 The next item of business is a debate on motion 5.6.3, in the name of Paul Wheelhouse, on partnership action for continuing employment known to all and sundry and to us as pace. Can I invite those members who wish to speak in the debate to press the request of speaking buttons now, and there is quite a bit of time in hand, surprisingly, so interventions are actually invited from the PO here, whether Mr Wheelhouse wants them or not. Right, Mr Wheelhouse. To speak and to move the motion, it says here 14 minutes, but you can make it longer if you wish. I'll do my best to oblige and happy to take interventions, of course, to help with the passage of time. The Scottish Government's initiative for responding to redundancy situations, partnership action for continuing employment or pace, is one of our most effective interventions, and is a unique service to Scotland. Yet pace remains largely low profile in terms of consciousness of the people of Scotland. One of the key aims of this debate is to raise awareness of pace among any individuals who, either now or at some point in the future of face redundancy, will also afford me the opportunity to recognise and praise the efforts of the pace partners themselves. I also wish to ensure that members who may receive approaches from constituents are well informed, as can be, and in a position to advise on the support that is available through pace to their constituents. Therefore, we will be arranging for literature and pace services to be distributed directly to members' offices, which I hope will be helpful to colleagues in supporting their constituents in the future. We are also looking at increasing the range of marketing materials to ensure a balanced approach between digital, social media, targeted communications and hard copy and print to improve general awareness, raising of pace and what it can provide. As we know every year, sadly, regardless of the economic context and due to the nature of market changes and other factors that happen from time to time, new businesses are born and existing businesses grow, but the converse is also true, as businesses end up in difficulties or ultimately cease trading. It is difficult to be definitive about the numbers affected by redundancy as any figures are based inevitably upon estimates. However, what I can be clear on is that from April 2016 until March 2017, pace has supported 15,167 individuals and 299 employers. However, we know that, while HR1 forums tell us where redundancy occurs for 10 or more employees, that that does not capture the full scale of those affected. Pace support varies and can be provided in a number of ways from providing information to the more intensive programme of tailored support, which includes one-to-one advice on careers guidance, interview skills, CV preparation, workshops and benefits, etc. From April 2016 until March 2017, 6,500 individuals received intensive pace support, and that is key, as we know individuals benefit greatly from the intensive level of support. We are therefore keen to ensure that we continue to both extend the reach of pace to support as many individuals as possible, particularly those who are not covered by the HR1 process and small businesses that might be laying off one or two workers to make sure that they are aware of the support that is available to them. I would ask members across the chamber to do your best to make sure that that takes place. I very much welcome what the minister is saying. I wonder if he will agree that one of the great strengths of pace is that it draws in all of us of all political representations to the room. I know that I have sat with Lewis MacDonald, for example, in pace meetings, which enables us all to bring our individual contributions, contacts and knowledge, but also that, by involving UK departments such as the Department for Work, it draws the net as wide as we possibly can, and that is one of the very great strengths that pace has, although I am sure that the debate might nonetheless identify areas where we can fine-tune and continue to improve the process. I am very grateful to Stuart Stevenson for raising that very important point. It is something that I will return to later, but I do want to put on record that I know that there has been a hugely positive contribution from members across the chamber when situations have arisen where, sadly, jobs are at risk or ultimately face redundancy. The work that has been taken forward, as Stuart Stevenson says, many members come to this place with a lot of background either in the trade union movement or, indeed, as employers or, indeed, having been in the workplace in positions of management, so bringing the expertise and also local information, local knowledge and context to be able to help the pace partners to deliver better service for those who are affected. I very much welcome the marks that Stuart Stevenson has made and I want to thank him and other members for their work in the Fraserburg task force in particular. We all know other high-profile examples such as the work in response to the loss of steel jobs in Lanarkshire, which was hugely successful, not least because of the widespread party—non-party—political approach that was taken by members across the chamber to support those efforts. We are keen, as I say, to ensure that we both extend the reach of pace to support as many individuals as possible and to deepen the engagement with those who are accessing the support to ensure that they get the maximum benefit. On 23 June 2009, we established the Ministerial Pace Partnership, which brings 21 organisations together with the Scottish Government to oversee a continuous improvement programme to enhance the operation of pace. As part of that continuous improvement programme, we published research in October of last year, which indicated that of those surveyed who had received pace support, almost three quarters—71 per cent—had obtained employment, which is very encouraging. That compares with a figure of 51 per cent in the 2010 survey. Clearly, that reflects a number of things, including improvements in the labour market since 2010, which we should acknowledge, but also the on-going evaluation and refinement of the support that is provided by Pace to ensure that the service is continually improving and working as effectively as it can be. It is also important to emphasise our message to employers and their employees that our research and our experience makes it clear that the earlier that pace support can be provided, the more effective that support will ultimately be. Our research also shows that most clients are highly satisfied with the package of support that the PACE service is delivering. For the majority of individual PACE services, satisfaction levels sit at over 80 per cent. However, for clients aged 50 or over, though there is a slightly lower satisfaction rate with the PACE package of support, we therefore commissioned research earlier this year to investigate this lower satisfaction rate. That qualitative research has highlighted some very useful insights about the additional barriers that over 50s may face in the labour market, such as age discrimination and other factors, and from the perception of those involved and who have gone through the process, and the need to tailor support better for those who need more intensive support in interview and CV preparation, perhaps. I certainly will. Elaine Smith I thank the minister for taking intervention. Would that also include tailor-in support for people with additional support needs, for example, such as dyslexia? Thank you, Presiding Officer. I think that that is a very important point that we should not take for granted, particularly all the workers who have gone through an educational system that failed to recognise their needs and perhaps did not address the particular needs that they had at the time. We have gone into work successfully, but they have been trying to face the transition to a new career, perhaps where they are requiring to demonstrate skills in areas such as digital skills or other factors that they might need additional support. I will certainly take that very important point that Elaine Smith has made away with me and put that forward in action for the next evaluation meeting. However, there was indeed much to suggest from the research, and we will indeed look to improve our pace offering for this important client group, picking up the point that Elaine Smith has just made, to see if we can make it easier for those who find it particularly difficult to re-enter the labour market. Despite in many cases having extremely impressive experience to boast of, they just have not got the formal qualifications to recognise that or lack confidence in going forward in the job market. I must stress that pace is available for every individual who is affected by redundancy, no matter the size of the business nor the number of employees involved. I would like to reinforce that point, because I do not think that that is well understood. We tend to talk about pace in the context of large employers and high-profile employers who may be affected by redundancy in members' areas. We sometimes forget that, on a case-by-case basis, small and medium-sized enterprises may be shedding one or two jobs. That is still hugely important to those individuals involved, and therefore they should be aware that the same level of support is available to them. Skills Development Scotland leads on the delivery of pace support on behalf of the Scottish Government and in conjunction with key partners, including the Department for Work and Pensions and local authorities, among others. There are 18 local pace teams across Scotland to ensure speedy and effective responses to redundancy situations. Crucially, while standard information is an issue to all those who are affected, where possible, each pace response is ultimately tailored to meet the needs of each and every individual who engages with pace. In some cases, there will be time for a planned programme of support to be developed. That is important because we have found that some individuals who are maybe have a high level of skills and qualifications sometimes think that the initial stage of the pace support indicates that that support is irrelevant to them. We have many highly qualified people, for example in the oil and gas industry, coming out with a lot of skills. I think that initial contact might indicate that perhaps the services are not relevant, but if they are to engage in a case-by-case basis, the approach will be tailored to their needs to reflect the level of experience and the background that they have to ensure that they have the best chance to gain full employment. Dean Lockhart PACE encompasses a partnership, I believe, of 22 different organisations, which I think is a strength because those organisations can bring many different areas of expertise to the table. Is the composition of PACE reviewed on a regular basis so that, if there are issues with the oil and gas sector or different sectors, you can bring in people with appropriate experience? That is certainly the case. The membership of the group is evaluated to keep an eye out for if there are organisations that might add value to the process. As I understand it, we always have the ability to bring in experts to speak to us and engage with the PACE partnership group to give a briefing on a particular subject that is important to all partners. We have the services of the Office of Chief Economic Advisers to give us detailed breakdowns and analysis of issues such as those that affect the oil and gas industry. If there are specific recommendations that Mr Lockhart is aware of, he can provide that to me and I will certainly take that on board. As I say, it is important to emphasise that it is a tailored programme of support to individuals. There are really good examples of where work has been taken forward in a very sophisticated way to respond to individual situations. For example, in January of this year, as some members may be aware, Aegis Quick Fit Insurance Service has regrettably announced the closure of their Erdingston office where 521 employees were based. That was extremely bad news, of course, for local community. However, as a conscientious employer, I praise the company for this. Aegis wishes to do their best to support their employees to find onward employment opportunities in the local area and to work closely with the Scottish Government and our agencies towards this end. I set up a working group to provide support, which included Aegis, the Scottish Government North Lanarkshire Council and Scottish Government agencies through our PACE initiative. Through the process, we identified more than 2,000 vacant roles within the locality of the site that we are available to employees through four onsite jobs fairs, which Aegis arranged and which 44 separate organisations attended. PACE staff worked closely with the company and their out-placement agency to deliver a tailored programme of support. That support included 13 PACE presentations, 50 workshops on CV preparation, career management and interview skills and more than 201 to one career planning interviews with a PACE adviser. Around 450 employees took up the service. As at the end of March 2017, when the site closed, more than 300 employees, or two thirds of the total, had already secured successful outcomes before the site even closed. It stressed that PACE support continues to be available for anyone within the former quick-fit insurance team who may still require assistance and, more generally, for other situations that arise. Once a factory or a plant is closed, there is still support available to those who are affected. Unfortunately, it is inevitable that some businesses face severe financial difficulties, and that can result in there being no time for PACE to provide support to affected employees prior to the notification of entering administration. I also want to highlight that the insolvency profession in Scotland plays an important role in the Scottish economy, helping to rescue just under 1,000 businesses and saving nearly 22,500 jobs each year. Therefore, I am grateful for the contribution that the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland plays in the work of PACE, ensuring close collaboration with insolvency professionals to achieve a positive outcome for employees and other creditors in difficult situations, working alongside trade unions and stakeholders to achieve as good an outcome as possible. The strong working relationship between PACE partners and ICAS promotes access to more than 10,500 chartered accountants in Scotland who are often the first port of call for businesses requiring advice or who hold positions within companies that may face having to make redundancies. Collectively, ICAS chartered accountants and insolvency practitioners ensure that employers and employees have access to assistance at an appropriate time. Access to assistance is key in minimising the effects and risks of redundancy, which can have such a detrimental impact on individuals, their family life and the wider Scottish economy. I would like to turn now to consider the economic outlook and the climate in which PACE is operating today. The Scottish economy has remained resilient through 2016, despite the significant challenges that continue to face oil and gas sector. Compounding those challenges, the heightened uncertainty that has been created by Brexit, has led to consumer confidence in Scotland falling, as we have seen elsewhere in the UK. However, it is vital to note that Scotland's economy grew 0.4 per cent in 2016 and Scotland's labour market has continued to show considerable resilience. Latest data to March 2017 shows that our unemployment rate has fallen to 4.4 per cent, lower than the UK rate of 4.6 per cent. Scotland continues to outperform UK on both female and youth employment rates. I am aware of the economic inactivity figures, which are less positive, but with employment 48,000 higher in Scotland than a year ago as the end of quarter 1 in 2017, that is a positive outcome. The 0.2 per cent contraction in the Scottish economy in the final quarter of 2016 stem largely from the continued slowdown in the oil and gas sector and the impacts that it has on its wider supply chain. We know that the headwinds affecting the Scottish economy can have varying impacts across Scotland's regions. For example, the recent labour market data for January to December 2016 has shown that there have been decreases in employment in Aberdeenshire and the Highlands. That is clearly likely to be driven by the fall in the oil price affecting investment in the oil and gas industry and its supply chain. There are, however, encouraging signs that the situation is improving for North Sea operators, and it is clear that the oil and gas sector has a long-term future. We will work to support the supply chain in the interim to ensure that it can gain from future opportunities. The oil and gas industry remains of vital importance to the economy of both Scotland and the UK, supporting 330,000 jobs across the UK with 124,500 in Scotland alone. It has contributed around £330 billion in revenues to the UK exchequer since production began. However, our £12 million transition training fund has already directly supported over 2,000 individuals now, made redundant as a consequence of the downturn in the industry, while a further 755 are being assisted through two procurement rounds to provide new employment opportunities again through the transition training fund. Examples of other headwind impacts on local authorities are those such as South Lanarkshire, Fife, Edinburgh and Glasgow, which have all been affected by a reduction in activity in the manufacturing sector, and local authorities such as North Lanarkshire have been impacted by tightening budget constraints in the public sector. The labour market in Scotland is strong and resilient. Latest figures show that unemployment in Scotland is lower than in the UK as a whole, and since last year, employment in Scotland has risen by 48,000. Scotland also has an innovative business environment, and since 2007, the number of registered businesses in Scotland has grown by 15 per cent to an all-time record level. Through PACE and other service, which might not be immediately obvious through PACE, we try to provide support