 Ydw i'n fywch am ysgol iawn. Rwy'n gweithio i gael eich gweithio ystod, i fünf o gychwynhau a'r Cyflaenau Fawr Derbyn Cymru, i'w gweithio eu cyfrif yn ei hyffordd, i gael eich gael eu gymryd, ac rydyn ni'n baen i fynd i ddim i'n gwneud ac yn ei hun i'r cyflaeniau sy'n ei gael eich cyfrif. Mae'n rhan oes yn cyfan ei cyfrif, mae'n ddig acceptanceor. Mae hi'n fwy o fwy o ddig inni, ac mae rhan oes eithaf Feelsbury i Bwrth Patrick Harvie a John Lamont, ond rydyn ni wedi gwneud hynny oherwydd yr item 4 o'r agenda o'r parlymentol. Item 1 o'r agenda, rydyn ni wedi gwneud hynny oherwydd yr item 5 o'r enterprise bill legislative consent memorandum, a item 6 o'r discussion on evidence heard at today's meeting in private. Item 2, rydyn ni wedi gwneud hynny oherwydd yr item 2 o'r agenda o'r parlymentol, a hynny oherwydd yr item 6 o'r agenda o'r parlymentol. mynd i'r cyddiadau. Willidd ni'n clywed gweithio sy'n bugwch Focus ddweud, y grammarit heritage is a aansing o leddar- fill blo'n ymgusg, easyleg, r splendid-Force. Os beth, síps, to the committee on respectllive motion, by Deputy First Minister, on Danke very much for your lead, I'm very grateful for today's opportunity to address the committee in respect of the motion lodged by the deputy First Minister on 9 December last year. The UK Enterprise Bill was introduced in the House of Lords on 16 September and is progressing through the UK Parliament. It includes a wide range of measures aimed at promoting economic growth and the UK government expects it to remove what it regards the bill are reserved to the UK Parliament. What we are concerned with today are those that fall within devolved competence of this parliament and which require an LCM to allow the UK Parliament to legislate for these matters. The LCM covers two areas, establishing a small business commissioner and capping public sector exit payments. I briefly outline each of these areas. The UK Government intend to establish a small business commissioner as a statutory appointment with powers to offer advice guidance and a complaint service to small businesses. The UK Government's aim is to tackle poor payment practice across the UK where a small business is subject to unfavourable contract conditions yet is keen to maintain that vital commercial relationship with a larger company. Extending the provisions to Scotland places Scottish businesses on an equal footing with those across the UK. Payment practices that disadvantage small businesses are a common complaint and the Small Business Commissioner offers an opportunity to redress the issues that are a challenge for many of Scotland's small businesses who do business across the UK. My officials are in discussion with the UK Government to ensure that Scottish interests and delivery processes are represented as UK Government develop regulations for operational procedures. The proposal convener is seen as generally welcomed by the small business community adding to existing mechanisms. The provisions fall within devolved competence as they affect business support policy and the consent of the Scottish Parliament will therefore be required to extend the measure to Scotland. Secondly, on capping public sector exit payments, the second measure outlined in the LCM is to provide regulation making powers for Scottish ministers in respect of the cap and public sector exit payments. UK Government intends to limit public sector exit payments to a maximum of £95,000. The measure provides for Scottish ministers to make similar regulations in respect of devolved Scottish public bodies. It would be for Scottish ministers to determine if and how they want to take forward such proposals. My officials have sought views across the Scottish public sector and trade unions on this measure. Most respondents were in favour to ensure that the proper consideration could be given to Scottish circumstances should there be any prospect of such a cap being introduced but commented that the UK proposals were overly prescriptive. Ministers therefore have an idea of the ranges of issues and concerns and have not made any decision as to how the cap might apply to devolved Scottish public bodies. We have committed to consult fully before making regulations to enact the power, including on such issues as exemptions from the cap and delegation of decision making powers. In its correspondence with the UK Government in October 2015, the DFM indicated his support of the measures, subject to two points. First, that £95,000 is not specified on the bill as Scottish ministers want to have full flexibility over the powers to set the level of any cap from the outset, as well as to vary it. Secondly, that the delegated authority is extended to allow Scottish ministers to make regulations around the capping of public sector exit payments in relation to civil servants working for the Scottish Government. Both of those revisions would be more consistent with the devolution of responsibilities for public sector pay, terms and conditions and exit payments. HMT officials finally offered a response last Friday. They are clear that Scottish ministers could determine their own level of exit payment caps and, if they chose a different figure, that could be set out in the Scottish regulations at the outset. From a presentational point of view, it may have been better if there had been something expressed in the bill, but legally the position is fine and we are content. In relation to the issue about Scottish civil servants and the Scottish administration being covered by the UK regulations, whilst Cabinet Office have already delegated authority to Scottish ministers in respect of terms and conditions and voluntary severance, the powers to make regulations in relation to those civil servants remains with UK ministers. HMT officials have not said whether they intend to provide this delegation now, though it would remain something that could be done at any time. We will continue to press them on the issue. The potential benefits to the Scottish public sector of ministers holding regulation making powers are such that we would want to progress the self-cm even if UK ministers were not content to agree the points raised in the DFM's letter. The Scottish Government recognises that the current position of voluntary severance may not always provide the best outcome for the Scottish public sector. The powers proposed under the bill provide sufficient flexibility to allow them to be adapted to suit the Scottish public sector landscape. Once the regulation making power is vested in Scottish ministers, it would be for Scottish ministers to determine if and how they want to take forward such proposals. That provision affects the executive competence of Scottish ministers and the consent of the Scottish Parliament and will therefore be required to extend the measure to Scotland. Finally, in the Green Investment Bank, an amendment was introduced to the bill on 14 October last year to repeal the Green Investment Bank provisions of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 in support of privatisation. Given the lack of consultation or reassurance on the privatisation process and the UK view that no Scottish legislative consent was required, the in-principle support offered to the UK Government in early October for the Enterprise Bill was rescinded until further notice. Following constructive dialogue between UK and Scottish Governments, reassurances were received from the Secretary of State for Business and from Lord Smith of Calvin, chair of the Green Investment Bank, in relation to protecting the green purpose of the bank and the importance of the bank's Edinburgh headquarters and employees. All correspondence on this matter have been made available to Parliament. On this basis, the strategic decision was taken to not to further pursue an LCM in relation to the Green Investment Bank amendments, and the previously expressed in principle agreement to legislative consent was reinstated. Thank you, minister, for that explanation. I have two members who have questions to ask just before I come to them. I can just ask a couple of questions in relation to what you have said. First of all, in relation to the Small Business Commission, or clearly that is something from what you have said that the Scottish Government is supportive of, can you tell us how much that is likely to cost the Scottish Government, given that it looks like the costs of this are to be shared between UK and Scottish Government? I have a figure here somewhere that I read yesterday evening, and which I suspect will be produced in front of me in very short order. I think that the costs to be seen will be relatively modest. The problem is very substantial, and we welcome this step, but we do not think that it will be enough. We do not think that it will be enough. Meeting with the FSB Glasgow region in a very cordial engagement late last year, many of us here who were there were left with the clear impression that late payment is an endemic and an unaddressed problem in many respects in the UK. There is a very strong feeling that many large companies—I am not going to name any of them—take advantage of their relative strength in the bargaining position and wait many, many, many months before payment is made. Moreover, many small businesses feel constrained in speaking out for fear of losing custom, where they seem to be putting it bluntly trouble makers, as perceived from the large business point of view. That is a very serious problem, and the Scottish Government feels that it does not have sufficient powers to legislate entirely on itself. Although I should say that we have, and this is a very important convener, and I have been involved in this in some respects, taken steps to ensure that, so far as the public sector is concerned, the payment of public sector to small businesses and businesses in general is something that is conducted in a far more satisfactory way. The evidence that we have on that, if you are interested in, we can share with you because it is an on-going debate. We need constantly to revisit that to make sure that it is operating properly. Yes, the figure in my cranial area was £90,000 to £100,000. Those are the estimated costs that we expect at the moment to be attributable to the cost of establishing a small business commissioner. That seems to me to be surprisingly modest, convener, so I am going to ask that we, after this meeting, review that to see if, in fact, it is future proof. If there are any further points on that, we will come back to you. The Scottish Government's share of the cost is, presumably, the overall cost is much higher. Yes, that is indeed what you meant. We have about 7 per cent of the total of small businesses in the UK with an estimated 7 per cent of predicted businesses likely to use the commissioner. The UKG has indicated that it will meet the cost of establishing a commissioner. Should that position change, the estimated running costs may be around £90,000 to £110,000. That is based on the analysis of the UK Government consultation and analysis. As I say, that figure looks to me to be small because if 7 per cent of small businesses complain to the commissioner, that will be a lot of complaints. I am not quite sure how they expect such a large volume of complaints to be handled other than in a very cursory, high-level way. Were that to happen, I suspect that we may get the situation if there are complaints about the complaints. Let us not be too gloomy today. Let us say that, in principle, that is a good idea, and that is why we are supporting it. On the