 yn ystafellau maesol naddwyd? Mae'r gwrthodau o'r ddechrau Llywodraeth Cymru yn ystafellau agriacolol yn ein rhaid i'r ddechrau'r gwerthfelly. Mae'n gwybod y ddechrau, mae'n cyfnod, a oedd y byddwyr, o'r cyfnod 1, 2, 1, 5, 4. A oes y cyfleu fel fergyshwyr diweddod, o'r cyfnod, o'r cyfnod, o'r cyfnod, o'r cyfnod, o'r cyfnod, o'r cyfnod, o'r cyfnod. I will give a few moments for members to change their seats, but I would like to invite members who wish to take part in the debate to press their request to speak button as soon as possible. To be made compulsorily redundant is one of the most unpleasant experiences that one can have in life. It can be grim, bruising and a cause of stress and anxiety. It has often an immediate impact on ability to make ends meet. For the vast majority of people losing one's income causes real financial problems. However, it can also damage one's sense of self-respect and self-esteem. Therefore, it is essential that our government responds to redundancy, because any officer is as effective as is possible. The Scottish Government's initiative for responding to redundancy situations, partnership action for continuing employment or, as it's better known, PACE is, I believe, one of our most effective interventions and I want to state the evidence to support that claim. Research published in June last year indicated that of those surveyed who had received PACE support, almost three quarters, 72 per cent had obtained employment. That compares with a figure of 51 per cent in the 2010 survey. Research also shows that users are highly satisfied with the package of support that PACE service is delivering. We work closely with our partners, such as the local government and business gateway. When I spoke yesterday with Councillor Stephen Hagan and working also with Hugh Lightbody, they both provided positive feedback across the country about PACE and the staff involved. From April 13 to March 14, PACE supported almost 12,000 individuals. Many members across the chamber have, over the past nearly four years, contacted me about PACE support for their constituents. One purpose of today's debate is to hear thoughts from members, from all parties, on how we can build on the success of PACE and make it even more successful. The economic climate is, of course, relevant. Employment levels are at an all-time high and Scotland is the best-performing UK nation across all headline labour market indicators. That will clearly be of help for some of those who lose their jobs through redundancy to enter alternative employment. Of course, however, we also want to minimise the number of people facing redundancy. Our programme for government sets out our commitment to boosting the economy, to building a fair society and tackling inequality. Our business support policies focus on ensuring that businesses can grow and thrive, working to help companies avoid situations where there is a risk of redundancies. Through their account management system, our enterprise agency's PACE partners provide a range of early preventative measures to negate potential closure and alleviate difficulties. Specific measures, tailored to the network, involve banks, helping to raise finance, business organisations, professional bodies and relevant public sector representatives, including working with the UK institutions such as the HMRC and the enterprise agencies. Planning officer operating on a confidential referral basis, work in this early prevention field is almost always and correctly so behind the scenes and carried out in confidence. When the issue is around making tax payments, we work effectively with HMRC, a PACE partner, which may offer time to pay, a temporary option for viable businesses experiencing short-term difficulties in paying tax due in full and on time. The challenge is to encourage a business to engage early to address potential difficulties before they become insurmountable. Labour has set out the need for this function in its amendment and I can assure it and the chamber that this work is done. It is done well, it is done thoroughly and it is a priority. We carry out a great deal of work that I do with partners, especially in local government, the enterprise network to that end. I am grateful to the minister for the intervention. Will he agree that there is a case to be made around the forgiveness of Scottish-level taxation in those circumstances that he describes as well as forgiveness or relief on taxes that are due to HMRC? As a lawyer, I think that there is a difference between forgiveness and deferral. What we are talking about here is not really writing off debts by the HMRC but permitting more time to pay where that is required for cash flow reasons, which a sudden liquidation or insolvency of a main customer who owes a company a couple of million quid can often trigger a cash flow crisis. We, generally speaking, expect businesses to pay their debts and to do so in full over time. I must stress that PACE is available for every individual affected by redundancy, not simply those in large-scale redundancies but every single individual and perhaps more work can be done to reach out to those companies who make redundant one, two, three or a handful of people as well as the headline cases. Skills Development Scotland delivers PACE on behalf of the Scottish Government in conjunction with key partners, including the Department for Work and Pensions. There are 18 PACE teams across the country, 12 in the central belt and south of Scotland and six in the Highlands and Islands. SDL also provides services to those who are unemployed, those who are employed through the Employability Fund, which is of the order of £52 million, and flexible training opportunities that offer in-work training. The Employability Fund caters for, if you like, the consequences of redundancy at a human level. In 214 to 220 structural funds programmes, £115 million has been allocated to two local authorities across Scotland. I offer this in hope that this will be met with a positive response from my Labour friends that, in the light of the fact that there are these two existing public sector substantial provisions to cater for the upshot and the consequences of large-scale shocks to parts of the country, £150 million and £52 million, whether there is, in fact, a need for any resilience fund. If, as I suggest, the existing funding deals with the situation adequately, then, of course, if my colleagues in the Labour Party argue that there has been any single case where there has been insufficient funding to deal with matters appropriately, then I give my undertaking. I would be more than happy to discuss that in detail with Mr McDonald or his colleagues. However, Scottish Government funds and structural funds, which, of course, have to be very carefully applied—the EU rules are strict, stringently applied—penalties have been imposed on many cases in other jurisdictions, but the Scottish funds and the SF funds ensure the continuation of employability pipelines and offer substantial support and backup to local communities. On 23 June 2009, John Swinney established the Ministerial Pace Partnership. It now has 21 organisations together with the Scottish Government overseeing a continuous improvement programme to enhance the operation of pace. Each pace response is tailored to meet the needs of the individuals involved. In some cases, there will be time for a planned phase of support to be developed. For example, at Philip's Lighting, working closely with the employer and Unite the Union, the local pace team delivered a comprehensive programme of support services over seven months. Trade unions play a key role. The STUC is a paced partner, and I would like to thank them for their support. Just this morning, speaking at the first of two conferences in Aberdeen, I discussed this with Stephen Boyd and our co-operation in several cases in Scottish Resources, Scottish Coal, FreshLink, Remploy and other cases, where we work closely together and you become to build up an excellent personal working relationship. That is what we have done with the STUC and we hugely value it. Similarly, our colleges across Scotland, another paced partner, form a key and integral part of pace. Many of the examples of individuals who have received help have received the right help to retrain, and that is because of the opportunities that they have been able to get in part in our colleges. The experience shows that the earlier paced support can be provided to individuals, the more effective that support will be. I would make a plea to employers that, although there are commercial considerations involved here, the earliest possible notification to pace of potential redundancy or formal redundancy period can provide a period of three months or even longer for employees to adjust to the consequences, financial and other. Much of my work relates to liaising with insolvency practitioners, and my prime concern is to make all efforts to seek a positive outcome to preserve jobs. For example, CityLink. I spoke with the administrators to offer support, but they were of the view that the business could not continue as a going concern. I met representatives of the RMT in that case, and we subsequently held five paced redundancy support events across Scotland for affected employees. Another recent case was the West Coast capital, USC, where both I and my officials had difficulties contacting the parent company. Despite that, we were able to provide some paced support for those being made redundant. I thank insolvency practitioners for all the support that they have given. I spoke to Derek Wilson of ICAS yesterday. I will be meeting with him and Michelle Mullen of ICAS to discuss further joint working in the next couple of months. No one welcomes insolvency and the horrendous impact that that can have on individuals and employees, but there are some instances where a positive outcome can emerge. It is important to recognise that that can happen in a minority of cases. For example, there can be an injection of substantial capital and a much stronger business case for the future. That was what happened in the case of Ferguson shipbuilders and in the case of Hargreaves taking over from Scottish Coal. That can lead to a more secure, better, more robust profitable business going forward, replacing one that was ailing in the past. Across Scotland, I see local authorities and national agencies working together effectively to deliver business support, responding to particular situations. I think that that really is a very good example of Team Scotland in action. 21 different bodies acting well together. Sometimes circumstances require the intervention of national government, not in every case but in some cases. There can be value in intervening directly. We have established task forces to bring together national and local politicians, public sector agencies, company and workforce representatives. This week, we see the first meeting of the energy jobs task force, focusing on supporting jobs across the energy sector, including apprentices, with an initial focus on oil and gas, given the current challenges that are being faced in the sector. I am delighted that Lina Wilson, the chief executive of Scottish Enterprise, is chairing and personally committed to driving forward that work. I spoke to her yesterday about that work and will be working closely with her on that. Over the past two years, I have chaired the Scottish coal task force, which was established in April 13, where two operators, ATH and Scottish Resources Group, went into liquidation, resulting in over 700 job losses and significant restoration liabilities. In that case, the work that we did together resulted in around 500 people resuming employment. I think that that is not a bad result, given the difficulties and the scale of the task. In conclusion, I have mentioned some specific cases, just a few. There are many others. Perhaps we can turn to them later when members can talk about them in their contributions about their part of Scotland. I would like to pay tribute to the PACE team, led by Margaret Souter and her 18 teams of colleagues around the country. They provide very strong support to people at rough times in their lives. They do so in a human, sympathetic and effective fashion. It is no surprise that that support is genuinely appreciated by the substantial majority of people who are in receipt of their services. Much of the PACE team's work is done under the radar, unseen, unreported and unappreciated. The debate today is, among other things, an opportunity to pay tribute and to give credit to them. In conclusion, I believe that PACE is an excellent example of the Scottish Government working in partnership with all our other parties and bodies to maximise benefit for individuals, communities and Scotland's economic growth. I would like to speak to you in movement 12154.1, Mr McDonald, nine minutes. Thank you very much. The debate is timely because the Scottish economy is indeed facing the threat of thousands of job losses as a result of the falling price of oil. Partnership action for continuing employment clearly has a part to play in responding to that threat, but PACE is not enough on its own. That is why Scottish Labour's amendment today proposes a resilience fund to strengthen the response to economic shocks at a local level. We do of course recognise the role of PACE. I echo the minister's closing comments about the personal qualities of the staff involved in the PACE teams. We welcome the fact that the Scottish Government has brought forward a debate on a report on PACE that was published in June of last year. The news release at that time was headline Scottish Government PACE initiative five years on and told us that the Scottish Government established the PACE partnership in response to the economic downturn in June 2009. That at first might seem curious given that the first year review of partnership action for continuing employment was published by the then Scottish executive 14 years ago and that PACE was actually launched under that name in March 2000. Of course ministers know that they did not invent PACE and that what we are debating today is an initiative that is almost as old as the evolution itself. However, it is true, as Mr Ewing said, that the PACE partnership has been around in its current form only since 2009 and that the changes made then were more than simply a minor rebranding for PR purposes. Last year's report, for