 I remind members of the Covid-related measures that are in place, and that face coverings should be worn when moving around the chamber and across the Holyrood campus. The next item of business is a member's business debate on motion 522, in the name of Mercedes Villalba, on the need for an offshore training passport. That debate will be concluded without any questions being put. I would ask those members who wish to speak in the debate to please press the request to speak buttons now, and I call on Mercedes Villalba to open the debate up to seven minutes, please, Ms Villalba. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I would like to start by thanking all the members who supported the motion, which allowed it to be brought forward for members' business today. We all agree that our economy must shift from reliance on carbon-intensive sectors to greener alternatives, and a failure to bring about this economic change will weaken our efforts to tackle the climate emergency. We cannot pursue that at the expense of workers, such as those in the offshore oil and gas sector. I represent offshore oil and gas workers in the north-east, so I know the importance of delivering a worker-led transition. That means a transition that will not only deliver well-paid and secure green jobs but also empower workers. We are very far from achieving such a transition in the offshore energy sector. In fact, offshore oil and gas workers are left in a position where their transferable skills go unrecognised. At great personal expense, they are often asked to duplicate skills and qualifications that they already have. Workers continue to find themselves in that position because of on-going market failure, coupled with Government in action. Left to their own devices, the sector's major training bodies have failed to agree common standards. They have instead developed rival standards, training modules and qualifications. Although the Scottish Government provides warm words about a skills guarantee and a just transition, there is no hint that it is willing to intervene in a meaningful way. That is why I have been engaging with climate campaigners from Friends of the Earth and trade unions such as the RMT, because workers' futures can no longer be left to the whims of the market or remain unsupported by Government. They need the Government to intervene, and that is why I am calling on the Scottish Government to commit to creating an offshore training passport. When I raised the issue with the First Minister last month, she described an offshore training passport as being a constructive proposal, but when the just transition minister later wrote to me, he failed to offer any firm commitment that the Scottish Government would support the creation of an offshore training passport. I have three key asks that I hope the minister will respond to when he or she comes to the debate. I cannot see a minister at the moment. I am sorry to engage in that chat with Mr Sauer at the minister's remote. I referred earlier to the significant personal expense that offshore oil and gas workers face when covering training costs. Research by Friends of the Earth Scotland, Platform and Greenpeace UK suggests that an offshore oil and gas worker will pay up to £1,800 a year in training costs. Most of those workers receive no financial contribution from their employer towards training costs. As the sector largely offers insecure work, workers are often forced by a new employer to duplicate training that they have previously completed. The impact of those training costs on the lives of those workers cannot be underestimated. Nick James, for example, worked in the offshore oil and gas sector for almost 25 years, but took the decision to transition to working primarily in offshore wind. James said that I bear all training costs myself from my own pocket and to become competitive with other divers the more qualifications you have, the better chance you have of working. To increase his competitiveness and meet the standards required by offshore wind employers, he spent £6,000 of his own money on training and certification costs over the past two years. Like James, Jack has spent a significant period working in the offshore oil and gas sector. Jack has borne training costs of £3,000 in the last two years due to receiving no financial support from his employers. Jack said that the companies used to pay for their training costs. Once they were established with a company, they would pay for their training because they want you to work for them. Now it is very different. You have to cover all those costs yourself, and the training needs to be redoing every couple of years, so you are in this constant cycle. Those workers have taken a financial hit in the name of transition, but to achieve the scale of change that we need, it will take co-ordinated Government intervention. My first ask to the Minister is, will the Scottish Government commit in principle to supporting the creation of an offshore training passport? Along with the burden of costs, I spoke earlier of the market failure in the offshore energy sector, exemplified by the two industry training bodies. We have a PETO, focusing on offshore oil and gas training, and a GWO, which covers training for offshore wind. Despite significant overlap in many of the training modules that they both provide, particularly in relation to safety, they have been unable to agree common standards. That means that workers looking to make the transition are in the ludicrous position of regularly having to duplicate training and qualifications. One worker who wishes to remain anonymous told me of the duplication of safety training that he would have to undertake if he wanted to transition from offshore oil and gas into offshore wind. He summed it up perfectly. Can anyone tell me what the difference is between the GWO and PETO courses? All that