face of it, it could have the possibility to tackle a problem. Therefore, as an optimist, I support it, and the Scottish Government cabinet more at the point has supported it. I am clear about this. The £90,000 to £100,000, is that the Scottish Government's share of the cost or is that the total cost? It is the estimated annual running cost for Scotland, maybe, around that mountain. Is that your share? I have one question on the issue of capping the public sector exit payments. How many Scottish public sector payments would have been made which would have exceeded that cap of £95,000? Again, convener, I was somewhat late last night after coming from a trip to Caithness and North Sutherland yesterday. I did read a figure, which is going to be presented to me shortly, but, as officials provide me with this figure, I hope that, to be serious, this is a very significant problem. We all recognise that there have been some pretty serious instances of payments that seem to members of the public and members of Parliament to be excessive. I am not going to go into any examples. I think that that would be an abuse of my position, but we do not really need to think too far or too long. Therefore, this is a legitimate and serious area of concern. Therefore, I very much welcome the fact that the Scottish Government has decided to take a Scottish approach and that the UK Government, to be fair, has largely cooperated in principle with that. I think that that is really all to be welcomed. What we are not doing today is making a decision about what that decision would be. That would be entirely wrong. That would pre-judge entirely a debate, but the need to take some kind of action is recognised and manifest. I think that, in principle, this is something that we entirely support as necessary. I made reference to the preliminary consultation that we had carried out, which indicated that the view of setting one figure was perhaps overly prescriptive. That is a view that, plainly, we would have to look at seriously. Local Government made specific points, as perhaps is not unexpected, but I can give you some initial information from the Scottish Government that, out of 238 applications received for such payments in 2014-15, there were 22 cases that would have been affected by a cap set at £95,000 in some way. I will undertake to do that if it would help, because I appreciate any computations figure statistics are complex and they need to be seen in the round. If that is acceptable right to you confirming the level of the nature of the issue here, but it looks as if it is 22 out of 238 or somewhere under 10 per cent, a significant not an enormous, but nonetheless a significant number of individual cases where, on the face of it, the payments, the reward would have been in excess of the figure of £95,000, which I think that most people would see as a very large payment indeed. Thank you. Good morning. Still on the issue of public sector exit payments, the end of paragraph 15 of the memorandum reads that trade unions have been more forceful in asking the Scottish Government to reject the UK Government's proposals, and you touched on this, minister, on your opening remarks. I wonder if you could just expand on what the nature of those objections were and how the Scottish Government responded to them. I am not excited on that. I will ask Mr Ronson to expand on that, and if he is not able to do so at the moment, we can certainly write to you with some more details. Well, the time constraint imposed by the UK Government timetable prevented any formal consultation, so what we did in about the latest autumn last year was a very quick feedback exercise and the public bodies and unions and so on that we approached understood that it was a very quick and dirty if you like. Most of the respondents were in favour of ministers taking relevant powers to ensure that proper consideration could be given. Many respondents commented that the proposals were overly prescriptive and that there were other routes for setting voluntary early severance and early retirement payments at an appropriate level. Local Government has indicated that they would wish to continue discretion over their own arrangements, and the trade unions have been more forceful in asking the Scottish Government to reject the UK proposals. As I said, it was a very quick and dirty exercise. It was over a period of two or three weeks. We are fed back to the Scottish ministers, and at that moment they are still considering how they want to take forward whether they want to take these regulations. I acknowledge that this may come up if a future decision is made to use these powers, but given that we have not had anything more than what is written in the paragraph in front of us, it would be helpful to hear something in writing about the nature of the objections that were raised and how they were responded to by the Government. I think that it has been made clear already, both by myself and Mr Ronson, that the initial consultation was of necessity. A pretty quick exercise carried out, not the thorough consultation that this issue merits. Therefore, I am not really sure that we are able to say much more than we have done. To be fair, I think that the trade unions, with whom we work extremely closely in all matters, are very capable of speaking for themselves and should have the opportunity to do so, if they so wish. You referred rightly to the prospect of privatisation of the green investment bank as one of the significant aspects of the bill. You explained the concerns that you had about a privatised bank ceasing to focus on green investment priorities and about the possibility of that bank moving away from Edinburgh. You said that you received reassurances that satisfied you. Can you tell us what steps would have followed had you not been satisfied with those reassurances? That is a hypothetical question, so that is not where we are. We were very concerned about two matters principally and one matter principle. We did not agree with the privatisation of the new investment bank post-op. Second, on matters of operation, we wanted to make sure that it would remain a green investment bank, not just become an investment bank. Secondly, of course, that the headquarters and associated jobs would be retained in Edinburgh, and that in itself is a subject to some controversy. What assurances did we get? Reassurances on the green purpose were offered by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Sagid Javid MP, in a letter of 3 November, a subsequent letter from Lord Smith of Calvin of the Green Investment Bank on 12 November reaffirms the GIB's board's continued commitment to retaining the headquarters and associated jobs in Edinburgh following privatisation. Although the responses that I summarised and which I believe are available, as I have said, in the Scottish Parliament, do not alleviate all risk following privatisation, it seems to be a pretty reasonable and helpful response from both parties, and it gives us reassurances from the UK Government in areas of importance to Scotland. It is really in the common-sense basis that all those responses were received in good faith from Sagid Javid and from Lord Smith of Calvin, someone of the highest repute, that we felt that the two very serious issues that we raised—Mr Lewis MacDonald rightly raises—were satisfactorily dealt with. In the situation of trust and respect in dealing with Governments, we felt that the conclusion that we reached at that point was one that we reached with justification. We will, of course, continue to monitor this extremely carefully. I have seen the correspondence between Sagid Javid and John Swinney and also the letter from Lord Smith of Calvin. Sagid Javid on 3 November was keen to point out that seeking agreement on a voluntary basis from new shareholders was, quote, the most we can do to secure this, in other words, to secure a green priority approach. It is simply not open to us, the UK Government, to impose more binding conditions that require future owners of green investment banks to act in a particular way. I am keen to understand, given that the minister in charge, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, was keen to point out the limits of assurance that he could give you. He did the same very much so around the issue of the headquarters remaining in Edinburgh. It is important to recognise that only so much Government can do in this matter is what Sagid Javid said and Lord Smith simply expressed his own personal commitment to Edinburgh and his enthusiasm for staying in Edinburgh. Given the limited nature of those assurances, is the minister satisfied that either of those outcomes is guaranteed much beyond the next few months? As I have already said, the reassurances were couched in such terms as it affords us reasonably to reach the conclusion justifying the agreement to the LCM. Those assurances have been provided. I think that the main thing is in good faith. As for guarantees, well, guarantees are not things that are easy to come by in life and in Government. I recall that, in my days as a lawyer, banks provided the guarantees and they had some difficulties, not so long ago, as I recall. I think that it is reasonable to rely on the assurances that are given in good faith by Lord Smith and Sagid Javid. It is fair to point out that the decision to privatise is not one that we support. It is not one that we can prevent. It is not within our power to prevent. Had the constitutional decision in Scotland been different, there would have been a different dynamic, but that is not the case. Power rests in London and we cannot prevent decisions being taken by the UK Government. We have to act in a respectful way towards the people that we deal with, and that is correct. That is what we do. The Deputy First Minister acted entirely appropriately and obtained assurances that are sufficient in their terms. The more important thing, frankly, in relation to this whole area, is that the green renewable industry and investment continues. Perhaps the more substantial question is, of course, the concerns that we have about the fiscal machete having been taken to the destruction of the renewable industry in Scotland and the UK. That really gets to the heart of the issue. Perhaps it is something that is of more direct relevance to the stability and confidence of investors in the green sector. I have, if you like, a grandstand seat here, because I deal with investors from Governments and public companies, both in the UK and first of Scotland, whose confidence in the investing in the sector has, I think, it is fair to say without exaggeration, being undermined by the exercise of said fiscal machete over the last year since the UK election. Perhaps that is the very serious issue, because that determines the viability of the investments for which, if you like, the green investment bank was established to enable. We are here to consider our legislative consent motion, and that answer brings me back to my first question, which it dismissed as hypothetical. Given that new shareholders could change the chair, change the chief executive, relocate the headquarters and resile voluntary agreements with the UK Government, and given that there seems to be some difference of view between the Scottish Government and the UK Government about whether Scottish legislative consent was required to the amendments relating to the green investment bank, what did you come to a conclusion about whether a legislative consent motion was required in relation to those amendments or