example, highlighted enhancements arising from a continuous improving programme like a PACE helpline, a new data capture system and evaluation framework and improved support in a number of fields for people made redundant. Helplines and data capture systems can of course be very significant but the most substantial changes in PACE now compared with a decade ago are in who leads the partnership action and in the scope of ambition around continuing employment. PACE, when it was first established, was seen as a tool of economic intervention, bringing together Government agencies to protect existing jobs as part of a wider approach to supporting the productive economy. That is why Labour's amendment today highlights that original remit to identify companies or sectors in difficulty at an early stage to promote partnership working between public sector agencies and private companies in order to mitigate that difficulty and to avoid job losses and where that joint work fails to avoid job losses to get people back into employment as early as possible. Because it was about the wider economy, the lead was taken by the enterprise agencies and the real strength of PACE in its first few years was that leadership and delivery were provided by local response teams, bringing together the local enterprise company, the local council and the then equivalent of Job Center Plus. Local enterprise companies were of course done away with in the SNP's first term and local response teams are no longer under the agencies of the enterprise agencies although, as the minister said, PACE now encompasses business gateway instead. However, now it is Skills Development Scotland, which leads on the delivery of PACE on behalf of the Scottish Government, and that shift of focus is reflected in the Government's motion today. The motion describes helping those made redundant to gain other employment opportunities as the core function of PACE rather than as one of a number of equally important tasks, as was the case in its original remit. However, of course, getting unemployed people in those circumstances into jobs is rightly a very high priority and one on which the national skills agency should indeed provide a lead. However, the original vision that inspired the creation of PACE was also to prevent those redundancies from happening in the first place. Prevention is better than cure and indeed this Government has said that they are in favour of preventive spend rather than simply picking up the pieces. So the ambition of Government must be about continuing employment for whole sectors and workforces and not only about enabling individuals to find alternative jobs, highly important though that is. All of the agencies and organisations involved in PACE are doing their best to help, but we believe that the Government itself needs to look at the bigger picture. The Government or the enterprise agencies on its behalf should assess the effectiveness of early intervention to prevent redundancies to see if the change of focus over the last five years has reduced the ability of public agencies to prevent a redundancy situation from arising in the first place. I agree with the need, but can I assure Mr McDonnell that the enterprise network is absolutely persuaded of the need to take early intervention and devote a considerable amount of time and effort of its officers, account managers and leaders to that? A whole cross a range of activity including the co-ordinated support mechanism, the early intervention network. I do not doubt that the will is there and the good intention is there. The question is how far it is able to deliver that given the strength of focus on post-redundancy situations. For example, what is taking the place of the local enterprise companies in providing early warning or local intelligence of what is going on in the local economy? How far are local trade unions or local employers engaged on a routine basis to share their knowledge of risks or threats to local jobs? We need to know whether the appetite or capacity to address risks that have not yet become threats has been significantly affected by moving pace from an enterprise focus to one of schools development. For all those reasons, and with new threats to jobs in the Scottish economy today, the Scottish Government should look again at the role and remit of pace to see if it is fit for the whole purpose rather than simply say that we need to do more of the same. The most serious new threat to jobs in Scotland is, of course, posed by the prospect of low oil prices over an extended period, possibly as long in the view of some of those in the sector as two or three years. Acre solutions yesterday followed Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips and Talisman Sinopec in announcing hundreds of further job losses in Aberdeen and across the UK. Question and answer. Thank you, Members, for taking an intervention. I heard what you said earlier about how to help individual companies when they are in difficulties. I still cannot think that the Scottish Government is getting the right way to go about it by helping sectors as opposed to helping individual companies. It is very, very important that we are not seen as using public fund to help failing companies, but we use public fund to help the sector. So, in all and gas, would you agree and support the Scottish Government to have a change of taxation which will help the sector as opposed to the individual companies? In a sense, the point I am making is that it is not simply about picking up the pieces when a company goes bust. It is about intervening to assist sectors by using early intelligence and by making those types of interventions. As Mr Allard will know, besides the headline figures of hundreds of jobs at major oil companies, many other jobs have gone quietly at many of the smaller companies in the sector. However, we need to have an assessment of the impact on the wider economy of those job losses before we can make a sensible estimate of how many thousands of jobs have already gone and how many more are at risk. My question then is in this debate how far PACE has contributed to anticipating or mitigating the loss of jobs in the oil sector in the north-east and beyond. Certainly, the Scottish Government for a long time seemed to underestimate the impact of the falling price of oil on the Scottish economy and to regard it as merely cyclical or a blip rather than a serious threat to future production and employment. For example, we welcome, of course, the offer to protect oil industry apprenticeships, but it is worth noting that all the companies that have announced major redundancies so far have gone out of their way to avoid including apprentices among those losing their jobs. We welcome the establishment of a task group. What is critical is that it comes forward with serious proposals very quickly indeed. Labour's amendment today promotes one such proposal, as the minister has acknowledged, and that is a proposal to establish a resilience fund as part of the next Scottish budget. Just as a local council, faced with an environmental shock, like major flooding, can apply for extra funding under the Belwyn scheme, so a local council, faced with a sudden and unforeseen economic shock, could apply to the Scottish Government for support from such a resilience fund. They could then use that funding to make a real contribution to local economic resilience, for example by providing short-term rates relief to help supply chain companies survive an initial economic shock. A budget of £10 million, it seems to us, would be enough to get such a fund under way and to make a difference in areas affected, for example by the current position in the oil industry. However, the resilience fund would not be specific to any one region or any one sector. It would be part of a renewed pace and additional tool for partner agencies to use to anticipate on where possible to prevent job losses in their local area. If ministers were to take that proposal on board through the budget process, we would of course work with them to set the right criteria and conditions to give real added value from such an additional fund. I am happy to take an intervention. I thank the member for taking my intervention. Could I ask Mr MacDonald why Labour has come to this so late in the day? He might recall that two years ago the coal industry suffered a major crisis with two of its main companies going bust. Why no resilience fund for the coal field communities that I represent? Can you begin to conclude? Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Mr Ingram is absolutely right. It is a very good example that coal fields, particularly in East Asia, are a very good example of exactly why that should happen. If Mr Ingram is chiding me for not coming to the sooner, I hope that we will chide his front bench as well and ensure that ministers now get behind his proposal and make sure that what was done two years ago is done now and can make a difference. We will continue, of course, to support partnership action for continuing employment, not just after redundancy but to seek to prevent redundancy in line with the original remit and purpose of PACE when it was set up 15 years ago. I hope that we can work with members of other parties to ensure that every mechanism is in place that can help us to do that. To that end, I move the amendment in my name. I welcome this afternoon's debate on the partnership action for continuing employment. We have become used to hearing those terms when redundancy is announced and it is good to have the opportunity to debate in more detail the work of PACE and how it functions and indeed how it might be improved. The first thing to say, of course, is that, with the overall economic picture improving, we would hope that the requirement for PACE intervention will be diminishing. Since 2010, employment in Scotland is up by £175,000. Unemployment is down by £61,000. Although there was a slight increase in the figures for the latest quarter, our unemployment rate is still lower than the rest of the United Kingdom. We have seen since 2010 some 265,000 new private sector jobs created in Scotland. All this is, of course, a testament to the economic stewardship of the UK coalition government, delivering the fastest-growing economy in Europe and pursuing a policy that was opposed at every turn by members on both the SNP and Labour benches in the chamber today. Even against that successful backdrop, the reality is that we have a dynamic market economy where we will continue to see business successes and business failures. Even at a time of overall economic success and overall economic growth, there will be sectors that from time to time are hit with a downturn, just as we are seeing today in the oil and gas sector. In that very sector, we have seen, over the past few weeks, a number of redundancies announced, which the minister will be familiar with. I suspect and I fear that others may come in the months to come. If Murdo Fraser agrees with me that the main element that the oil and gas industry requires at the moment from the UK Government and urgent action to introduce the tax reductions that are needed to send a strong message, as Sir Ian Wood has said, throughout the world and to prevent irreversible damage being sustained, would Murdo Fraser and a spirit of consensus agree that the headline rate should be cut by at least 10 per cent? An investment allowance and exploration measures, substantial measures, must be introduced as soon as possible. The minister and I have discussed the very points and the number of occasions over the past few weeks. He knows perfectly well what our position is and that we do support tax reductions to assist the north sterile industry. That point has been made by Ruth Davidson to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on a number of occasions. However, seeing as he mentions Sir Ian Wood, it is worth reflecting on the fact that Sir Ian himself has said that tax changes would make no difference now to the north sterile industry nor prevent redundancies. In fact, they would not have any impact for the next six to nine months. While I agree that there is a requirement for the Westminster Government to take action, I do not pretend that it will have any impact in the short term and that it should not absolve the Scottish Government who has responsibility for economic development for taking action themselves to deal with the situation in the north sea at the moment. If the member will forgive me, I do not wish to be a diversion into debate about the oil and gas industry, which I am sure we have had opportunity to debate in the past and will have in the future. I want to move on and get back to talking about pace, which is what this debate is about. Where we have business failures is important that the individuals affected get the support that they need to help to access benefits, help to find new work, help with retraining and make the transition into new employment that much easier. The experience of individuals involved with pace teams has generally been positive. The minister referred to the report commissioned by Skills Development Scotland, which looked at the client experiences of pace. That found that three quarters of those involved were overall satisfied with their interactions with pace, although older clients—that is over 55—tended to be less satisfied than those in other age groups. Two thirds of users suggested that pace met or exceeded their expectations. The most useful component of the pace scheme, according to the survey, was to help with job applications and CVs. The good news was that nearly three quarters of clients had found work following pace's intervention, although unfortunately over half were being paid less than they had been in their previous position. Around a quarter had undertaken further education or training. The conclusion overall is that pace is providing a valuable service that is generally well regarded. Nevertheless, I appreciate the remain on-going concerns. I was very interested in what the minister had to say about pace and involvement with very small employers. I think that there is a general view, clearly incorrect, that it is only there to help with large-scale redundancies. Perhaps the minister could deal with that when he is responding to the debate, whether more could be done when working with the business organisations, such as the Chambers of Commerce and the