leads to is confusion and very rich training providers. My second question for the minister is whether she will call a summit for a PETO, GWO and the trade unions to deliver an agreement on common training standards and to resolve other issues such as the lack of sectoral collective bargaining in the offshore wind supply chain. The Scottish Government regularly talks of its commitment to a just transition for those working in carbon-intensive sectors, but its actions to date have failed to live up to that commitment. It has provided no detail on how its planned skills guarantee will work in practice, and its much-trumpeted Green Jobs Workforce Academy has turned out to be a little more than a referral website to job adverts and training courses. In fact, when I used that website yesterday to search for offshore jobs, at least half seemed to be for advisory roles and research posts at universities. Given that the Energy Skills Alliance, the ESA, has been tasked with creating an all-energy apprenticeship for new entrants into the sector, my final ask of the minister today is whether she will look at tasking the ESA with creating an offshore training passport to benefit the existing workforce as well. As delegates begin to arrive in Glasgow ahead of COP26, we have an opportunity today to demonstrate Scotland's commitment to climate justice, underpinned by social and economic justice. I hope that the Scottish Government will grasp that opportunity and deliver the worker-led transition that our offshore oil and gas workers deserve. I now call on Julian Martin to be followed by Liam Kerr, up to four minutes, please, Ms Martin. I am very interested to hear the ideas that Mercedes Villalbaugh has put forward. I find very little in that speech to disagree with. It is great to see that she is highlighting those issues. I have highlighted many of the similar issues for the last five years since I have been elected. I congratulate her on getting this debate today. There are many barriers from moving from oil and gas to renewables, and certification is certainly one of them. I conducted a survey over the summer on the issue of transitioning. In the next few weeks, I am publishing a report on my findings from a testimony of nearly 600 oil and gas workers on their experience. I thought that this debate would be a good place to hear some of the thoughts of those men and women on certification and training, which may assist Ms Villalbaugh, although I appreciate that she is doing a lot of her research. I am the minister from somebody who is very much steeped in the oil and gas community of the north-east. I have often talked of the prejudice that oil and gas workers have reported to me when applying for jobs in other sectors. People often report an assumption that once oil and gas sector picks up, workers will move back to the industry from new jobs and renewables. In fact, one recruitment agency told me that they tested the theory of bias towards oil and gas workers. They would show companies a CV stripped back to only show the skills of the applicant, taking out the details of where and when and what capacity they had worked. When presented like this, the applicant's CVs were met with a very warm welcome at offers of interviews. However, when the CVs had been shown with the applicant's previous employment record from the oil and gas sector, they were disregarded and people were not getting to the interview stage. In my discussions with the renewable sector, they say that they are crying out for applicants and would welcome oil and gas workers so that something is not working here. OIM, with 25 years experience, told me this. It is made extremely difficult as you require a different set of expensive certifications. The comprehensive training and certification that is received in the oil and gas industry is not recognised. We need to enable skillsets to be recognised across both industries. A field service supervisor with 15 years experience said, "...often other industries will not hire oil and gas workers because they think they'll leave when oil and gas picks up again. Oil and gas is seen to pay higher so people often presume you would not take a pay cut. Once I tried to change industry and got to the final two interviewees, I was not selected because they were worried that I would not be happy with the pay cut." A technical safety engineer said to me, "...it's too expensive to transition by yourself without employers paying for the training, but renewables companies expect the training to be achieved before you meet the job specs." A drilling technician of 16 years told me, "...I would love to retrain, but I'm unsure what courses are best for me to do and I don't want to pay it money if it doesn't help me get work." A woman with 18 years in the industry as an HR manager said that workers needed to be provided with details of roles available. The Government needed to work with the industry to compare competence requirements. Government to support a joined up approach and to encourage more use of initiatives such as connected competence that helps to record and support transferable skills. If that means a passport, such as Mercedes at Vilellba, has mentioned here then so be it, but they need to start working together and it needs to happen a lot faster than it is right now. I look forward to continuing the discussion. It is so important from my constituency that it is so important for the north-east. If a passport is a way forward, let's get both industries and regulatory bodies together to develop it, but there are a lot more barriers to transitioning outlined by the workers who spoke to me. I look forward to detailing them in my report, which I will of course send to the minister and to anyone else contributing in this debate and to Ms Vilellba. I now call Liam Kerr to be followed by Monica Lennon. Up to four minutes, please, Mr Kerr. Thank