to those individuals who, perhaps receiving redundancy payments, are able to start a new business and tailored support again through Scottish Enterprise, Hylsdowns Enterprise, to make that happen, and business gateway services at a local level. The minister referred to people getting relatively substantial redundancy payments. I am not aware that PACE has previously done that, but would he consider whether, in particular circumstances, people who receive such payments are in a position to receive advice as to what might be the best way that they can get the best quote bang for their buck from such payments? In particular, for people who are a little bit older, how they might use that as part of their preparation for a retirement that might be disrupted and financially affected by the fact that they are being paid off at a point in their career, whether there will be limited opportunities for them to replace the job and the further development of their pensions. It strikes me that the whole issue of pay-offs, and that perhaps in the oil and gas industry in the north-east, we have seen quite a lot of people take the money and kind of drop out of the system for a long period of time when it may be in the long-term interest to receive good advice and perhaps take a slightly different approach. I think that that is a fair point, Presiding Officer, that Mr Stevenson makes. Certainly, there will be a range of circumstances affecting individuals who are facing redundancy, some who will be closer to retirement and, as the member points out, may be potentially in receipt of significant funds as a part of redundancy package to evaluate their options. I am aware that there is some support in the area, but I will try to provide written information that I have provided to all members as to what is already available and taken board the point that Mr Stevenson makes. That might be an area for future enhancement of the service, if possible, to do so. The economic outlook, Presiding Officer, remains positive, as I have said and cited in some statistics. We believe that the main risk—I appreciate that—may not be something that all members in the chamber agree about. We do believe that the main risk facing Scotland's economy continues to be the prospect of a hard Brexit. There is concern about the Chartered Institute procurement reporting this week that 45 per cent of European companies are looking to replace UK suppliers with EU suppliers. We hope that that does not come to pass, obviously, but the important point to make in respect of that, Presiding Officer, is that it is important to recognise—and for members, indeed—to reinforce the message across the chamber that Scotland is very much open for business and continues to attract everyone's investment. There are two examples that I want to cite just to give a more positive message on today's debate. We have seen £11.1 million of investment in East Kilbride recently in a subsea development centre by a German company, TUV-SUD, and the creation of 300 jobs in Glasgow through investment by a global professional services firm, GenPAC. There are continued investment flows into the UK and, indeed, into Scotland, and that is positive to record. While change is now inevitable, regardless of which constitutional future those of us in this chamber seek to pursue, the Scottish Government's twin approach of growing the economy and tackling inequality will be at the heart of our efforts to meet the challenges that lie ahead and to seize opportunities. As members may be aware, we have been undertaking enterprise and skills review, and while the process is still to include the benefits that we envisage from this, our simplification of the enterprise and skills landscape, improvement in collaborative working and co-ordination, and improvement in delivery of enterprise and skills support, all of which we believe will contribute to our already pattern of collaborative working that PACE has established with its partners. Our business support policies will continue to focus on ensuring that businesses can grow and thrive and to pick up the points that are made by the Labour amendment, working to help companies to avoid situations where there is a risk of redundancies is vital, and we can accept that. We also recognise the importance of engagement in terms of the Conservative amendment, with UK ministers on the industrial strategy, and the cabinet secretary has had positive discussions with Greg Clark in recent times on that theme. Therefore, we will be supporting both Labour and Conservative amendments today in this debate. Through their account management, our enterprise agencies, PACE partners provide a range of early preventive measures to negate potential closure and alleviate difficulties, and operating on a confidential referral basis, work is rightly carried out behind the scenes. I should say, Presiding Officer, I can keep talking if you wish me to. I've still got more material, but if I'm conscious— Just let me check if we're all awake. Yes, we're all awake and you keep talking. If it's helped to the chamber, I will continue to talk. The challenge is to encourage a business to engage early enough to address the potential difficulties before they become insurmountable, and SCI and HI have a broad and highly innovative range of tools at their disposal to support companies, including those who are experiencing difficulties. Those include grant support, of course, and a wide range of support options for businesses, including mentoring support and other means by which we can improve their performance. SDI can also offer invaluable support and advice to global companies exploring the range of opportunities that are available in Scotland as well. Our support to companies is actively maintained throughout difficult periods to explore all possible options for retaining operations and jobs in Scotland. As I say regrettably, in some cases, that is not possible despite the best efforts of officials, local authorities, trade unions and other partners, there is no viable commercial future that can be found. It may result in a closure situation and, indeed, sadly, job losses. Our focus shifts to ensure that effective workforce is given the support that it needs and deserves and to mitigate the economic impact on the surrounding area. In cases where there is a business failure, a decision to close part of a business or particular difficulties in the sector, the pace response is usually sufficient. Occasionally, circumstances, as Stuart Stevenson has outlined, require the intervention of national government. In those particular situations, there can be value in us intervening directly and we have established task forces that have, to re-emphasise the point, been very bipartisan in nature and very positive in their progress. Those task forces—I will discuss a number in my closing speech—bring together national and local politicians, local authorities, public sector agencies, company and workforce representatives, such as the trade unions, to respond to challenges and, where possible, find positive outcomes in extremely difficult circumstances. We are bringing people together to understand the challenges and what can be done to mitigate the direct and indirect impacts that we make connections that might otherwise not be made. That ensures that every avenue is explored, every potential source of support is considered and every possible solution can be delivered. I have seen, at first hand, the excellent work that has been done in Faserva task force, Fife and Lungannock task forces, the latter two in Fife having set up to mitigate the impact of the closure of Tullis Russell paper makers in Mark Inch and the early decommissioning of Lungannock power station. The success of both task forces has clearly demonstrated that the Fife task force helped to achieve positive outcomes for 83 per cent of paced clients during the task force lifespan, while the figure at Lungannock was at 87 per cent. The Scottish Government is committed to creating a culture of fair work, which is supported by such a fair work convention. I will turn to them in my closing remarks. I am actually going to ask you to start closing. Oh, great. Excellent. I want to give other people a bite of this big cherry. I have done my job, Presiding Officer. In conclusion, I believe that PACE is an excellent example of the Scottish Government working in partnership with our stakeholders, working with colleagues in the chamber where that is required, to maximise benefit for individuals, for communities and for Scotland's economic growth. I thank all our PACE partners for their support and all our efforts. PACE partners include agencies that provide skills development and employability support, re-training and upskilling directly to people at the coalface for those who are facing redundancy. They also include organisations that provide support to spread the message of PACE to their members. Many members in the chamber have contacted me about PACE support for their constituents, and I thank them all for their efforts. I would be grateful to hear their thoughts during this debate on how we can build on that success of PACE and make it even more successful for those affected. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Please move the motion. I move the motion in my name. I have got 20 minutes in hand. I do not want people to panic and think that they are not going to get their time. I call Dean Lockhart. It is a liberal nine minutes, Mr Lockhart. Perhaps not as liberal as unless Mr Stevenson intervenes again, Mr Lockhart. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I suspect that it will be a conservative nine minutes, not a liberal nine minutes. Let me start by congratulating Mr Wheelhouse in extending his opening speech. I hope he has the exhaustive too much of his closing speech, and I look forward to hearing his closing remarks. This is a welcome opportunity to debate the work of the partnership action for continuing employment or PACE, as we know it. It is also a timely opportunity to consider the work of PACE in responding to redundancy situations, how it functions and, I think, most importantly, the challenges it will face in the future. We will be supporting the Government's motion this evening, and we will also be supporting the Labour amendment. Our amendment to the motion today seeks to do two things. First, it highlights the need for policy and government agencies, including PACE, to anticipate and plan for the rapidly increasing changes impacting many sectors of the economy. Changes driven by new technologies, automation and other developments, which could, in large scale result, redundancies if, as policy makers, we do not plan for them. Secondly, our amendment encourages the Scottish Government to follow the advice of leading organisations to cooperate with the UK Government's industrial strategy to ensure that sectors and businesses across Scotland are fully prepared to meet those challenges. Before looking at some of the future challenges that we have to face, I want to highlight the valuable work undertaken by PACE. As the national strategic partnership framework for responding to redundancy situations, PACE coordinates responses from 22 different organisations across Scotland and the UK as a whole. Skills Development Scotland delivers PACE in conjunction with those partner organisations. As we have heard, there is a national team based in Glasgow supported by 18 local teams across Scotland. Every year, PACE supports thousands of individuals across Scotland during a very challenging time in their lives when they are facing the prospect of redundancy and the loss of their livelihood. To deal with the different needs of individuals in those very difficult circumstances, PACE provides a number of tailored services, including one-to-one counselling, access to high-quality training, seminars on starting business. As we heard, an increasing number of people affected by redundancy are choosing to open their own business or start their own business, which I think is something that we should encourage. PACE also gives access to IT facilities and helps people to prepare business plans if they are looking to start their own business. Historically, PACE has been primarily targeted at large-scale redundancies, but improvements in its service offering now mean that it can help more individuals and smaller companies in rural areas as well as larger companies in urban areas, and that is very much to be welcomed. PACE undertakes regular client experience surveys to get a sense of what is working and what can be improved. The most recent survey last year pointed to a number of positive outcomes. Three quarters of clients were satisfied with their interaction with PACE. Employment outcomes are generally positive. 71 per cent of clients had secured work after assistance from PACE. Of those that had secured— Inevitable, Mr Stevenson. I wonder if the member would agree with me that it can also be useful to have the employer in the room who may be paying off. In Fraserbrook, where we had a major payoff, we were fortunate to have the company in the room. One of the direct effects of that, hearing the ideas of people around the table, was that the company modified its plans, and that the trade unions seemed to have gained an opportunity to better interact in a safe space with the employer and come up with something that mitigated the worst effects of it. The clients are not simply those who are affected through their employment, but also the companies. We should not fail to recognise that there is always a benefit if we have a safe space for people, communities, companies and trade unions who are affected by what is planned, all being in the room working through solutions that might be better than the initial prognosis might have been. Dean Lockhart Thank you. Mr Stevenson makes a very good point. I think that it will come on to this a bit later. It also feeds back into the need for PACE and the enterprise agencies to get involved in discussions earlier and perhaps have a more proactive response and not just wait for difficult situations to arise but to address some of the problems earlier in the process that may ultimately end in PACE being involved in the process. 71 per cent of clients secure work after assistance from PACE, and of those that do secure work, the majority find work with at least the same or higher levels of skills or responsibility. However, a sizable proportion, roughly a third, is only able to secure work with a lower level of skills or responsibility and a proportion of clients who have secured work end up with work with a lower level of pay, and that is roughly about 60 per cent of workers who have been helped by PACE. However, I think that in the difficult context of redundancy situation, those are positive results. I commend the hard work of everyone involved in the PACE partnership. There is always more to be done, however, and a number of recommendations were made as a result of the survey findings that I mentioned. Those recommendations include the need for PACE to enter earlier in the process, as I mentioned to Mr Stevenson. Given that PACE acts as a gateway to other options such as starting a new business or retraining, it is important that vulnerable workers get help as soon as possible so that they can explore all possible options. There is also need for more tailored support, as the minister mentioned, for older workers aged 55 and over. The poster redundancy outcomes for those this age group is typically poorer. I think that someone mentioned that already. One reason for that might be workers of that age. If they are made redundant, they either start their own business or they perhaps leave the workforce altogether, and that might be something behind the increasing levels of inactivity in the Scottish economy, because those workers would not fall within the statistics. Finally, another recommendation is the further need to promote the services and the reach of PACE so that support is available to everyone who needs it, no matter the size of the business or the circumstances of the redundancy. It is clear that PACE continues to play a constructive and important role within Scotland's labour market, and we are supportive of the work undertaken by PACE and the support that it provides. Our amendment to the Government's motion today reflects the fact that we as policy makers need to begin planning for the significant changes to the structure of the economy and the structure of working practices going forward, because, if unplanned for, those could result in significant redundancies in the economy. Those challenges that we face were highlighted in a report that was issued just last week by the Institute for Public Policy Research, which predicted that almost half of jobs in Scotland, more than 1.2 million jobs, will be at risk from automation and new technologies over the next 15 years. The IPPR report makes a number of observations and recommendations, including that workers will need more career transition support and retraining during their working life. Workers are much more likely to have multiple jobs, requiring not just one-off support following redundancy, but a lifelong platform for career transition, because those workers by 2030 will have different jobs, and they are more likely to have multiple jobs at the same time with multiple employers and have multiple careers. The IPPR report concludes by saying that, without reform, we could see changes to the economy, driven by automation and technology, that will damage employment prospects for a number of sectors and leave whole communities behind. In that regard, if the member would like to make any comment on the article by Dave Watson of Unison in Today's Scotsman, where Dave Watson says that unnecessary recording and reporting at work increases costs and places of undue stress in staff, coupled with new monitoring systems, workers are being turned into robots before they are actually replaced by them. I am trying to work that out with Pace, but I am on your own. I have not read that article to be fair, but we have all got to recognise that best practice in the workplace is good management as well as best practice is the only way that the Scottish economy will remain competitive, given the increasing competition that we face across the world. To deal