Federation of Small Business, to make sure that they are aware of the availability of pace for their members and that they are spreading that message to them. I read with interest the Labour amendment to the Government's motion today. I have sympathy with the call from Lewis MacDonald that the work of pace should be reviewed in order to identify whether more proactive interventions can be made at an earlier stage, although I did not note the minister's view that this is already happening behind the scenes. I listened with interest to Mr MacDonald's speech to see if he could bring forward many examples of where there had been a failure to intervene. I did not hear many, but maybe his Labour colleagues could, in the course of the debate, expand on that particular point. I was somewhat less convinced at the Labour's call for the establishment of a resilience fund. If such a fund is to be established, I think that we need to know exactly what it will be for, in what circumstances would it be called upon? What will be the criteria that is required for payments? On what basis has a budget of £10 million per annum being calculated? What exactly will that money be spent on? It rather sounds like a headline looking for a story to be written in order to justify it. If Labour is going to attract us to support its amendment, I am afraid that it will need to provide a little more detail on those aspects. With that caveat aside, I hope that this will be largely a consensual debate. The Scottish Government told us in the middle of last year that there had been 63,500 people receiving support from pace, which reflects the number of large-scale redundancies that had occurred in the economy. However, as I said earlier, I hope that, with the general economic recovery, that figure will be declining, with the exception of problems, for example, of oil and gas. It will mean that we will unfortunately have a requirement for pace for many years to come. In closing, I take the opportunity to concur with the minister in paying tribute to those who work for pace. Their efforts are clearly valuable, and the evidence would suggest that they are well regarded by their clients. I hope that we can all agree that they deserve praise for their endeavours. I am pleased to support the Government's motion. We now turn to the open debate speeches of six minutes. I have a little bit of time in hand for interventions. Mark McDonald is to be followed by Mark Ritmoculloch. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I have been reflecting on this for a few days in terms of what I was going to say in my remarks. I have been struck by the fact that, to me, pace partnerships are somewhat paradoxical in the sense that they do very good work in communities, but you kind of hope that you will never need to see them do it, because the upshot of them does not work. The fact that they are doing that work is that there are jobs at risk and redundancies in the train. That said, pace has been active in the north-east in a number of occasions in recent years. That is despite the fact that the north-east has been largely an area of economic buoyancy, in particular the only area of the UK that actually grew its economy during the period of the recession. However, that said, there have still been instances within the north-east of company insolvency and redundancy. I recall in 2012 raising the issues around the potential redundancy at the Hall and Taws joinery in my constituency with the minister at the time. During the downside by-election the following year, I spoke to a number of employees who had gone through that process and had interactions with the PACE team who spoke very positively of the work that the PACE partnership had carried out during that period, which was a cause of great uncertainty for many employees and their families. I hear what Lewis MacDonald is saying about the issues around early intervention. It ties into some of what I was saying in terms of not wanting to see PACE doing the work that they are doing because of the implications. The implication would be that much of the early intervention work is work that we really shouldn't hear about, because if it were to become public knowledge that PACE were interacting at an early stage, that obviously sets hairs racing around the possible sustainability of companies about the possible job security for employees. That can affect potential future contract awards and things like that, which can have a significant knock-on effect. While I understand the point that Lewis MacDonald is making, I think that the minister has given us some comfort in terms of the early intervention work that he has outlined does take place. I think that it would be better that we work on the basis that we don't want to see too much evidence of early intervention taking place, lest it put companies in an awkward spot. I will take a brief intervention from Lewis MacDonald. I am very grateful to Mark McDonald. I think that he makes a very reasonable point, but would he not accept that there is a period between where a company or a wider sector has seemed to be in fairly rude health and the point at which redundancies are having to be made, where there probably is an opportunity for interventions to be made that can stave off redundancies but in a sense don't reveal anything that the market and those employees aren't well aware of already? Mark McDonald. I take the point that Liam McArthur makes. I simply say that if word were to get out that a company were involved with a PACE partnership, because of the connotations that the PACE partnership has around dealing with redundancies, that has potential for a knock-on impact. That was merely the point that I was making. However, it doesn't deflect from the fact that there should be early interventions where possible, and the minister has highlighted that that does happen. I just think that we need to have faith in the fact that those will take place and we won't be reading about that early intervention taking place. Again, if there are examples of where that early intervention hasn't happened, I think that we need to hear about them. It certainly hasn't been my experience of any of the situations that companies in my constituency have gone through where PACE have been involved. They have had any complaint about the speed and efficacy of the work of the PACE partnership. There are opportunities to be explored in relation to the on-going situation in the north-east that perhaps could be the focus of some of the work of organisations involved in the PACE partnership. For example, at a recent briefing at North East Scotland College, one of the points that was highlighted to members was the difficulty that the college is having in attracting appropriate individuals to lecture in some of the oil and gas courses at the college. It strikes me that one of the upshots of some of the work that is taking place in the north-east might be to identify potentially individuals from the redundancy rounds that are taking place who could potentially be directed towards the college or vice versa as potentially being able to fill some of that skills gap. I turn again to the issue around the resilience fund and want to explore that in the last part of my speech. Murdo Fraser makes a very strong point in that what we have seen initially was an announcement of a resilience fund being called for. Ever since then, we have had various stages of detail being applied to it. I get the feeling that another couple of weeks we might finally have a crystallisation of exactly what that resilience fund would do. It now appears that that is £10 million, which local authorities can use to provide rates relief in their areas. I would question exactly what impact that would have in areas, for example, in relation to some of the large multinational companies in the north-east of Scotland at present. If we are talking about supply chain companies, as we know at the moment, much of the focus of cost cutting that is taking place within the oil and gas sector at the moment is focused heavily on contracted staff and staff working within the organisation itself. It has not started to leach into the supply chain at present. In terms of the resilience fund, there needs to be a little bit more detail in terms of what the impact of that would be. I appreciate that it is not just about the oil and gas sector. Lewis MacDonald was a little bit unfair to my colleague Adam Ingram and perhaps willfully misinterpreted what Adam Ingram was saying. I do not think that Adam Ingram was saying that he should have called for this previously. I think that his question was why it was that Labour had not called for it previously if it was such a good idea. The minister has outlined the £52 million employability fund and the £150 million worth of structural funds that are available to provide very much the kind of economic support for communities and for regions that Lewis MacDonald has highlighted. I note that I am at 6.20. I see that Mr MacDonald is offering me an intervention. It has to be very brief. That is in the gift to Mr MacDonald. I will get way to him on the basis that it will be. Mark McDonald accepted that the detail of such a fund is one thing. The principle of enabling local councils to apply for support in order to help supply chain companies is another. Mark McDonald, if you could come to complete. I think that we had this little exchange last week and the devil is always in the detail of these things and how it would be applied and how effective it would be. I think that there is a large amount of Scottish Government money and also EU money, which is available to Scotland, which is doing a great deal of good in communities already and supporting some of the employability objectives. Finally, I welcome the minister's remarks regarding the issue around scale of redundancy. While large scale redundancies often grab the headlines, we should not forget that small scale redundancies have many individual stories contained within them and the support that can be given to individuals and to companies in those circumstances is just as valuable to local economies across Scotland. Thank you very much, and I call Mark McDonald to be followed by Chick Brody. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Like others in the chamber, I represent a part of the country where there has been a recurrent need for pace teams. Communities across Scotland are still reeling from the loss of jobs at CityLink when workers were told on Christmas that they would be out of work by new year. The relocation of Roll-Royce from East Kilbride to Inchinnon, while not directly leading to redundancies, is expected to affect the supply chain and significantly reduce the already declining manufacturing base in the town. It was the closure of the Jays manufacturing plant in East Kilbride that prompted me to investigate pace and look at the effectiveness of the scheme in detail. Jays is one of the country's leading manufacturers of cleaning products and fluids. Over a period of 130 years, Jays has grown from humble beginnings to become a manufacturer with global reach. Retailers in over 60 different countries worldwide have Jays products in their shelves, and many of us will have some of those products in our own kitchens and bathrooms. East Kilbride shared in the success of the firm having been home to the manufacturer for over 40 years. Yet, in 2012, Jays decided to consolidate manufacturing at Thetford in Norfolk and close East Kilbride plant despite a strong counter-proposal from local management, South Lancer Council and the Scottish Manufacturing Advisory Service. This was a profitable plant. The workers were not just productive and committed, but most of them were highly skilled and many had been working at Jays for over 15 years. The loss of these jobs was a body blow for the workforce and the manufacturing industry. Workers there told me that the whole experience was most daunting for those who had been with the firm for years but not long enough to consider retirement. PACE teams were deployed. They provided assistance with CV preparation, interview skills and benefits advice. The practical support that we know is most valued when workers are being made redundant. I brought the fact that workers faced redundancy to my own jobs sphere in East Kilbride and secured extra support from Skills Development Scotland at that event to reinforce those job-seeking skills. I also met the PACE team to hear in detail about how they approach workplaces like Jays and the lessons that I took away from that experience are broadly reflected in the client experience survey, as previously mentioned. Help with CVs and applications is overwhelmingly appreciated. Information about training and funding for training continues to rank among the most popular of PACE services. The initial presentation to workers could be delivered earlier, especially when a workforce is forewarned about an employer's intention to make staff redundant. Two thirds of those surveyed had to take a pay cut on their first job after the PACE intervention and half continued in lower-paying work. That is the last point that I want to stress. PACE is our way of supporting workers who face redundancy back into the labour market, but the labour market is changing. To give workers the best chance of securing continuing and meaningful employment, we need to influence those changes. We need a strategy that insulates Scotland against economic shocks such as those that we are seeing in the North Sea and oil and gas, which reverses the decline of our manufacturing base in places like East Kilbride. I believe in a strong, resilient, higher-wage, better-skill economy in which growth is more evenly distributed than we must ensure that we do not simply replace the good-quality, secure work that we lose with less well-paying, less secure work. Indeed, our aim should be to retain those jobs that contribute most to the economy and prevent painful and wasted redundancies in the first place. I believe that PACE services can be delivered sooner. I believe that we must do more than respond to redundancy where we can. We must prevent it. As discussed previously, I believe that there is a strong and compelling case for an economic resilience fund, and for those reasons I will support the Labour amendment. However, I would say to all members that we cannot separate the issue of how we support people facing redundancy with how we reshape