you, Presiding Officer. At the outset, let me congratulate Mercedes Vilellba on securing our first member's debate. On such an important topic, the oil and gas industry, according to OGU case, supports around 60,000 workers in the north-east and perhaps 100,000 more widely. The consequences of not managing the transition away from fossil fuels in a managed and fair way are, I agree, too awful to contemplate. We must ensure that the workforce can both transition to those lower-carbon jobs and do so easily and cost-effectively. OGU reported earlier this year that 90 per cent of oil and gas jobs have medium to high transferability, so it is imperative that securing the training and certifications required is as efficient and straightforward as possible with initiatives such as the passport being proposed. I am pleased that, to an extent, that is already being developed through the Energy Skills Alliance and, as part of the UK's transformative £16 billion North Sea transition deal, that the PTO is leading work on the development of people and skills plan, to look at how safety and technical standards can align with the energy skills passport, a core element of that work. Similar programmes are already under development in the offshore wind and nuclear industries, so this very much complements existing efforts. Crucially, the energy industry is working with our G.U. to use their figures to model supply and demand to 2030. By doing so, a timeline for ramping up the likes of hydrogen production and use in the wind sector can be plotted in order that the industry can bottom out what the CAPEX profile is going to look like. From there, it can isolate what skills are required, where and how. PTO tells me that this work will be completed by March 2022, and it will fit into the work that is already being done by the ECITB. Indeed, when I met companies such as Shell and Total Energy recently, it became clear that there is already significant investment going into transitioning products, productions and skills. Just this morning, I was corresponding with Tectera, an Aberdeen company, who told me that they have just used oil and gas skills, infrastructure and ideas from the north-east of Scotland to carry out a geothermal mapping project in India. In my view, the transition requires that industry itself can see a future and that it will be managed and supported politically. That means that investors and businesses are not confronted with mixed messages from the Scottish Government over its future, nor is there a potentially very damaging failure to recognise the climate change committee's conclusions on the long-term demand of the UK for domestically produced gas. In the wider debate over the future of the UK oil and gas industry, it is extremely important that knee-jerk positions are not adopted and a genuine appraisal of things such as the carbon footprint of imported LNG, as against domestic production, underpin our thought processes. Furthermore, where support is offered, that must be properly thought through. Mercedes-Benz Viaba rightly flagged a couple of failures in that regard already, but I would add to that, because the Scottish Government has trumpeted its announcement of a £500 million just transition funding plan but remains unable to tell anyone who will get it where, how they apply or any detail whatsoever and won't propose to till spring 22. That contrasts, of course, with the UK Government immediately announcing its key commitments when it revealed the £16 billion North Sea transition deal. It is really important that the Scottish Government ensures that, when they make an announcement, it has substance and does not appear to simply be what the First Minister called it face-saving slogans. In summary then, a fair managed transition is not only an economic essential but a moral imperative. The member's motion recognises this and proposes part of the solution. For that, it is to be commended. It has been an excellent debate so far. I congratulate my colleague Mercedes-Benz Viaba for securing the debate. It has been a pleasure to see new members come to the chamber and hit the ground running getting their members' debates supported. In Mercedes-Benz, we see a real champion for the north-east, a champion for workers, and a champion for a socialist green new deal, which we badly need to tackle climate and nature emergencies. The debate is very timely, with COP26 beginning in just three days' time. I have heard good speeches from Gillian Martin and the work that she is doing from Liam Kerr. I am sure that others are about to speak as well. Mercedes-Benz Viaba has been given credit by the First Minister already. We did a bit of a road bump in response to Richard Lochhead. I am pleased to see the minister on her screen today, because I know that she will have a real insight and an interest in this. I feel hopeful that the solutions that have not just come up with Mercedes-Benz Viaba on her own, but that is the work of Friends of the Air Scotland, of Greenpeace, of the platform of the RMT. It has come from workers themselves. I was quite shocked to hear that account from James, the oil and gas worker, who had to pay an eye-watering £6,000 to make that transition to offshore wind. What we are tackling today is an injustice. This is the opposite of a just transition. Given how big the agenda is, we need every member in the chamber to do the heavy lifting, to bring the solutions to the chamber, to give voice to workers. Hopefully, that is quite an easy debate for the minister to respond to, because Mercedes-Benz Viaba has set out three quite clear asks, and some of the solutions are laid bare in the report. The report is training in tickets that had in cost for offshore oil and gas workers. I am sure that it will not come as a surprise to the minister, but she is now in a position to do something, and there are many of us in the