with the challenges that I mentioned, those are large challenges, and I certainly do not expect Pace in its current form or capacity to have all the answers or deliver all the solutions to the challenges that are raised in the IPPR report. However, as a multi-agency partnership, including the enterprise agencies, Skills Development Scotland, trade unions and various industry bodies, we hope that Pace will be able to play an active role in helping to formulate policies and strategies to anticipate those significant changes in the economy and workforce. While those changes, driven by automation and new technologies, no doubt represent a significant challenge, they also present significant opportunities. If we can get the policy response right, we can capitalise on those new technologies such as Fintech for the benefit of the economy and the creation of new jobs. That is why our amendment today calls for the Scottish Government to follow the advice of leading organisations in Scotland and to actively participate in the UK industrial strategy. As part of the industrial strategy, the UK Government has announced that it will invest £4.7 billion to be used across the UK in science, research, development and innovation in areas such as artificial intelligence, smart technology, robotics and 5G wireless. Significant investment in those key sectors will help the economy to capitalise on the opportunities available and, hopefully, avoid the worst-case scenario of the wide-scale redundancies that may, if we do not get the policy response right, be the downside. As the Scottish Chamber of Commerce said yesterday, given the struggling performance of the economy in Scotland, we need a coherent industrial strategy for the UK, and that must be fully supported by both the UK and Scottish Governments. To conclude, we are very supportive of the range of work that is undertaken by PACE and the support that it provides in redundancy and related situations. However, we must look forward and start to plan for the significant changes that will impact the structure of the economy and the nature of work in the future. To do so, we urge the Scottish Government to proactively engage with the UK Government's forward-looking and ambitious industrial strategy and to take advantage of the trading opportunities that we have with the rest of the United Kingdom, which represents more than two thirds of our trade. I move the amendment in my name. I apologise, Ms Smith. Of course, you are quite right that I see the amendment from the Conservatives' automation, so you are absolutely pertinent with your intervention. I now call Richard Leonard to speak and move amendment 560.2. Mr Leonard, a liberal with a small l, seven minutes. What we are debating here this afternoon is a consequence of what happens when there is market failure or a shift in the market. It is what happens sometimes when there is a falling rate of profit. What happens when there is a corporate demand to boost share values or to inflate dividend payments? What happens sometimes when there is a strike, a strike of capital, and a company decides to disinvest to move work offshore? What happens when redundancies are proposed throughout my working life? I have seen that what happens is all too often typically this. Workers, women and men, aged 50 or over, with 20 or 30 years of working experience being tossed aside, job security, job stability gone, occupational pensions, no more. Too many remain unemployed but uncounted. In part-time work, when they want a full-time job, some may be moved on to a zero-hours contract, precarius employment, which affects the youngest and the oldest workers the most. In advance of today's debate, like the minister, I made some inquiries about what had happened at the Quick Fit Insurance Call Centre in Udingston, where 521 working men and women who have all lost their jobs in the last few weeks have been desperately seeking alternative work. I asked just yesterday at North Lanarkshire Council's Economic Development Department to tell me what had happened to those working people. They pointed to the co-operative work involving the council but also the Scottish Government, Skills Development Scotland, the PACE team and Scottish Enterprise. They reported to me that out of the 521 people who have now lost their jobs, 44 were either on long-term sick or on maternity leave. I am not quite sure what support workers on maternity leave, for example, get in a redundancy situation. I hope that that is something that we can ensure is properly covered. They could tell me that 46 were retiring or taking time out. I defer again to Stuart Stevenson's point that there needs to be on hand either through the trade union or perhaps channeled through the PACE team access to people for independent financial advice on access to their pensions or to other forms of financial benefit that they may have derived through their employment. 268 was reported to me yesterday and had found alternative jobs and often in similar lines of work to the quick fit call centre. Jobs at HSBC, one call direct, Sky and BT local solutions were among the destinations where people had found work. I have to say that there was no information available in relation to those people who found jobs, no information about their rates of pay or their other terms and conditions of employment, no information either about the types of employment contract that they are now on. That is again something that we need to consider, because I will say in a moment or two about the audit work that is carried out by IFF research, for example, which looks at the outcomes of the PACE process, but we need to be a bit more proactive in monitoring people's destinations once they leave employment and understanding better the kind of employment people are going into. That is why, indeed, I found that the latest PERS client experience survey, as it is rather grandly called, carried out by IFF research and published in 2016 is so important, because it gives us some insight into people's journeys after they have been through the PACE programme and the support that PACE offers. The research report provides us with that profile. First of all, it established that, although 40 per cent of PACE clients are below the age of 45, a third are age 45 to 55 and a quarter are over the age of 55. Two thirds, as it happens in that year's report, of those were men. Therefore, I am interested to hear that the Scottish Government has identified those older workers, especially as a group who may need additional support through the service that is provided. However, I was struck in the report not just about the profile of the people who have gone through PACE but the experience of those people having lost their jobs. In contrast to Dean Lockhart's assessment, some of that caused me some concern and I think that it provides something that this Parliament responsibly needs to consider. First of all, the post redundancy experience of people was this. 18 per cent went into part-time work, many of whom had previously been in full-time employment. A third moved from permanent contracts to short-term contracts, or worse, were in a casual job. Again, that was particularly a feature of those older workers who found it hard to move from one permanent job to another permanent job and were much more likely to be caught up in more precarious forms of employment. Those older workers, the findings of the survey and the research were more than twice as likely to be in casual employment than those working people who have been made redundant, who are under the age of 45. There was something else that struck me about the report, because it goes on to make a comparison between the survey that they conducted in 2016 and the comparable survey that they conducted in 2014. This afternoon is a time for consensus and broad agreement, but it is important that we understand what those results show. The conclusions are these, and Dean Lockhart touched on this in his contribution earlier on. In 2016, pace clients were more likely to have taken jobs with lower-skill requirements than their previous job in 2014. Now, as many as 34 per cent went into forms of employment with a lower-skill requirement compared to 29 per cent in 2014. Of course. I am grateful to the member for taking an intervention. I think that, just to help the debate, I am very interested in the points that Mr Leonard is making. We understand that, in 2016's survey, we were picking up a lot of people leaving the oil and gas industry, some of whom are very experienced and highly skilled. It is true to say that there is a phenomenon in which people are having to take, perhaps, occupations that require lower qualifications and have a more temporary nature. However, there is some encouraging sign that those who are in that position do progress on to better employment prospects in due course, and I hope that that is some encouragement to those who are involved. My reading of the last part of the report, which addressed itself expressly, is that two oil and gas workers suggested that those workers with their skills are more likely to slot into forms of employment that give them a comparable application of their skillsets. However, I take the point, and it has been well made in this chamber before, that the levels of remuneration offshore, for example, may not be matched by equivalent employment onshore for reasons that I am sure everybody understands. However, the report talks about the lower levels of responsibility that people moved into employment. In 2016, 40 per cent of those who went through the PACE programme moved into jobs with lower levels of responsibility compared to 32 per cent in 2014. Just to address the point that the minister makes, if I can quote the report, it does say in paragraph 1.25 that the proportion of clients who had secured work with a lower level of pay than the job from which they had been made redundant has increased since 2014 from 52 per cent to 58 per cent. I am conscious of the time, Deputy Presiding Officer. So, let me just say one of two things, if I may, about PACE as an organisation. Because in preparation for this afternoon's debate, I checked on the PACE website earlier on today, and the minister made the point about the use of social media and what we can do to use these new forms of technology—well, new to me anyway—new forms of technology to try to help improve the quality of the service that is on offer. When I looked on the website, I noticed that there was such a thing as a PACE toolkit promoting PACE services and support. It covers the use of social media and gives advice to both employees and employers. If I could strike a serious note under the heading example tweet—and here I must make full disclosure that I myself am not on Twitter—I need a tweet nor retweet and never have done it—the tweet example that is on the PACE website currently says this. Is your business downsizing? Check out the PACE partnership at Redundancy Scotland and see how they can help you. We should not be in the business of helping businesses to downsize, we should be in the business of defending people's jobs and retaining industry. However, in fairness and by way of balance, when I went on to look at the advice under the heading Facebook, which I subscribe to, the question was posed in this way, which I think was a much more constructive way of putting it. The question posed was, is your business facing redundancy? PACE advisers can provide free and impartial advice on the best ways of dealing with redundancy from providing options to retain staff or managing debt. I am sorry, but you can all sit down because you will have to close. You have done well, I mean that you are into, I think, 12 minutes. I have got so much more to say as well. My final point then— Will it be brief? My final brief point is, let us ban the awful language of downsizing and let us have more emphasis on staff retention. With that, I would like to move the amendment in my name. Thank you very much, Mr Leonard. We still have some time in hand, and I am going to let you know so that every in the open debate can have seven minutes, but do not be naughty and do not go on and on and on at seven minutes. I also remind members that, if you have intervened, you have to press your request. Mr Stevenson, you are not paying attention and this is for you. If you have intervened, you have to press your request to speak button again, because it may not be on. You have good man. I will now call Ivan McKee to be followed by Bill Bowman. Mr McKee, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Just before I start, I will make a comment on Mr Leonard's speech. I think that you may find—I have not been a Twitter user, you may not understand this—that the brevity, hence the lack of full explanation on the tweet, is a consequence of the 140-character limit that does not apply on the more comprehensive text that you can put on. A Facebook post, of course. Do you really want to intervene in that? It seems to me that downsizing is an especially long word with lots of characters in it, so all the more reason to change the vocabulary. Good intervention, Mr Leonard. Thank you. Take back my comment. Yes, on you go, please, to the debate. I would like firstly to remind the Parliament of my role as parliamentary liaison officer for the Cabinet Secretary for the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work. Technological change is a feature of our modern economy. It drives progress and it drives growth, but it also causes disconnects in business models and employment patterns. Jobs and businesses that were the foundation of employment in past decades no longer exist, and today's young people will spend their careers in jobs that we cannot even begin to imagine. Change is something that we need to be able to manage and to our possible leverage to our advantage. Further and higher education that trains in career flexibility, both in skills and in attitudes, is a key component of enabling our economy and our citizens to survive and thrive in a civil changing environment. It is also critically important that the Government plays its role in supporting employees who are affected by the process of change at the time when that support is most needed. The process of redundancy is painful and stressful for individuals concerned and their families. It is a process that I myself have been through twice so far in my career, and who knows what the future may hold. Of course, in many circumstances, Government is able to step in and turn a job-threatening situation into survival or even an opportunity for growth. That is, of course, the first priority. The Scottish Government has been proactive in that regard and several recent examples can be cited, including saving shipbuilding at Ferguson's on the Clyde, saving the Lanarkshire steel mills and the recent deal to saving develop the Lochaber smelter, a deal that offers huge potential for growth of the site and the employment opportunities that it offers. That proactive Government intervention is critical. In situations where rescuing recovery is not possible, the Government also has a role to play, a duty in fact, to support the individuals concerned with practical support to smooth their transition to new employment. It is this regard that the Scottish Government's partnership action for continuing employment, or PACE, is well placed to deliver, having demonstrated the value it adds to the lives of individuals going through this difficult process. PACE advisers help people to recognise their skills, explore their options and prepare for their next move. That could also often be highlighting to individuals skills and abilities that they already possess, which can be leveraged in the job market. It can take the form of introductions to employers looking to recruit or to other individuals in a similar situation who are looking to partner in new business ventures. It can open doors that an ex-employee may never have thought of. Change is challenging, but it can often offer opportunities and new pathways. The formal support that PACE provides includes one-to-one counselling, comprehensive information packs, access to high-quality training, seminars on skills such as CV writing and starting up a business, and access to IT facilities. All designed to provide tailored support and advice to those going through the process of redundancies. PACE does that through its national service and through its local teams. Raising awareness of the value that PACE can bring is important, both to employers facing difficult decisions and to employees who find themselves going through the redundancy process. I hope that one of the outcomes of the debate today is to make the work of PACE more widely known and increase participation in its services. We must not forget that, while the practicalities of finding new work is key, the provision of support around the emotional impact of redundancy provided by PACE is of huge value to many employees who find themselves in that situation. The uncertainty about the future that many experience in that situation often itself is a barrier to the positive attitude that is required to move on and find future opportunities. Best practice calls for constant review of processes and outcomes, driving continuous improvement to develop and enhance services. The Scottish Government is focused on ensuring that PACE continues to improve the service that it provides. Regular client experience surveys are carried out and the findings used to further develop the service. The most recent survey found that 71 per cent of PACE clients had secured work and increased from the 51 per cent recorded in the 2010 survey. Of those who had secured work, almost two thirds were now in roles, which required the same or higher levels of skills or responsibility. The partnership aspect of PACE is important, bringing together, as it does, the Scottish Government, local government and industry partners, drawing on the different inputs that each can make to the service. It is important to recognise that, in a UK context, PACE is unique. No other part of the UK has a comparable programme to that offered by the Scottish Government. Although many factors affect the labour market, a proactive focus on helping individuals back to work or to start up in business on their own with the potential to employ others can have a