 I ask the members who are leaving the chamber to please do so quickly and quietly, and the final item of business is a member's business debate. I ask the members who are leaving the chamber to please do so quickly and quietly. Thank you very much, because we are in session. The final item of business is a member's business debate on motion 11664, in the name of Collette Stevenson on protecting FCDO jobs in East Kilbride. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put. I would ask those members who would wish to speak in the debate to please press the request-to-speak buttons, and I call on Collette Stevenson to open the debate around seven minutes. I am grateful to have the opportunity to lead this debate on the need to protect civil service jobs in East Kilbride. The Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, or FCDO, has had a presence at Abercrombie House for over four decades. Currently, there are around 1,000 people working there, and that has increased in recent years, and I very much welcome that. However, a few weeks ago, the Tory Government announced that the FCDO would believe in Abercrombie House. That is a hammer blow to East Kilbride, and it could, according to the UK Government's own figures, cost the town's economy £30 million. I am grateful to SNP, Greens and Labour colleagues for supporting my motion. It is sad that no members of the Conservative Party have done so, including those who live in and represent East Kilbride. I have raised the matter in the chamber before, and the Tories try to diminish it. What I am doing is standing up for East Kilbride in the face of Tory plans to remove 1,000 jobs from my constituency. Let me set out the context. Firstly, the UK Government's declaration on government reform commits to relocating jobs in areas of activity across Government to places including East Kilbride, so the Tories are even breaking their own policy commitments. After the announcement of the closure of the FCDO base at Abercrombie House, many people, including Tory politicians, said that it is no big deal since HMRC will be moving in, but HMRC has been based in East Kilbride for decades. Those are not new jobs for the town, and staff at HMRC have faced their own challenges with the Tories. In 2014, the UK Government announced that HMRC would be leaving East Kilbride and other towns across Scotland to move into regional centres. That led quite rightly to a huge backlash. Indeed, Conservatives MSP Graham Simpson called this move misguided. The PCS trade union launched its stay in East Kilbride campaign, backed by East Kilbride news and local politicians on a cross-party basis. Following the hard-fought campaign, we managed to keep HMRC in the town, so beggars believe that the UK Government will instead cut 1,000 jobs from East Kilbride by removing the FCDO. After its return, HMRC recognised that keeping a presence in East Kilbride made the best sense. I hope that today's debate, as well as all the concerns from staff which I will come on to next, will help the FCDO to make sense too. A big issue with the UK Government's announcement was the lack of respect shown to the workforce. I understand that there was no prior consultation with staff about the potential move, and reports suggest that trade unions were given just one hour's notice about the announcement. Local staff are upset about the decision, with one employee telling the press that they could not get any lower morale than there is at Abercrombie House just now, and saying that people are at rock bottom. I have spoken with FCDO staff who are worried about their future, and I have heard stories of people who have left jobs in Glasgow to work closer to home, and some who have even moved from HMRC, given the threats of it moving out of the town. The UK Government should have given the experiences of their staff some thought before seemingly rushing into this decision. Several servants were not the only ones caught off guard with the announcement, though. My understanding is that the FCDO has been in discussions with South Lanarkshire Council about a new site in the town, so the decision to abandon Eastgo Bride altogether left the council astounded. The whole thing seems to be ill thought through. The HMRC saga showed that politicians of different parties can and must work together when it comes to standing up for the areas that they represent. I have had productive conversations with the Labour leader of South Lanarkshire Council, Social Fagan, Labour MSPs Monica Lennon and Mark Griffin supported my notion. Conservative politicians, on the other hand, seemed to have lost their voice. After the department headed by the unelected Lord David Cameron made its decision, I wrote to Graham Simpson MSP and the other unelected Tory, Lisa Cameron MP, to ask if they stood by their previous remarks that FCDO must stay in Eastgo Bride. I also wrote to Alistair Dick, Secretary of State for Scotland, seeking assurances. I have received nothing back from any of them. I hope that Tory politicians have been able to reflect over the Christmas break. They must recognise the concerns not just from me, not just from the council, but from the local staff who carry out the Government's work. To sum up, the Tory UK Government's plans to close down the foreign commonwealth and development