chamber who want to help. I am also grateful to the RMT union for its helpful briefing and echo its calls. There is an urgent need for an offshore training passport. As we see from the findings, 93 per cent of offshore oil and gas workers are in favour of this action happening. We have heard about some of the costs that workers have had to bear. As I say, it is a real injustice. Yesterday I said in the debate on COP26 that Scotland does have the potential to lead Europe's great energy revolution over the coming years and coming decades. We need well-paid green jobs to be at the heart of that, and I am really pleased that we are having a chance today to talk a bit more about what just transition means and what it needs to look like in practice. What we have heard about today is a real fragmentation in terms of training and a lot of profiteering that really needs to be rooted out. I am glad that we have had the chance to look at that. I am also pleased that Mercedes Villalba talked about the green jobs workforce academy, because right now it looks like a bit of a glorified website. I recently asked Scottish Enterprise what, as a green job, they said that they did not really have a definition of that, so we have some work to do. As I say, this has been a good debate, because the asks are very clear. This is urgent, and I hope that in response the minister will be able to give a firm commitment to the member today and to all of us who have a keen interest in making sure that we get a genuine and transformative worker-led just transition, because we need it now. I, too, represent a constituency where oil and gas is a significant contributor to our economy and an employer for many people, whether they are working at local installations or in the North Sea or, indeed, further afield. Seas are rising and the world is getting hotter, and if we want to reverse that, we need to reduce our energy needs by reducing demand for fossil fuels. Decisions to be made in Glasgow shortly and over the next 10 years will either make our planet or break it. We need a just transition to ensure that people are not left on the scrap heap as their jobs disappear. We have seen that already when the coal mines were closed. Some communities never recovered. Some communities still struggle for decades on. The Scottish Government estimates that there are roughly 100,000 jobs directly and indirectly employed by the oil and gas sector. The Scottish Liberal Democrats have been calling for a successor to the Just Transition Commission. I have also called for a Northern Isles Just Transition Commission. Its mission is to avoid piling workers on the scrap heap, avoid declining communities because of a loss of jobs and avoid the loss of expertise in the energy sector. The commission's membership would consist of workers and communities, trade unions and environmental interest groups. That is how we make the switch to renewables and save workers and communities from a repeat of the past. Offshore training passports can help to secure that. As the motion points out, one of the barriers to a truly just transition is the cost that workers must incur to gain qualifications in the renewables sector, and the member has rightly highlighted eye-watering figures in that regard. Qualifications that people may already have in the oil and gas sector. A passport recognising that training would cut the cost and allow for seamless intersector job prospects. Friends of the Earth found that 81 per cent of workers said that they would consider switching to the renewables sector—a redeployment of skills that we urgently need. That shared commonality that others have mentioned. Scotland was to be the Saudi Arabia of renewables. I hope that the Scottish Government does not miss another opportunity, and I hope that ministers will see the merits in offshore training passports. I now call Maggie Chapman to be followed by Tess White up to four minutes please, Ms Chapman. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I would like to begin by thanking Mercedes Villalba for bringing this motion today and for giving us the opportunity to discuss the economic, social and environmental imperative that is the just transition, the managed process of economic change that is fair and equitable and that means that no one is left behind. Many of us in this place and beyond it have been talking about a just transition and a Green New Deal for years. Many of us have been campaigning for climate justice for the structural changes needed to avert climate catastrophe for years, and many of us have been frustrated at the slow pace of change and the reluctance to act. We really need to stop talking and start doing, because meeting our climate targets, achieving a sustainable world requires a fundamental transformation of our economy and our society, and it is probably the energy sector that needs to see some of the biggest shifts. We need to transition to renewables to build our economy on an energy system that does not cost the earth. Building that new economy that is green and fair and serves everyone rather than just the wealthy elite must start with a new deal for workers. The just transition we want to see and I know that Mercedes and others want to see must be worker led and they must get the support that they need. As other speakers have highlighted, we do hugely value the skills and experiences of our current offshore workforce, and so we have to support them to develop the new skills and expertise that will be the cornerstone of a renewables-based economy. I support the calls in this motion for the establishment of an offshore skills passport and a coherent strategy to ensure that all workers can access the training and professional development that they need and not be out of pocket to do so. Many workers in our energy sector are living with a very precarious and uncertain future. Many in the