marked effect on overall statistics. In that regard, Scotland's employment performance is worth highlighting. Unemployment in Scotland has fallen by 14,000 over the past quarter and by a total of 48,000 over the year. Scotland's unemployment rate is now at 4.4 per cent, down 1.7 per cent and lower than the UK level of 4.7 per cent. Scotland's employment levels are also up, increasing by 0.9 per cent over the year, with 41,000 more people now in employment. Particularly pleasing is Scotland's performance in youth unemployment, the fourth lowest in the EU, and the youth unemployment rate up by 3.9 per cent over the year. In conclusion, the work of PACE is part of a broader approach and strategy by the Scottish Government, intervening where appropriate to save or reinvigorate key sectors in businesses, creating the environment for business creation and growth, and proactively assisting individuals to find themselves at risk of redundancy. An approach that is delivering results as Scotland's employment statistics make clear about something that we must and should continue to develop to further expand its reach and effectiveness. Thank you very much. On the button, Mr McKee, I call Bill Bowman to be followed by Graham Day. Mr Bowman, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I have been schooled by you not to over speak, so I may struggle to do so. Can I mention also that— I can't be gentle. Okay. Can I mention in my register of interests that I am a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland who have been mentioned by the—quite complementary terms by the minister today. I would also like to say that I found the minister's presentation at the beginning very informative and filled in quite a few of the areas that you do not get from just reading what is online. Just over two years ago, the chamber found itself in broad agreement about the valuable work of the partnership action for continuing employment initiative. Back then, members paid tribute to the constructive efforts of PACE in helping those who had been made redundant to transition into new jobs or training. Now, two years on from that debate, I would wish to reaffirm the positive impact of PACE. I represent a part of the country where there has been a frequent need for PACE teams. Communities across the north-east are still struggling from the downturn in the oil and gas sector. The industry has moved from a longer term boom to contraction, some would say—severe contraction. To survive at all, businesses have needed to restructure right across the supply chain, and some of that meaning downsizing in Richard Leonard's terminology. In this tough climate, redundancies have been unavoidable. According to the annual economic report from Oil and Gas UK, there are now around 120,000 fewer jobs done in 2014. For those who were made redundant during this period, PACE has been a valuable source of support. In particular, PACE and its 22 partners have played a crucial role in organising five north-east employment support events in Aberdeen. Those events have proved to be an ideal opportunity for employers to recruit from the highly skilled talent pool of former oil and gas workers. On top of that, as has been referred to, there has been encouraging results from the 2016 client experience survey. The good news being that 77 per cent of former oil and gas workers have secured work. Most of the oil and gas workers found new roles in different industries, with nearly half saying that PACE influenced their receptiveness to alternative employment opportunities in the north-east. At a national level, PACE is providing a service that is generally well regarded by its clients. Most importantly, the rate of employment for all PACE service users continues to be high between 2014 and 2016. 71 per cent of those who use PACE services secured new jobs either before or after their redundancy. PACE has maintained consistently high levels of satisfaction with around 75 per cent of clients expressing satisfaction with the relevance, usefulness and timeliness of its services. Without a doubt, PACE continues to play a constructive role within Scotland's labour market. Credit should be given where there is success, but I should also sound a note of caution. Celebrating the success of PACE is all very well and good, but, as Andrew Grove, founder of Intel, warned, success breeds complacency, complacency breeds failure and only the paranoid survive. Despite the general success of the PACE initiative, improvements can always be made. I think that we've heard one or two here today. It's just that the member has triggered a memory. Only the paranoid survive, which is, of course, the autobiography of Andy Grove, who was the chief executive of the Intel Corporation, who literally came in on a Monday morning and found that the memory business that he had on Friday had emigrated to Korea. His lessons were absolutely an object lesson in how really good value leadership can avoid catastrophe for a company. I hope that other members will read, as obviously we both have, the book by Andy Grove, which is one of the seminal works on how to handle change in business. Mr Bowman. Thank you for that. Of course, he survived, I think, the holocaust, and then escaped from Hungary in 1956 at the uprising time, so he's had quite an interesting, if you put it that way, life. Going back to where I was, speaking about the improvements that could perhaps come, one was spoken about the awareness of and the availability of the telephone and online support could perhaps be improved. Earlier intervention by pace, if that is possible in the legal circumstances sometimes, and as has been mentioned, focusing perhaps on redundancy support for older workers. I think that you've given some indication that you will maybe look at that. Those aged over 55 tended to have poorer rates of employment when compared to the younger age groups. In 2016, the findings show that post-redundancy outcomes for the over 55 saw no real overall improvement. Some form of targeted support for older workers and perhaps the ones that Elaine Smith was mentioning as well would be welcome. Now, I don't wish to reign on the minister's parade, but there is room for improvement, but the work of pace is not made any easier perhaps by the current government's handling of the economy. As things stand, Scotland's economy is halfway towards a recession. I don't think that there's any sectors in the Scottish economy currently experiencing growth. The Scottish Chamber of Commerce has warned that the Scottish Government's high tax agenda risks driving investment away at a time when it is perhaps needed most. There are some alarm bells ringing and we have to hope that the Government is listening, perhaps not making things better with their insistence on holding a second independence referendum, which, as we know, creates economic uncertainty, which the markets do not like. Scotland's economics problems threaten the good efforts of pace. Post-redundancy outcomes will not remain high if positive job creation falters. Now, I know that the unemployment statistics have improved slightly, but the question is whether that is from new jobs or from people leaving the market. Along with abandoning your high tax agenda and making business growth, your number one priority would be my closing remark. I ask the members to support the resolution. Thank you very much. I call Graeme Dey to be followed by Lewis MacDonald. Let me begin by welcoming the opportunity to debate the work of pace in this chamber. I think that, amongst holding the Government to account MSP, we should also find time in this forum to highlight the excellent work carried out by Government agencies, just as we might criticise the performance of some of these, so we should be willing to offer praise where it is due. In generally speaking, we are hearing such from across the chamber. I also welcome today, because the chances are there to bring to the attention of the minister, a couple of issues that I have encountered in relation to pace, both involving barriers placed in the way of their assisting constituents of mine. I will come to those later. Members will be aware of the wide-ranging and partial advice and support that pace offers to individuals facing redundancy. My part of the country, eight employers and 226 individuals across Angus were supported by pace survivors between April 2016 and March 2017. Several of the firms had gone into administration while some faced the challenge of redeploying staff. Perhaps more significantly, six of the eight Angus-based employers that were supported by pace last year operated in the oil and gas industry. Although the highest numbers of oil and gas redundancies are of course concentrated within Aberdeen City and Shire, a number of my constituents in Angus have been affected by job losses also. The transition training fund set up by the Scottish Government has acted as a vital support route that complements the existing services that pace can offer to individuals who have been affected by redundancies in the oil and gas sector. As members will know, the TTF offers support with training grants to help individuals to retrain, upskill or get accreditation or certification that would help those made redundant to get a new job in oil and gas, the wider energy sector, engineering, manufacturing or whatever. To date, there have been 122 approved applications to the training fund in Angus. The support offered by the fund to retrain and rehone the skills of oil and gas workers has been invaluable to my area. One example of PACE's work in the county was its engagement with GEE oil and gas, which is located in my colleague Mary Evans' neighbouring constituency. In August last year, GEE announced that 151 employees located in Montrose were at risk of redundancy as a result of the decline in activity in the oil and gas sector. All of the employees concerned were provided with a PACE's facing redundancy guide and offered the opportunity to attend support events. Over six days of the staff attended the PACE's presentations, where the individuals concerned were given the opportunity to have a one-to-one discussion about their situation with a PACE adviser. All of the redundant employees were eligible to apply for the transition fund and relocate their skills to another sector, many did so. Of course, the success of PACE is dependent on co-operation from the firms whose employees are facing redundancy and, in my experience, they encounter a very mixed landscape. A few months ago, myself and my MP colleague Mike were last to a meeting with a local firm that we were engaged with previously. They had bad news to give. Some jobs were going, others would be relocated as the firm shut down its local operation. I raised the assistance that PACE could provide to those staff who would not be moving with their business. The response could not have been more positive. However, the PACE team locally have come across difficulties in being able to reach out to other folk in need of their help. Last year, I got wind of redundancies with a well-known firm in the constituency. My attempts to engage with the company, not for the first time, came to naught. PACE called them up, seeking access to the affected workers. They could not get past the switchboard. They were told to email a leaflet, and essentially it might or might not be shared with the staff. I am aware of another situation that PACE encountered in Angus when a firm went into administration with no prospect of being sold on as a going concern. They approached the administrators, seeking contact details for the staff who had lost their jobs to be told that they could not be passed on. I can remember whether the reason given was data protection at the fact that the staff were no longer employed by the firm, and that meant that the info could not be shared. Either way, it was not going to be provided, and we had to use media outlets to reach out to those impacted. I am particularly exercised by that last scenario. It strikes me that, when people lose their jobs, nothing should be getting in the way of accessing any and all help that might be available. It is important to recognise that PACE initiative was set up to not only help individuals, but to provide support to firms and employers, too. That can be overlooked sometimes. PACE advisers can offer alternatives to redundancy and provide solutions for employers to retain some or all of the staff. In the many cases where that is not an option, PACE offers employers impartial advice on how best to approach redundancies and to sit down with employees to discuss the situation. When situations like that arise, the priceless expertise and support that PACE advisers bring to the table has to be recognised by employers. When firms are reluctant to cooperate with a PACE team, it can only have a detrimental impact on their employees and the families that they support. With some that might be down to a steadfast refusal to engage with external agencies, but others might be oblivious to the fact that PACE can support organisations like themselves to secure the best outcome for all parties. That is an issue of awareness-raising that perhaps needs to be addressed. It has been touched upon earlier as MSPs that there is a role for us there, making sure that businesses across the areas that we represent understand the backup that is available to them and their employees. Sadly, that is going to be increasingly important in the light of Brexit. I know that the Tory amendment does not mention the B word. I am assuming that it is covered by the use of the phrase other challenges, but Brexit is beginning to impact. I was in discussions the other day with the MD of a firm-remised constituency that is going to have to make people redundant and is seeking to diversify in order to minimise the numbers concerned after losing two contracts completely out of the blue. One of those contracts came from a major company that is taking steps to downsize its own workforce because of Brexit. Alongside that, the subcontracted work that it placed in Scotland is now going to the far east. That is quite clearly a knock-on effect. Brexit is starting to bite and it has not even happened yet. Let me take this opportunity to thank the Skills Development Scotland team in our broth who have done some terrific work for my constituents in Angus South and the wider Angus. Urge firms who may face the unfortunate situation of redundancies in the future to engage with the pace advisers for the benefit of your employees and your organisation as a whole and appeal to any of my constituents in Angus South affected by oil and gas redundancy who have not yet come forward to contact their local skills development branch to check their eligibility for the transitional training fund. Thank you very much. Paul Lewis Macdonald will be followed by Alec Cole-Hamilton. Thank you very much. As the minister and other speakers have acknowledged, workers in the north-east of Scotland have had more experience of large-scale redundancy in the last three years than for quite some time. Most obvious is the downturn in the oil and gas sector, but that has had wider impacts. For example, in the closure of restaurants and pubs, and there has also been significant pressure on the supply chain and quite separately pressure on employment in other sectors such as fish and food processing, which have cost hundreds of jobs. PACE has been and remains important to the regional economy of the north-east as to other parts of Scotland. Through involvement in the Fraserborough task force, I have seen both the strengths and the limitations of cross-agency working and the impact of major redundancies in a town where alternative employment is not readily available. I would particularly commend the involvement of ASDAW, which represents the workforce at Young Seafood, and the efforts of North East Scotland College to enable people to upskill in order to access other jobs. A great deal of effort has gone into seeking to mitigate the impact of job losses and to reduce the number of redundancies there. I think that all concerned should take credit from that. As Stuart Stevenson mentioned, the partnership approach involving all levels of government and members of all parties is valuable in ensuring that the widest possible range of expertise and experience is at the table. I acknowledge the role that Paul Wheelhouse has played in the work of that task force in recent months. Where the closure of parts of the Young's Plat and Fraserborough brought hundreds of job losses, the impact of the oil downturn on employment in the north-east has, of course, to be measured in the thousands. The minister has already mentioned the role of PACE in relation to the oil and gas sector and in supporting individual workers. Alongside the usual PACE initiative sits the energy jobs task force, again bringing together a range of partners to take a more strategic approach. The work that has been done by that task force in a number of areas is to be welcomed. The minister highlighted support for workers who have been made redundant through the transition training fund and other initiatives. That is very important for those individuals, but it is also important to put those numbers in context. Where 120,000 jobs across the United Kingdom, some 46,000 in Scotland have been lost as a result of the downturn, not only in the oil and gas sector but also including indirect and induced employment, it is clear that the help that has been made available has been important for those individuals, but touches only a part of the wider problem. There is a lot of work still to be done to protect and secure the future of thousands more jobs in the industry, in the supply chain and beyond. Offshore unions remain rightly concerned about the bigger picture. Pat Rafferty of Unite said in November that we are in the middle of a crisis, and unless there is action soon, we could be approaching a point of no return. That would be devastating for the Scottish economy, particularly in the north-east. Jake Malloy of RMT said in February that our big worry is getting through this next year. 2017 does not look any better than the previous two. If that is the case, then that could be the tipping point for the North Sea. It is not only trade unions that are concerned. The 25th oil and gas survey from Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce found that businesses believed that measures taken to address the crisis in the North Sea had not yet made sufficient impact. Some of that is about macroeconomic policy, so important is the oil and gas sector to the wider economy. However, it is also about how Government can intervene early and proactively to avoid redundancies happening in the first place. Part of that is about appropriate training, ensuring that jobs are protected in the sector, because without properly supported training schemes, the sector could well end up losing many of its most experienced workers. Having lost one job, older workers simply may not be qualified to take another and need to be able to access training to allow them to do that. Apprentices, as well as older workers, were hard hit by the downturn in the last two years. Many firms ended apprenticeship training schemes early, leaving young people without security with regard to their future career. That is partly why there has been so much concern in the oil and gas industry about the Scottish Government's plans for the apprenticeship levy. I know that employers will have told ministers how vital it is for them that they know in advance how this money is to be distributed to help them to plan their own apprenticeship and training schemes. When the Government announced in December that some of that money would indeed go back into modern apprenticeships, but some would go on other workplace training programmes and initiatives, clearly that caused concern for some employers in the oil and gas industry, because the money that they had previously had to hand for training had gone into the levy, and then they have now learned that not all of that will come back. There are clearly some issues there. While some oil workers want to move to another industry, many do not, there needs the effort to be full support for companies in the sector that are willing to retrain and reskill workers and for those who are willing and able to continue to provide high-quality apprenticeships for young people entering the industry. The transition training fund, as the minister has said, is important too. I have previously raised concerns about transitions from offshore oil and gas to offshore renewable energy and the shortfall in mutually recognised safety and training qualifications between those two sectors. I have discussed the issue recently with John MacDonald of Apeto and Maff Smith of Renewable UK. I am pleased to say that both sectors recognise the need to address this issue going forward. It is an issue that I have also raised with Lina Wilson of the energy jobs task force, because it is in areas such as that there is clearly still work to be done going forward. Just as Paul Wheelhouse rightly agreed to extend the work of the phraseable task force, because he recognised that there was still work to be done there, I would want to reiterate the same point in relation to energy jobs and the oil and gas sector. I know that the energy jobs task force is moving from a monthly meeting schedule to a quarterly meeting schedule. I know that members of that task force are keen to contribute more and to do more to protect jobs going forward. I hope that the minister can assure us today that there is no intention to end the work of that task force prematurely. It is not job done in the north-east oil and gas sector. Jobs are still being lost, contracts are still being put on hold. That means that there is still work for PACE and for Government agencies working together to address those matters. I hope that we can continue to work together on a cross-party basis in broad terms in order to ensure that that happens. I call Alex Cole-Hamilton to be followed by Angus MacDonald. I very much welcome the Scottish Government's motion today and commend the work of those 21 organisations that make up the ministerial PACE partnership. They have, along with the localised teams between them and through the work of that partnership, been able to offer support, advice and help to thousands of people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves out of work. Since the crash of 2008, redundancy has touched nearly every person in this chamber. It has perhaps affected members personally. We have heard how it has certainly affected constituents. It has happened to a family member or to a close friend, but its impact is almost always the same, a period of anxiety and grief, not just in the person who has lost their job but their family and their dependence as well. A huge knock to self confidence and a sense of humiliation and worthlessness comes with that. I know something personally of that indescribable anxiety. I will never forget the night that I was phoned by a colleague and the terrible words that she said to me. I should not be telling you that, but I wanted you to have time to prepare that your name is on that list. The days that followed saw me desperately trying to work out what I was going to do. We had just taken on a three-year mortgage. My wife was pregnant with our third child. My mobile phone was up for renewal, and I was not even clear if I would be able to afford a new contract for the next two years. That is the point at which I have to check my privilege. I have never known poverty, I have got generous friends in a family to lean on for support, and I have got equity in my house. At the end of that phone call, I knew a new kind of terror that I had never experienced before. As it happened, we managed to bring in a funding grant the following week, which staved off that next round of redundancies. I will never forget that sense of desperation and sheer panic. It certainly helped to give me a certain empathy when, a couple of years later, I had to make a member of staff redundant. It was not just that feeling of uncertainty as to how we get by financially. My job was my life—at least part of it—and it was part of who I was as a person. I was proud of what I did. It gave me structure to my world. To lose it would have seemed to me utterly desperately lost. I was incredibly lucky, but the worst that I had feared was a daily reality encountered by all too many people at every level of employment and in every sector of industry since the meltdown of 2008. Had it happened to me, I would have almost certainly sought to engage with PACE. As we have heard through 18 local teams across Scotland, the partnership offers a fleet of foot response to redundancy in every corner of Scotland. That response consists of a holistic package of care and support, ably stewarded by staff from Skills Development Scotland and Job Centre Plus, which addresses almost every aspect of the immediate aftermath of redundancy and the fallout that it can then have on individuals and on its families. It offers essential assistance with the basics, sorting out benefits, household budgeting, whilst building important transferable life skills and technical advice, essential to rejoining the workforce in areas such as CV improvement and interview preparation. However, its reach and focus covers vital elements of the dreadful impact of redundancy on mental health too, helping service users to cope with the stress and anxiety whilst building resilience in particular. It is this pastoral care, this pastoral role, which I believe gives PACE a hugely welcome humanitarian edge as well. Vital Deputy Presiding Officer, when you consider that 40,000 suicides are linked to unemployment and job insecurity worldwide each year. I want to recognise too the work of PACE with Scottish Government and partner organisations in their efforts to adapt to the landscape of redundancy in this country. Although the partnership had been previously targeted at large-scale redundancies—a regular feature of the start of this decade—by re-profiling through the introduction of a national helpline and improved website, the partnership teams are far more readily available to individuals and small employers, particularly in rural areas at times of redundancy. Re-configuring in this way has helped the partnership to adapt to the change in economic outlook, which has seen a decline in large-scale redundancies. As such, assistance has been offered to some 4,500 individuals and more than 800 businesses. When considered in the context of the families and support networks around those individuals, that reaches greater still. I welcome that adaptive approach, and if I could offer one recommendation to the Scottish Government and, by extension to the partnership, on how it might adapt still further, it would be this—please try to do more for older people facing redundancy. Those workers who are made redundant over the age of 50 find it harder than any other age group in our society to re-enter the workforce, and many find themselves locked out of the labour market for the rest of their lives. It is essential that PACE teams engage with those workers at the earliest opportunity and offer enhanced support over and above their normal assistance package, with training for IT literacy and, indeed, job brokerage. To appoint some of that responsibility to older workers, it lies with us here in this chamber as well. We need to rise to the real challenge of age-related workplace discrimination in our society and do so with the same vigour with which we greet the discrimination of any other equalities group. This is a motion around which every member in this chamber should coalesce. I am very grateful for the camaraderie and the sense of unity around this issue this afternoon. I want to take this opportunity to thank the staff and organisations involved in the work of the partnership and to thank the Scottish Government very much indeed for raising this in Parliament today. I call Angus MacDonald to be followed by—excuse me, a moment—the members are not in the chamber. Should we be followed by—neither is that—and terribly sorry, Mr MacDonald, followed by Gillian Martin. Okay, thank you, Presiding Officer. I am pleased to be able to contribute to today's debate on PACE. Ironically, the one time I managed to trim my speech down to six minutes in advance. If there is one thing that unites us as members of the Scottish Parliament, it is to drive to help and represent our constituents who find themselves in all manner of situations for one reason or another. We all speak regularly to constituents who are at risk of losing their jobs or have indeed lost their jobs through decisions made to close sites, businesses hitting hard times or decisions by companies to move operations elsewhere, leaving a hole in the local economy, leaving workers sometimes in significant numbers looking for alternative employment. As you would expect, it has certainly been the case that residents in my constituency of Falkirk East have been hit by the threat of job losses. Most recently, more than 200 people in Falkirk district have been faced with this prospect due to the announcement by Frank, who operates the Caren Phoenix plant, making granite sinks and bathroom equipment to consolidate and move their manufacturing operation to Slovakia. Caren has been operating for over 258 years in our area and is one of Scotland's oldest manufacturing companies embedded in Scotland's industrial heritage. To say that its closure was a sore one is certainly an understatement. In those situations, it is frustrating that more can it be done to save the jobs directly and, considering the skills levels and the length of service some of those workers have, it can be a daunting and difficult position to be in to know where to begin, especially if you are having to start out in the jobs market. Clearly, that is when pace kicks in. Partnership action by the Scottish Government, SDS, Scottish Enterprise and the local authorities working together to prepare workers for the challenges and past place before them has proved to be invaluable in Falkirk district and beyond. Over 2016-17, the Falkirk pace partnership has assisted with several redundancy situations, including Caren Phoenix, which I mentioned earlier, Street Sweeper manufacturers, green machines and BHS, among others. PACE has been instrumental in providing guidance to employees and agencies involved with the companies in question. 389 people over that period have benefited from the support and advice available from PACE with extremely positive feedback. Most employers are impressed by the support available to them as a business, and that has enabled them to provide support to their staff at what can only be an incredibly difficult time. Clearly, the earlier the intervention, the better in terms of planning the support required. However, that is obviously dependent upon every individual circumstance. With regard to the Caren Phoenix situation, a plan was initiated to provide employability workshops, future fairs, support with literacy and numeracy, as well as self-employment workshops, which were delivered by business gateway Falkirk, as well as the identification of short vocational opportunities and the offer of accreditation of prior work-based learning. Similarly, some of my constituents who were faced with the early closure of Longannock Power Station benefited from PACE assistance, with a non-site resource centre being established to deliver redundancy support services to all staff, including the considerable level of contractors on site. Advice on benefits, employability support, business startup advice and support to access training all contributed to 370 people being supported. 52 per cent of those people are employed full-time, with a level of 18 per cent being economically inactive. However, in terms of progress, there is light at the end of the tunnel. With support from the Scottish Government, particularly from Minister Paul Wheelhouse, who recently met the Falkirk economic partnership to discuss the progress in the Grangemouth investment zone, there is a positive vision within my constituency. I will take this opportunity to thank the minister for the help and encouragement that he and his officials have provided locally in recent months. Those measures, when realised, will mean that the Falkirk TIF initiative will be expanded, which will enable a wider programme of assistance, covering infrastructure, provision, energy and enterprise growth. I have no doubt that that will lead to further opportunities for people in Falkirk East and across Falkirk district as a whole who are seeking employment now or in the future. Of course, in an ideal world, the support that PACE provides would never have to be called upon. However, the economic uncertainty, due to a number of varying factors—Brexit was mentioned earlier—at times when redundancy is inevitable, PACE can be the difference between continued employment or an uncertain future, where the market and advice is available but not necessarily the easiest to access. What PACE delivers locally and nationally is of vital importance in these difficult situations, and I am pleased with the work that has been done in my area to help and support my constituents as and when it is required. However, it is not all doom and gloom. The unemployment situation has been stabilising with numbers dropping, and it is fair to say that Falkirk district has a positive outlook and an exciting future. During 2016, Business Gateway in Falkirk assisted 283 startup businesses in the council's area, and tourism is a big new growth area for Falkirk district, generating over £100 million annually and now employing over 2,000 people locally. In addition, the council's economic strategy for Falkirk document details plans to create an investment zone of national significance at Grangemouth, and Ineos is clearing about 250 acres of land that will create about 200 acres for co-location sites that are expected to attract up to 500 jobs, maybe more. Business Gateway in Falkirk is forecasting that new business and the expansion of existing enterprises could bring around 550 new jobs in the next three years. The future looks good for my constituency. With the vision and energy that the proposed new minority SNP administration will bring to Falkirk council, the need for any future pace intervention will hopefully be greatly reduced. I call Julian Martin to be followed by Jamie Greene. Sadly, there are few, if any, people in my constituency that don't know someone affected by redundancy from the oil and gas sector. For decades, it was a reliable and stable area of the economy, not just for those directly employed by oil and gas companies, but also for the tens of thousands of people working in the supply chain connected to oil and gas, and those businesses benefiting from the disposable income of highway jenners in the sector, which led much of the hospitality and retail sector to flourish. In the last two years, a decrease in the global oil price and the reluctance of the United Kingdom Government to offer loan guarantees to exploration companies has meant significant job losses in the sector. There is now a pressing need to provide support to the men and women who are making a real effort to upskill, retrain and find new ways to work in a very different employment landscape in my area. PACE has been instrumental in providing such support. Last year alone, it helped more than 1,000 individuals in dealing with redundancy. In December, it reported having more than 2,000 apprentices in training. That came alongside fantastic news that out of over 11,016 to 19-year-olds in Aberdeensiau, 93.2 within learning, training or work. The tangible difference that has been made in the lives of people who worked in oil and gas and the new options that has been highlighted for constituents like mine is the development that I welcome. In March of this year, PACE held an employment event in Aberdeensiau, bringing together 800 individuals affected by oil and gas redundancy with over 50 exhibitors to speak to about job vacancies and other opportunities to use the skills that those people have already learned. Physically bringing together employers with their prospective employees is such a simple, but it is a very effective way of giving people a chance to get back to work. I commend PACE for taking those steps to identify opportunities like that. PACE brings together many employment support agencies and programmes that are available to the people of the north-east. More than 400 new training places are now available for people who