not? I have quite enough reality to deal with in my working day, without having to spend time in conjecture on hypotheses. I am afraid that, fairly or unfairly, I am going to decline the opportunity to get involved in that. I read out in my opening statement, convener, that the initial view that we took was not to agree. It was only after the assurances were sought and obtained on the key points about which I have been entirely open and candid in those unscripted remarks. It was only after that, for the reasons that I have stated, that we agreed. The answer to your question is that, initially, we said, no, we are not happy with this unless we get assurances that it will continue to be headquartered in Scotland and that the green nature of its activities will continue. I think that that was a reasonable course. I entirely accept that Mr MacDonald might want me to say what our position would have been if things had panned out differently, but, since they didn't, I don't propose to do so. I am simply trying to establish whether you are saying that you didn't agree, could, have, had, force, or not. I think that, with respect, convener, I think that I have answered the point in the way that I have chosen to do it. Mr Brody, what is the question? Just before I do that, Minister, I have to say your comments about the fiscal machete seem rather bizarre, given that the subsidy cut that you are referring to applied to onshore wind projects, which the green investment bank, as you well know, has never supported in terms of its business plan and has no plans to support. I wonder whether the fiscal machete would also apply to your Government's plans to hit the renewable sector with an additional £10 million tax grab by bringing their projects under the remit of the business rates regime for the first time. It is not simply the elimination of the incentive support system for onshore wind. It is the fact that that particular form of renewables was, by experts, a judged beyond paraventure. With respect, minister, we are talking about the green investment bank. The green investment bank was very clear when the green investment bank was set up. The green investment bank was not set up to support onshore wind projects. That is never part of its business plan and never part of its forward plan, so why are you bringing in a totally irrelevant matter into this discussion? With respect, convener, we appreciate that this is becoming a political discussion, but I want to respond. I will tell you what the response is. I know that great many of the companies that were absolutely appalled by the UK's decision to scrap the least expensive to do with the green investment bank. If I may have the opportunity to complete the point, many investors in onshore wind are also investors in offshore wind. The undermining of confidence in one leads to a counterpart risk and, in some cases, actuality of undermining confidence in them all. The argument is that if a Government pulls the rock from our feet in one area where incentives have been promised, what is to prevent them from doing in other areas? I have heard this argument from a great many companies, convener, who are involved in offshore wind. Therefore, the way I put it was not an over-exaggeration. I understand that some of your colleagues take a very condemnatory view of onshore wind. What view are the same companies taking of your Government's tax grab of £10 million a year on renewable energy projects? The business rates measures were introduced by Mr Swinney of an entirely different level of range and scale and will affect existing businesses that are contributing successfully. I do not believe that that measure is a comparator of that order. We are not comparing apples with apples here. Just on the point of the green investment bank, there is no assurance in Sajid Dabid's letter that he can control anything in terms of the privatisation of the retention of the headquarters in Edinburgh. It is a shame that major shareholders in the new company are not indeed employees in Edinburgh. I have a concern as to what may happen with senior members of the green investment bank in terms of their migration to the new company. Is there any caveat in there that says that that will be looked at? We have talked about the capping. That does not stop, as I say, the migration of senior members of the green investment bank currently joining the new company or owning shares in the new company. That is the first question. The second question is, some three years ago, I wrote to the DfM as a European reporter on this committee regarding a meeting that I had with a European commissioner on small businesses with a view to creating a small business commissioner in Scotland. The basis of that was the relationship between the UK and Europe. It was not particularly friendly. I have no reason to feel that that will change, but the basis of putting forward that suggestion was that there was no meaningful application to help small businesses from the European Cosmic Small Business Fund, which amounts to €2.3 billion over the period 2020. Again, I see nothing in the enterprise bill that will address that. I see nothing in the LCM that indicates what a supportive, I will put that in inverted commas, supportive role there might be from a small business or a small business commissioner in Scotland. Regarding the second point, not for the first time, Mr Brodie has raised an interesting point and one that I hadn't anticipated would form part of the debate this morning. Out of fairness in him, we will go away and look at it carefully, particularly if the reference to the scale of the potential funding involved from Europe. I can say more generally that the officials dealing with European development funding are very attuned to the possibilities and the need to use available funding to assist small businesses. That is very much part of our plan or programme for the next wave of funding, and that is something of which I have taken an interest in bringing together Scottish Government officials to discuss with the Federation of Small Business and Other Bodies as rightly so. However, we will take away, if I may convener Mr Brodie's point and come back to him on that. No need to apologise. We are all working as a team here, sort of. I have a little team here, so I will pass to the member of the team, Stuart Febister, to answer the first question. Mr Brodie's first point. I do not think that there is anything in the correspondence, I am not aware of anything in the correspondence about guarantees for senior staff. The point that I would make is that there is not a separate company being created, privatisation will retain the same company, the same legal entity, so there is no automatic conclusion that there is a need for transfer of senior staff or anything like that. Shareholdings would need to be transferred in privatisation. I am not going to ask you a hypothetical question and I am not going to ask you something that is not on the agenda, but I work for the Royal Bank of Scotland, and I get made redundant with the Royal Bank a number of years ago. Can I ask that you honestly believe the assurances that you have been given in regards to the green investment bank? I have covered the approach that we have taken. I think that it is an approach that is correct, and part of the reason why it is correct is that it is given by the cabinet secretary in the UK Government, and it is given by Lord Smith, someone of unchallenged repute in his personal dealings. Mr McDonald is quite rightly pointing to things that could happen in the future. I am not, if you like, challenging that we are not able to predict with absolute clarity and certainty what the future may hold. However, as of here and now, as in the Government, as the nature of the way in which we take decisions, we take decisions that take account of issues such as the nature of the assurances and the persons from whom they are received. I think that the decisions that we have taken are the right decisions for the reasons that I have said. Without casting any expressions on bankers, they have not actually been provided by bankers. If there are no other questions, I thank the minister and his officials for coming along, and the committee will consider in private session shortly our response to the LCM. We will now have a short suspension to allow a change over witnesses. Thank you very much. We are moving on to item 4 on the agenda, and we are taking evidence from the Longannate task force. I would like to say two things about process issues. John Lamont has had to leave us to attend to parliamentary business elsewhere, and Patrick Harvie is having to leave us shortly to attend to parliamentary business elsewhere, but they may come and go in the course of the meeting so that you are aware that they are not storming out because of something that you have said. Thank you for coming. I apologise to witnesses that we are running a little bit late this morning, but we have until about 11.30 for this session, and the committee was keen to hear from the Longannate task force. I should declare an interest. I am actually a member of the Longannate task force myself. The committee was keen to hear from the task force about the work of the task force, how it is going to take its work forward in supporting the workforce at Longannate, given that we know that closure is now imminent, what the wider plans are for the fife economy and how the economic whole that will be created by the loss of Longannate can be filled. We want to get an understanding more generally of the value of the task forces. I think that I could sit on three Scottish Government task forces, and I think that we are keen to understand what the purpose of a task force is and what the objectives are behind it. I appreciate that there are six of you here. It is quite a large panel, so please do not feel that you all have to try to answer every single question that is asked, otherwise you might be here for some time. Maybe I should start by introducing you all starting from the left, Stephen Boyd, assistant secretary of STUC, Hugh Finlay, who is generation director at Scottish Power, Callum McLean, who is pace manager at Skills Development Scotland, councillor Leslie Laird, deputy leader of Fife Council, Fergus Ewing, Minister for Business, Energy and Tourism at the Scottish Government and Danny Cusick, who is senior director, food and drink, tourism and textiles and location director for Fife Scottish Enterprise. I welcome the opportunity to address the committee on the matter of on-going support for workers, businesses and communities affected by the premature closure of Longallat power station. It is a timely opportunity, given the electricity production at Longallat, due to cease in just over two months' time. Against a backdrop of concerns for energy security linked to shrinking margins across the GB electricity system, particularly the concerns for the consequences for Scotland of losing future power generation at Longallat, the EET committee has recently completed an inquiry into security of supply. The Scottish Government's view of energy security and energy policy is much less sanguine than the view presented in the committee's report, published on 26 October, plugged in and switched on and charged up in ensuring Scotland's energy security. The outlook for winter 1617, following the planned closure of Longallat and a combined loss of some 5 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity across Britain, is a huge concern, given the ageing nature of much of GB's