north-east have already lost their jobs over the last few years. We cannot, we must not leave oil and gas workers at the mercy of market forces. We cannot, we must not leave oil and gas workers to face the end of oil and gas without support, without a plan. We cannot, we must not leave oil and gas workers and their communities to face the devastation similar to that faced by the mining communities in the 80s and 90s, as my colleague Beatrice Wishart has outlined. I urge the Scottish Government to act quickly to support workers in the energy sector. I ask the minister in her closing to outline how we can use some of the 500 million just transition fund to provide the training and skills development work needed by workers. I also urge the Scottish Government, as part of the on-going discussions that they have with the UK Government, to stress the importance of offshore workers to Scotland's future economy. I must say, however, that I find it deeply frustrating that we have to ask, beg, plead with the UK Government to deliver the things that we need to secure a just transition. I take Mercedes Villalby's motion in good faith, but it points to a weakness of letting British nationalism trump democracy. We need those powers here, the powers that I and others have argued for, to deliver for our workers. We have our work cut out for us, Deputy Presiding Officer. With COP26 starting in just a few days, let us put the offshore workers and other energy sector workers at the centre of not only our plans, but also our actions to deliver the just transition that we also desperately need. As someone who has worked in the energy sector for many years, I recognise that the transition to renewables is vital to safeguard the future and is also vital to safeguard jobs. As a north-east MSP, the livelihoods of thousands of energy sector workers and their families are at the forefront of my mind. I too am interested in the workability of an offshore training passport. I am cautious, however, not to jump straight from A to Z. The scoping must come first. Safety is of paramount importance. Any proposal that looks at competency and skills training needs to consider the implications for health and safety, as well as the accreditation for the specific competency and skillsets that have to be identified for the new type of work. The north-east can become the role model for this transition in the world, and we all recognise that we cannot afford to lose the talent and technical expertise of those who work in the energy sector as renewables become more embedded. Indeed, they are essential to facilitating this shift. That is why we must, this must be a properly managed transition, taking in the contribution of all the key stakeholders working together. I know that the energy skills alliance, which was established last year by the energy sector skills and safety standards body APETO, is looking at future energy skills demand and supply as part of its work framework. That includes understanding the training and support needed to deliver the energy transition. It is a cross-industry group, including representatives from the oil and gas authority, oil and gas UK, the Scottish Government, Scottish renewables and the unions. That will be an important body of work, and we must look at its recommendations very carefully. I am also pleased to see that BP, which has ambitious plans for offshore wind in the north-east, has signed a five-year deal with an Aberdeen-based energy consultancy to provide a skills capability accelerator. Its remit is to create energy-level transition roles, facilitate the reskilling of oil and gas workers, graduates and technicians with transferable skills to the renewable sector. The expectation should be that the education sector can rise to this challenge. Further and higher education is key to this work. Nobody should work in a silo. As part of the UK Government's North Sea transition deal, APETO is also leading the development of a people and skills plan, which will address a number of the issues that have been raised today. Finally, as we transition to an integrated energy sector, we must listen to the concerns of all stakeholders. We must act collaboratively across Government, regulators, industry and the third sector to address those concerns. I very strongly believe that collaboration is key. I look forward to engaging with members on those issues over the coming months. Deputy Presiding Officer, can I refer members to my register of interests? Can I begin by thanking my comrade, Mercedes Villalba, for securing this as her first member's debate today? She has done so as a committed environmentalist, as a principled democratic socialist, but also as a conscientious representative in this Parliament for the North East of Scotland. To Mercedes Villalba's constituents and to many other working people, the establishment of an offshore training passport is a test. It is a test of whether or not we are really serious about a just transition, because there can be no better example of how we must make the shift from the carbon to the post-carbon economy in a just way than by the active redeployment of offshore oil and gas workers to jobs in offshore renewables. As we prepare to host the UN conference on climate change in Glasgow next week and as decisions are taken about the future, as agreements are reached, as targets are set, as treaties are signed, we need to expose the yawning gap between high-falutin statements of future political intent and the real present day lived economic experience of the people we are sent here to represent. While oil and gas UK has expressed support for the Connected Competence initiative, only eight contracting companies have signed up and the offshore wind industry has given it no support whatsoever. So, while it is true, as it has been said, that a PTO is overseeing a North Sea transition deal and it