualifications, often have problematic backgrounds, etc. All the evidence points to, despite the fact that they spend lots of money on trying to reskill these people, it does not work very well. This is the sad thing. Whether we continue to try to get these people back in the labour force is a financial question because it does not seem to work very well. The other Conservative politician view would be to force these people into work by cutting back their welfare benefits so they do not have much choice. Again, it is pretty extreme. I do not agree with it at all. The other thing is, while again, a lot of countries and this group go into the army. This is one of the requirements. If you cannot cut it in the labour market, and you have a low skill, then sorry we are going to make a decision for you, but this idea of retraining people, making them fit for work that come from this group, there is no evidence that it has been successful yet lots of money has been spent on it. It is a real core problem. As has been pointed out for a long time in Scotland, relatively speaking, we have a lot of people in this age group compared to a lot of other countries. Again, one view is that way to fix this problem is to address the problems at their source when they start because the school system cannot fix problems that start before the schooling age starts. I know this is very controversial, but this is a view of many people now. It is early intervention, but very early intervention. After the school system in no country can fix big problems created when people are young. I think you really have to recognise that. I wish I had something more optimistic to say, but I am just looking at the evidence. It is not very optimistic. The question is an area where, along with partners, we have made progress in recent years. I think that I have reflected in things like school leaver destinations, helping to report at a local level in collective action between ourselves, the colleges and local authorities. Within the school system now, we have got much earlier identification process and shared data with education authorities to pick up young people who have additional needs. We may require additional support, and we help that through job coaches and others. As I said, it is not a problem that is unique to Scotland, but we have made good progress in future areas. The labour market opportunities that may arise subject to what it does or does not happen from Brexit would obviously shape the opportunities that are available for young people within a locality. It is important that there is a regional dimension to that activity, so that I can continue to focus not just on myself but on the partners across the education system. Mr McGuire, if I am understanding the question correctly, which is have I given any formal legal advice to any of my clients? If I think that is a question by that, you mean my trade union clients. Sorry, the question was to this committee in your written submission. Have you given any hard legal advice in relation to the implications of Brexit in the three-page submission that you have provided? Does this contain any hard legal advice? That is a wonderful question. When we have economists appearing before the committee, they generally give us economic advice. When we have Scottish Enterprise appearing before us, they tend to give us their view on enterprise. I am offering an opinion based on my knowledge of the law and my understanding of the legislative process and the devolution settlement in the Scotland Act which I have spent huge portions of my career looking at and understanding which few lawyers do. In terms of the solicitor advocate point, I did not choose my title, it is just a fact. I am one. That is fine. No, thank you. I just wanted to clarify what this written submission was. Thank you. Thank you very much. Richard Leonard. Just a quick follow-up to that, but perhaps, Mr Maguire, you could help us to understand whether or not all those existing EU directives, which have been transposed into UK law, whether it be health and safety, whether it be qualities, whether it be employment rights, on the day of Brexit, will they still be on the statute book, subject then to further revision or amendment? That is correct. They will remain on the statute book and will then be open to the foibles of whichever Parliament takes a political view in it. Thank you. Andy Wightman? Yes, I was just to follow up on some of those points with Mr Maguire. As you have just said, the Prime Minister has said that all existing legal rights that pertain to the citizens here that are under EU law will pertain on the day that we leave the European Union. Therefore, the question is in the future what may be the fate of those. You have given us an opinion based on your analysis of the current administration as to what the fate of those might be, and that is a valid view. However, the fundamental question is that we are talking about the constitutional politics of this whereby the European Union no longer has any jurisdiction over UK law in those areas. What do we need to do collectively to retain the best of workers' rights that we have in this country when we have full domestic control of them, whether they are at the UK Parliament or whether some of them are devolved at a Scottish parliamentary level? The kind of default position that you outline whereby the EU has underpinned all those has arguably led to a bit of complacency within the labour market about those rights being inviolable, because we are always going to be in the EU. I think what I first and foremost did was that it created a social norm that workers' rights only seem to be travelling in one direction. That, as far as I am concerned, was absolutely right, and it was utterly outwith the contemplation of anyone that that would in the main be the case. In that respect, in many ways, workers' rights were not that capable of being a political football and, with Brexit, that changes absolutely. I made the point earlier, and I reiterate it, when you talk about the constitution. There is a very serious constitutional issue here that both Governments and both Parliaments have to contemplate in that respect, and it is because if all the legislative powers in relation to the three areas that I have highlighted—employment, health and safety and equalities—vest in the UK Government, the Westminster Government solely, then that unquestibly constitutes a significant rebalance in the relative powers of the two Parliaments. I do not think that that was ever in the contemplation of anyone, so there is a serious constitutional issue to address, to come to the point about when we move forward and Parliaments have powers and the law can change what should be strived to achieve, although there is one thing that