capacity and the fact that investment in new replacement base load capacity is stalled. We have legitimate concerns for the adequacy and stability of Scotland's electricity supplies after Longallat closes, and we have made those concerns known both to the UK Government, indeed from the FM to the PM and to the national grid. In particular, we continue to seek reassurance that the system recovery plan's so-called black start arrangements and the times taken to restore power supplies will be adequate following the loss of Longallat. National Grid and Scottish Transmission Owners are responsible for developing those plans. The Scottish Government has developed effective ways of responding to economic shocks, depending upon their nature, depending on business failure, depending upon a decision to close part of a business or particular difficulties within a sector. Usually, the partnership action for continuing employment, known as PACE, response is sufficient, complemented by business support offered through the enterprise agencies and local authorities. However, in cases where the impact of the economic shock is particularly severe, greater intervention, either locally or nationally led, has been put in place. Such interventions build on the existing available PACE support, as well as general economic development support through local authorities and the enterprise and skills agencies. The task force approach provides a focus to understand the challenge and impact of the economic shock and to explore all potential approaches for support and future activity. Of course, the circumstances surrounding the establishment of task force are always unique. It is essential to emphasise that no two task forces are the same. In fact, everyone is different. The task force enables a bespoke response, responding to the differing circumstances of each event. Where the shock is more localised, local authorities have assumed a leadership role, building effective partnership to respond to the situation in their area. I recognise the extent of the impact of the closure of Llanet will have on Fife, the neighbouring areas and across Scotland. Close partnership working with all partners is essential to ensuring successful outcomes, namely mitigating the prospect of job losses and identifying how the wider business interests can be supported. The Llanet task force will continue to work towards identifying the various needs and requirements prior to the closure. The emerging Llanet economic recovery plan will shape that work going forward. The support that we have had, if I may say, moving off script from the local authority from the company, has been exemplary. The plan that will be developed going forward will set out activities that could re-establish a fair, inclusive jobs market, replacing job opportunities lost and promoting regional cohesion in identifying an after-use for the site. The plan will look at ways to support sectoral diversification to build skills and capitalise on the location of Llanet, the availability of strategic transport connections and local labour markets and business networks. It will also look at how to rebuild community confidence around the site. I am very grateful to have the opportunity to make this statement and look forward to working with the committee both on the Llanet task force and on the general issue of the use of task forces. I am quite keen in the course of this session that we do not spend a lot of time going over a debate on energy policy. We have done that many times in the past and I think that it was more important for this session to focus on the work of the task force and how we help to replace the jobs that are going to be lost and the broader question of regeneration. In that context, I might start off by asking the minister to come in as well. The task force has been established. Its work will, presumably, last for some years, I would expect. Perhaps you can elaborate on that. How are we going to measure its success? At what point are we going to look back and say is it four or five years from now? When will it be? We will say, right, that task force was set up. It did its job because we now have this position in Fife to replace what was lost in Llanet. How will we measure the success of the task force? To answer your question, convener, I think that the primary thing that we have to do in the task force is to focus, as a matter of urgency, with our partners on what can be done in practice. The primary focus has to be on understanding the facts, understanding the nature of the problems, understanding the impacts on people and the economy and doing that as quickly as possible. Where a task force is formed, it is because there is a very severe shock, not simply a few people losing their jobs, which of course is for them a tragedy, but a very substantial impact of a sort of economically seismic nature to a local community, whether that be Glen Rosses in Fife, whether it be the steel community in Motherwell, whether it be the town of Fraserborough or whether it be in Llanet. Each of those is entirely different, but it is important to say that evaluation is something that comes afterwards. I am sure that you would agree that the primary focus has to be on doing the job, especially on what can be done in a practical nature. To answer your question about evaluation, that is something that comes later. I can provide it. I do not know if you want me to do so at this point, but we have, thanks to officials, Scott, an outcome that has been in relation to the Fife task force, for example, a breakdown of those who have received full-time work and training. The Fife task force is for Tullus Russell. Indeed, it is interesting to say that. We cannot do that for Llanet because Llanet has not closed. One of the actual benefits of working together before the closure with the company is that we can plan for what is about to happen, not after workers have received, as they did in this graceful case of the Ayrshire, the Ashley case, the USC, where workers were told that they were being made redundant on the spot and where the company refused to respond to our letters. By contrast, the relationship with Scottish power has been one of very close engagement in partnership, and we have worked very closely with Hugh and his colleagues. That, of course, is the benefit that, for the workforce involved, they have got a period, in this case, of about 18 months to prepare and plan for life beyond Llanet—a great sadness, a great shock, a great loss, but one that, on a human level, thanks to the approach that this enlightened company has taken, we are able to plan much more efficaciously. I am very interested to hear, because I am hogging the show at the moment, what my colleagues in Fife Council and Hugh Finlay from Scottish Power say about that. I should also say that, in the case of Llanet, it is not only Fife, Fife are perhaps the greatest impact, but I think that some of the local authority colleagues would also say that they are equally affected in the area as well and are represented on the task force, as you well know, convener. However, evaluation has difficulties. Nobody has got a duty to come and report to Fergus Ewing. By the way, I have a job now. A lot of people will just get on with their lives, go and get a job for themselves, and there is no duty to report. How we find out about those things is through pace doing evaluations by sending out questionnaires to people, and that is the basis upon which statistical data is obtained about individuals. The measurement of economic impacts is much more complex, because logically the exercise can only be done after a forensic comprehensive encyclopedia, a picture of the actual benefits of Scottish power to the supply chain and then an analysis of what has happened to the loss of the injection of money into that supply chain. Intellectually, convener, I am hoping to persuade you that evaluation is not an easy or simple process. We have a method of dealing with it specifically in relation to people, and rightly so. Pace can talk about that in a lot more detail than I can, but as to the more slightly nebulous concept of wider economic impacts, direct and indirect, it is intellectually difficult to find a method of evaluation of that serious impact that does not involve disproportionate costs. However, Danny Cusack might be able to address that conceptual problem in more detail if convener and members wish to do so. I invite Councillor Laird if she wants to contribute to that question. How will we look back in five years' time and say that task force was a success? I think that I would start by reiterating the point that each task force is different, and you have got some experience of the Tullish Russell one. The circumstances were very different that led to that establishment. The Longannate task force has a broader reach, not just for Fife, but through the central belt, through to the west. Therefore, the way that you would approach that has got to be different. In any of the task forces, we need to look carefully at what the short, medium and long-term objectives that we are trying to accomplish out of that task force. The short term is fairly clear in that there is a human impact, a job loss and an impact not just at an individual level, but an impact on communities. Therefore, it is important that we take the mitigating actions as a task force to address those aspects, which are within our gift and our control to do something about. Broadly, we touch on a wider question, which is what are the wider ramifications when we have sudden impacts to local economies, and how do we plan, assess and prepare a better, more resilient workforce in our communities and a stronger economic infrastructure around which we want to take forward? If we go to the Longannate task force, there are six work streams that are effectively looking at those short, medium and long-term areas. It will be for, as we work through the task force, to flesh out what we think are the medium to long-term impacts. Some of those are, for example, to address areas such as the lack of incubator and small business growth units in the second cardin area, so that might be something that we would want to explore further as that task force. In terms of measurement of that, the measurement clearly needs to be further down the road about when we have managed to attract or develop or grow and sustain businesses in that. It is, as the minister says, a very complex picture, but you have to have some objectives in mind in those timescales, and you have to be clear about your objective. I reiterate that point by saying that task forces take up a lot of resources, a lot of time, a lot of contributions not from just the officials here, but from all the people who are from those various organisations and working to try to deliver that. We should not recognise the amount of time and effort and money that that costs not just to write the plan, but to deliver the plan. It is the delivery that will test out whether we have done a good job or not in terms of our planning. If I could, I think that the concept of how we do measure is an important one, but it is also a whole complex, as minister and councillor have mentioned. The impacts are not just on businesses that are across communities, people and businesses themselves. I know that each of the agencies that we will be putting together a measurement and evaluation framework that will try to track our interventions. In relation to Skills Development Scotland, they will be trying to track as much as possible, where