recently joined renewable UK, when it did so, it put out a press release where it set out its view that different parts of the energy sector have different skill requirements. But what about all the common skill requirements? What about all the common health and safety requirements? Instead of seeing the glass half empty, what about seeing it half full? The CEO of renewable UK told us in that same press release that when it came to the offshore wind sector, the experience of the oil and gas workforce is, in his words, most prized. But for this most prized of workers, there is no collective agreement with the trade unions. Those most prized workers are mostly contracted out. Some are even on the national minimum wage if they can get a job at all, which is why I tell you that it cannot be left to commercially driven private limited companies and the forces of the market to equip oil and gas workers with the training and certification that they need to work in renewables. They will not do it and it will not work. That is why we need Government action. We do not need a Government that simply talks about planning a programme of events as the Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero was telling us in this morning's newspapers, we need action. I say to the minister that the Scottish Government cannot just pronounce its support for a just transition in principle, establish a commission and all the rest of it, if it will not support it practically by putting in the means. That means that it is time for Government leadership. It means bringing into line those powerful global corporations that for so many years have dominated UK continental shelf oil and gas energy production and that are now set to dominate UK continental shelf renewable energy production. However, that in the end is the job of Government to use its power to use all of its considerable influence on behalf of the people so that the vision of a net zero carbon future is accompanied by a radical but a credible plan of action which puts people first, which is on the side of these workers, which gives hope to communities, hope of climate action, hope of justice and hope of jobs. Thank you. Before I call the next speaker, I would say that due to the number of members who still wish to speak in this debate and who have spoken, I am minded to accept emotion without notice under rule 8.14.3 to extend the debate by up to 30 minutes. I now invite Mercedes Villalba to move a motion without notice. The question is that the debate be extended by up to 30 minutes. Are we all agreed? Excellent. I now call Paul Sweeney to be followed by Katie Clark. I just like to begin by congratulating my good friend Ms Villalba on securing today's members' debate and speaking with such expertise, insight and passion about an issue that is so critical to skilled workers across Scotland. With COP26 just a matter of days away, our transition to a green economy with a detailed plan for a green new deal is more important than ever before. The topic of today's debate will be vital if Scotland is to keep pace on its climate targets while ensuring that there is a just transition for workers and communities. We all know how important the oil and gas industry has been to this country and particularly to the north-east of Scotland. The latest workforce and employment insight published by oil and gas UK estimates that in 2020 the industry supported almost 120,000 jobs across the UK, 36 per cent of which are based in Scotland. Of those workers, 55 per cent are under the age of 45 and 92 per cent are under the age of 60. Those are all people who will have to live through this transition and we must be there for them. Just this week, the Scottish Government announced that a limited extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea is fundamentally wrong. That is a position that I completely agree with and I only wish that the First Minister would be more steadfast in her opposition to oppose the new cambo oil field. Apparently, around 3,500 jobs would be connected with cambo. Where is the just transition that Mr Sweeney proposes for them? It is an important challenge and one that we must respond to robustly. That is the backdrop that I want to come on to in my speech. If we look at today's debate, we keep talking about the just transition but where is it? Yes, we must move to a green economy at a rapid rate but sadly we are not seeing the renewable energy jobs appear at the pace necessary to drive a true green industrial revolution. It is all well and good preparing the ground for the skills but if there is not the demand from new sectors to pull that labour into them, we are simply on a heading to nothing. It will not surprise the chamber that I think there has been precisely no just transition for workers and communities. In this country, we like to talk a good game but the actions of the Government simply do not live up to the rhetoric. In fact, we have surrendered sovereignty over these matters to faceless men in boardrooms far from Scotland who determine the key investment decisions over this sector and we have been found wanting as a branch plant economy in this sector. In 2010, the Scottish Government's low-carbon strategy predicted that there would be 130,000 low-carbon and renewable energy jobs in the country by 2020, with 28,000 direct jobs in the offshore wind sector alone. The reality now is that there are 23,000 direct jobs in the entire low-carbon and renewable energy economy. Are we going to say that this is good enough when we are faced with such pressure and is it any wonder that workers in the oil and gas industry have absolutely no faith whatsoever in the Government that there will be a job available to them when the instruction of oil and gas inevitably comes to an end? Deputy Presiding Officer, the message that has been made of the opportunity to develop Scotland's