Speeches by Downie.

“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the ways we can go about building trust in the Government and in how they respond to a crisis is by trusting the people with the information. The people will be the ones who can press us to take the action that they know requires to be taken, if we give them the information. W…”

“I congratulate the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) on helping to secure this debate. Others have already spoken about rearmament and the focus on budgets, procurement and force structures, and while those things definitely matter, there is another question that I believe we must confront as well. As touch…”

“I welcome the move to commit to the procurement of six common combat vessels in the DIP. I hope that they will be based on the hull of the Type 31, which is being built by the very skilled workforce at Rosyth in my constituency. Will the Minister take immediate action and work with me to progress the CCV programme so t…”

“After holding a series of stakeholder events with local businesses and charities and an online survey attracting more than 1,000 responses, I have recently published the results of a city centre survey for Dunfermline. That survey highlighted that people are very proud to live in Scotland’s newest city and ancient capi…”

“How do young people think about it?”

“Susan, you mentioned difficulties with budgets up to this point, and given the focus on trying to create these new jobs in Aberdeen and the challenges that the city faces, has skills provision in colleges in the north-east been particularly hit by cuts to college budgets in Scotland?”

“I was going to say, it is short term. It is not giving you longevity of funding because you are chasing every year.”

“Yes, that is probably for another inquiry, because I would actually happily pick that up with you. Thank you.”

“Would you say it has become an excuse by successive Governments to pretend they are doing something?”

“A quick question around language; we discussed this a little this morning. There are two elements. How careful should we be about language when discussing the industry? More broadly, and this has come up in other evidence sessions, if we are to maintain any kind of public confidence that these low-carbon economy jobs a…”

“I want to pick up on a couple of points made by both Paul and Susan. Paul, you talked about how we have that workforce ready to go to avoid the peaks and troughs you see in other industries. What skills should young people now be looking to train for? What should they be doing, and what should we ensure that the colleg…”

“Susan, if you can build on that, but also what is the current awareness in and around Aberdeen of the opportunities in low-carbon energy jobs for the future? How do young people in particular feel about that security? We covered that a little with the last panel.”

“What do they want to be instead?”

“They are moving towards the technical?”

“Russell and Richard, you both spoke about the need to broaden the conversation, beyond Aberdeen but also beyond oil and gas. I want to talk a little about the low-carbon economy in and around Aberdeen and the rest of Scotland. Richard, I will probably come to you first. How important is oil and gas, and continued confi…”

“Donna, can you pick up some of those points from your own experience on the ground in Aberdeen? How are those kinds of low-carbon jobs viewed on the ground? How important is the oil and gas sector for some of the work that you are trying to do to sustain the communities?”

“Do they just not believe that those new jobs are coming? Is that contributing?”

“Russell, when it comes to the supply chain jobs that exist around Aberdeenshire, how much can be transferred or evolved into low-carbon jobs, and what support is available?”

“Finally, Richard, talking about the differences between low-carbon economy jobs and oil and gas jobs from a union perspective, how different do those two jobs look when it comes to terms and conditions and how do we get one to match up and meet the other a bit better?”

“Is there a way we can include the case studies that Donna Hutchison talked about in the written evidence? That would be helpful to make sure we are keeping the discussion on the communities and the individuals, if that is something that can be anonymised sufficiently.”