people who are directly involved are redeployed and where jobs go. From our perspective, we are looking to track all of our interventions, supporting companies that have been immediately affected or in the immediate areas. By tracking those interventions, we can then look at how many projects have been accelerated, how many jobs have been created over time and then, through a formal measurement evaluation, try to get some sense of the collective inputs. Has it mitigated the effect of what we know at the moment? Was the effect of the economic impact worst case scenario? There is a framework and a governance structure in place, and we will be taking that seriously to look at how we intervene and what the outputs of those interventions are creating. I think that it is just an answer to your question about measuring success. It is tremendously difficult and it is quite helpful to think about what are expectations of task forces that are established in circumstances such as this. In the first instance, it is clearly about assisting individuals who are in danger of losing their jobs. In general terms, we can maybe come back to some of the specifics, but generally speaking, task forces do a reasonable job. In that respect, in that instance, it is certainly assisted by working with a responsible employer and having a reasonable time frame of which to deal with the issues, which is not always the case. Secondly, it may be more important in terms of general discussion. To what extent is it reasonable to expect task forces established in these circumstances to deal with long-standing problems of economic development in many of Scotland's communities? Problems that have been pretty intractable in some areas, and I think about probably the best-using example would be the coal task force established as you know. I remember the very sudden collapse of the surface mining sector in Scotland. I attended some of those task force meetings out in Cumnock. East Ayrshire has got very long-standing, deeply ingrained problems of economic development. Can a task force that is established in the short term, in such circumstances, really begin to address those problems? I am not entirely sure that it can, and maybe what that suggests is that we need a different kind of task force with a much longer term viewing outlook to start looking at those kind of issues. Okay, thanks. There is a range of issues that you have raised that are very interesting. I am quite keen to bring in Patrick Harvie because I know Patrick needs to leave the committee shortly. I know that he had a specific question that he wanted to ask. Well, thank you, convener. The other committee that I am having to go to has been delayed a bit, so I have got a little longer, but the question that I wanted to raise was relevant to the last point that Stephen Boyd made, so it is helpful to bring it in now. The minister, quite rightly in his opening remarks, talked about some circumstances where we do not have foreknowledge, where we are thrown into an urgent situation and have to respond reactively, but there are situations where foreknowledge is coming. Whether there is a disagreement about whether it is necessary or not, but the long-anit plant is closing a little bit earlier, a few years earlier than anticipated, but it has been anticipated that this plant was coming to the end of its life for quite some considerable time. Would it not be helpful if all of that intensive activity that Councillor Laird was talking about began at a calmer pace much earlier, so that we are looking at building this into the Government's economic planning rather than merely being reactive when a situation like the end of burning coal for electricity has been anticipated for a long time? I am not sure whether the phrase foreknowledge is coming means anything, but I think that I get the general drift. Having done so, I would refute the assertion that there was any kind of panic or unseemly rush or lack of pre-preparation. First of all, Mr Finlay is here. He is the man who can talk about long-anit with more authority and passion than anybody else on this planet, but long-anit should not have closed. I am answering this convener because the question has been put. It should, in my opinion, have continued to do the great job that it has been doing for Scotland for the last several decades, at least until the end of this decade. You have been in the convener in the boardroom, long-anit. There is a picture on the wall showing the employees. Long-anit 220 is the slogan on the wall and the professionalism and the enormous investment by Scottish power in long-anit, which was made not in the last 20, 30 years but in the last 10 years. I believe that it was something that should have been utilised in various ways. I am not reopening the rights and wrongs of the UK Government's failure to respond in any meaningful way to repeated requests and arguments, but I would say that, very shortly after it became evident, convener, that the PM was not for turning to kind of phrase and that there was going to be no intervention from the UK and there was nothing more that we could do, nothing at all. Very shortly after that, immediately after that, as far as I am concerned, we then turned to working with our colleagues in the council and the company to address the consequences. I think that Mr Harvey has raised a fair point in general, but I do not think that it applies to this situation. It is quite the converse. Precisely because we have had a considerable lengthy period before the closure, the workforce of it had a bit of time to think about things. We have had time to engage with Stephen and his colleagues, Hugh and Leslie, and we have done that in detail. I know that the company can talk about opportunities within Scottish Power for some people. Other people were fairly close to retirement. I met some of them more than once because I visited the plants several times and others were highly skilled. My feeling was then that an awful lot of those guys will find other jobs without a great deal of difficulty, although they would choose not so to do. I refute the suggestion, Mr Harvey, utterly. On the converse, we have sought to make the best of a situation that we felt very strongly should never have a reason. I certainly did not accuse the Government of panic. That is not a word that I used. However, the Government's own documents in energy policy have anticipated something like 2020 as the end of the operational life of the plant. I wonder if any of the other witnesses would share the view, which Stephen Boyd seemed to be heading toward, that a longer-term piece of work for a task force like this, looking at the past 10 years of the operational life of a plant like this, would give us the preparation to know that, if closure was to happen a few years earlier, we have already begun a lot more of that work rather than having a great deal of that intensive activity that Councillor Laird was talking about retrospectively after an announcement has been made. If I am speaking from Scottish Power's point of view, and I do not want to go back into economics, it has been presented to the committee in the past as to why that took place. However, once that decision has been made, I am not sure how you prepared for that beforehand from my point of view. My focus now is on staff and all the people we have and the people who have been impacted by that. From the task force point of view, we met as a task force before a firm commitment to close was made, and that has been very useful for us. It has been very useful. We have strong engagement with the trade unions and the position that we are in as a company is as strong as it can be from that point of view and the partnership that we work with. The reality of it from a staff point of view is that, at the time, we started with 236 people employed by Scottish Power at Long Annat. Of that, 16 have left and taken up new roles in other companies through their own way. 152 have come forward, as the minister said, who are in a retirement position where they can take the advantage of the retirement package that is offered, which is quite substantial. A number of them may want to go on and seek for their employment going forward, but they are in a much better position than they would have been without that. In that 27, we are then redeployed across our own company, across the whole business, and we have about 17 per cent of staff who want to remain with Scottish Power, who we have not been able to sort yet. On 17 per cent—one is far too many, but on 17 per cent being somewhere a lot south, further south than I expected at the time. From our point of view and managing the people who are involved, that is for me where the focus has to be on that right now. We are in a good position and we have still got some time between now and the full decommissioning of the station to try and work with the number who are left and get them work elsewhere. In that, we have been supported by PACE. We have brought in other companies, about eight or nine companies, Police Scotland, Wears, Ineos and so on, and we have made presentations to staff. We have got a really skilled workforce and so there are still opportunities. The timescales that we have had, we have to be very sensitive to that. We have done that and that has flowed through into a situation in which we need to keep working at, but it is in a pretty strong position at the moment. In those circumstances, early intervention is absolutely crucial. It is interesting that the circumstances in the eight or nine months that we have had here are pretty good compared to many other instances. It is interesting to think back to when PACE was established in the early part of the last decade. The original intention was always that PACE would initially look at the company that was in trouble and look at various ways of saving that company, look for a new buy or look for employee buyouts, that kind of thing, look at ways that could change the employee ownership, but that never happened. Why did that not happen? Well, because companies do not want to engage with either agencies, Government or very often, in most circumstances perhaps, their workforce when they are coming up to a situation like that. There is also some barriers often to them doing so. You look at the ownership structures in the Scottish economy and we are very often talking about branch managers here who can hear about these kinds of decisions quite far down the line. Although we all agree that intervention is crucial, and we have had a couple of work streams in PACE over the past few years looking at this, making it work in practice is really tremendously difficult, and I do not think that we should underestimate that. It is something that we have all been trying to make happen, as I say, for over a decade, and it is really tremendously difficult. I think that what I was getting at my answer to the previous question was that there are apparently intractable problems of economic development in many of our communities around about Scotland, and perhaps given that there are unreasonable expectations placed on task forces established around industrial closures to perhaps begin to solve some of those problems, maybe looking at a new approach to economic development in those areas is something that would supplement the task force approach in specific industrial closures. We are often facing in PACE situations with companies that, as the minister said, go into administration like Tullis Russell, and we have no time. We have a very comprehensive monitoring