are leaving the oil and gas sector to gain the skills that they need to move into other industries, thanks to the Transition Training Fund. That £12 million fund was set up by the Scottish Government to offer support with training grants and to help people to retrain, upskill and get accreditation or certification that would help them to get a different job in oil and gas, the wider energy sector or engineering and manufacture. Let us not forget that people in oil and gas are some of the highly trained people working in Scotland today. I have had to go through years of rigorous training on an almost quarterly basis, and a lot of the certificates that they have have to be looked at in terms of how they can be transferred into other disciplines. Areas such as renewables, construction, teaching, road haulage, smart meter installation and rail are sure to benefit from the highly educated and skilled people trained in oil and gas. The Transition Training Fund and Energy Jobs Taskforce ensure that those routes back to employment are created and communicated. There is a myth that former oil and gas workers are not interested in readjusting to new types of work, but the reality is that when you speak to people worried about their job or their future, they absolutely want to contribute to the Scottish economy, they want to provide for themselves and their families, and they genuinely want the opportunity to work in a stable sector. Let us not forget that a lot of those people went through a situation in the early 90s where they had to take a pay cut or a rate cut or they lost their jobs then and went back into the industry. They do not really want to go through that again, so they are keen to be redeployed in other areas of the workforce. It makes perfect sense that we as a Parliament support the redeployment of skilled people into different areas of the workforce. I thank all the members who came to speak to SDS representatives from the Transition Training Fund. I hosted them at the end of last year in Parliament, and I know that a lot of the members got a lot out of those conversations. I also want to mention some work that I have been doing when highlighting issues of discrimination from certain employers against former oil and gas workers that I have found when I have been speaking to some of my constituents. I have been working with a local journalist Fiona Stocker of BBC Scotland to draw attention to the issue. As a result of the publicity, many more oil and gas workers have been in touch with me to share their stories, and I hope that I have been able to help some of them. More positively, as a result of the report and reporting in Scotland about our work in this area, the road haulage association got in touch with me. They invited me to come along to an open day that they were holding for oil and gas workers who had been made redundant. What they are doing is using Transition Training Fund money and putting people through their HGV licence training, and they are working with employers in the road haulage industry to fill the many vacancies that they have in haulage. Since my afternoon with those trainees who have ranged from early 20s to over 60, I have been able to put a few of my constituents in touch with the RHA to access the training, the latest being just yesterday. Some employers that I have spoken to in other sectors in my area have been very wary of employing former oil and gas workers. They have said to me that they are worried that they will invest in them only for them to upsticks and move back into oil and gas when the industry recovers. However, the people that I spoke to, the RHA Recruitment Day, all said that they wanted to retrain and permanently move into a new sector. Many of them wanted a life on land for a kick-off, with more time with their families, working in areas with less susceptibility to market forces outwith their control. From the RHA point of view, they wanted to recruit highly skilled people, and they recognised that oil and gas workers are highly skilled in terms of health and safety, problem solving, maintenance and are used to working in very challenging conditions. There are sectors where there are skilled shortages, and I would urge those sectors to work with SDS and PACE to follow the example of the road haulage association. I would also like to point out that there is a whole generation in my area that has only ever worked on oil and gas. Many of them have worked for the same company. I have got an example on a friend of mine, Neil Bailey, who worked for Halliburton for 25 years and was made redundant on his 49th birthday. Neil has moved into the social care sector very successfully. I would like to encourage people to think more broadly, not just about engineering opportunities, but maybe taking the opportunity to go into sectors where we really need people and where you could have a very successful career. I would also encourage more people to take advantage of the new routes into teaching that the Transition Training Fund offers. It is hard to believe it when you hear some members of the Opposition speaking about Scottish schools, but it really is a great career. One of many of my families work in this area. We need STEM teachers with valuable industry experience to help to get our young people ready for the challenges of the centuries that unfold. In the education committee, we have heard testimony as to how invigorating people moving into teaching from industry are in a classroom. It is incredibly important that the availability of this workforce is harnessed by other sectors, who can recognise the contributions that people have made to the success of oil and gas industry. I believe that my constituency will emerge from this downturn as a more diverse, adaptable region, and I welcome the efforts that have been made through projects such as PACE to help us to become a reality. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. The partnership action for continuing employment remains ever vital in our rapidly changing economy. I make my comments today in the spirit of the ambitions of PACE. As oil and gas revenues continue to decline and economic conditions remain tough, it is important that we have a clear focus on getting people back into work. Figures out yesterday show that UK unemployment rates now stand at 46-year-low. I welcome those figures. In the UK, 4.6 per cent of people are unemployed. Let's compare that to Spain, where 18 per cent of adults are out of work, or in Italy, where 12 per cent are out of work, or even in France, where it is 10 per cent. One could argue that we are faring reasonably well compared to our European neighbours, but 4.6 per cent still equates to 1.5 million people, and 120,000 of those people are in Scotland. There is always a duty on us to improve the employability of our workforce, so I support the work of PACE. We also want to see the Scottish Government implementing some of the recommendations in the most recent PACE survey. In particular, more could be done to reach out and educate people on what options are available to them when they learn of redundancy. Redundancy's long-term unemployment can be very challenging experiences financially and emotionally. It's not just the economy that suffers when people aren't working, people suffer as well. Being out of work has a negative impact on your mental health, on your feelings of social inclusion, self-value and self-pride. That is exaggerated when someone finds themselves out of work after redundancy, perhaps from a job that they have held for many years. As we live longer and healthier lives, there is a wealth of experience in our over-50s workforce, which I think is often overlooked. Admittedly, PACE has seen some successes, such as high job outcomes for those using the service, and it is going from strength to strength. It's great to see that three quarters of individuals using PACE said that they were satisfied with the service that they received, and I welcome that. However, at the Scottish Government's most recent PACE conference held in March this year, a number of very important points were made by the audience panel members. For example, increasing the acquisition of basic skills more early on to deliver job flexibility later in life. I would also like to look at some other points. One suggestion that I was struck with was that of making local economies less reliant on big, large employers—a more diversified economy, if you like. However, the million-dollar question is how do we do that? What pre-emptive measures or precautions can be introduced early on? How do we attract new or smaller indigenous businesses to our towns? The notion of having one big local employer is one that we hear often, but that comes with a huge risk. Another area that I would like to look at is the suggestion of improving access to the PACE system. In my view, enhancing PACE's digital activity will be vital and engaging with people. Moving towards an enhanced and more immediate online service is important for those who perhaps are not on social media or do not have access to the internet as widely as others. We need to offer alternatives. For example, a phone call. In my view, a phone call might simply be enough to help to alleviate that initial stress and fear when somebody learns of redundancy and wants someone to talk to them about their options. Nothing replaces face-to-face help, of course, but I would like to see a marketing campaign that tells people where they can turn to as a first port of call. Many will immediately think of their local job centre and immediately their thoughts may be starting to turn to what benefits might be available to them. I think that there should be a mindset change in that there is opportunity there that they could go straight into another job if they are suited to be qualified and if a job is available to them. Of course, I want to see PACE work, but PACE alone will not be enough. We should point out that the Scottish economy contracted in 2016's final quarter. If it contracts again, then we will be in recession and in that environment PACE becomes ever more important. Skills training is not sufficient without job creation. In my view, I am glad that Gillian Martin mentioned STEM subjects, because I think that they create opportunities for career changes. They can open doors in a never-changing workplace, but it is important to point out that 1,000 STEM teachers have disappeared from the profession in the past 10 years. I do not say that to make any political points, but purely to demonstrate that I think that if our workforce were equipped with sufficient STEM skills, then they could transition more easily from industry to industry. For example, if you did work in the oil sector as an engineer, could you make a career in renewables? One example that I saw in our rural economy committee was that we went to a forestry company that was desperately needing new recruits to work the machinery that it had invested in, and they were recruiting from warehouses where people were able to drive pickup trucks, and the skills that they had using pickup trucks were able to be transferred and were able to be taught how to use the complex machines that fell, strip and chop up trees. In my local area in Greenock, I have seen the town transition from bustling business parks that used to house companies such as national semiconductors and IBM, and today those big industrial parks lie barren and grass-covered. They are indeed skeletons of an electronic hay day, and the mood changes in a town when a big local employer closes, but these derelict sites should be places of opportunity. I worked for a time in the city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, where the old Phillips factories that closed down are now bustling havens for young entrepreneurs and tech startups, and the mood of that city has really changed. It is positive and upbeat. It has to be seen to be believed. I should also declare that I sit on the industry task force in Inverclyde for one such business, Texas Instruments, which is seeking to close or sell its assets. I have seen first hand how sitting around the table with the people that can help the workers really makes a difference. Those are consensual discussions. The local employer is invited to participate, and that is why it is really important that the comment that Stuart Stevenson made on the importance of having the businesses themselves around the table is absolutely vital. I will close by making one final point on what has been a fairly consensual discussion. Pace needs a top-down focus. I see that the finance secretary is not here today, but I do hope that he is listening. His focus should be on growing the Scottish economy 100 per cent of the time, because businesses will always open and close, and that will not change. However, a flexible workforce that can transition from company to company or industry to industry, in my view, is the key to mitigating the devastation that business closures can bring. Preparation is everything. I have a relevant, declared interest as an unremunirated director of McQuick Ltd's bagpipe covers and also as a member of Unite the Union. In researching for this debate, I came across a comment from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. I would like to start by sharing that with colleagues if I may. They say that all people have the right to economic initiative and to productive work to just wages and benefits to decent working conditions, as well as to organise and join unions or other associations. Work should provide people with security, a decent salary and stability, but for too many people, their jobs are insecure, they are low paid and they are often threatened or undervalued. In work poverty in 21st century Scotland is unacceptable, as I am sure most colleagues would agree. Scottish Labour is committed to full employment as an economic and social goal, and that means working to ensure that everyone who loses their jobs is helped back into work. In terms of today's debate, the focus is on PACE, which works well to support individuals when the closure of a factory or business means that a number of workers are facing redundancy. As might be expected, as colleagues have said, that has been a relatively consensual debate. I, along with my Labour colleagues, support the efforts of PACE and the hard work done, but with the proviso that we should always strive to try and improve those services and to retain jobs. The PACE survey found that many of those who had used the service felt that it would be beneficial if PACE got to them earlier, and that is a point that has been mentioned by other members. However, it is, of course, also fundamentally important that trade unions and Government are given time to explore all the options to try and prevent redundancies. As Labour's amendment says, the development of effective, proactive approaches to support existing jobs in the industry to seek first and foremost to avoid redundancies is vital. The survey also found that most of the people using PACE had success finding new employment at a similar level to the previous employment, but the slight downside of that was that people finding those jobs were often having to take a pay cut to get them, and we have heard that from other members. Of course, PACE is a corrective measure, it is not a preventative one, and it is a tool for damage limitation, and perhaps it could be more proactive. I think that the minister mentioned in his opening that that was being explored. To address that, we could focus beyond continuing employment. Given that pay across Scotland showed the weakest growth in the UK in 2016, but that did still equate to real-terms increase, to be fair, I would put that in. We have to consider the long-term effects of redundancy when half of the PACE survey showed that people were now in significantly less than they were in their previous roles. If jobs are leaving Scotland and are not being replaced with jobs at a similar rates of pay, that is a net loss for the Scottish economy, and it will have a major effect on workers and their families. While attention must be paid to addressing redundancy, we also need to consider how we can retain jobs, particularly in parts of the country that might be losing out to the big cities. In central Scotland, the area that I represent, we have recently lost companies such as Quick Fit, Airdrie Savings Bank and Tannoy, but we have also lost many local government jobs and HMRC jobs are also under threat. Personally, I run a successful jobs sphere with the help of SDS, and if members are keen to do that, I would certainly recommend that it is being helpful to people in local areas. In central Scotland, there are many people with innovative ideas and inventions trying to start small businesses. PACE can try to assist those who fall victim to redundancy to start their own business with the help of business gateway, but those services have historically been available to those who are part of large-scale redundancies. We should do more to try and assist all people who are made redundant and interested in trying to start up a business. I was pleased to hear that moves are being made in that direction, and I note the interesting comments that were made earlier in the debate by Stuart Stevenson. Bad practice, by employers, particularly towards women who need time off for family and caring reasons, can cause stress and security and can end up in redundancy situations. That, of course, does have a relevance to PACE. Those stories can be lost in the face of the headlines about large-scale losses, but they exist and we need to listen to them also and take action. I want to briefly turn to the issue of people with disabilities, which I intervened on the minister earlier about. I think that people with disabilities have very specific concerns when they are trying to find jobs after redundancy. In particular, if people with learning disabilities like dyslexia, the prospect of having to fill in a CVE, face an interview, search online for a job can be very worrying and can cause a loss of confidence, and that can make securing jobs harder. I checked with PACE advisers in Central Scotland, and they said that there is not much that they can do at present other than signposts to other organisations and point-to-benefits that might help. I think that there should be clear recognition of the issue so that we can tackle it appropriately and perhaps more direct expertise within PACE would help. Although I have to say, Presiding Officer, I was very pleased in the minister's response to my intervention that he noted this point, and he is going to be taking that forward. Obviously, PACE, as a model for continuing employment, as the minister said in his opening remarks, does not meet the needs of everyone, and that is something that we must address if we are to continue to improve the service. If we can identify the individual concerns and needs of each worker earlier, then we can begin to improve our response to redundancy. Although PACE is a good Scottish initiative and I very much welcome the continuous improvement programme to ensure that Scotland can be an example for the rest of the UK on how you value and utilise people's skills to benefit both them and wider society. Presiding Officer, I would like to finish in the way that I started, but this time with remarks that were made by Pope Francis in 2015. It makes me sad when I see people without work who do not find work and haven't the dignity of bringing bread home. It cheers me when I see that political leaders make great efforts to find jobs and to seek to make sure that everyone has a job. Work is sacred, work gives dignity to a family, and we must pray that work be not lacking in any family. Oliver Mundell, followed by Stuart Stevens, has no more than seven minutes. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I welcome today's debate on the partnership action for continuing employment. In 2015, the chamber praised the positive efforts of PACE in responding to redundancy situations. I know that, since then, as we have heard in the debate, many improvements have been made to that service. I am particularly pleased to see 80 skills and development staff now work alongside job centre staff to enhance the work of PACE. A national helpline revamped website and improved information services have also increased the visibility and accessibility of PACE services for employers and individuals. Those enhancements have enabled a strategic focus of PACE, which was initially set up to target large-scale redundancies. However, with more dedicated staff and accessible services, PACE can now open up its doors to more individuals and employers, particularly in rural areas, such as my own Demfresher constituency, where, in the past, small-scale job losses have not been seen as important as larger-scale job losses with big companies closing in the central belt. Those improvements have been very much welcomed, particularly last autumn, when penman engineering entered into administration. It had been in operation locally since 1859 and was one of the area's biggest employers. It was threatened with closure and, losing this historic firm, looked like it was going to be a major hammer blow to the local economy. Wave after wave of redundancies came and the workforce shrunk from 140 employees to a skeleton crew of just 50. That was devastating news for our local economy and a deeply distressing time for the families who relied on jobs at the site. From the outset, PACE offered a quick and efficient response. Relevant assistance and guidance was immediately offered to all those who were affected by redundancy. I particularly thank the minister when I have the opportunity for the advice and support that he gave me as a member during what was the first major round of job losses in my constituency. PACE really did make a difference, and it is not a service that operates in isolation. It is a partnership of 22 organisations that co-ordinate a response to redundancy situations such as that that we saw at Penman's engineering. As one of those partner organisations, Scottish Enterprise, who worked very closely with the administrators, were vital in turning round the fortunes of penman engineering. The speed of the turnaround was quite remarkable. In September last year, the firm entered administration. In October, the firm started a search for a suitable new buyer. By November, new owners were secured. Since then, contracts have grown and the workforce has already risen to 67 employees. Every step of the way, every effort has been made to re-employ the old workforce. That is really important in a rural area such as Dumfriesshire, where there are not all that many similar opportunities for those with the particular engineering skillsets of the workforce. It was undoubtedly true that the efforts of PACE and its partner organisations were very constructive in Dumfriesshire at that time, just as they are across Scotland. Although that said, expectations need to be managed. Despite the general success of the PACE initiative, it is still possible for PACE to find further improvements to its redundancy support services. As we have heard from other members, the findings in the 2016 PACE client experience survey point towards a number of recommendations. A quarter of clients who used the PACE services felt that the introductory presentation and information guide came too late in the process. That needs to be improved, as clients need to know how to access redundancy support as soon as possible. Further to that, awareness of the online PACE services and telephone helpline remains relatively low. If PACE is to satisfy the growing need among many for follow-up help, much improvement is needed in the promotion of those services. I hope that today's debate goes a little bit of the way towards doing that. Beyond improvements to the PACE client experience, the Scottish Government must also do more to drive investment in growth and business support. I must stress again that the good efforts of PACE are made all the more possible by the work of its 22 partners. I very much hope to see a 23rd partner very soon with the creation of a new south of Scotland vehicle, which will hopefully complement their work and tailor their services to support the specific and recognised local needs and economic challenges. I also hope that a new vehicle will be able to work alongside the proposed Borderlands growth deal announced in today's Conservative manifest of the UK general election to help to create a stronger, more resilient and dynamic local economy. In doing so, I hope that we can reduce the risk of further redundancies and deliver a broader mix of high-skilled, well-paid employment, particularly in traditional textile towns such as Langham, where industrial activity has been in decline in recent years. In closing, I wish to join Dean Lockhart by calling on the Scottish Government to follow the advice of leading organisations to co-operate with the UK Government's industrial strategy. Co-operation is needed from all levels of government if we are to see businesses plan ahead for the future trends in our economy. As the Scottish Chamber of Commerce stated yesterday, Scottish businesses are competing on a global basis and need the co-ordinated support of all levels of government to give them the edge and to enable businesses to create high-quality employment opportunities for all. Although PACE has been generally successful, the Scottish Government must do more to support the Scottish economy by co-operating with the UK industrial strategy, offering its full support to the Borderlands growth deal and by delivering on the long overdue promise of a South of Scotland skills and enterprise agency. The last of the open debate speakers is Stewart Stevenson. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Bill Bowman introduced Andy Groves to the debate, and I thought that there was another quote that might be useful in this debate. The ability to recognise that the winds have shifted and to take appropriate action before you wreck your boat is crucial to the future of your enterprise. In Dutch, a shipwreck on the shore is a warning to the sailor. Andy Groves talks in his autobiography about strategic inflection points when something suddenly happens that you have not seen coming and how you respond to that. In history, it has happened many times when Fritz Haber discovered the importance of nitrogen fixing. It led to the end of the run rig system of agriculture to enclosure and the removal of many people from the lands. That is, of course, the benefit of why there was a workforce to create the industrial revolution. I am not sure that it helped the people very much. Their lives were much more miserable in the city squalor than they had been in the rural area. By the same token, McCormack's Reaper, invented in the 1830s, transformed the way in which employment worked in agriculture and cartridges, power loom of the 1780s, through many people out of work. The division of labour has de-skilled many people over the years. It is not new, Plato's Republic referred to the division of labour, so it is an idea that it has been around a long time. Adam Smith talked about it in his wealth of nations in relation to the manufacture of pins, so we know. That is the mechanical world and the threats that have been. Computers bring their own new threats. First of all, computers from the 1960s onwards automated routine activities that were often done by vast numbers of people in back offices, then moved to creating new products that displaced existing products from markets. With the advent of the internet, they threaten and will threaten even more in future our high streets as retail changes. The next big revolution is here with us now, and that is artificial intelligence, which will displace many intellectual activities. If I might just share something else that Dave Watson in his article today said, which was, like all new technology, the robots probably won't deliver all that they promise. In the meantime, human beings in the workplace deserve a bit more dignity and will deliver more without being turned into robots. I wonder if the member would agree with me that the dignity of labour and the dignity in the workplace are extremely important. The member is absolutely correct. I have not read Dave Watson's article. I will make sure that I do before the sun goes down behind the yard or whatever it does later in the day. However, I want to give a few further reflections on what happened in Fraserburg, because that is the experience that I have had of PACE. There are two things that are sort of not processed that it is worth looking at. Getting all the people in the room that we had and the Government very generously provided tea, coffee and biscuits, there was a lot of genuine informal networking in breaks in the meeting, before the meeting and after the meeting that I suspect had as much value as the formal session round the square of the table in the leisure centre in Fraserburg. It also meant that some people who had responsibilities could not escape the people who were affected by how they discharged those responsibilities. That was quite important. The other thing that I saw in the Fraserburg experience was that we never, as far as I am aware, discussed it, but it appeared to work on a Chatham house basis. In other words, we were able to open up and talk about things in some comfort that what was said in that room would not be taken up and used to disadvantage the people who were present outside that room. Although, of course, as under Chatham house rules, we could refer to the matters that were discussed in that room. I do not know of other interventions and major events such as the hundreds of people who were going to lose their jobs in Fraserburg. It is typical of how it worked. However, I thought about the soft things about how it actually worked in practice, driven by the personal characteristics of many people in the room. The trade unions were there, I think, at the first meeting. We had three or four trade unions as presents, and Unite did an excellent job in representing their workers. Even they had a difficulty because, in the factory concern, we had a huge international workforce multilingual. There was support on translation services that helped the unions to make better contact with many of the people who were not union members for all sorts of historical reasons, but nonetheless properly required the kind of support that came from the trade unions. Creating that opportunity for people in the room to be supported to support the workers was a very good aspect. The company that was being run from Hull with management decisions being made in Hull and a competition between the opportunities in Hull and in Fraserburg, each offering different things. However, having the company in the room made a huge difference to its understanding of the future and the future support that they could be given to the future development of their facility in Fraserburg. That ultimately protected that facility for the longer term. Oliver Mundell might be interested to know that, because of where it was, we had both islands enterprise and Scottish enterprise in the room, and that was immensely valuable because they each brought different things, specific to their areas, just as I am sure the South of Scotland enterprise company will do so. It was, of course, one of those strategic inflections that got us to their task force. It was the quite sudden and unexpected loss of the most profitable contract, because the purchaser took that business and put it elsewhere. They created the need for the pace response for that. I think that I will simply end by saying that, if anybody has learned anything, Richard Leonard has earned the curse of the 140 characters on Twitter. Let's hope that Donald Trump learns it sometime soon as well, Presiding Officer. We move to the closing speeches. I call Richard Leonard up to six minutes, please. Thanks, Deputy Presiding Officer. Listening to today's debate reminds me that I went to meet Skills Development Scotland in Airdrie on 6 March. It could tell me that the oil and gas workers training transition fund had helped 43 workers in Lanarkshire. Again, last time I checked just earlier on today, 58 working people had been helped in Lanarkshire through the training transition fund. That is an issue that we need to tackle across Scotland. Of course, the eye of the storm is in the north-eastern. Gillian Martin, Lewis MacDonald and others mentioned the importance of supporting workers who have been in the oil and gas industry seek alternative employment. I am also reminded that the energy jobs task force produced a 10-point plan that included a requirement or encouragement, at least upon employers in the oil and gas industry, to look at non-labour costs, to look at sabbaticals, to look at ways of reducing hours rather than laying people off at job sharing and job loans. The truth of the matter is, as I see it, that those are very large in many cases multinational corporations, among the biggest and wealthiest anywhere in the world. Down the years, they have made rather considerable profits. If and when there is an upturn, I suspect that they will be the first people to complain that there is a shortage of suitably skilled labour available. Perhaps we should return to putting a bit more pressure on those companies. I am also bound to say that the wood group has been mentioned over the last 12 months in debates that we have had in here about that downturn in the oil and gas industry. According to my reading, around 3,000 jobs have been shed by the wood group over the last year or so, but that did not stop Ian Wood and the Wood family rising in the Sunday times, which is rich this year to an elevated position of an extra £160 million compared to the previous year. The Sunday times calculate that the accumulated wealth is worth about £1.6 billion. Let me turn to the Scottish Government's labour market strategy, which was published last year and mentioned on page 17 in a chapter called ensuring that our labour market is resilient in the face of economic shocks. It is said that, usually, the pace response is sufficient, complemented by business support offered through enterprise agencies or local authorities. I am not sure that we wholly agree with that analysis. Maybe that goes to the heart of something that we have not really debated this afternoon, but I think that we should all understand that there is an underlying issue here. Time after time, members of this Parliament have come to this chamber with reports of threatened job losses in their constituencies and in their regions. Often, that takes place—I direct my remarks, including to Dean Lockhart—at the start of the formal consultation period with the trade unions. There are sometimes good reasons why trade unions do not want pace involved at an early stage, because the whole point of the redundancy consultation is to seek ways of avoiding redundancy or reducing them before you get to mitigating them. We need to bear that in mind. We hold on the Labour side that sometimes sending in the pace team as a response in those situations is frankly insufficient. We need to look at ways of trying to prosecute campaigns to fight harder to retain existing jobs. I am bound to say that the decision of the Conservative UK Government to cut back, in the case of large-scale redundancies, the time period for that redundancy consultation from 90 days to 30 days has frankly been unhelpful. It is a regressive move and it is a move that I think should be reversed. A couple of things that I have asked the Scottish Government to consider. One is whether it should provide more resources or any resources for trade unions to develop alternative plans in a situation in which closure is threatened, whether, as is the current Labour Party proposal, workers should have a statutory right in the case of closure or a transfer of ownership, a statutory right to buy the plant or workplace that they live in and whether they should be putting in place an industrial strategy rather than simply relying on a defensive reactionary approach when there are crises developing. However, to the Conservatives, although we will support their amendment tonight as well as the Government motion, I do say that that does not mean that we subscribe to the Greg Clark view of industrial strategy, which in his foreword talks about pro-competition rules, flexible labour markets, less intrusive regulation and continued austerity. That is not a strategy that we would support, rather we would turn to one mentioned by Elaine Smith, which is one built on full employment, patient capital