office in Eastgo Bride is a betrayal of the town. That has already caused unnecessary stress for many employees, and it could lead to millions of pounds of damage to the Eastgo Bride economy. With that debate, I hope to bring more attention to the reckless decision and to give a voice to the staff who feel as if they have been overlooked in this process. The UK Government must engage meaningfully with the workforce, trade unions and all interested local representatives. It must ensure that an impact assessment is carried out in terms of the workforce and of the potential harm to Eastgo Bride's economy. In my view, the UK Government must scrap the plans immediately and avoid a further broken promise to the people of Eastgo Bride. I pay tribute to my colleague Collette Stevenson for bringing this important motion. As she has set out the detrimental impacts of those proposals on her constituency, it would clearly be significant. We all support her in her efforts and the wider efforts from trade unions and others to get the UK Government to reconsider that decision. The reason that I want to speak today was to emphasise something more, which is the wider beneficial impact that the workers in the Eastgo Bride, the civil servants, the diligent, capable, focused and highly motivated people in that office have made not just in terms of Scotland's reputation as a good global citizen, not just in terms of diplomacy and building a more internationalist world and outlook, but also the lives that have been saved, the people that have been helped, and the significant contribution that has been made to supporting highly well-thought-of international organisations, whether that is the United Nations or the World Food programme or others. That is because the office in question today, when it was previously highly occupied by different staff members, as well as its current status as FCDO, has played a huge role in the last quarter of a century in making a global difference. For example, leading the world in tackling the Ebola crisis and in recent years in the last decade providing aid to the people of Syria and responding to other humanitarian crises elsewhere. The decision in 2020 by the current UK Government to end the Department for International Development was a mistake and I fear that there is another mistake being made here because, as colleagues will know, I served as a Scottish Government minister between 2018 and last year, 2023. Between 2018 and 2020 I had the great privilege of being responsible for Europe migration and international development and I can say that the number of staff that I met not just within the Scottish Government but within other organisations who began their careers in East Kilbride was a high amount. Indeed, when I worked in other roles in other departments, civil servants had begun their careers in East Kilbride. That shows the impact both in terms of the direct work that comes out of Abercrombie House and the impact that that makes on an international scale, but also in terms of the quality of civil servants and the beginning of civil servants careers, as well as all those who have worked at the office for some time, the impact that they make when they go on elsewhere in the civil service. East Kilbride is a strategically important workplace and that workplace will have a network within itself, it will have a culture and all of that would be detrimentally affected by dissipating and relocating the workforce. This place is important for East Kilbride, it is important for Scotland more widely, it is important for our civil service and it is important for the impact that it has made internationally. I think that it is important that we all and the other politicians consider those wider effects, as well as the mistake that would be made in terms of negatively impacting the people of East Kilbride if that decision is not reversed and the mistake by the UK Government is seen to happen. I will start by congratulating Collette Stevenson for securing this debate. She has mentioned me a few times and I will come on to that. I was speaking at a school that visited the Parliament earlier and I was telling the pupils how I first got involved in politics when I was at school a long time ago and while I was at school in 1980 a report came out. It was the Brandt report headed by Villy Brandt and that was all about international development and we learned about the north south divide. The message in that report was how it is important for developed nations to help less developed nations and that would benefit us all. I read that report, all of it. I supported that message and my views have not changed since. I have been a supporter of international development for more than 40 years. I have always felt a sense of pride that the UK's international development programme has been delivered from the town that I have represented as a councillor and MSP since 2007. If I have a frustration it is that DFID and now the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office reaches out to the world but does not reach out to its Scottish home very well. It has not really, to my mind, sold what a great story that has very well. Now in 2015, I think it was 2015, not 2014, the HMRC threatened to leave East Kilbride and go to Glasgow, so a similar situation. As