and evaluation programme for PACE. We follow up every customer who receives an in-depth service, and what comes back consistently from our research is that the earlier we can get in front of employees to deliver services, the better. I think that, from memory, three to six months is the optimal time for that. Certainly, in the case of Scottish Power, as has been said, we have had very good co-operation and support from both Scottish Power and Right Management, who are their out-placement agency, and the feedback that we received both from unions and employees and the company is that the timing is right in this intervention. We have been working since before Christmas with employees, and I can provide more detail on that. In terms of the timing of support, we have enough time to do the job in hand. I will add a couple of points. Stephen Boyle's points are well made about the wider economic infrastructure and how he responds to that. Five councils, when there was the suggestion that Long Annat was closing, we certainly were proactive in approaching the Scottish Government and asking for a task force to be formed, particularly off the back of the Tullish Russell announcement. We felt that it was important to get on the front foot, just as you suggested, and to start where we could to make plans. However, there is a balance to be struck between being premature in that and undermining business confidence, so it is a very delicate balance for politicians to try and reach. Nonetheless, it is better to be proactive than to be coming in later in the day and trying to respond to issues on the ground, so it is that balance to be struck. However, I think that the point going back to Patrick Harvie's point about the wider economic assessment is truly important, and I think that it is the committee that is raising a good question here. If we look, for example, at the impact on the oil industry right now and the repercussions and the waves that are likely to occur from that, in five we have been taking stock and assessing with our manufacturing sector what will be the implications of that flow through into five, because in five we still have around 12 per cent of our industry is manufacturing sector engineering led. Clearly, we want to understand early what that fallout is likely to be and what, if anything, we can do as a council to facilitate dialogue, opportunity for like-minded people to get together and to look at what interventions are possible. I think that it is absolutely essential that there is the scanning of the economic horizon and understanding that, instead of having a task force coming in at the back end, what should we be having at the front end that is scanning the horizon and assessing what is coming and putting the time and effort in place to some of the more proactive economic development activity? Is it being focused in the right areas, given some of the legacy issues, that communities across Scotland are still having to deal with? Thanks, and good morning. Perhaps I could address Council Alert in the first instance, because we are looking at, as you have said, being very proactive. You have a job sphere coming up, 28 January. How responsive have the external organisations and agencies been for that job sphere? I think that what we have seen in Fife is that we have a very proactive economic development team in Fife. Our officers have very strong relationships with the business community. We are very proactive in making sure that we have those relationships. When situations like that arise, we have a good network of businesses that we can connect to and understand what opportunities there might be for redeployment. That was well demonstrated through the Tullish-Russell workforce. We also have very strong relationships with Danny, the PACE team and the trade unions. It is the working of those relationships on-going that means that, when something happens, you can very quickly mobilise those resources. I think that that has been well demonstrated across the two task forces. You have had a good response in terms of the people who are going to come in terms of the job sphere. Well, colleagues who are organising that are probably better placed to talk specifics about that response. We have gone out to Scottish Enterprise's account-managed companies with connections to Fife Council. We have gone out through SEED. Employers are coming in. As of two days ago, we had approximately 12 to 15 employers. That includes large employers such as Ineos, GSK, Scottish Water, Lockheed Martin, Wears Engineering and a number of recruitment agencies. In addition to those agencies, we will also have guidance and support agencies provided through PACE. That is very helpful. Does that match in terms of the workforce that are seeking future employment in terms of diversity? There is probably no quick answer to that question because each member of the workforce is treated as an individual and may have multiple career goals. If you are an engineer, you may want to stay within the power generation sector. You may want to move to another sector such as food processing engineering or defence engineering. You may wish to set up your own business, so often people have a number of career options. We try to spread the net as widely as possible as we can. I know that Scottish power has been very proactive in linking into local employers such as Ineos and GSK. Wherever there is a clear intention of a job goal from a member of staff, we will try to bring an employer to them. We have heard about the fact that there is an impact on the human element for each individual and their families. In each job loss, someone may have been the minister who said that it was a tragedy in itself. Have you had any engagement with the Fife health board in offering support to individuals in addressing the impact on their mental health? Have you engaged with any of the banks to ensure that they are sympathetic to those who have been made redundant or who yet have to find future employment? The first question is to Councillor Laird. I personally have not had contact with health. I know that Scottish power has a strong support structure for its employees, so I would refer that. We have a very active occupational health department, so councillors are available to staff who want to talk their own way of offered all-staff financial advice. We set up classes right across a broad spectrum from basics to interviewing, preparing CVs and stuff like that, to prepare people for other things through to support whether it is counselling, general chatting or whether it wants to take up further. All of that is available to every member of staff. I think that those matters are matters for the company that they have dealt with responsibly and for the agencies involved. My role as the convener of several task forces is to work very closely with everybody to provide overall coordination to quickly determine what, if anything, practically can be done in a whole range of areas such as training, business growth, community regeneration, infrastructure, future use of the site and environmental mitigation. As Mr Boyd and Mr Harvie have pointed out, each task force has a different focus. The coal task force, for example, did great work in achieving the ORR's agreement to persuade them not to hike up the costs of freight per tonne. We did that. It would not have happened, I do not think, convener, had we not questioned the ORR's stronger word before the task force. If the task force had not been there, it would not have happened. It then went on to review planning processes for restoration. The TATA task force, by contrast, has focused almost exclusively on the twin tasks of identifying a commercial operator to take over the two Scottish sites ideally and to make more viable that is a proposition by addressing cost issues. Each task force has a different focus and we work very closely, particularly with local authorities, as is expected with Leslie and with David, the council convener, in the case of Fife. If it is necessary to address particular other issues such as health issues or approach banks, then we do that, but we do not start off by doing that. We start off with a focused inquiry on what the matter in hand entails and what we can usefully do. I think that one of the good things to emerge pretty quickly from the task force was the ScotRail recruitment of DB Schenker drivers. When it was confirmed that Longannock would close, ScotRail discussed with DBS the potential recruitment of 60 DBS rail freight drivers affected. ScotRail advised that they would welcome applications, although those would need to be assessed. That led to former DBS drivers being successful in taking up positions with ScotRail, not many, but for every individual that was the result. It happened because of the initial focus that led to that problem, and then we went to ScotRail to see if they could help, and they were able to help. That is a kind of practical example that arguably could have emerged anyway, but with the task force focus and the huge work that Leslie has mentioned, perhaps it emerged sooner than it may otherwise have done. I wonder if I may ask just one question, although I know that we are not going back in the policy, but it was very instructive that when Amber Rudd and Stephen Lovegrove were in front of the deck committee, after Longannock's closure being announced, Stephen Lovegrove said that following the European Union's third energy package of gem is effectively saying that there has to be a form of differential pricing transmission, so that the generating plant is not responding to irrational, irrational economic pressures. You talk about the part of my horse getting out before the door has been closed. I wonder if I may ask Callum McLean. Last night, after about 18 months of work, I was privileged to hold a member's debate about the heavy goods vehicle driver crisis. We are short of 11,000 drivers in Scotland. The demographics are such and the entry position is such that that is going to impact business. What regular dialogue do you have with Schools Development Scotland, or do they have with you to tell you where there are? I am not suggesting that everybody at Longannock wants to be a lorry driver, but what on-going discussion do you have just to keep ahead of the game in terms of what they perceive to be a shortage in particular indices? I know that colleagues with an SDS who have responsibility for specific sectors have regular dialogue with heavy goods associations. I do not have the detail of that. That happens to me at the case in point. Surely we should be ahead of the game, and I am not laying that at your door. We should be ahead of the game in terms of indicating what the demand is. In terms of the dialogue with the HDVI and other sectors, we have a team of sector managers whose job it is to engage with industry, to have a forward look at industry needs and to articulate them through skills investment plans. That is fed down into our one-to-one guidance process, which is there to support everyone who is under threat of redundancy. In that case, we are advising not only Longannock but also a number of supply chain companies. Everyone who is in the position of being under threat of redundancy is offered one-to-one consultations and the opportunity to identify training that might meet their needs and a system to get a job in the labour market, and that would include HGV training, bus driving training, et cetera, et cetera. The knock-on effect that I made when I was accusing is that we talked about food and drink, particularly