JOHN Swinney has called for Scotland’s only oil refinery to be nationalised by the UK Government – suggesting the Labour administration would take the issues facing the plant more seriously if it were in England.
The First Minister made the call at a press conference in Edinburgh on Monday, where he also called for “immediate” action on a carbon capture project in the north east and for investment in a supercomputer at Edinburgh University, which was announced by the Tory government but cancelled after Labour took office.
Swinney said the devolved nations could not be an “afterthought” for the UK Government, and said he had made representations on all the above issues – as well as Labour’s National Insurance tax rise and alignment with the EU – in a meeting with the Prime Minister on Friday.
He also said his Programme for Government, normally published in September, would be brought forward to May to allow for a full year of work to be done on it before the 2026 Holyrood elections.
Laying out how he believes Scotland’s economy can be made more resilient in the face of uncertainty globally, not least due to Donald Trump’s actions in the US, Swinney told press that he would be seeking “further formal intergovernmental meetings to ensure that the needs of devolved nations are at the heart of UK decision-making and not simply an afterthought, as the evidence increasingly suggests”.
The First Minister went on: “My view is that the UK response should include removing the self-imposed economic straitjacket of the Chancellor's fiscal rules and reversing the job- and growth-destroying increase in employers' National Insurance contributions.
“The world is changing around us, and quite simply, the UK Government needs to change too.
“It should include closer alignment with the European Union. If trade barriers are being constructed in the Atlantic, they must be swept away in the Channel and the North Sea.
“And it should include investment in Scotland's green industrial future. If British Steel is to be nationalised to protect it, then so too should Grangemouth.
“If a supercomputer is to be built in the London-Oxford-Cambridge triangle, then the cancelled supercomputer for Edinburgh should be restored.
“If carbon capture and storage is to proceed in Teesside and Merseyside, it should be given an immediate green light in the northeast of Scotland too.
“This is what it means to turbocharge Scotland's economy, to actually get serious about Scotland's economic future. Given the scale of the threat, anything less is not good enough.”
Over the weekend, the UK Government took the exceptional decision to recall MPs to Parliament for a Saturday sitting, passing a bill that allowed ministers to take control over British Steel.
The owners, Chinese firm Jingye, had been moving to shut down the UK’s only steel blast furnace, meaning the UK would have been completely reliant on imports of the key material.
Responding, the First Minister highlighted how he had said the devolved nations must not be seen as an afterthought.
He went on: “I think that rather corresponds with what Dave Doogan has said on the radio this morning, and there has been a real sense of urgency delivered by the United Kingdom Government in relation to Scunthorpe [where British Steel is based].”
Swinney added: “There is a need for activism in government and I certainly would align myself with the comments that Dave Doogan has made, that it's important that we have that activism available from all governments so that we can deliver for people in the country.”
The SNP leader elsewhere said that the Scottish Government did not have "adequate" resource to step in and nationalise Grangemouth itself, but that his administration would work with a willing UK Government to see it done.
The First Minister’s intervention came after Labour Scotland Office minister Kirsty McNeill claimed the SNP were “manufacturing grievance” over calls for the UK Government to save the Grangemouth oil refinery.
McNeill said the situation at Grangemouth is different to the steelmaking plant at Scunthorpe, echoing her UK Government bosses.
“These situations are different, which is why this interventionist UK Government has an industrial strategy that matches solutions to the problems at hand,” she said.
“In the end, [the SNP are] having a conversation about Grangemouth today because they’re manufacturing a grievance.
“We, by contrast, have taken serious action from the minute we got in in July.”
