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Scottish Parliamentary Elections- Responses from Political Parties

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Scottish Parliamentary Elections- Responses from Political Parties Scottish Parliamentary Elections- Responses from Political Parties Scottish National Party Aviation: If elected what steps will you take to support the aviation sector in Scotland and reassure our members and the communities where they live and work of the retention of well paid high quality employment and oppose the plans to deliver air traffic control remotely? Globally, as well as here in Scotland, the aviation industry faces one of the longest recovery periods from the pandemic. The SNP have extended the 100% non-domestic rates relief for the aviation sector for all 2021/22 - the only country to do this in the UK - and we're also working with airports on route recovery, to help rebuild connectivity for business and tourism once we are able to safely lift travel restrictions. This will help win back routes and employment opportunities. We recognise the need to modernise Air Traffic Control to ensure more sustainable and reliable air services in the Highlands and Islands. We urge both HIAL (Highland and Islands Airports Ltd) and its staff to continue to play a constructive role as implementation of the project progresses. Defence Sector Jobs: The contract for the construction of the new Royal Navy ships to support the carriers is currently ongoing. A victory for the joint BAE / Babcock team bidding for this work will secure thousands of jobs on the Clyde and at Rosyth well into the 2030’s. It will deliver a prosperity boost to both the UK and Scottish Governments in the region of £400m. If elected what steps will you take to ensure that this vital contract is awarded to Scottish yards and Scottish workers? The Scottish shipbuilding industry has near-peerless standards in the manufacture of the highest quality of state of the art frigates - while we welcome the work that is coming to Scotland through the construction of these Type 31 frigates, all it does is highlight the cheque that the Tories wrote in the run up to the 2014 Referendum but have still failed to cash. Firstly, these Type 31 frigates are far smaller orders than the original promise of 13 Type 26 frigates, which the House of Commons Defence committee had heard would come to £1 Billion per ship, while Type 31s are estimated at only £250 million per ship. In short this is a significant short-changing. The Tories also promised to invest in a state of the art frigate factory in Scotland during the referendum, despite planning being put forward and stakeholders calling for this promise to be met they have failed to deliver on this promised investment in Scotland’s future. In addition to broken promises to the defence industry, the government have also continued, even accelerated, the closure of military bases in Scotland (including its last surface vessel navy base) – in the 2014 Referendum, Scotland was promised 12,500 personnel to be stationed permanently in Scotland: it has not increased, and remains well below 10,000. ONS figures indicate that there are around 9,000 people employed in defence manufacturing in Scotland (of which 6,000 work in shipbuilding). Scottish based defence jobs have been drastically cut in over the last 40 years. In 1981, there were 47,000 people employed in private sector defence related manufacturing associated industries in Scotland. Of these, 32,000 or 68% were in shipbuilding. While cuts to the industry have been deep, the Tories continue to waste billions of pounds on weapons of mass destruction while allowing investment in public services or key conventional capabilities to fall behind. Not only would the shipbuilding industry and the communities they are imbedded in benefit from more shipbuilding orders, but the Navy is currently not far off a historically small size and there are no surface vessels stationed in Scottish waters even though Scotland is where most of the UK's marine resources are and where over 60% of its territorial waters is - the strategic imperative for more ships is evident. Latest revision of this document: https://library.prospect.org.uk/id/2021/00422 This revision: https://library.prospect.org.uk/id/2021/00422/2021-04-29 The SNP will always champion Scotland's shipyards for more work through defence contracts - we have vocally called for the Royal Navy's Fleet Solid Support Ships to be built in Scottish yards, and the government has since reconsidered whether to open these contracts up to international tender (something that we vocally opposed). Fair Work: If elected how will you strengthen the work of the Fair Work Commission and ensure that fair work underpins the change to a more digital and remote world of work? We want Scotland to be the best place to live, work, invest and do business. We believe that fair work is the foundation for this. Covid has highlighted that too many people are still stuck on exploitative contracts, often zero-hours, that leave them with little security. Without the powers of independence, we are limited in what steps we can take, but where we can act to improve employment security and enhance the quality of work, we will. Fair Work First: Our Fair Work First programme makes adoption of fair work practices part of the criteria for winning public contracts and receiving grants. It uses the financial power of government to make fair work the norm. We will now build flexible and family friendly working into the programme, learning lessons from working practices during the pandemic to make it easier for women, particularly single parents, to return to work and also encourage a more equal share of childcare responsibilities. The principles of Living Hours - ensuring workers get the hours they need to make ends meet are reflected in Fair Work First good practice and promoted through Fair Work First where this applies to grants or procurement. If re-elected, we will go further and support a specific accreditation programme for Living Hours in the same way we have supported Living Wage accreditation. Four Day Week: Covid-19 changed the way we work almost overnight. As we recover from the pandemic, we want to do more to support people achieve a healthy work-life balance. We also want to keep the total number of people in employment high. As part of this, we will establish a £10 million fund to allow companies to pilot and explore the benefits of a four day working week. We will use the learning from this to consider a more general shift to a four day working week as and when Scotland gains full control of employment rights. We will also identify additional employment opportunities and assess the economic impact of moving to a four day week. More widely, we will support a review - in partnership with trade unions and businesses - of how working practices could and should be adapted to meet the needs of the future economy. Devolution of Employment Law: During the pandemic, some companies have used fire and rehire tactics to undermine wages and conditions. This is unacceptable. The SNP has been pressing the UK government to act but it has so far refused to take the necessary steps to ban these exploitative practices. We will continue to call for the devolution of employment law to allow us to act, but in the meantime we will do all we can with our limited powers to protect employees from these practices in Scotland. We will review our Fair Work First criteria for contracts and government support grants to include specific reference to fire and rehire tactics. Support for the Creative sector: If you are elected what steps will you take to continue and enhance the support provided to the creative sector to ensure job protection and creation, and to assist our freelance members to stay in the sector? Culture is central to who we are as a nation. We have always valued culture and creativity, but the pandemic has demonstrated more than ever how vital it is to our wellbeing, mental health and sense of belonging. A ‘Percentage for the Arts’ and Fair Funding We want to create a more sustainable funding model for culture which benefits organisations and freelancers. Learning from countries such as Ireland and the Netherlands, we will establish a “Percentage for the Arts” scheme which will create a requirement for a percentage of the overall cost of a construction project for new public buildings, places or spaces to be spent on community art commissions. We want to increase the work available for freelancers and creative practitioners by creating cultural commissions for more work that is fairly paid. We will consult on initial percentages of 0.5% for projects under £5 million and 1% for those over £5 million capped at £1 million for any individual project. We estimate this would raise £150 million per year for the arts once fully up and running. To aid future planning and recovery, we will agree 3 year funding settlements for Scottish Government core funded cultural organisations. We will also continue our culture recovery 2 funding to get support to those who continue to be significantly affected by Covid related restrictions. We will support the co-ordination of Scottish commissioning and create a Scotland Touring Fund for Theatre and Music as part of economic recovery, helping to take live performances directly into alternative community venues and revitalising year-round tourism. To recognise the role culture and heritage can play in achieving our climate change ambitions, we will increase access to capital funding to help ‘green’ cultural infrastructure across Scotland. Expanding Our Programme: We will expand our Culture Collective programme, giving artists and communities the length and breadth of Scotland even more opportunities to collaborate on creative activity, supporting a sustainable creative recovery from the pandemic.
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