Labour Market Trends

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 16 July 2020.

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Photo of Fiona Hyslop Fiona Hyslop Scottish National Party

I feel strongly that we need migrant workers supporting our health and social care systems. We have relied on people coming to this country to work in our health and care systems to help to suppress the virus and deal with the real challenges for our hospitals and our care homes in recent months. The UK is now turning round to them and saying, “You’re not welcome.” The Conservatives who challenged me about how welcoming Scotland is at the moment should seriously think about what the UK Government is doing in telling people who want to come here and can help us with their much-needed skills in our health and care departments that they are unwelcome. That is among the most shocking things that I have seen from the current UK Government in relation to what it is doing with Brexit.

We are living with Covid, and we will live with it for some time to come, but the new immigration rules do not serve Scotland or our health and care system, and they will be very damaging. I want a Scotland that is safe, confident in itself, and welcomes those who want to work with us in building a new Scotland and ensuring that we have a health and care system that can look after our sick and our elderly. The UK Government thinking, at this time of all times, that it can press ahead with its migration system and Brexit when we should be concentrating and focusing on tackling and rebuilding our economy following the Covid crisis is among the most disheartening aspects of the developments in the past few weeks.