and rebalance the economy as a whole. We must ask ourselves for the sake of those who face redundancy and those who struggle with unemployment, whether the economy that we have is really the economy that we want. I welcome the debate today and will support the motion. As a young manager with NCR at manufacturing in Dundee some years ago, I had the privilege of working with a company, a team of individuals that company saw its workforce increase from 1,100 to 6,500 on the back of demands for decimals. The demand for decimals and the simultaneous creation of a new computer range is changing. Sadly, because of changing technology, the demands eventually meant that the numbers fell back over six years to 1,500. That is over the course of seven redundancies, the consequences of which still live with me today to sit opposite good colleagues, wives, mothers, husbands, fathers and others and advise them that their job was redundant, not once, not twice but seven times, still hurts to this day. That is why in every election since I have made job creation and continued employment to be my major driver. PACE did not exist then but happily it does today. The drawing together of local and national bodies like SDS, Job Center Plus and local authorities, among others like the STUC and Affiliated Unions, nowadays provides a rapid response to redundancy. Change is a constant and redundancies become a consequence, hopefully a very limited one of that change, be it economic, competitive or financial. How we address it and how we address it speedally is absolutely critical. Our first objective, of course, has to be that the risk of redundancy is minimised. That is determined by a very focused economic strategy underpinned by a business support infrastructure that embraces our enterprise agencies, by the security of capital investment invested £11 billion over the last four years, by the creation of opportunities for young people and of modern apprenticeships and by the creation of things such as the Youth Employment Fund. However, as I say, change is constant and the strengths of our economy, our small business sector, our exports, our foreign direct investment will not buttress us wholly against the business circumstances ending in compulsory redundancies that I mentioned before. However, a rapid response task force in the nature of the PACE partnerships, 18 of them in Scotland, was and is the appropriate vehicle to mitigate the challenge of those redundancies. Without it, we should then ask how would the 63,500 individuals across Scotland made redundant over the last five and a half years have responded to that situation on their own? I imagine the landscape of vines and halls of Brockspur. The impact has been mentioned of the serious consequence of the opencast coal mines in East Asia and elsewhere. Now, albeit a short-term consequence of the oil and gas sector, among others, what would people have done without the support of the PACE organisation and structure? Those and other redundancy challenges demanded the construction of that Government-led initiative and so it proved to be successful. If I pay a particular credit to any part of the organisation, Deputy Presiding Officer, I would like to give credit to the STUC and the unions role in those initiatives. I do so because of my experience of that that I mentioned when I was with NCR, when at that time, when there was no such partnership, the unions did what they felt they had to do in protection jobs. PACE is an important ingredient in getting people back into work and not least our young people. However, I suggest that our horizon should not be limited. In an increasingly confident economy, we need new entrepreneurs, new businesses. I personally would like to see PACE's even greater emphasis, and they have a great emphasis on training and bringing people back into work, but a greater emphasis on the creation of new small businesses through facilitated investment and meaningful business mentoring. For example, how many embryonic engineering services, export supply companies could there be from those currently facing redundancy? Our international network and competitiveness might secure more rapid jobs and employment growth through the creative of such productive small businesses and or social enterprise in anticipation of whatever sector within anticipation of the sector's recovery. Notwithstanding the basis and the need for PACE's creation, it is a success in achieving what it set out to do and more power to its elbow. I beg to support it. Thank you very much. I now call Liam McArthur to be followed by Adam Ingram. With the figures this week on exports and growth, all the indications are that our economy is continuing to emerge from the depths of the difficulties faced in the not-so-distant past. On employment, unemployment, business confidence and a range of other measures, we are seeing relatively strong growth as the economy here in Scotland and across the UK continues to recover, thanks in no small way to the tough decisions being taken by the coalition government. Even average wages are now starting to show signs of improvement, which is particularly welcome. Nevertheless, no one would reasonably argue that we are out of the woods yet and circumstances in a range of sectors remain very challenging indeed. That is borne out by a series of disappointing announcements by a range of individual companies over recent months, notably, though not exclusively, in the oil and gas sector. In that respect, I think that the Scottish Government is very much to be congratulated on the timing of this debate. Whether or not the debate this afternoon proves to be useful will perhaps depend rather on the willingness of the minister to reflect on some of what I think have been constructive contributions this afternoon and make changes where they are seen to be necessary. I am bound to say that the wording of the motion was not initially encouraging in this respect, melding together a quite legitimate element of self-congratulations about pace but an absence of any recognition that improvements might need to be made. To be fair, the minister did correct some of that in his opening remarks. I would fairly acknowledge and put on record the contribution that pace makes and its strengths. Mr Ewing's motion rightly points to the collaborative approach, which is a genuine strength and absolutely integral to making those interventions work. Of course, that involves not simply collaboration across the public, private and third sector, including the trade unions that a number of colleagues have mentioned, which the motion specifically refers to, but also joint working within the public sector. Given the constitutional setup that exists now, and even in a post-Smith commission context, there is an imperative for both Scotland's Governments to work closely and constructively together. Turf battles do nothing to help those that pace is there to serve. It is therefore a little disappointing that the First Minister initially chose not to specifically include UK departments and agencies such as DEC and DWP in a task force set up in response to the current challenges facing the oil and gas sector. That said, I welcome the apparent change of heart there. It has been on this following the representations my colleague Willie Rennie made at First Minister's Questions earlier this month. The establishment of that task force is nevertheless very welcome, as indeed is the decision to guarantee apprenticeships across the oil and gas sector. However, while it would be unfair to draw comparisons between that sector and others in our economy, I wonder whether the commitments given in this instance will now be expected to be matched elsewhere in the future. Perhaps that is something that the minister can come back to in closing. It is also entitled to point to the statistics on those who have been helped into employment and other opportunities as a result of pace support. Nevertheless, there is rather gloss over some of the shortcomings that have been highlighted, but at least some of those who have experience of pace. Whether or not those are in a minority views, I think that they represent valid and indeed valuable feedback on which we should take note and take action, as well as over half of those confirming that they have moved into employment where salary levels are lower than those that had previously concerns that have been raised about the lack of personalised support. There is, for example, a reduction, albeit slight, in the number of people rating the pace support as relevant and useful. As this is often a signpost to other services, it is perhaps a concern that more of those who rely on it may find it less effective at meeting the needs than was the case previously. Those findings are not wholly surprising to me as they reflect some of the feedback that I have had in recent time from constituents who have been on the receiving end, as well as complaints about a lack of early contact post redundancy, offers of help with bruising up a CV were seen as, quote, inadequate in the circumstances. It will certainly be interesting to see what feedback there is overall from those in, for example, the wave energy sector who have found themselves in need of pace support in recent times. In passing, two months on, since Palamas went into administration, it appears the problems facing this sector are not deemed sufficiently important to merit a debate in this Parliament, a situation, I find, frankly, inexcusable. One of the other areas flagged up by the recent, I certainly will, yes, question. As Mr MacArthur knows, we have had a private meeting and I am very happy to have a further briefing session with him. Can I assure him that the future wave energy in Scotland of the whole sector is something that HIE, I know, are working on very hard indeed? I am very happy to confirm that that is receiving a great deal of my attention, that of Alex Paterson of HIE, and that is very much a priority for the Scottish Government. I thank the minister not just for that intervention but, as he says, for the time that he has committed to those discussions with myself and, indeed, Alex Paterson. I do think that it is remiss of this Parliament not to have had an opportunity to debate the wider issues, notwithstanding the fact that I think there have been commercial sensitivities around some of the discussions in relation to Palamas and the establishment of wave energy Scotland. One of the other areas flagged up in recent feedback reports on PACE is requiring attention is the need for a more timely point of intervention. Those in the wave energy sector would perhaps agree with this assessment, which in essence speaks to the points in Lewis MacDonald's amendment. I know Mr Ewing's reassurances on this and I would observe that it is perhaps not good enough for PACE to be seen as something for ministers to refer to when asked by MSPs what they are doing in response to a major set of job laws. Originally, part of the purpose of PACE was to identify where key companies or sectors were experiencing difficulties and intervene in order to mitigate difficulties, reducing any job losses and ensuring that those made redundant were helped into new employment. That is not always possible, of course, but we absolutely must guard against PACE coming to be seen as a response after the fact rather than something that is activated much earlier in the process. Indeed, I have even seen ministerial responses that refer to the fact that PACE stands ready to provide whatever support is needed, which does rather suggest a level of reactivity that does not altogether inspire confidence. The final aspect of the issue that I wanted to reflect on before concluding is the role of colleges in helping to deliver pathways back into employment. In some instances, former employees can be taken on by competitor companies in similar roles and on similar terms. Generally speaking, some degree of retraining and reskilling is inevitable. Colleges are crucial to that and therefore the cuts that we have seen to college budgets over the last two to three years is a real concern. Everyone knows that those cuts have come at a disproportionate effect on older learners. It is right and very welcome that the Scottish Government gives Parliament an opportunity to debate the work undertaken by PACE and to consider its strengths and its weaknesses. The collaborative approach is absolutely essential and those involved can feel justifiably proud of many of the interventions that they have been able to make. However, we owe it to them and to those PACEs there to serve to ensure that we acknowledge where things are not working as they should effectively. Otherwise, this well-motivated motion and debate and a very valuable and generally well-regarded service will be seen as a missed opportunity. As someone who has been made redundant twice in my working career, I can vouch for the authenticity of the introduction to the PACE guide that is issued to people facing that prospect, which states, redundancy can be one of the most challenging and stressful things you'll ever face and you'll understandably feel daunted and unsure of what to do next. Thankfully nowadays PACE is there to help with all the support and advice needed to move on and move out of that crisis situation. As an airshare MSP, I can also vouch for the effectiveness of the PACE's response to the all-too-frequent calls on their services. Some of those involve very large-scale job losses, like Johnny Walker's bottling plant, which was especially painful for my colleague Willie Coffey and his comaric constituency. However, the notice given in the long lead-in time allowed PACE advisers to reduce the final figure in terms of redundancy to just over 10 per cent of those initially expected to be seeking work. More difficult issues have arisen when companies have either willfully failed to engage in the PACE process or entered suddenly into administration. I want to highlight two particular cases that illustrate problems that need to be addressed, but perhaps through better company regulation. The first relates to the collapse and liquidation of the two major companies operating in the opencast mining sector, Scottish Coal and ATH, with neither employer being willing to engage with PACE at the appropriate time. That inevitably resulted in over 700 workers nationwide and 311 in East Ayrshire alone being left with neither work nor any immediate