manufacturing base on the back of our transition to a green economy is no longer even contested by the Government, really. The facts speak for themselves and they are embarrassing. We see it in every single offshore wind development. SCC, in total, £5.7 billion secretion project off the coast of Angus, how many of the 114 turbine jackets were manufactured in Scotland? None. Each and every one of them were off-shore to China and the United Arab Emirates, only to be transported back to Scotland on diesel-burning barges. At the NNG wind farm off the coast of Fife, the 54 complex Siemens-Gamesa turbines will be manufactured abroad, and the Haalandong Wolfyards and Methil, merely 10 miles away from the development itself, will manufacture just 15 per cent of the steel jacket foundations. Not good enough. I could not be more supportive of the calls that have already been made today, but we need to match that with demand to ramp up offshore renewable energy sectors to pull that workforce into the new sectors. The Scottish Government needs to get a grip of that, and it needs to provide certainty to workers in the oil and gas sector to address those barriers to entry. A standardised offshore training passport would do just that, and we need to place obligations on industry bodies like Opeto to step up to the challenge. We need to enable those workers to begin the skills transition that inevitably needs to happen if we are able to meet our climate ambitions and ensure that there actually is a just transition. I would strongly urge the minister to commit to this agenda, to commit to the demands made by my colleague today if they are in any way serious about ensuring that workers are protected during our inevitable transition to a new green economy. I am afraid that rhetoric just won't do any more. Those workers have been strung along for far enough. I commend the motion by Mr Dede Valber. I now call Katie Clark. He will be the last speaker before the minister responds up to four minutes, please, Ms Clark. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and it is a great pleasure to be able to congratulate the Savedies of Albar on securing this very timely debate as co-delegates arrive in Scotland for what are vital negotiations for all of us who live on this planet. It is a particular pleasure to add my name to the call for offshore training passports. One of the key issues about the demand is that it is a proposal that has come both from climate change activists and trade unionists who represent workers who work offshore working together. That is the model that we should be endorsing. It is a model that we should be not just supporting but pushing for in terms of what we do going forward. We need to work together. We need to bring together those with key interests, because, as has already been said, there has never been a time where it is more important that we have a Green New Deal. North Sea production has increased by 15 per cent since this Parliament declared a climate emergency. In reality, very few green jobs have been created during that period. We have had other debates where we have cited some of those statistics, but that is not because there is no potential for green jobs. The STUC, for example, estimates that up to 350,000 green new jobs could be created in Scotland with the right policies on renewables, energy and hydrogen and storage, on building and retrofitting, social housing and on upgrading and expanding public transport. There is a massive capacity for job creation with just transition and with a green economy. However, as working class communities know when we have seen economic change in the past, it is usually ordinary working people that pay the price and, in reality, there has never been a just transition. A recent survey of offshore oil and gas workers published earlier this year revealed that over 90 per cent of them are concerned about their training costs in the UK offshore energy industry and are paying in the region of £1,800 a year each in training. It says much about workers' rights in this country that nearly two thirds of those workers receive no financial contribution for that training from their employers. The insecure nature of the work in the sector exacerbates the problem with 75 per cent of the workforce's hardest contractors on an ad hoc basis, and 60 per cent of those who are required by new employers when they get a new job to duplicate training and qualifications that they already possess. The issue is a central issue in this sector, and I think that the Scottish Government needs to act particularly because of the way that the demand has come about. Both the UK and the Scottish Governments have failed to deliver the strategic training bodies to agree common industry standards and to push for the creation of an offshore training passport. The Scottish Government programme for government failed to provide any detail on how the proposed skills guarantee will work and practice on what level of funding it will receive. We have already heard that the Green Jobs Workforce Academy has done little more than create a website. The UK Government's offshore wind sector deal and recently published net zero strategy also only offers warm words on the need for a skills transition. With COP26 about to start, and with a green MSP in the ministerial seat, I hope that we will see the start of the Scottish Government looking at whether the energy skills alliance can be tasked with creating an offshore training passport. The already untied reading programme of work to develop energy apprenticeships which standardise training for new entrants into the industry. I urge the minister to come forward with a proposal that brings forward standardisation to assist all workers in this sector. I will call on the minister who has been noted as joining us remotely to respond to the debate. Up to seven minutes, please, Minister