we have heard earlier there was a campaign launched. It was called Stay in UK. I got involved in that. All parties got involved in that. We worked with the trade unions, I have not heard from the trade unions yet on this one, but that decision, I do not know whether it was a result of that campaign or something else, but it was reversed in January 2022. Of course anyone who represents the town must have been delighted by that as I was. The announcement by the FCDO at the end of last year that they were going to move out of Abercrombie House and go to Glasgow came as a shock. It certainly did come as a shock to me. I cannot stand here and say I was delighted about that. Of course I am not delighted. I would rather they stay in East Kilbride. It is a result of the lease and ending on the current HMRC building at Queensway House. That lease is ending, HMRC, yes, I certainly will. If a provider gets more time, thank you. I have been waiting all day to hear that story to start because we did the same school chat this morning. I did promise there would be a story. I would say to Graham Simpson that the PCS union that he refers to did comment in December that their members were given just an hour's notice of the decision before it announced on 7 December. It has been the Christmas period. People have had time off working, including trade union officials, so we might hear more this week. Does he recognise that giving an hour's notice for a plan that really is not a plan because there is no named location in Glasgow for the move? Does he not recognise that that is a really ropey plan and rather than have a go at trade unions for not saying more, we should be putting this back to the UK Tory Government for them to give a proper coherent explanation? I will be able to give Mr Simpson a good minute back for that. I am grateful for the intervention. The point that I was merely making is that I have not heard from the PCS. We did hear from the PCS during the campaign to get HMRC to stay in East Kilbride, so there may be good reasons why they have not been in touch, but I would encourage them to get in touch with everyone. That is what they should be doing. I will have to be much briefer than the previous intervention. I congratulate my colleague Collette on her passion for her constituency and for the jobs there, shared by her predecessor Linda Fabiani. I was also a regional MSP at that time when I was involved with the PCS union and met them about those closures. However, Mr Simpson, do you not recognise that that was around about 2014? Those jobs, both HMRC and the different jobs at that time, were held up as a jewel in the crown of why we should be staying in the union and a benefit of the union. It would be a tragedy if they became added to the long list of promises broken at the time of the referendum. That is an unfortunate intervention from Claire Adamson, because she shows precious little knowledge of what is actually going on here. There are no job losses suggested. In fact, there are going to be more jobs. The plan is not to get rid of jobs merely to move the jobs to Glasgow. Claire Adamson seems to be unaware of that. No, I am not going to take any more interventions unless I get loads more time. Mr Simpson, I appreciate that the member has been generous, but I think we are now at five minutes and six minutes, so I will give you an extra minute and a half. I think we need to respect the time. You are being extremely generous. The only contact from within the constituency that I have had, unfortunately, is the letter previously referred to from Collette Stevenson, which was frankly a stunt. I do not respond to stunts if Collette Stevenson and I am hearing lots of muttering from Mr Stewart actually. If Collette Stevenson at any point wants to know what I think about anything, all she needs to do is pop along to my office, which is on the same corridor as she is in. I do not respond to stunts like that, which is why I have not responded to her letter. She could have just come and spoken to me as she has done on many other occasions. Fortunately, I have spoken to the town's Conservative MP Lisa Cameron, who has not indulged in such antics. We have both been in discussions. Members should do me the courtesy of listening. Yes, Members, could we please allow the member who has the floor, Mr Simpson, to conclude his remarks? Thank you very much. We have both been in discussions with the FCDO. I have spoken personally to Minister Andrew Mitchell. We will work, and I am quite happy to work with Collette Stevenson if she wants to do it properly. We will work to do all we can to see if there is anything that can be done for staff locally. The key thing here is that staff, if they are to move, have to be treated properly. I have been involved in an office move myself. There are issues like parking, extra costs for transport, childcare. Can you work from home? Mr Simpson, please bring your remarks to a close. I will bring my remarks to a close, but at the end of the day, more people are going to be employed, but we have to work with the staff, and that is why I encourage them to get in touch. If they want to get in touch with myself, I would be delighted to hear from them. I think that there is more to go on this. Thank you. I now call Monica Lennon to be followed by Julian Mackay. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and happy new year to you and colleagues in the chamber, and, like others, I am grateful to Collette Stevenson for securing this debate. It feels like a debate, so I am grateful to Graham Simpson for taking some interventions. I will not repeat some of the things that have been said, because Ben Macpherson's thoughtful remarks have paid tribute to the workforce over many decades and made us realise that, yes, there are local impacts and local factors, but there is also a big global dimension to this, and we should remember the important internationalist values in work. I will remind colleagues that I am a member of the PCS Scottish Parliament group, and that is on my voluntary register of interests. Many of us recognise that there are important stakeholders including the trade unions, but do not wait to be approached, Mr Simpson. You can pick up the phone to workers as well. I am a central Scotland MSP, so I represent East Kilbride. I live next door in Blantyre. That is a big deal for us locally, and it is a real pity that we do not have unity, we do not have all the elected members locally. I suspect that Graham Simpson probably does feel this one, and we are in a different situation, but we find ourselves in an election year and perhaps people feel they cannot say what they really think. People are concerned about the UK Tory Government's announcement to close the foreign commonwealth and international development offices at Abercrombie House and to move those highly regarded civil service jobs out of East Kilbride, and that is the key thing that I want to focus on tonight, because it is a hard pill to swallow. The UK Tory Government did promise more FCDO jobs in East Kilbride, but instead they are moving them out of the town. At a time when the council and others are working really hard to think about the future of East Kilbride regeneration and to give people hope and confidence. As we have heard, Abercrombie House was first established in 1981, which happened to be the year that I was born. At that time, the expansion of the overseas development administration provided a massive boost to the area, giving East Kilbride residents access to stable and secure employment. At a time when communities across the central belt were suffering due to de-industrialisation and that chyrism. Before his days playing for the Scotland football team, Alan McCloist worked at Abercrombie House part-time while playing for St Johnston FC as one of the first 350 employees back then at the start of the 80s. In his words, he said, it was a massive boost for East Kilbride when that building opened. Abercrombie House is a central feature of the UK's economic and social life. Since he has been mentioned, I will mention him again. Councilor Joe Fagan, who is the leader of South Lancer Council, has said, quote, I am frankly astounded by the announcement on the FCDO, both the decision itself and the way it has been made. Those staff have been working and, in many cases, living in East Kilbride for decades and are important contributors to our local community and economy. The FCDO announcement has been made out of the blue, suggesting not just a failure of communication but also a lack of coherence in the decision-making process. The reasons given for the decision are also weak to say the least end, quote. I know that there are some people who work there who perhaps live in Glasgow and feel that this might not be too big a deal, too much of a move, but for others who live beyond East Kilbride and striving, for example, or in Stonehouse, they are worried about the commute, people with care and responsibilities. There are so many unknowns. Again, that one-hours notice before us went public, just before Christmas, does not sit easy with me. A few of those points have been made already, but I would say, as we come to the close, that there is time to unite and to put East Kilbride first, to put those jobs first, and to go back with questions to the Secretary of State for Scotland and other UK ministers who have got a plan that does not really add up. There is still time for Mr Simpson and for Lisa Cameron to get behind the community and to get behind the workers, because if we can speak with one voice, that will be much stronger. I will bring my speech to a close, and I thank all colleagues for their support and collect Stevenson for bringing it to the chamber. I thank collect Stevenson for bringing forward this debate on the relocation of the FCDO office out of East Kilbride. The decision, made abruptly by the UK Government, has far reached in consequences for FCDO workers, their families and, as we have already heard, the wider community in East Kilbride. Abercrombie House employs upwards of 1,000 staff members and is estimated to generate £30 million to the local economy. Its contribution to the social and economic fabric of the town, I do not think that we can understate it. The decision, made with no prior consultation, is deeply concerning, and the dedicated workers at Abercrombie House have been instrumental to the constituency, and this relocation not only impacts the hardworking staff but also creates a massive shortfall for local services, stores and the business community, triggering a chain reaction that adversely