investment and a planned approach to economic development. As the Government's own motion spells out, this is important work that the PACE team does. I say gently, and I am not trying to point-score here, but I gently say why cutting the grant in aid budget to Skills Development Scotland by £5 million this year will not help. I hope that the minister and the finance secretary and the cabinet secretary who are back with us will revisit that decision in the weeks and months to come. I call Gordon Lindhurst. No more than eight minutes, please. Deputy Presiding Officer, today's debate has largely been a consensual one, as we have discussed PACE. Certainly, there is agreement across the chamber about the importance of PACE that it has for those who face difficult times as a result of redundancy and also the achievements of PACE in getting people back into paid employment. I was myself disappointed recently to hear news of potential job losses of up to 260 at the Jabal Manufacturing Plant in Livingston, and this is but one example of a recent announcement that may require urgent action to be taken. Although it remains in that case to be seen how many people will actually be affected following consultations and natural turnover, it is clear that PACE may have a role to play there. I am looking to the wider picture. It is important that PACE takes on board recommendations given to it through the client experience survey held in 2016. A number of today's speeches made reference to the need for quicker engagement with clients. With a quarter of respondents to the survey, I have just referred to feeling that the presentation and information service came too late for them. I think that the minister, Paul Wheelhouse, referred to the assistance being the earlier the better. I think that my ears have misheard at one point when he talked about a thousand vacant roles in some context as being a thousand vacant roles, but I was pleased when I paid closer attention that that was not the point he was trying to make at that point. I will move on to Oliver Mundell's speech. It was encouraging to hear that he spoke very highly of the quick and efficient response given by PACE to Penman engineering in Dumfrieshire when that situation arose. We also heard from my colleague Bill Bowman in his erudite speech of the valuable assistance for those in the oil and gas industry. I hope that, in future cases throughout Scotland, others that are affected in this unfortunate way have the same experience of PACE being of assistance to them. However, there is also a need for PACE to expand its services in two ways. The recommendations tell us that more needs to be done to tailor support for older workers, aged 55 and over, who typically have poorer post-redundancy outcomes. My colleague Alex Cole-Hamilton, who is here today with his trademark brown leather shoes and which coalesced with his suave blue suit, referred to the need for more coalescence, and I would echo that. I thought that Jamie Greene painted a vivid picture of the emotional drain of being out of work. As he said, for younger people, a wider variety of skills can help, but for people of older years who have perhaps been in work for decades, redundancy can be a very new and probably deflating experience. That combined with worry over lack of opportunities for work towards the end of a career can add to very significant pressures on such individuals. Perhaps by publicising in a better way the PACE online and telephony services, which is another of the recommendations, those in the older age bracket can have better access to PACE, thus increasing post-redundancy opportunities. Likewise, younger people immersed in the digital world should benefit from greater awareness of the online services. Those appear to have a very high satisfaction rating among those who use them. Unfortunately, take-up has been somewhat slow, and in the modern day, when the ability to use technology is vital in the workplace, more people should be encouraged to use that service, which will in turn contribute to skills development. It is pleasing to note the successes of PACE to which I have already referred, not just the fact that jobs outcomes are almost at three quarters, but that 64 per cent of those new jobs require the same or higher levels of skills. It is clear from that that not just any outcome will do, and I hope that PACE continues to improve on that good record in the coming years. It is clear, however, that there are pressures that are coming to bear on the questions that PACE deals with. As has been highlighted today by colleagues, Scotland is falling behind the rest of the UK with the real threat of the economy slipping into recession. Growth is sluggish at best in Scotland, with the economy in Scotland contracting by 0.2 in the fourth quarter of 2016. Although, as the minister has said, the Scottish economy grew by 0.4 per cent in 2016, and the UK economy grew by more at 1.8 per cent. As Dean Lockhart pointed out, there are other significant challenges that face all economies, not just the Scottish economy, as patterns of working and ideas and technologies develop, progress and change. Richard Leonard mentioned concerns about insecure contracts. That is part of the picture, and certainly in the gig economy, that needs to be approached in a new and progressive way. Workers often have jobs that are set out in a very different way than traditionally has been the case, and we are still only just learning, not just in Scotland but in the United Kingdom and other countries, how to deal with those developments. Traditional working patterns have given way to more flexible and pragmatic ones, and it is important that we keep pace with those. Theresa May has, this week, announced that workers' rights and protections are to be extended to people working in the gig economy, and I would welcome that. It is vital that, as the structure of economies around the world changes, the UK is at the forefront of dealing with that in order to maximise our potential whilst protecting jobs. Pace alone cannot deal with all those developments and we need a holistic approach. The UK Government has been consulting on its new industrial strategy to address those long-term challenges, and I would join calls to the Scottish Government to seek to participate and co-operate in that fully. It is a strategy that all parts of the UK can work together on to ensure that we are stronger together, as we have been in the past. I would close by saying that I am obliged for the support that is to be given to the Scottish Conservative amendment. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I thank members for genuinely constructive, intelligent and very thoughtful contributions that have been made across the chamber today to the debate. As Gordon Lindhurst has just acknowledged in his own final remarks, I wish to reiterate the point that, regarding the importance of raising awareness of pace to ensure that those individuals who find themselves in a very unfortunate position or are facing redundancy are able to access the excellent support that is available through PACE that members have acknowledged. That is key. A number of members have referenced the fact that the experience survey suggests that people are looking for earlier engagement with PACE and that we know that the earlier engagement has that impact. It is really important that members try and reinforce to employers and to the workforce that they are aware of what PACE can do for them, so that they are asking for it from their employer, but also that employers know that it can be a very discreet service that does not necessarily need to flag up the companies and distress that can be done on a confidential basis and without any bangs and whistles being fired off while people are going in. It is possible to help. I hope that, as members have acknowledged, to try to avoid redundancies in the first place. The earlier we can get in there, the more likely that is to happen. The PACE partnership is what it says in the TIN, Partnership Action for Continuing Employment, a national framework underpinned by a diverse range of organisations working together in pursuit of a common objective. I would say in reference to the point that Gordon Lindhurst raised in his speech around Jable, an important employer in the Lothians, 68 staff. I have unfortunately left the business, but we are, just to reassure members who have an interest in that issue, we are engaging with the companies through our PACE team. Indeed, only yesterday visiting a business in Glasgow inspired global who are involved in the space industry have employed people who have come from Jable in that sector, so that is encouraging, specifically looking for people who have got the kind of experience and skills that are coming out of that kind of clean room environment in a semiconductor factory who know how to put together small cube satellites for use in space. There is hope for people that we can find jobs for them. Through providing skills development and employment support, PACE aims to minimise the time people affected by redundancy are indeed out of work. As demonstrated through the work of PACE, we can make a real difference to individuals facing redundancy, a real difference to their families, importantly. Alex Cole-Hamilton made very important points about mental health impact and, as have others, on people who are affected by redundancy. Like Alex Cole-Hamilton, I have worked in the environment where redundancy was the day-to-day fear that we all had and I know the impact that it has on you. It can make a real difference to the communities and indeed a real difference to the Scottish economy. We therefore need to continue to work together with our PACE partners to maximise the benefit that comes from working together in partnership and to continue our efforts to enhance the operation of PACE through our continuous improvement programme. I reassure members that we are very much intending to do that and to continue to reflect and improve as we go forward. I thank the engagement of all the PACE partners in the evaluation process and I am being very open and frank about the changes that need to be made. A number of members today have specifically highlighted the point around the over 55s, and to review issue members, that is very much a focus for our work going forward, trying to make sure that we can tailor services to address the specific needs of that age group. However, ever since the positive note, our evidence shows that PACE is effective in supporting individuals and it is critical that we are able to provide that support, as I say, as early as possible. Our research findings do, as I have highlighted a number of times today in October 2016, highlight that those who receive PACE support have 71 per cent obtained employment, which is not ideal. We would obviously like to see 100 per cent of people getting work, but it is, hopefully, something that gives people confidence if they are affected by an imminent redundancy, that there is a very good chance that they will get work. Although the outlook for the Scottish economy is promising, there are lies ahead of much uncertainty as I stated in my opening remarks regarding Brexit. Will the minister acknowledge that a number of people who initially contact PACE for all sorts of reasons drop out of contact, so perhaps 100 per cent, is overambitious? I know that great efforts have been put into trying to trace individuals who have left employment in the case of young people. That was clearly an issue that Mr Stevenson has highlighted himself in terms of a large number of accession state workers who were working in the factory. Had moved on, a considerable effort was made to try and track them down and make sure that help could be given to them. Bill Bowman, in a very constructive speech, I will focus on the bit that is more of a concern to me, but it was a largely constructive speech that raised some points about the economy. It is important to highlight a number of points. It is not true to say that there are not growth opportunities in the Scottish economy. There are a number of sectors that are doing very well, thankfully, in terms of life sciences. Dean Lockhart also mentioned Fintech, in terms of the financial services industry. I am extremely optimistic that Fintech will be an area of the Scottish economy in which we will see significant growth in future years, and the Government is working closely with industry through the financial services advisory board and the teams such as Louise Smith from Royal Bank of Scotland to try to make sure that we deliver the necessary investment to support the growth of that sector. We are investing in our future through £6 billion of infrastructure plan and a £500 million Scottish growth scheme, which will hopefully be up and running this year. We are making substantial investments in transport and digital connectivity. We are committed to reducing the burden of air passenger duty, which I appreciate is not supported by all members in the chamber, but is aimed at improving Scotland's connectivity. We plan to invest more than £1 billion in our universities in this current financial year and supporting collaborations between universities, businesses and others through our innovation centres. We are establishing a board of trade and creating permanent trade representations in Berlin to add to our innovation investment hubs in London, Dublin and Brussels, and we are using our tax powers to support growth in the economy on business rates. We have also reduced the overall rates burden by around £155 million in the current financial year and ensured that more than 50 per cent of all properties pay no rates this year and over 70 per cent paying the same or less than last year. I know that those issues will be familiar to members in the chamber. I think that it is worth reiterating that we are not standing still here. We are working through pace, but we are also trying to reflect the point that has been raised by members fairly, that we need to be proactive and try to create the right business environment to sustain employment and prevent job losses in the first place. That is very much our focus. We might disagree on the method, but I hope that members will take reassurance that we are very much focused on the task of trying to do exactly that. In terms of the economic outlook in Brexit, I have mentioned it earlier on, I want to focus mainly on the comments that have been made by members in the chamber, some extremely good contributions from members across the chamber, in relation to points that were raised by colleagues such as Gillian Martin on the fate of oil and gas workers. I very much recognise the concerns that have been raised by Gillian Martin today about those people coming out of the oil and gas industry. The irony is, of course, that those individuals have a high degree of experience and have reliability. They have demonstrated their capabilities over many years, and it is a shame if there is any degree of prejudice against them in the workplace. However, I can assure the member that we are focused on trying to help individuals through the Transitional Training Fund and other means, but there is also some encouragement that has been received from interrogating IFFs who have done the work for us that, in the qualitative research that is done with those individuals who are less satisfied with the services that came through PACE, identify that many of them who are struggling to find employment have heard from those in the FSB, the Federation of Small Businesses. Small businesses are looking for those older workers who are reliable, who have a highly skilled experience and are less likely to jump ship than perhaps those groups who are there only for a temporary basis. They appreciate that older workers are looking for longer-term employment. Angus MacDonald made some very good points about the support in terms of Grains Mouth. We are clearly trying to work with the local authority and local enterprise agencies, and local business community is trying to support regeneration in Falkirk. He rightly highlighted the tourism potential of Falkirk, which has been transformed in recent years with the building of the Kelpies and other projects that have made Falkirk a tourism destination, perhaps not for the first time, but certainly for an enhanced view of the local area. Michael Matheson is also sitting here nodding away, so I have one favour with Michael. It is important to highlight that Richard Leonard made some very fair points about the digital material. I will look at the point that he raised around language. There is the curse of 140 characters on Twitter, but that does not mean that we cannot look very carefully at the wording that we use. I will give him a guarantee to take that up. He raised the point about maternity staff, and they are invited to attend PACE presentations and to be involved in that process. We obviously need the collaboration of the employer to give us access to those individuals, but I reassure him that we are very much focused on the needs of those individuals. I run out of time, Presiding Officer, but I thank all members in the chamber for a very constructive debate. Very good points raised. My colleagues at the back, who are largely responsible for helping to deliver PACE, will have no doubt noted down very many positive suggestions that have been made today, and I thank members for them. I look forward to working with them on a bipartisan basis to help all those who are affected by redundancy in the future. Thank you very much, minister. That concludes our debate on partnership action for continuing employment. There are three questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first question is at amendment 5630.1, in the name of Dean Lockhart, who seeks to amend motion 5630, in the name of Paul Wheelhouse, on PACE, be agreed. Are we all agreed? We are agreed. The next question is at amendment 5630.2, in the name of Richard Leonard, who seeks to amend the motion in the name of the minister, Paul Wheelhouse, be agreed. Are we all agreed? We are agreed. The final question is at motion 5630, in the name of Paul Action, as amended on partnership action for continuing employment, be agreed. Are we all agreed? We are agreed. Thank you very much. That concludes decision time. I close this meeting.