Lorna Slater. Thank you so much to Ms Vialba for bringing this debate today and to everybody who has contributed. I am so sorry not to be joining you in chamber today in person. I would be delighted to meet Ms Vialba to discuss her three points because she describes our indeed prohibitive life and the duplication of training is indeed frustrating. I will follow up in this speech on the current related work of the Energy Skills Alliance. Offshore passports is something that I have been looking into under the green skills element of my portfolio and I value the input from members on this matter. I will follow up with Ms Chapman on the funding that she references. Having worked offshore in marine energy myself, I know how much potential there is in Scotland for this sector and how important these offshore passports will be for my former colleagues and for all offshore workers. One of the developments that I am pleased about in recent months is that I am starting to see references to offshore energy and the offshore energy industry, which seems to me to be in the spirit of what we are talking about here, not pitting oil and gas workers against workers in offshore renewables but recognising the overlap of skills and expertise in all offshore energy industries. I know first hand the hazards of working offshore and how much training, experience and sheer hard work is needed to develop the expertise to work safely under harsh conditions to keep providing the energy that we all depend on. I absolutely agree that we need to make it as easy as we can for workers to transition their skills between different sources of offshore energy. This is an issue of particular importance now as the eyes of the world look up to Scotland in the run-up to COC26 and as part of our commitment to adjust transition to net zero emissions that delivers for communities and businesses across Scotland. The question of skills passports has been a long-standing issue for a number of years, particularly since the last downturn in 2014. I understand that it is quite a complicated issue and even the term skills passport is a somewhat contentious one within the energy sector. What all workers want to see are a common set of safety, technical and work site standards across the whole offshore energy sector and the simplification of certification, recognition and transferability between roles. The members who have spoken today will be pleased to hear that, while there are a number of existing passport schemes provided by industry bodies across the offshore energy industry, further progress is under way. OPTO is the global not-for-profit skills body of the oil and gas industry through the Energy Skills Alliance, which includes representation from trade unions, industry and the UK and Scottish Governments is working with industry bodies to create a solution that enables easier skills transferability across offshore energy. The purpose of this work that the Energy Skills Alliance is undertaking is to create the safe skills and mobile workforce needed to deliver the energy transition and retain these high-value jobs in Scotland. We recognise that training standards and certification is critical to safe working offshore and we want to ease the transition of workers in a just and affordable way. This work was established to create an integrated skills strategy for a net zero energy industry across Scotland and the UK. It will address mapping of future energy skills demand, developing all energy training and standards and implementing all energy apprenticeships and launching the My Energy Future programme. The question of skills transferability is also central to the North Sea transition deal, which includes the on-going work of the Energy Skills Alliance but also the commitment to creating an integrated people and skills plan with measurable objectives to support its transition and diversification. This work that I have been describing led by OPTO will seek to link up with initiatives in workforce transition and skills being undertaken through other sector deals, such as the offshore wind sector deal, where that will add value. Their collective findings and their recommendations will be presented to the UK Government by March 2022 as part of the people and skills plan for the North Sea transition deal. The fundamental question is how we as a Government can complement and accelerate these efforts and I appreciate your support and enthusiasm for that. I have asked officials to arrange for me to engage with OPTO and the Energy Skills Alliance in particular to find out how I and the Scottish Government can support their work on skills transferability. We are committed to achieving a transition to net zero emissions in a just, inclusive and managed way and to ensure that no worker or community is left behind. Previous transitions have seen spikes in unemployment and social format. They have damaged trust and diminished opportunities. As a Government, we will not repeat these mistakes but will instead work with partners from across Scotland to collectively seize the opportunities that transition represents to us. It is our intention that our recovery from COVID-19 pandemic is a green one. We support for new roles and support for the transition to net zero. We are currently supporting retraining opportunities across vibrant growing industries like forestry and land management, green construction and heat decarbonisation. In doing so, we are not only promoting high-skilled quality jobs but a recovery that contributes to a greener future for all. Equipping people with the skills they need to shape their careers is critical to our collective success and is ensuring that individuals are confident that they will be supported as and when they need assistance. Thank you, minister. That concludes the debate. I suspend the proceedings this meeting until 2.30 this afternoon. Thank you.