Speeches by Crichton.

“Time is short, so very quickly, Richard. You touched on nuclear, and we hear anecdotally that people leaving North Sea jobs, very complex engineering challenges, move into renewables and find that the challenge is not there, so they go straight into nuclear. Are you seeing that?”

“There is a lot of stress and anxiety. You talked about issues with joblessness. GMB talked last week about a cliff edge coming up here, and this is a real mental health and financial crisis coming into Aberdeen as well, isn’t it?”

“—in Scotland and in England. What do you need? What does Aberdeen need and what does Scotland need to avert that?”

“There is a lot of stress and anxiety. You talked about issues with joblessness. GMB talked last week about a cliff edge coming up here, and this is a real mental health and financial crisis coming into Aberdeen as well, isn’t it?”

“Going and not coming back.”

“Richard, in terms of the workforce going abroad, do they stay abroad? Do they come home? Does the wealth stay here? When people go to work offshore, do they still come home to Aberdeen or come home to Scotland? Or do we see that workforce exporting itself?”

“Going and not coming back.”

“Just two more questions, because you mentioned young people and their uncertainty going into this sphere. We have men aged 45 to 60, a really vulnerable group for suicide and mental health crises, and the domestic side of that, of course, is that these men’s partners are literally single-parent families because they ar…”

“You anticipate my last question, because we have been here before in the mining communities—”

“Russell, quickly, Donna talked about two Aberdeens—one in quite deep poverty—but Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire have some of the wealthiest postcodes in the UK. Are we just seeing a real-life adjustment here? We have been here before. I remember coming to Aberdeen and seeing a bumper sticker, “Please God, give us one oil b…”

“Columbo-style, I have one last question. Susan and Michael have both alluded to the difference between the availability of funding and emphasis on training for young people at a UK level and a Scottish level. Is there a mismatch there? Are we missing something in devolution or does devolution add something extra to the…”

“Because they lose who they are. They lose their identity.”

“—in Scotland and in England. What do you need? What does Aberdeen need and what does Scotland need to avert that?”

“Richard, in terms of the workforce going abroad, do they stay abroad? Do they come home? Does the wealth stay here? When people go to work offshore, do they still come home to Aberdeen or come home to Scotland? Or do we see that workforce exporting itself?”

“Did Aberdeen itself do enough to prepare for this?”

“And what you are all saying is that there is a human value to that, as well as an economic value.”

“Michael, Susan earlier talked about this quilt work of different award bodies and training agencies, and it is more like a jungle than a quilt really. How successful are bodies such as the NSTA and GB Energy in addressing the skills need of existing oil and gas workers?”

“Paul, when we think of skills training and college we think of young people, but do we have a demographic problem here with people who have been in the industry for some time, who have come up against that wall of redundancy and simply do not reskill themselves or just walk away from the workforce altogether? Is that p…”

“Do the teams move at the same speed or different speeds?”

“You anticipate my last question, because we have been here before in the mining communities—”