27th September 2021: A Week in Parliament

Broken Britain

Instead of the Global Britain we have been promised, we have Broken Britain. The fuel shortages associated with the lack of HGV drivers being the latest example. After arguing it has nothing to do with Brexit, at last the UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, is bringing in a visa system to allow 5,000 HGV drivers to be temporarily recruited. However, with an shortfall of 100,000 drivers, then their proposals are ridiculous – it does nothing to plug the gap, and how many EU drivers are going to move to the UK to be kicked back out at Christmas? It can only work if they are given absolute bumper contracts, which has an impact of the cost of transport and instead of undercutting UK driver wages, which the UK Government argues, they will be getting a premium. That said, if we are in the market of supply and demand, then UK HGV drivers here should be getting wage rises.

There can also be no doubt that if the UK Government are bringing in this scheme, then they really are worried about the warnings of empty shelves at Christmas. Over 5 years have they been warned about this and it is still too little, too late.

Ayrshire Growth Deal

Along with other elected representatives, I was given an update on the Ayrshire Growth Deal. It is good to see plans coming to fruition and it was great to hear of up to 4000 jobs being created at Prestwick aerospace cluster. There are good projections of the number of jobs to be created The key issue I try to highlight is making sure we plan for these jobs and have the skills and training plans in place so locals can get maximum opportunity. We can only turn our local economy round and improve lives if we make sure people can access secure well pad jobs.

Covid and Vaccination Passports

Hopefully we are past the worst of the recent massive spike in covid cases. It shows this disease is not going away. As I write however, cases are still very high and East Ayrshire has the second highest rate in Scotland. It means the mantra of “being careful” should not be ignored.

This is also partly the reason that the Scottish Government is brining in covid passports for events and nightclubs with large crowds. Several constituents have contacted me, concerned about impacts on civil liberties. However, given that the passport or certification process will not be used for public services or public transport then the exclusion only applies to a limited number of events. This is where the personal choice comes in, I believe. I attended a festival in England, and the organisers had imposed a “double vaccinated status” as a condition of entry. I was relaxed about this, but maybe that is because I had made the choice to be double vaccinated. So, even without Government intervention this is becoming standard for larger events. Indeed, the events and hospitality industry welcomed the moves by the Scottish Government. They believe it gives them more confidence to plan ahead.