is absolutely within the gift of the Scottish Parliament as it currently stands in that is the Ordering Council in relation to the administration of the employment tribunal system. That more often than not is the forum and the ability to access justice to a particular and appropriate forum. That is the difference between a right existing effectively or not. There is no better example of that, as I highlighted earlier in the employment tribunal lodging fees, that we have at this moment in history entirely, coincidentally, to the Brexit vote the opportunity to fully take that power to the Scottish Parliament and to ensure that Scottish workers, no matter what the Black Letter law says, will always have the best opportunity to prosecute their rights via employment tribunal, and that is one that I say that the Parliament must grasp. In question of employment rights, is it not the case that, broadly speaking, employment rights should be harmonised across labour markets so that the advantages that come from EU membership in terms of harmonisation of workers' rights that we enjoy and the ability of workers to work anywhere within the EU and, broadly, enjoy the same employment rights? If you are to devolve substantial amounts of employment law to the Scottish Parliament, is there not a danger that you would have an erosion of the labour market across the UK? I do not necessarily accept that analysis. It is an issue that has been debated backwards on many occasions. There are already some differences in rights on the periphery, granted in relation to a matter of civil justice, the best example being in relation to awards, in relation to fatal damages. We have also seen the Scottish Parliament take its own steps forward in relation particularly to protecting victims of asbestos-related disease. The law is very different in Scotland now because of great strides forward by the Scottish Parliament. There has been no particular economic advantage to one side of the border over the other. The other analysis would be that there is a flight to the bottom, or that there is one jurisdiction showing the other the best that it possibly can be. I would like to think that it is a latter. Professor Wright and I think that Stephen Boyd want to come in. I want to supplement Patrick's response to that question. I think that it is a very important point when we have always assumed that there would be something of a trade-off between narrow economic efficiency in terms of the integration of the UK labour market and workers' rights in Scotland, which we think would be better safeguarded if employment law was devolved. I think that there is a tendency to assume that the degree of integration between the Scottish and the rest of the UK labour markets is greater than it is. The Bank of England a couple of years ago presented some really interesting analysis looking at labour flows between Scotland and the rest of the UK and, for instance, between US states or Canadian states. By quite a distance, the migration flows between Scotland and the rest of the UK were lower than those other scenarios. I am happy to leave it at that, convener. You are happy to leave it at that. Are there any further questions from committee members for our witnesses? One last one, perhaps, from Andy Wightman. Professor Wright, how confident are you in the quality of the data that we have in relationship to workers, EU workers, EU nationals, born in the EU, not born in the EU, people with rights of residence, people without, in terms of being able to forecast what might happen in the future and, therefore, what kind of provisions we need to make in terms of migration policy and worker's work permit arrangements? Good question. You have a lot of data, and you have a lot of data that is not used. I have always found that the Scottish Government does a lot of statistical analysis of not-very-important issues. You can have the census, for example. You have the information of higher education graduates through the higher education statistical agency. You have your labour force surveys. You have a large number of surveys. What has not taken place yet is the analysis of these surveys, because it is to the extent that you need it, because it is expensive, and you have to find somebody to do it. There are various reasons why the incentives are not there in the further and higher education sector for the staff to do this, but there is enough data to answer all these main questions in my view. It is just how do we move forward in getting the people with the knowledge and the interests to actually start doing it, because the statistical service within the UK Government and the Scottish Government is not doing this to the extent that they should. Why is that? I do not know. I do not set the work agenda for the Scottish Government. For example, the census, the most recent census, they just ended reporting a mass of hundreds of tables on everything you could possibly think of, but nothing specific, like how long has the typical Polish worker in Scotland been living here? What is he doing? Did he or she move from a low-skill job to a high-skill job? This information is available, but again, you have to think about this in the context of the Government. What is the information that you need? That should be the priority, and a lot of the other information that you do not need should not be producing. Again, I know all the people that I have educated and taught a lot of them, and the skill is there to do a lot more, but it is a political issue to decide their work for them. I think there has been enough issues raised today that would be a good start to some of the things that you need to understand better, particularly in this time of uncertainty. I do not agree with this view somehow that Brexit is going to be a negotiation, and we may have to adopt other things to get something else. We may have to adopt all this EU employment law that maybe we like, maybe we do not, because we want access to the single market. Who knows what the outcome is going to be? Nobody can really say what the situation will be six months, one year after Brexit, because we do not know what the negotiations are going to give to us. I am a bit concerned about saying what is going to happen in the short run, and then we can think about 10 years down the road, because there is all this uncertainty around these negotiations. It is nice to hear all this legalistic discussion, but then again there is nothing that says these laws will have to be in place in the future, because they may or may not be as a process of Brexit negotiation. Thank you very much. We will move forward to the future then. May I thank each of our guests for coming today? Thank you very much, and I will suspend the public session. We will move into private session.