As the First Minister will know, yesterday the BT Group confirmed the closure of its Alness base. Some 100 jobs will be lost, which will impact one in 50 local residents in the town. What talks has the BT Group had on preventing those job losses, given that it has benefited from and enjoyed hundreds of millions of pounds of Government funding?

The First Minister:

I will ensure that the relevant cabinet secretary engages directly with Rhoda Grant on any support that we are able to provide. These are extremely difficult times for the group of staff involved. We do not want job losses and will do everything that we can to prevent them. If it looks as if they are necessary and will occur, we can engage the partnership action for continuing employment initiative—PACE—and insist on redeployment where possible. However, we want to see whether we can avoid the 100 job losses that Rhoda Grant mentioned. I will ensure that, following First Minister’s question time, the cabinet secretary will engage with Rhoda Grant directly.