sense of support from the public sector. To his great credit, the minister acted swiftly setting up the coal industry task force to rescue the industry's viability, while East Ayrshire Council set up a local response team that significantly enhanced the public sector response. The effectiveness of the PACE partners response is best illustrated by a survey of those made redundant a year after the event, showing only 13 per cent of the workforce still unemployed and looking for a job. That is despite the fact that Scottish Coal had failed to train and certificate levels of competence in its workforce, which would allow employees to secure equivalent jobs outwith the company. The second and truly scandalous case that I want to refer to is that of US Seed and Donald in my constituency, which I raised at FMQs a little over two weeks ago. That establishment, part of the sports direct group of company that was owned by billionaire Mike Ashley and the UK's biggest sporting goods retailer, was summarily closed without warning or notice to its workforce on 7 January. Even before employees knew what was happening, a fleet of sports direct trucks had arrived at the warehouse to remove its stock, so there was no chance there for early intervention. That blatant breach of statutory duty was further compounded by a management refusal to allow PACE access to the site. Despite repeated attempts by the Scottish Government and the minister himself, sports direct ignored offers of help for US Seed workers and access was not granted until administrators were on site a week later. That is deplorable behaviour and should not escape severe legal sanction, but it probably will, given the weakness of UK employment law. A loyal workforce of some 88 people has been treated with contempt by an extremely wealthy employer who appears content to wash his hands of any responsibility to pay redundancy or even wages due. That truly is the unacceptable face of capitalism and makes a mockery of our industrial relations system. As the minister highlighted, the STUC is one of the PACE partners and I was pleased to attend a meeting organised by them for the US Seed workforce with Tom's and Solicitors who specialise in employment law. The aim of the meeting was to inform people of their rights under the law to seek some compensation for US Seed's failure to consult on their redundancy. That is by way of protective awards through an employment tribunal. Even if successful, the process can take six months to a year to complete and clearly does not deal with the immediate financial crisis that many of the redundant workers are facing. That is one area of employment law that needs to be strengthened. To my mind, there is an unanswerable case for the powers over employment law to be devolved to this Parliament to bring about a much-needed enhancement of workers' rights. Exploitative employers like Mike Ashley require to be held to account for their actions. Bruce Smith, to be followed by Dennis Robertson. Over the course of the afternoon, there have been about two dozen of us in the chamber. We have all got a different experience, different skills and differences in political outlook. We have one thing in common this afternoon that separates us from any similarly-sized gathering of the people that we represent. That is that we are all well-paid. We are all reasonably secure in our jobs, at least until election time. The chances are that most of us enjoy or receive some degree of fulfilment from our work. Some of us have experienced unemployment in the past, as Mr Ingram referred to, or some of us have grown up in families where there has been shorter or longer periods of one or two periods of work. For the moment, as a representative gathering of people in Scotland, we are unique in that none of us is unemployed, none of us is at risk of unemployment, none of us is suffering under-employment or enduring unfulfilling or even exploitative employment. I just say that to put in context what I wanted to say in the rest of this debate. I think that it is all well and good to thank those involved in efforts to secure continuing employment for others and I absolutely do that. We should remember that lack of work is a deeply personal and debilitating thing that can revend our individual humility to the point of contributing towards mental illness. It can put stress on the family to the point of family breakdown. That, quite simply, is a social evil and it should be regarded as such. Not just a matter of policy where we view redundancies as an undesirable outcome to be minimised, a cost that must be borne, or worst of all, a tragedy that is somehow unavoidable or unpredictable. Redundancy is not an act of God, although there are situations where the person making the decisions or the company making the decisions about redundancy does behave in that way. That is the reality there. It is certainly very clear about who is playing the role of deity in those situations. Paces, as has been described by Lewis, MacDonald and Mark MacDonald, I would absolutely agree with and support. However, we need to do much better than that. Redundancy is an outcome, in my view, which I think society has come to too readily accept as just a normal part of the economic cycle. I would accept that there are situations where it is going to be the only option and that it is an option which the employers involved will be pursued with genuine grief and after strenuous efforts to ensure that it does not happen. In those circumstances, initiatives to advise redundant workers of their best chance at being re-engaged are necessary, but they are still in most circumstances reactive. I have to question why the lead partner for Paces is still Skills Development Scotland, which is a training body rather than Scottish Enterprise, which is the jobs and economic development agency. Encouraging workers to reskill for another job, other than the one for which they are already trained, is going to be necessary in some situations, and that can be a positive thing. Some people may never look back after that experience, but we need to face some other facts that follow from only pursuing that approach or pursuing that approach first. Some of those workers will not be reskilled at all. They will be, in effect, de-skilled, because they will end up discovering that their period of unemployment or their instance of redundancy does not lead to an opportunity for career development. Rather, it leads them into a situation where they are subsequently underpaid in their new occupation, where the qualifications and skills that are required in the new occupation are not comparable with the previous employment rate. Remember that one of the important purposes of Paces is ensuring continuity for the household and the family affected by redundancy. You do not have continuity if you have another job, but you are paid substantially less than you were before. The impact from that can be severe, too. Or, if you are moved on into a job where job security remains low, that could be the result of various other things that we talk about regularly. In this place that is happening in our economy, zero hours contracts would be one being asked to work without contracts or where collective bargaining is non-existent. I listened carefully to Mr Ingram's point about U.S. C. Dondonald, and I agree with him. However, one of the reasons that the STC and Thompsons solicers needed to step in in that case was that there was no collective bargaining in the facility, no recognition of the union and no density of union membership, which meant that people were unaware of their employment rights at the time of redundancy. I agree that employment rights should be improved. There also needs to be a greater understanding of the rights that people have and respect for those rights by their employer. I have said in the chamber before that the world of work consists of good employers and less good employers just as the workforce is made up of good workers and not so conscientious workers. The point is not to denigrate all for the sins of a minority, but it is to recognise that, fundamentally, the workplace and the necessity of selling a labour has a fundamental potential for exploitation. It is for that reason not the individual circumstances of particular companies or others that employment requires to be regulated and there is no greater example of the potential for exploitation than the issue of redundancy. Redundancy can be and, frankly, it is used on occasion to provide a threat to ensure that workers comply with working practices that the employers wish to promote, generally which lead to greater insecurity. I mentioned temporary contracts and those issues of bogus self-employment. There are plenty of examples. I turn to the instances in which the workplace, as a whole, or a substantial part of the work of a workplace, has been declared as redundant. We often need to recognise that the work is not redundant at all. Is the worker sure of redundant? The work is not being made redundant. The work has simply been moved elsewhere, more than likely to somewhere where, in the company's eyes, it will be termed to be more competitive. That basically means where job security will be weakened, where pay will be weakened or where safety regulation will be weakened. I think that we need to therefore go back to first principles on the issue of pace. We all accept that there is good work being done by partnership action for continuing employment, but it is a reactive service in the main. I hear what the minister and others have said about the wish to protect companies from revealing information about the situation, but we need to have a greater deal of confidence and expectation that companies have an early engagement with the services town so that we avoid redundancy rather than just simply mitigate it after it happens and therefore support the Labour amendment. I think that the partnership aspect is very pertinent. We have to look at how we use that partnership within the local communities where we live and the constituencies that we represent. Murdoff Razor raised an important aspect in his speech, and that was the smaller agencies, companies and so on, probably the smaller medium-sized businesses. Colin Borland from FSB mentioned in the February 2014 at the PACE conference this very area about the individual support that seemed to be lacking for this particular group. My recall from that was that the minister, Fergus Ewing, responded very positively at that time. The interesting thing about the conference, if I recall, was the change of pace. They were looking at all aspects of PACE and how it operates within the sector to try to enable early intervention. Can I say that I concur fully with Mark McDonald that it would be wrong to advertise the early intervention of PACE within a sector or organisation? You undermine the confidence within that area. It is okay when redundancies have been announced and it hits the headlines to say that PACE is now involved. My understanding is that PACE can and do get involved at an earlier stage. If we are looking at continued employment, sometimes we are actually looking at preventing the redundancy from happening in the first place. It is looking at alternative means to try and secure work for the employee. If I did not mention the energy sector because I represent the Aberdeenshire west constituency and, as the minister knows, I often mention west help when I am in the chamber because it is the Europe's capital of the sub-sea sector within the industry. I certainly welcome the appointment of Lena Wilson, who, with her expertise and knowledge from Scottish Enterprise, will fulfil her role remarkably well in reporting back to the minister with the discussions that she will have within the energy sector, specifically with the oil and gas. We have to look at how we try to ensure that we do not try to inject or install a situation that does not exist within the sector at the moment. If we try to present that there is a crisis within the sector, are young people coming through, are young people or graduates going to university, those going on to college, looking for a future within oil and gas, maybe looking at alternatives, looking at alternatives for their education, looking at alternatives for their training, and that is something that we cannot afford. We have a problem already within a skill shortage within the industry and it is well recognised that that skill shortage exists. If we continue to highlight that there is a problem within the sector, it is only right that our young people will be looking at alternatives. I suggest to the sector that we try to ensure that there is still a very positive message out there. There is a future within the energy sector and we need to try to get that balance right because we have to ensure that those coming through the college sector have a prospect of employment and those coming through the university sector, the graduates, also have an opportunity before them. We cannot and we do not control the oil price but we can control the message that we portray to our young workforce. The partnership is very important and it is important that our young people have the appropriate skills. This is where SDS provides a great opportunity to probably upskill some of our younger people or some of those that have been made redundant already, giving them the opportunity not to de-skill but to upskill, to give them new skills, to make them more employable within the sector. The sector will need them. What can be done at the moment? What can be done? I took on Mord of Fraser's comments about Sir Ian Wood. I believe that I have heard on more than one occasion and I believe that it is still the case that the oil and gas sector is seeking stability within their taxation. They are looking for a reversal, the tax hike that happened in 2011. They are looking for incentives to look at the exploration of difficult areas within the North Sea. I would say that something can be done now. I sincerely hope that the Labour Party would move with the Scottish Government in trying to ensure that George Osborne, the chancellor of its tech, makes an early announcement to assist the sector to have that stability and the confidence to move forward. It will certainly make the job of PACE much easier when they are talking to people within the North East, especially at the moment, with the current situation of a prospect of a bright