exports. Getting HGV drivers to take seafood and drum and carpine helped in the debate last night. Getting drivers to take our exports to whatever port of exit there is is extremely difficult. Not everyone wants to be a lorry driver, but it is a highly paid job. I am surprised that there seems to be no mention of that when I have talked to those who lead the industry. I will certainly report back with the discussions that colleagues have had. In terms of every individual, a discussion about training options is on the table, and that is certainly one of the things that we would discuss with them. To give you some reassurance, there is well-developed dialogue across the skills degen across all our key sectors, so there are skills development plans as Calum alluded to. So, on the food and drink, there is a team looking from skills development Scotland and from industry. We had to drag them to the table to put out a survey that closes today to put out a tender to do a full survey on the HGV market, so they have not been at the table. Perhaps on the logistic side of it not, but certainly from the immediate skills required for the industry, that is a focus that looks at the industry requirements and takes that through to both training schools and further education. I will raise a related point about this convener, which is that one of the many benefits that Mr Boyd and Mr Finlay have said about having a bit of time is that if any of the workforce involves in any of the areas where there is a severe shock or any worker has 18 months or a year to decide what he or she wants to do, then if the plans include going back to college or university, that time can be used to make an application to get on a course. If you do not hear until the day before that you are being sacked, then, of course, the next available course that you want to do might not start for six or nine months or a year hence. We work, and I should have said this initially, and I apologise to the colleges and universities that we work extremely closely with, as appropriate. We have had great support in Fife in particular who have risen to the challenge. I have a table showing the number of workforce in Tullis Russell that has decided to pursue various diverse types of training, but where there is more notice than in a human level, there is a bit of time for planning and somebody can think, I fancy doing something entirely different. I will just go back to college or university. That is much easier to do in a long-annate Scottish power process than it is where the workforce here, the day before, is getting the P45. I would probably reflect Mr Brodie's point fairly accurately. In Fife, we took a view very early in our administration that we needed to have a more accurate assessment of matching skills with training. We undertook a partnership study with Professor Alan MacGregor of Glasgow University to assess more accurately what the demands were and what the skills requirements were. What we have been implementing over the past few years is an alignment of that plan. We are making sure, for example, that the Fife economy is focused around delivering the skills that businesses in Fife and beyond need, because we need to recognise that it is a global market and not to become parochial in our skillset. It is also about understanding the relationships between education and the colleges and making sure that that pipeline is working effectively. It is not a simple case, but it comes back to my earlier point. If you are not regularly scanning the horizon and understanding what is changing, you will obviously not be connected by how things are changing in the market. That is what we are attempting to do in Fife, but from some of the examples that we have discussed today, you can see that it is a very dynamic picture and that it is changing all the time. My question to the committee is, how do we get better mechanisms that are being more proactive in scanning that market and that we are ahead of the game and not catching up? What surprises me is that I think that the Government and the ministers and the leaders of industry and the trade unions are doing the best job that they can in the circumstance. What I do not understand is why each of the councils—you can tell me why I am wrong—each of the councils do not have an a priori list of their major employers and regularly meet them. They may do that, but regularly meet them to see what their financial situation is, what the market conditions are, employment conditions. That does not seem to be happening in the economic development teams. Certainly, in some of the councils that I have talked to. In the context of what has been happening more widely in local government, there has been 40,000 job losses. If you are protecting front-line services, that often means that things such as economic development are one of those areas that unfortunately get targeted. I am pleased to say in Fife that that is not the case. We are proactive. We have a register of our top 250 companies. We regularly dialogue and meet. We have officers who are matched to those companies, so we have a kind of relationship management basis. I regularly go out and meet businesses. I hold different forums with cross sections of the business community in Fife. It is about having the time and the resources, but it is also about having the strategy and the plan that says that you are very clear about what you are trying to achieve. I come back to my earlier points. What is your short, medium and long-term objectives and how are you delivering those on the ground? That is what we are attempting to do in Fife. Yes, I run a company in Fife and I know how well Fife does. I will add to that from a Scottish Enterprise perspective across a portfolio of 2,500 companies at any one time. Each of those companies has dedicated account managers, so that dialogue is happening on an ongoing basis. In relation to the immediate long-gannot, there are 189 account managed companies across Fife, Clifmanishire and Falkirk. That dialogue is continuing on going to understand the requirements and to identify where we can accelerate or support growth projects. It is important to make a couple of general points that, backing up what Councillor Lair and Danny Cusack have made, there is on-going work entirely apart from task forces, the bread and butter work of the Enterprise Network of Business Gateway. Business Gateway has assisted 801 new start businesses in Fife. Danny was beat me to it to refer to the companies that were working as account managed companies. In 2015 to date, five RSA projects have been approved in Fife, totaling £540,000 in the creation of 39 jobs. Most of the work convener, as I think you well know, goes on under the radar behind the scenes because it is good news that it is not really featuring very much in the press prints and the people involved know about it, but it does not really hit the headlines. Secondly, there is an entirely separate area of work where we work with the Enterprise Network, with local authorities, but also with insolvency petitioners, early intervention to get, if you like, advanced confidential forewarning of potential industrial difficulties in companies. A lot of the work that I am involved with relates to that confidential work. The relationships that we have built up with ICAS, with insolvency petitioners allow us, in confidence, to try to address difficulties behind the scenes, in some cases averting administration, in some cases looking post-administration at how the business, if it is viable and profitable, or could be made such, could be continued. There is a whole range of other work, aside from task forces, which we try to do to the best of our ability. The last point that I make is that I am aware that Fife's economic team is extremely proactive. The whole business breakfasts, both myself and John Swinney have attended them. I have visited a number of companies recently and frequently, Oceaneering, FMC, BiFab, Raytheon and many others in Fife, who are all major employers in Fife and all have different challenges and successes. The work carries on and is the staple of economic development work in Scotland, working together to try to achieve sustainable economic growth and assist people to get and keep their jobs. I need to be very careful about understanding skills, gaps, shortages and mismatches as a consequence of agencies and local authorities not doing their jobs properly. If, for instance, the road haulage industry is facing a skill shortage on that scale, then in the first instance, the road haulage industry has to have a good time to look at itself. Secondly, the long-anit closure is not a secret. The long-anit closure is not a secret to anybody. There is a reservoir of skilled people to be drawn on, so the HGV industry should be writing about it. Calum and his colleagues have organised those jobs spheres. They cannot approach every employer or every industrial sector to be involved in that, but they should be making themselves aware of those opportunities and making the most of them. It has been a very interesting session so far. I am also a member of a task force in Fraserborough, with very different challenges and, in some ways, steeper challenges in relation to people. I think that what Hugh Finlay has said about the people position is perhaps more encouraging than I think he himself anticipated at the beginning. The focus on people is absolutely right. I am interested in the other aspect of this issue, which is the impact on community. Clearly, in a case like this, where there has been a high number of highly-skilled and well-paid jobs in technical areas, that suddenly disappears. That has an impact on all the individuals, but it must also have an impact on Cuckardin and the immediate vicinity. I wonder whether members of the task force could comment on that. I am going back to Stephen Boyd's point at the outset that there was a time when the first question that Pace would have asked was whether there was an alternative operator. Clearly, those are not the same circumstances that might have applied 15 years ago, but nonetheless the site itself is clearly of value in itself. Again, I would be interested in what can be said today about the disposal of the site and how that might have connected to economic development for that local community. If I just pick up initially on the site, I think that we need to be just to make people aware. We will close the station on 31 March. We then have nine months of decommissioning and making safe the situation that is there. At that point, even if a decision was made to demolish the building staffing on 1 January 2017, you have got four years to get that. It is a substantial piece of work to bring it down. From now on, we have broadly five years before the site would be in any meaningful way available to do things. That does not stop us, as we have mentioned, in discussing the task force and other offshoots from that. The ability to look at any suggestions for the site is doable where we can work together. Scottish is at a business that is on the site at the moment and we are able to manage things that they can remain there and continue to do what they are doing. We are always open to doing that, but there is a five-year period to get. That is if a decision is made and nothing else changes in that time that we went from now straight through the process before the site would be levelled in a similar position to the one at Kecancy, for instance. That is helpful. I wonder from perhaps the local authority point of view the impact