affects East Kilbride as a whole. East Kilbride was once touted as an example of UK Government investments outside large cities. That decision starkly contradicts the commitments made by both the foreign secretary and the cabinet secretary of levelling up as recently as 2021. The reasoning provided for the move, I believe, is weak and ill-founded. Mr Simpson said earlier that there would be no job losses in the FCDO, but I believe that that misses the key point—that those are jobs lost to East Kilbride. That decision is not a mere bureaucratic shift for those working at Abercrombie House. People's livelihoods are neither expendable or easily transferable. The relocation of the office forces workers to deal with the choice of working further from home, changing their job around the most extreme circumstances, potentially having to give up their job. Not all workers have access to a car, and moving to and from where they live by car or by train represents another cost to workers during a cost of living crisis, potentially extra childcare costs, longer travel and therefore longer working days. For those who work flexibly due to caring responsibilities, disability or other personal circumstances now have a real dilemma. Shifting those jobs outside of East Kilbride unfairly burdens workers and it is disrespectful to them to assume that those dedicated workers can seamlessly transition to an office in Glasgow. A worker wishing to remain anonymous is quoted as saying, "...it's going to take 40 minutes each way into town and back, which as to your working day. There will be childcare costs involved in that. There will be train and bus fares. Although the FCDOs say that they will cover them for three years, that's not good enough and nobody wants to move." Leveling up has been touted as a pivotal element in the UK Government's pledge to reduce regional disparities and promote local economies. The closure of the FCDO office in East Kilbride directly contradicts those commitments. It sends an alarming message about the UK Government's dedication to regional development and calls into question the promises that it has made to Scotland until very recently. The same UK Government that claimed to be investing over £2.4 billion in Scotland to empower local communities to drive innovation and enhance economic opportunities is now undermining its own commitment to addressing geographic inequalities. Moving valuable jobs away from communities, particularly at the expense of the people of East Kilbride, contradicts the very principles that the Government says it supports. It raises questions about the sincerity of its efforts to promote opportunities in all regions. It is as recently as 2021 that the UK Government made a commitment to sending an additional 500 workers to the facility and now we have this decision instead. We should join together and strongly advocate for the preservation of the jobs, expertise and valuable contributions that are made by the workers at Abercrombie House. I reiterate my disappointment and frustration with the UK Government's abrupt decision to relocate the FCD office out of East Kilbride. The repercussions are keenly felt within the community and cast out on the UK Government's commitments to levelling up. I urge the UK Government to reconsider and reverse this ill-advised decision, emphasising the need for a renewed commitment to the workers of Abercrombie House and East Kilbride. I pay tribute to all the members who have made powerful contributions to the debate today, and to Collette Stevenson, the member for East Kilbride. No-one can fail to be impressed by her passionate advocacy for her constituents in East Kilbride and the strength of feeling that she has expressed over the issue that she has brought to the chamber today. Of course, the strength of feeling was also clear from many other members who spoke in the debate as well. I should perhaps just say at the beginning of my remarks that I was raised in Clarkston, neighbouring community at East Kilbride, and I remember as a youngster finding it quite unusual but also refreshing that there were hundreds of jobs just up the road working on international development. On behalf of the UK Government, of course, this was prior to devolution as well. I am aware of the presence of those jobs and the impact that they have had on East Kilbride over many decades, and I remember that well from where I was growing up. As others have said, just to look at the history of the jobs there in the UK Government's department, on Monday 23 November 1981 Lord Carrington, the then foreign secretary, officially opened Abercrombie House in East Kilbride. It began life with around 350 staff, and at the time it was built as part of an expansion of the overseas development administration, which was part of the foreign office, to create jobs in East Kilbride. It went on to be the joint headquarters of the Department for International Development, known as DFID, before the merger of the FCO and DFID. More recently, in November 2021, the FCDO warmly celebrated the 40th anniversary of Abercrombie House, and the UK Government used that opportunity to reaffirm and cement the relationship with its staff and East Kilbride. Indeed, the foreign secretary at the time, herself, Liz Truss, is quoted as saying that our 1,000 staff