future. Let's welcome the work that PACE does, and let's welcome the opportunities that are still there within the sector, because that is the future. I am delighted to follow Dennis Roberts' comments, which I agree with, because what is important is to make sure that we understand where we are at. Where we are at, Scotland's economy continues to grow, and our unemployment rate is the lowest in the UK. So, we have to understand this. We have to be very careful when we talk about job losses, which situation we are. A lot of jobs available across the sector presenting officer. But all their successes as a result of a government understanding businesses and using the economic levers at its disposal, and I wish we would have more of these economic levers, for example, like Employment Law, like the Michael X said before me. Regarding the present situation, which was talked about in the energy sector, half of the oil and gas operators have already reported a reduction in contractor staff, with almost two-thirds expecting further reduction in contractors this year. That came from a survey of the Chamber of Commerce of Aberdeen and Grampian, and we were at a meeting last week with Dennis Roberts and others, where we were told that a lot of those jobs, of course, job losses were in fact already planned. They were planned following the second wood recommendation to streamline the industry. So, we have to understand almost the context of these job losses. They are not all due to the old prices, but further job losses could be due to that. But, again, repeating my colleague Dennis Roberts, there is an easy answer to this, and it's not an early answer from the Chancellor, because it's a bit late when in 2011 the President of the Government decided to put a hike on taxation to the sector. We should have reverted straight away. We should have not waited 2012, 2013 or 2014 or 2015. We should have done it straight away. And it's a way to do it. It's a way to do it, Mr McDonnell, if you give me a minute, because we need to help certain sectors from the upstream, not when it's too late. It's very important not to wait until the job is lost, but to make sure that, as a role of the Government, we give the condition, particularly on taxation, the condition for companies to grow and prosper. I'm very grateful to Mr Allan for giving way. In a sense, he's made my point, though, if many of the job losses that are affecting people and causing redundancies in the North Sea sector were predictable, as he suggests. Is that not all the more reason why PACE and Government agencies should have been in early in order to work with companies and with those facing redundancies in order to reduce the economic impact? It should have been done earlier. It should have been done in 2011. Like I just said, it's taxation. It's where the Government can do it. Any resident fund is too late. It's not what should be done. I go back to Mr Ingram again, contribution. We have to be very grateful that if Labour Government, at one point, decides to have such a fund that is not given to the wrong people, because it might be given to the employers which deserve the least, as opposed to helping upstream best companies when it's needed at the taxation level. But it's very important to understand as well that other sectors, and people talked about other sectors, have the same kind of problem. We've got a problem of skilled shortage, because we've got a great problem of skilled shortages, not only in Scotland but across the UK. So we maybe have, from time to time, a problem of people losing their jobs, but some of my colleagues talked about it earlier. The most important and the key thing is to making sure we can upskill the best workers, not only during the time work, but when they are losing their employment. And for example, we'll see the growth on house building activity that we have noticed recently. Scotland constitutional sector is expanding steadily over the next five years, and with thousands of new trade people are required to replace those retiring. We are an ageing population. A lot of people are going to retire in the next few years, so it's not only there's jobs, but there are plenty jobs available that are going to happen. So it's very important that the pay is to recognise it, and of course with SDS they are very equipped to do this, to work on the skills and making sure that people have the proper skills to respond to the sectors that need these employees. And we can talk about, of course, in rural Scotland, we can talk about the farmers. The farmers are getting older and older. The average for farmers is around about 60 years old, and the large proportion of those have no success in place. It's very important that the government does this, and it does with the Scottish rural development programme. We have, as well in the fishing industry, which is important, Abernishhire Council is launching next month a fishery project pending the development or modern apprenticeship in maritime occupations. But what is important is not only for our young people, but as Mr Robertson said, it's very important for people who change careers because this is a job, let's understand it. We are in the 21st century where people are not going to keep a job for life, so they need their skills to make sure that they can progress in different careers during their life. All of us, most of us, had other jobs before. Myself, I had at least two or three jobs before I became a parliamentary. So it's very, very important. We've got that skilled workforce. I think the people who are part, the organisation who are part of PACE, are really working behind the scene and all year round about this because let's not forget it's a partnership and it's that work. It's the partnership. This is important, Presiding Officer. We need to have the facilities and the people to retrain and upskill our workforce and is what this government is doing. This collaborative approach works very well because this government understands businesses and our work. For example, the business trade relief package from this government is making Scotland the best place to do business in the UK. The Scottish Government initiative for responding to redundancy of the situation is strong and delivers for people when and where they need the most. We, this government's business, support policies, business in Scotland keep on growing and thriving. Presiding Officer, many thanks. I now call Paul Martin to be followed by Linda Fabiani. Presiding Officer, I, like others, welcome this opportunity to speak in this debate this afternoon. I, like others, recognise the good work of the PACE scheme. It does help people back into employment but, of course, I think it should go without saying that we should be looking at all of the resources that's available to us in Scotland, whether it's to the Scottish Government, whether it's to the Westminster Government, whether it's to the Westminster Government. It should be something that we all agree on when people are faced with a redundancy situation that we provide that expertise and support. I think that, touching on the point that Bruce Smith raised, that if you're faced with the position of potential unemployment, what people wouldn't want to see us doing here today is debating a congratulatory motion. People would want us to improve the possibilities of them gaining employment, and I think that's what we should look at today. In Glasgow, there have been a number of examples of companies serving redundancy notice on their employers. Last year, on Christmas day, nearly two and a half thousand workers at CityLink received the news that the company was going into administration, and 165 of those workers were based in Scotland, many of them in the east end of Glasgow. On aspect, I don't think that we have debated today, and that is the impact on the local economy of these redundancies. As in the case of CityLink, we've seen the negative impact on the local community, particularly in the east end. I think that that's an aspect of PACE's work that I would welcome some feedback from the minister that should be considered. That's how we of course support those who are served with potential redundancies, but also look at how we can support the local community who face many of the challenges during that process. Another example that I would point to in my constituency was the international clothing retail group that was based in the Queensland industrial estate. Last year, the management stopped operations with a loss of over 40 jobs, and desperate staff were told that they had no entitlements, no redundancy payments were brought forward. I've got to say, if it weren't for the intervention of the Usdaw union, then the plight of the workers would have been much more negative than it resulted in. I think that we should pay tribute to the role of trade unions, the important role that they play in this partnership and ensuring that people do receive the advice that they receive. That was a loss of 40 jobs in that organisation, and I can't recall PACE being involved in that position. I would welcome some feedback from the minister in his closing statement on what the threshold is for intervention, and I would welcome some feedback on that. I say it in a constructive way, because I think that there are an intervention from those jobs. I'm very grateful to the member for taking a brief intervention. Congratulations to the work that Stephen Boyd does from STUC, and he's been working in partnership with the Government. At the conference in last February, he was part of that workshop looking at how to develop the partnership working within Government and local authorities. I think that Dennis Robertson makes a good point, but when we look at the intervention and role that the trade unions play, it should also be recognised that significant resources are required from the unions to play that part. Perhaps in the spirit of ensuring that that partnership can continue, the Government can consider what resources can be provided to the unions to ensure that they can provide that supportive role. That is something that I would expect the minister to include in his remarks to refer to at the same time. Touching the point that has been made in respect to many members of touch on this today, and that is the prevention of potential redundancies, I think that the point that Adam Ingram made in respect to the situation that people found themselves in the United States was well amplified by Adam Ingram. I think that he made some powerful points, particularly in relation to that. I know that he referred to Mike Ashley. There are many other individuals and companies who play the system, and they look at the opportunities that are available to them to play the system. It's not just in respect to the tax system. There are many other aspects of current law where these individuals play the system. They call themselves employers, they call themselves investors. I think that they should hang their heads in shame in some of the practices that have been followed by these individuals who reinvent themselves almost on a daily basis to look at other potential asset stripping opportunities that are available to them. I think that whatever Government is able to intervene in this, whether it be in the Scottish Government, whether it be in the Westminster Government, whether it be local Government, whatever we can provide support to employees who find themselves in this position, we should do that. We should, at every opportunity, highlight those examples of those individuals who should hang their heads in shame, and we should look at what action is available for us to take in that respect. In conclusion, I think that this has been an important debate to highlight some of the challenges that people face every day, and I think that Bruce Smith made that point very well. I don't think that we should congratulate ourselves for everything that we have done so far. We should take it as red that those resources and that support should always be there to help people who find themselves in that position. Not just those who face the redundancy position, but also the communities who face those challenges as a result of those companies that have gone into administration. I am now going to call Linda Fabiani. Linda Fabiani is the last speaker in the open debate. I know that there are a number of people who have contributed to the open debate who are not in the chamber. I would expect them to be there by the closing speeches. Linda Fabiani, six minutes. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. It's certainly been a really interesting debate, and a lot of people have contributed. I think that Paul Martin's last statement sums it up really when things like redundancies, whether large-scale, small-scale or individuals, happen. It doesn't just affect that person, it affects their family, it affects their wider community and sometimes it can devastate entire communities. That's why I think that it's so important that something like the partnership action for continuing employment exists. The fact that it is a partnership action is so very, very important and includes all people. There's really nothing at all in the Government motion here that I would take issue with, though I was interested in Mark McDonald's point, which was further spoken about by my colleague Dennis Robertson, about that issue about early interventions. Of course we need early intervention, but sometimes you can end up with self-fulfilling prophecies if you are seen to be too quickly talking about things like work coming to an end to redundancies, having worked in the construction trade for a while. We very often did see that happen when the rumor mill started about things going wrong. I'm grateful to her because a number of members have made that point this afternoon and I understand why they're coming from on it. My point is that employers who know that they may be putting their employees at risk of redundancy have a duty to engage with services. They have a duty to approach Government and make clear that action should be put in place to minimise that risk for those individuals. Absolutely, Presiding Officer. There is nothing in that statement that I can disagree with. All I would suggest is that that's perhaps why the STUC were so disappointed when the Smith Commission stuff came out, followed by the draft clauses, when aspects of employment law at least could have been transferred to Scotland so that we can work with trade unions, that we can be a beacon for the rest of the UK as to how employment law should be operated. That's what I would like to see happen, true partnership working. We've already established a fair work convention and that is so important, working for people's rights with trade unions. We'll look at what's happening at Westminster, the UK Government trying to end check-off facilities, reducing trade union facility time. We should be standing against it up here and one way we can do that is saying, give us the powers, we'll take them and we'll work for the good of people generally. That's what I would like to see. I looked at the Labour Party amendment and I'm not quite sure why, even listening to Lewis MacDonald, the need was felt to put down an amendment like this. PACE was originally created with a remit to ensure early identification. That's happening to undertake partnership working. It's happening all the time, but the bit that intrigued me was the establishment of a resilience fund and Murdo Fraser mentioned that. What Murdo Fraser said was that until he could hear what the resilience fund was actually for, he would not commit to whether or not he agreed with it. I'm even more confused by the Labour group than Murdo Fraser is and I don't mind admitting it because what I want to know to Siobhan McMahon that's closing the debate is, is this the same resilience fund that's going to help the health service? Is it the same resilience fund that's going to help local government? Is it the same resilience fund that's going to help the oil industry? Or are we going to have resilience funds for every single sector that exists in Scotland? Or are we just going to have a resilience fund every time there's a headline that's wanted in a national paper? I would appreciate a response to that. One of the things that I thought was interesting that the minister said when he was talking about helping businesses before crunch point was the ability to have, for example, HMRC on board and defer payments. Because very often as constituency MPs we do get calls from business, generally small businesses, that are having issues around that and it's good that the PACE team can help with that. The minister also asked for suggestions and one of the things that I find quite frustrating at times is when you have a sole trader or a very small business who has hit a trough. It's things like if you could really do that joined up thing of, for example, the benefits system being able to kick in to help people over a bad time and then be looked at and made up later. What is the point of making people unemployed and putting them in benefits if maybe six, eight weeks down the line the business is picking up again? Sometimes businesses end up going out of business because there isn't joined up thinking right across sectors. The last thing I would say, Presiding Officer, is Margaret McCulloch made a very good speech and talked about how PACE has helped in East Kilbride. Certainly when free-scale went down as well the local college was working with the PACE team to help in that. Margaret McCulloch mentioned Rose Royce and yes, we have issues there about people leaving and relocating from East Kilbride. A task force was set up for that. East Kilbride task force was headed up by South Lanarkshire Council. Can I ask minister that despite letters from the then cabinet secretary back in July about the council engaging war with elected representatives seven months on, nothing has happened? Can I ask that minister agrees to look into East Kilbride task force, see what is happening and perhaps suggest to the local authority that we should be working in partnership, that we are all working together and it is for the good of the community. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr Fabiani. I'm now moving to the closing speeches. Before I call Alex Johnson, can I just note that Chick Brody, who contributed to the debate, is not back in the chamber? I'm sorry, you are. My apologies, Mr Brody. How could I possibly have missed you? Alex Johnson, six minutes. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I'm delighted that Chick Brody has made it back. I was going to mention him and it would have been lost had he not been here. Members will have observed that there is no Conservative amendment today and they should not be surprised because on this issue, as with many others, if we can keep the whole issue of Scottish independence off the agenda, I find myself more or less in agreement with the minister. We heard at the beginning of this debate from Murdo Fraser, who pointed out that Scotland's economy is strong. Like the rest of the UK, we are seeing improvements in the number of people employed, reductions in unemployment and we are beginning to see wages rise once again. It's against that backdrop that we have this unusual position that we are in at the moment. When we debated independence, I and many others in this Parliament took the position that we were opposed to separation because of the risk of shocks to key sectors. Little did we know that there was a shock to a key sector coming very, very soon after that referendum. The slowdown in the oil and gas industry, driven by the reduction in prices, has demonstrated the risk that we find ourselves under. The North Sea oil and gas industry, as is based in Aberdeen, finds itself in a doubly unusual position. Many of those employed by companies in that area now operate outside the North Sea sector altogether. We could find that the level of shock that goes through that industry may well be periodical and it may come at different times in different areas. To a certain extent, he said that we are better together when the shock happens. Can the minister tell us what the Westminster Government has done? Because so far he has done nothing at all. We are waiting for the chancellor to take that decision and he needs to take it now. The UK Government has been cutting taxes since it came to power in 2010. The UK Government has ensured that we have passed through a period when, to the surprise of many, there were record levels of investment in the North Sea. What the UK Government is doing today is ensuring that public expenditure in Scotland remains consistent year on year at a time when if we were reliant on oil revenues that simply would not have been possible. Let me go on and talk a bit about the partnership action for continuing employment, the subject of this debate. The reason why we will be supporting the Government motion tonight is that we agree with the Government that PACE are providing a good service, well regarded and improving its expertise over time. It is in fact the case that the work that is being done by Margaret Souter and her 18 teams across Scotland has demonstrated itself to be effective and it improves in its effectiveness as it understands better the marketplace in which it operates. However, that marketplace changes regularly. In fact—this is the mention for Chick Brody—he came up with an oxymoron today and said that change is a constant. I think that it was an excellent example of the practice because I agree with Chick that the only constant is that we are in perpetual change. Unlike Drew Smith, perhaps, whose speech at one point seemed to deteriorate into a demand that no one should ever be made redundant ever, perhaps under the Drew Smith leadership, we might have seen a long-term result that would have kept our coal industry, kept our steel industry, kept our shipbuilding industry, and today we could walk across the Clyde on the backs of unsold ships. Nevertheless, change is a constant and that is why we have to have an organisation like PACE that is assisting where that change requires to be managed. We heard at some length from Margaret McCulloch in an excellent speech in which she talked about her own experience with Jay's plant and that was highly relevant and a demonstration of one of the positives. We have also had positives, perhaps, in the work that has been done over the years with holes of broxburn and more recently with Citilink. In Adam Ingram's contribution, which was also very constructive, he talked about the Johnny Walker plant in Kilmarnock and how work was successfully carried out to ensure the minimum of redundancies when that bottling plant closed. He also told us some horror stories. He talked about the companies that were involved in the opencast coal mining industry and how they exited at very short notice. He also recounted the story of the USC plant at Dundonald and the horror stories associated with that. We have had no shortage of examples of where PACE has worked very constructively with employers to minimise the impact of closures or downsizing. However, we have also heard examples of companies that have not taken the opportunity that they had to avail themselves of the service. There was also a suggestion made more than one occasion in this debate that early intervention was the answer. Of course, we all know that early intervention is extremely important. However, there was another point that was made by Mark MacDonald. That was that we cannot see every job as a potential redundancy. If we go about thinking that every job is a redundancy that has not happened yet, then we ourselves could undermine the marketplace that, as I said at the outset, is growing, is improving, is creating jobs and is actually reducing unemployment month on month. The partnership action for continuing employment, PACE, is providing a great deal of expertise. It is improving its expertise over time and, at the moment, it appears to be adequately funded, calling into question the demands by the Labour amendment to bring forward a resilience fund. For that reason, when decision time comes, we will be supporting the Government's motion on this matter. I now call on Siobhan McMahon, Ms McMahon, about seven minutes. This afternoon's debate has been a useful one. I am pleased that the Government wishes to draw the work of PACE to the attention of the chamber today. PACE is something that we normally talk about in written or oral questions. When a member questions the Government ministers, or indeed the First Minister, on the support being offered to constituents who are being made redundant, the response will inevitably involve PACE. As we have heard this afternoon, PACE was established in 2000 and was originally intended to play a role in preventing closures, redundancies, as well as dealing with the consequences. For far too long, we have seen the focus shift from prevention to mitigation. That is regrettable. If the role of PACE in prevention has been, or is being replaced by another agency, that would be one thing. I do not think that anyone would have a problem with a strategy that involves prevention and another for mitigation, but, as we have heard this afternoon, that is not the case. Unfortunately, the Government has been concentrating its efforts on mitigation, and the results of that are not always what we wish to see. I would be interested to know what role that is. I am not clear that that has been the implication that has been given from the Government or, indeed, from members who have made contributions. No business in my constituency that has had interaction with PACE has suggested that they have not had appropriate support either at early intervention stage or redundancy stage, so I am curious as to where the member has drawn that influence from. I do not know if the member was here for Paul Martin's speech, which proved the example that, if that intervention had happened in one of the businesses in his constituency, we might have seen a different outcome. That would be the example that I am drawn for. I would be interested to know what role PACE has played in seeking to prevent recent closures, redundancies and how successful they have been in that role. At the PACE Summit in 2009, entitled to working together to address redundancies, partnership, prevention and programmes, the ministerial commitment was the need for PACE to become a proactive force for the anticipation and prevention of company closures and redundancies. Can I ask the minister if that is still the case? I would also be interested to know when the next PACE summit will be held and what issues the minister believes will be addressed then. In addition to that, delegates at the summit agreed that a proactive approach helping people from work to work would yield more positive results and to support this retraining and upskilling needs to happen earlier, within workplaces prior to redundancies taking place. Given that it is now six years since that summit took place, can the minister in summing up tell the chamber what progress has been made in relation to that? In the PACE Clients Experience Survey of 2014, which was commissioned by Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Government, there was little mention of the prevention strategy that was spoken so highly of during the 2009 summit by the then Cabinet Secretary for Education Fiona Hyslop. In fact, the findings of the report were quite concerning. For instance, the survey found that more than one-fifth of those who had received a career guidance interview or information about training and funding sources expressed concern that had come too late. Of course, that was not a new finding, as the same thing had been found in the 2012 Client Experience Survey. Not only is it concerning that the same problems are being experienced by those using PACE two years on from when the original problem was identified, it is also concerning to note that the problem is getting worse and not better. The report states that the PACE presentation and guidance received by the largest proportion of clients and often represents the first contact that an individual has with PACE. Around one-quarter of new clients who attended the presentation felt that this had come too late in the redundancy process. 