on the immediate neighbourhood of the loss of those jobs. Clearly many of the people involved are at the point of taking early retirement or otherwise being redeployed, but there must also be a community impact. I will make a couple of points. The two task forces that we have had set off, the two companies, had very highly skilled workers. In the Scottish Powers case, very well-trained workers who had on-going training and support and regularly were upgrading their skills. In terms of their marketability when the event happened, they clearly had a skillset that made them attractive to other businesses, and you can see that from the companies that have come into response. The question is more about how we build resilient and sustainable communities going forward. That is part of the work that we need to look at more broadly. How do we ensure that our education system is fit for purpose and that it is not just about education but about building people who are resilient, communities that are able to see wider economic horizon and understand what that means to them and the skills that they need for themselves to continue to keep them marketable and relevant to what is happening? For me, the bit that plays a key part of that is the role of colleges. Regrettably, we have seen at a time when we would want to have more people skilled and going into opportunities to have skills refreshed and updated, the college sector has lost that pivotal role that the college sector has played through the years. If we are really looking at wider economic impact, we need to understand all the levers that contribute to making people resilient in both their skills and in terms of their outlook. If we do that for communities, we stand a better chance. We operate in a global environment. Lots of companies are competing for investment, lots of companies are competing for skills. We need to make sure that we stand out and that starts with putting the right skills with our people in our communities. I will add to reflect the importance of both the community and the site. The council alluded to at the beginning that there are specific and separate strands within the action plan that it is focusing on on both those aspects. Just so that I can follow up the point about the site, it is quite important. It seems to me that there are almost two routes that a task force can go down. One is to say that we have a workforce, we have a school base and we will try to disperse those and find them on other employment elsewhere. Some people will take retirement and some people will go to other jobs elsewhere. On the alternative route, it might be to say that, as I think was attempted at Tullus Russell without a great deal of success, I think. I am trying to find another enterprise that could come in and occupy the site and take up some of the employment. I am interested in getting any thoughts on that. The only enterprise that I was aware of who had any prospects in the area in terms of skilled employment were Clough Natural Resources to come in with their proposal for underground coal gasification in the fourth, which I know that five council were not very enthusiastic about, and they pulled out because there was a lack of political support and policy certainty from the Scottish Government. Should we not be more welcoming of this sort of initiative that could bring in skilled jobs to the area? Five council can speak for itself, but I do not think that those are the two possibilities that disperse or get inward investment. Quite the contrary, my approach in convening task forces throughout the country is based on the essential need to try to engage with the local businesses that are there already, because those who are doing well are able to assist, taking on one, two, three or more jobs, and they all want to help. They want to be asked to contribute. That is why, in Hoik, we will be holding an event for local businesses there and then, in a couple of weeks' time. That is why, in Fraserborough, I held one last week, the week before, last Monday, for local businesses. That led on to two potential actions. By reaching out to local businesses, very often you learn things that are current. You learn about their plans that perhaps they could bring forward. You learn about potential vacancies, which, in the case of Fraserborough, might be assisted by the provision of a local bus service from Fraserborough to an area not far from Fraserborough, but where many of the workers do not have cars and there is no bus service. The approach is to find out the facts locally. Yes, of course, an alternative use of the site is something that is appropriate in some task forces. Yes, of course, inward investment is the answer, but whether it is the Azure, or Veon, or Freshlink, or Fraserborough, or Fife, or Longannet, we need to reach out to local businesses, as well as having the task force, which is a largely public sector event. We also need to have events to reach out to the business community, the local business community. I can assure you, convener, that many local businesses in Fife have risen to the occasion. Incidentally, I think that I am right in saying that Marine Harvest has decided to locate a new plant very recently in Glenrothes in order to conduct a salmon fish processing activity there. It is not correct to say that Fife is a no-go area and an investment either, but that is not necessarily the primary approach to take. Also, by its nature, inward investment plans are a long time in the fishing. I am involved in innumerable projects at the moment that may or may not come to a fishing. What they all have in common, particularly the larger ones, is that they take years, not months to deliver. Therefore, the efficacy from a task force point of view is less good than reaching out to the local business community and the workforce representatives and engaging intensely with them straight away. Is it not a source of regret that the prospect of many hundreds if not thousands of skilled jobs from the proposal from Clough Natural Resources has best been put on the back burner for the time being? I thought that we did not want to debate larger, wider energy issues today, convener. That is your admonition at the beginning. It was a specific proposal to create jobs in the vicinity of Clough Natural Resources. That is why I am afraid that, with respect, I think that you are wrong. Let us assume that you are correct and that project should proceed. We have made our position fairly clear on the moratorium issue on underground co-gasification and on hydraulic fracturing. That is our position, which I will not rehearse right now, because I think that it is very well known. Even where the projects to proceed, those jobs and opportunities would not emerge and arrive for several years to come. What we need to do in a task force situation, as I think that you said a moment ago, is to deal with the immediate shock to communities, individuals and companies. That, if you like, is one of the purposes of task force. The issue of wider energy issues are, I think that Mr Boyd indicated, wider economic and energy policy issues, which is quite right when we debate, but they are just not the focus of what we do in the task force world. First of all, Fife is absolutely open for business and absolutely open for high-quality jobs. That is already demonstrated by some of the employers that we have been talking about today. Looking ahead, which is what we are trying to do and be proactive, that is why we are investing in the Fife energy park, because we have ambitions for Fife. We have a number of key projects emerging and developing, all of which take time to nurture and bring forward. However, the key point that we have to address here is the balance between attracting inward investment and actually growing our own indigenous businesses and making sure that we have the right infrastructures, skills and workforce in place to help and support those. If we come to the long-anit task force, one of the areas that we have recognised is that there are not enough small incubator growth units in that area. It is not just about addressing the problems that we have emerging out of the long-anit. It is looking more broadly and saying, how do we make sure that the economy is set up better for the future? It is taking the opportunity through the task force to do that. I will go back to your point about the clough resources. We had dialogue with the clough resources that our planners did, but I am not aware that we had any specific proposal. However, as a council, we have to balance the needs of business along with the environmental concerns of the community. Until you have matched all those parts up, it would be premature to be welcoming anyone without doing due geladins in the first place. I agree with the minister that the choice presented in your original question convener is perhaps not as stark as it comes across in your question. I also agree with the minister that the work of the task forces can be tremendously helpful in understanding local supply chains and understanding the nature of the local economy. I am concerned about what we have been dealing with in Scotland over the past year and the number of large-scale workplaces in the productive sector, and what that means for both national and local economic resilience, and I think that it is a good way of positing the decorations that we are dealing with. Unless we manage to replace that kind of industrial capacity, local economies will suffer. One of the lessons of Langanna is that it is brought home in very stark terms the scale of the local supply chain and the nature of that local supply chain. It is all very well and good. Of course we should be doing all we can to nurture local small businesses, but local small businesses rely on large-scale productive workplaces to support local demand, to support local supply chains. Unless we manage to replace that scale of workplaces, I do have concerns about what some of the trajectory that some of the local regional economies are on at this moment. I was just to add to both Councillor Llyrden and Stephen's comments. It is about looking at both strands and building the capacity and capability of our companies already in the area and trying to make them as internationally competitive as possible. At the same time, I am sure that we have real opportunities from the point of view of strategic assets or propositions to see what other companies, whether they are in the other parts of the UK or the other parts of the world, can attract to two-fif and to other parts of Scotland. Those strategies are happening. They are complex and they are difficult. As the minister alluded to, they take an enormous amount of time, but that does not prevent us from looking to where we can promote and sell Scotland as a viable place to do business. As we know, our track record on this has been a second to none. We are able to, outside of London, attract the most inward investment of any other region of the UK, and we have done that several years in a row. That focus will not diminish and will still be a very much part of our on-going plans. We are at the end of our time. If there are no members who are desperate to ask a final question, I think that we can draw a line under it. I thank you on behalf of the committee for coming along this evening. It is an extremely helpful and useful session to the committee in terms of understanding the work of the task force. Clearly, we wish you well in your endeavours. At this point, we will suspend briefly and go into private session.