in Scotland can proudly celebrate 40 years of Abercrombie House, having been at the forefront of making the UK a world-leading diplomatic and development superpower. Liz Truss went on to reinforce that and said, and I quote, that she was looking forward to building on Abercrombie House's impressive history, giving a bold commitment to, and I quote again, redeploy a further 500 jobs to the joint HQ by 2025. She stated that this was part of the UK Government's levelling up agenda, so that is why I fully understand and support the dedicated civil service staff at Abercrombie House today and accept and appreciate why they are so perplexed by the announcement. Only two years later, from what I was stating earlier on in terms of those quotes, the UK Government has bruneged on that commitment to the staff and the town, reversing that decision to build on their impressive history and moving all of their jobs in the entire department now out of Abercrombie House, according to the plans, and out of East Colbride. As many members have echoed, towns are much more than simply buildings and spaces, they represent the communities, and for many civil servants, Abercrombie House is the beating heart of that community of East Colbride. Also on learning about the 40th anniversary celebrations, as Monica Lennon did, I also noted that the famous son of East Colbride was one of the very first employees of Abercrombie House, and of course that is Scotland's former footballer and the commentator Allie McOist. At the 40th anniversary, he paid tribute by saying, and I quote, it's amazing to think that 26 of the people I worked with, with them, when Abercrombie House first opened, are still there. He noted that that was a massive boost for East Colbride at the time, and that he still remembered his first day and how proud his parents were that he got the ODA job, to quote him. Of course he's not wrong, it is an embedded important part of the fabric of the town of East Colbride and presents high quality employment opportunities for local people, as many members have said, as well as having a very significant positive impact for local businesses and the economy. Again, as others have said, and of course there is that point that the FCDO itself stated that, again, has been made, that it generates an estimated £30 million per annum for the local economy in East Colbride in a wider region. Again, this is not just about numbers or roles or just simply locations, it's about people, and today we are all thinking about those who have been dedicating their work in lives to the delivery of mainly overseas development assistance to those around the world in greatest need. Directly from East Colbride to the last four decades, Ben MacPherson eloquently paid tribute to the work carried out there, helping people around the world, as Monica Lennon and Gillian Mackay did in terms of the contribution of the staff who work there and their wider work that they carry out. So the town can be rightly proud of its role and the impact in the lives of some of the world's poorest and most marginal people. Of course, as a Government we place a great deal of importance on Scotland being a good global citizen and central to our own commitment to raising Scotland's international profile and providing that assistance as our international development fund, which supports and empowers our partners in Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia and Pakistan to the tune of £15 million per annum. So the staff there do certainly carry out vital work, and I very much fully sympathise with those affected by the unexpected news. The decision that was made by the UK Government to relocate the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to a new location in Glasgow was not a decision that the Scottish Government was aware of. As Governments, it is important to say that we should be working with our colleagues and trade unions to reach fair and reasonable decisions that respect the legitimate interests of workers. Of course, at times that may mean difficult decisions as well, but the principle of no surprises is an important one. Given the level of surprise and subsequent discontent in the news, I would join others in the chamber today, as the Scottish Government would do more widely, to urge the UK Government to follow the Scottish Government's more progressive approach and engage fully in meaningful conversation with both the staff affected as well as the local community. In the meantime, as I conclude my remarks, the Scottish Government continues to support East Kilbride. We have committed £500 million over 20 years to the Glasgow City Region Deal, the First Deal in Scotland and the largest Scottish Government investment commitment across the wider deals programme. £106 million of that investment has been allocated to economic infrastructure activity located in South Lanarkshire as part of that city region deal. In closing, I want to extend my thanks to the committee's workforce at the FDCO in East Kilbride and encourage the UK Government to work with them closely and the local community to ensure that any decisions that are made take full account of the views of the workforce, the local community and the impact of the local economy. 42 years of service for the people of East Kilbride must be respected.