23 per cent of respondents reported that this was the case, which was an increase from the 2012 where 17 per cent of those attending expressed this view. Given that the report does not shine light on anything new, but in fact clearly reinforces the point about prevention, a point first brought to the Government's attention in 2009 and the greater need for its workplaces that are at risk of redundancy. It begs the question what the Government is doing about this matter. I know that the Government may say that there is only so much that it can do to make PACE the PACE model work, and I accept that to a point. I fully accept that in order for the Government to be able to have control over prevention, they need the help from the employers, a point that the minister made in his opening speech and a point that was reinforced by Adam Ingram and his speech. However, the model that we are currently working with requires employers to notify agencies prior to an announcement of redundancies in order for it to be able to work. Given that this really happens, I have to ask, is it the Scottish Government's aspiration for PACE simply one of helping people into new jobs and if it is not, what are they doing to either change a model or their interaction with the employers? In addition to that, on the current model, the 2014 client survey also provided further worrying data. For example, only 45 per cent said that PACE had some influence on their move back into employment, and only 8 per cent stated that it had made all the difference. Not only does this marker fall from 2012, where the figure is 53 per cent, it is extremely concerning that less than half of clients think that PACE has made an impact on them getting a new job. However, the survey found that the top response when asked of views on the benefits of PACE services was, do not know at 20 per cent, and the third most popular answer was no benefit at 15 per cent of respondents. The fact that PACE's main objective is to secure future employment or training opportunities for people seems to be failing those that it seeks to serve. The good news for the survey was that around three quarters of clients have secured some form of employment. However, what we do not know from this figure, a figure that is to be welcomed, is what direct role PACE had in helping to secure that employment. Did the PACE team set up the interviews, inform the client of the interviews, help write the CVs, give them interview tips, or was the job found by the client themselves or through a different agency? We do not have the statistics to answer that, but it is something that we should be reported in such a survey. In fact, that was called for in the evaluation document commissioned by SDS following the PACE report offered to the informer employees at Halls and Broxburn. In the recommendation at the end of the document, it said that it was worth exploring whether or not it is possible to establish a client tracking to capture an output system. There are a number of options here, including undertaking a survey of redundant workers and using HMRC data. I would be interested to know if the Government has looked at developing such a model since the recommendation was put there. As referred from Liam McArthur and Margaret McCulloch, from the client survey, two-fifths of clients moved into a job with lower-scale requirements than the previous position. This figure has decreased from the 47 per cent figure that was reported in 2012. That is good news, however. It is disappointing to note that it is still occurring at such high numbers. Therefore, it would be interesting to know what steps PACE and their partners have taken to address that. Finally, the 2014 survey contained the information in relation to the way in which clients received information. It was found that one in eight people, 12 per cent, had accessed any online PACE report and only one in 20, 6 per cent had accessed the PACE contact centre helpline. It is clear that more has to be done to promote those services to users. Therefore, I would be interested to know if an ad campaign or something similar will be run to promote such services in the future. I feel that I should conclude my speech with the main ask from the respondents to the survey. They have suggested some improvements to the current system and I hope that that could be achieved for future service users. Those recommendations are a more personalised service, longer and more frequent help sessions and a more timely point of intervention, interaction to start earlier in the redundancy process. Scottish Labour also has its own recommendation, which we have put to the Scottish Government, and that is the resilience fund. We believe that that would provide an additional tool for local authorities and their partners, which would help local economies to end by a job crisis. The example given by Margaret McCulloch and Paul Martin, and the speech made by Drew Smith, particularly around the issue of continuity of work, shows that this fund could help in those circumstances in partnership with what is already on offer. Today has been an important debate and one that leaves off with many questions about PACE and the sport on offer. I hope that the minister will be able to answer some of those in his coming up. I am grateful to members for making this a constructive debate. I think that I have several thoughtful and informative contributions from all parties in the chamber, so I record my thanks. I would like just to start where I began with my opening comments, Presiding Officer. That is just to repeat that the experience of redundancy is one of the worst life has to offer for a great many people, which has horrendous financial consequences, but perhaps even more so the emotional or human or mental consequences, which it can cause to families who suffer the situation. Particularly if the sole breadwinner suffering a redundancy puts enormous strain on individuals and families. I say that because it is obvious, but it is very easy to lose sight of in the maelstrom of points that are made about how together we tackle it. That is the starting point. That is the central point from the perspective of people who have been made redundant. Adam Ingram mentioned that he himself has made redundant twice. Perhaps we are the exception in this chamber that many of us have been fortunate enough not to have suffered that experience. I know from my own family that those who have, that this is a very difficult experience and therefore it behoves us very well to respond as best we can as efficiently as we can and using taxpayers' money as efficiently as we can as well. I wanted to touch on the point that Mr MacArthur made and perhaps hinting that there was an element of self-congratulation in the tone of the motion if that is the case. I am entirely responsible for that and it was not something that I intended to convey whatsoever. There is nothing more off-putting to the public than politicians congratulating themselves for achievements, real or imaginary. That is not the spirit of this debate. The spirit of this debate is very much, as Mr MacArthur said, for me to learn from the contributions today what further improvements can be made. That is a point that I make and I undertake that myself and market suitors and other officials of the Scottish Government and Scottish Enterprise will reflect on the contributions today seriously. There are many invaders, so I probably will not have time to comment on them all. I am very grateful to the minister for taking intervention and for the start of his closing remarks. The description that he gave of the impact of redundancy clearly matters little, whether it is a large-scale redundancy or whether it is a small-scale, the impact on the breadwinner and the immediate family can be equally severe. Is there a minimum threshold below which PACE cannot operate as it will appreciate in communities such as mine? A relatively small absolute number of job losses can have a pretty devastating effect on the economy and on the community. I am happy to answer that point. I think that Mr Martin raised exactly the same point. There is no threshold. PACE is available for everybody. PACE is available for one person that has been laid off. That leads me on to an area where we can make improvements. Murdo Fraser touched on that in his opening remarks. In order for PACE to reach out and be able to assist people who have been made redundant, they need to know about the redundancies. If they are not made aware of them, by definition they are not able to offer help. Help may not always be sought. Many people will find alternative employment or opportunities themselves. Many people prefer to do that. However, a large number will not and perhaps do not get that help at the moment. Murdo Fraser suggested that we further use business representative bodies and trade representative bodies who perhaps may have a closer relationship with their membership than the generality of the chamber of the FSB, the IOD, the CBI and so on. We need further to reach out for them. The bodies of the FSB and the chambers are among the 21 PACE partners. Incidentally, I hold meetings with them, roughly biannually, of the partners to discuss together how, in practical terms, we can make improvements in this regard. We regularly ask the business bodies for their co-operation, and that is given in a fulsome fashion. We also need to reach out to small businesses and make them aware. I think that we all have a duty here. I counted in the chamber, Presiding Officer. I guess that this is normally your terrain, but I counted that there were about 22 members during the debate. I think that almost every single one has been in contact with my office at some point about redundancies in their constituency. I could not identify anyone that has not. Therefore, this is something that affects everybody. All of us have an ability to inform businesses, especially small businesses, that PACE exists, that it exists to help and that it exists to help everyone. It is also true that early notice to PACE can assist. For example, in my former constituency, when I represented Lechabur, there was, if you like, a model process of closure, if there can be such a thing, if that is not a contradiction. That was by British Alcan when they decided to concentrate activities between Fort William and Kinliffe. When they embarked on a five-year plan, they gave five years' notice to staff, and it was a model of investment and consideration for staff in the light of a business decision that had serious consequences. Sadly, the other end of the spectrum was clearly and graphically described by Adam Ingram. I thought that perhaps the most interesting contribution of this debate when he described the quite appalling behaviour of Mr Mike Ashley of sports direct and repeated the phrase, which was famous as some of the older members will remember in the 70s and said that Mr Ashley is truly the unacceptable face of capitalism. Mr Ingram's contribution is a reminder that, fortunately, there are relatively few cases like that. Almost all the cases that members bring to me are cases where employers and insolvency petitioners are working together to try to do the best in a difficult situation, but just occasionally there is one that is not. That was described very well indeed by Mr Ingram. One of the topics in the debate that dominated and I would like to comment on is early intervention. I am afraid that I here must disagree with my colleagues in the Labour Party. I believe that there is an absolutely correct focus on early intervention and, moreover, that this is a function that is discharged extremely well by the enterprise network. I say that and I can give further details to members, but I know from my personal knowledge and Mr Swinney, beside me from his more extensive knowledge, that there is a huge effort, day and daily, put in by a number of devoted public servants in the enterprise network, Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Scottish Development International to tackling very difficult situations. The reality was highlighted by Mark McDonald when he pointed out that companies that face some financial problems cannot make those issues public, otherwise they will then find that their banking terms, their customers, their creditors will react in a way that exacerbates those problems and perhaps even brings about the most difficult situation of insolvency that these efforts are intended to solve. I think that the better approach rather than vague and generalised criticism of our public servants, which is not particularly helpful or productive, is for suggestions of specific actions that we may take or which we may do more of, which perhaps we are not doing at the current time. My remarks must be drawn to a close and I would just like to finish by repeating my and Mr Swinney's recognition of the extraordinarily successful efforts and well-intentioned efforts of a huge number of people led by market suitor in the pace teams throughout the country. I know that they go the extra mile to try to help people in Scotland who face the appalling and harrowing situation of suddenly finding that their services, their livelihood is terminated, is at an end. I think that it is perhaps the human side, the human face of that effort that has resulted in the resounding vote of confidence from the vast majority of the people who have been recipients of the paced service in this country. That concludes the debate on partnership action for continuing employment pace, supporting individuals out of redundancy into employment. We now move to the next item of business, which is consideration of business motion 12164, in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick. On behalf of the parliamentary bureau, we are setting out a revised business programme for the week. Any member wishes to speak against the motion should press the request speak button now, and I call on Joe Fitzpatrick to move motion 12164. No member has asked to speak against the motion, so I now put the question to the chamber. The question is that motion 12164, in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. There are two questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first question is that amendment 12154.1, in the name of Lewis MacDonald, which seeks to amend motion 12154, in the name of Fergus Ewing, on partnership action for continuing employment, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? We move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote is amendment 12154.1, in the name of Lewis MacDonald, as follows. Yes, 34. No, 78. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed to. The next question is that motion 12154, in the name of Fergus Ewing, on partnership action for continuing employment, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. It concludes decision time. We now move to members' business. Members who leave the chamber should do so quickly and quietly.