Support for firms as Brexit bites
I sit on the Scottish Parliament’s Covid Recovery Committee and all the evidence we have seen there has made it very clear to me that, while this pandemic is far from over, we must still build resilience into the businesses that will be the bedrock of our economy.
Major employers in my constituency of Perthshire South and Kinross-shire – such as the likes of Simon Howie Butchers, Gleneagles Hotel and Crieff Hydro – have contacted me expressing their concern at the major shortages in staff they are all suffering from.
I have written to the UK Home Secretary demanding she take urgent and immediate action to alleviate the problem because there is absolutely no doubt that the single biggest source of these problems is Brexit and the impact it has had on freedom of movement and the ability of people from EU countries to work here as they have done in the past.
In the meantime, I took the opportunity to ask Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery, John Swinney, firstly what more the Scottish Government can do to help these businesses under the current devolved settlement, and also highlighting the need for our parliament to be asserting the powers to be able to manage our own immigration policy.
Acknowledging the frustrating impact of Brexit, he highlighted some of the steps that the Scottish Government is taking, within the constraints of devolution, to support individuals – who have perhaps lost employment in one sector – to gain access to employment in other sectors.
There is the Young Person’s Guarantee, designed to make sure that young people have access to employment or to training or to a college place, and measures such as the National Transition Training Fund which are designed to support individuals to make that transition from one sector to another.
The Scottish Government are also working, with partners, to try to ensure that those who are economically inactive are given every support possible to enable them to access the labour market where they may be able to make a contribution to the skills requirement that we have within the economy right now.
On the wider Covid front, the spike in case numbers over the summer has been brought down but figures remain stubbornly and frustratingly high.
The relationship between the impact on public health and the economic wellbeing of the country is a complex and difficult one but there is little doubt that without the vaccination programme we could not have removed protections and restrictions to the extent that we have, and this week saw an important milestone achieved with over one million third doses of the vaccine – often referred to as a ‘booster’– having been administered.
All the data clearly shows that being vaccinated gives protection against infection but also, if you do catch the virus, your chances of becoming seriously unwell are much reduced.
So, I would encourage everybody to take up the opportunity of getting vaccinated whenever the opportunity presents itself – whether you are due your first, second or booster injection, get yourself jagged.
And that applies to the regular winter flu vaccine, as well as the Covid one!