Employment Rights Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Chris Murray Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 12th December 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Justin Madders]

I gently correct the shadow Minister: we did not forget to engage with the Scottish and Welsh Governments. We were making sure that we had agreement before we tabled amendments, which is why they have appeared as they have today.

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that this is actually an example of the Government keeping not only their manifesto promise to deliver a new deal for working people, but the manifesto promise that I certainly made many times during the election campaign, which was that the new Government would show the utmost respect for the Scottish Parliament and Government, and for all the devolved institutions? I reassure the Minister that the Scottish Parliament was not forgotten during the drafting of the Bill, because there was extensive engagement with the Scottish Government, some of which I saw myself.

[Justin Madders]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. On that note, I commend the amendments to the Committee.

Amendment 59 agreed to.

Amendments made: 60, in clause 25, page 37, line 33, at end insert—

“(2A) In section 2 (contracting authorities), after subsection (1) insert—

‘(1A) But see also section 83B(5)(b)(i) (which provides for “contracting authority” to have an extended meaning in relation to certain contracts regulated under Part 5A (outsourcing: protection of workers)).’”

See the explanatory statement to amendment 59.

Amendment 61, in clause 25, page 37, line 34, leave out subsection (3).

See the explanatory statement to amendment 59 - because the new provisions are now being inserted as a new Part of the Procurement Act 2023, there is no longer any need to amend section 100 of that Act.

Amendment 62, in clause 25, page 38, line 3, leave out subsection (4) and insert—

“(4) In section 122 (regulations)—

(a) in subsection (4) (regulations by Ministers of the Crown subject to affirmative procedure), after paragraph (i) insert—

‘(ia) section 83C (provision for inclusion in relevant outsourcing contracts);’

(b) in subsection (10) (regulations by Welsh Ministers subject to affirmative procedure), after paragraph (g) insert—

‘(ga) section 83C (provision for inclusion in relevant outsourcing contracts);’

(c) in subsection (14) (regulations by Scottish Ministers subject to affirmative procedure), before paragraph (a) insert—

‘(za) section 83C (provision to be included in relevant outsourcing contracts);

(zb) section 83F (power to amend section 83A, 83B or 83E);’”.

See the explanatory statement to amendment 59.

Amendment 63, in clause 25, page 38, line 6, at end insert—

“(4A) In section 123 (interpretation), in subsection (1), in the definition of ‘appropriate authority’, at the end insert—

‘(but see section 83A(2) for a different meaning of “appropriate authority” in Part 5A (outsourcing: protection of workers));’.

(4B) In section 124 (index of defined expressions), for the entry for ‘appropriate authority’ substitute—

Employment Rights Bill (Seventh sitting)

Chris Murray Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th December 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Greg Smith]

I can assure the hon. Lady that I am intimately aware of the cost of childcare. It is something that challenges families—men and women, mums and dads, carers, grandparents and all sorts of people—on a daily basis. It is a very expensive reality of life. I do not want to get off topic, but the previous Government did a lot to increase the free childcare offer, and I fully acknowledge that the current Government are carrying through with that. We need more measures like that to ensure that people have the childcare arrangements in place to enable them to go to work.

I fully accept the hon. Lady’s argument: there is a cost to going to work. There is a cost of travel, as we all know as Members of Parliament travelling in from and getting around our constituencies. There are the costs of getting to work, of childcare or, perhaps, if someone is caring for a relative or someone else, of ensuring that alternative provision is there while they are at work. I fully accept that point and in no way wish to advocate for people to be left in that place. I do not want that for anybody in this country. But as I said to the hon. Member for Dundee Central, there are sometimes circumstances—very few, exceptional circumstances—where it could be a stark choice for the business and jobs could end up being lost altogether if there is not a little bit of flexibility. We are dancing on the head of a pin here, and it is about exceptional cases, but I do not want to see exceptional cases suddenly reducing the overall employment numbers in this country.

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

In response to the hon. Member for Dundee Central, the shadow Minister struggled to come up with a concrete example of a business that might be in the situation he is describing, with very small margins and staff costs not meeting the demand. I can think of two examples from my experience before coming here and from my constituency. One is car washes, where we frequently see very low-paid employees being recruited on demand and very small margins. Another is nail bars, which we see on high streets across the country, where fluctuating demand requires small amounts of work to be done, so people are employed on very short contracts with hours cancelled at very short notice.

The shadow Minister will also have noticed last week that the net migration figures for the last year of the Conservative Government reached almost 1 million. The point I am making is that we need to think about not just the impact on individual workers and businesses, but the bigger, broader impact on society as a whole. The problem we have seen with small businesses such as car washes and nail bars is that there is a high supply of labour, generally from exploited migrant workers. It is not a coincidence that the two industries I have just described are also where we see the highest incidence of modern slavery. That is because workers in those industries have very few rights, so they can be treated as almost expendable by their employers, and have their hours cancelled at very short notice, and they have absolutely no recourse. So, it is not a coincidence that it is the most exploited workers, or the most vulnerable workers, who have ended up taking such jobs.

On high streets across the country we have seen the growth of multiple small car washes and small nail bars. The industries are not struggling, but the employers are deliberately working on incredibly small margins. The point is that the dynamic between employer and employee is unbalanced, which is what the Bill seeks to correct.

[The Chair]

We just have get the balance correct between a speech and an intervention, if we can.

Employment Rights Bill (Third sitting)

Chris Murray Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 28th November 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Steve Darling]

Q My constituency, Torbay, is sadly in the upper quartile of the most deprived constituencies. I would welcome your reflections on how the Bill could have an impact on constituencies such as mine where there are high levels of deprivation.

Nye Cominetti: Well, I have a few caveats. First, overall employment rates are lower in high-deprivation areas, so we need to remember that all these measures will have an effect on workers, rather than those who are not working. If you want to improve income levels, this is not the place to do it. As I was just saying, however, we know that low-paid workers experience those issues of insecurity at higher rates than high-paid workers.

You also need to remember that there is not a one-for-one overlap between high pay and high income and low pay and low income. Some low-income households will have higher-paid individuals in them, but because of having a large family or having only one earner rather than two, they will still end up in that low-income category. That caveat aside, it is still the case that any measures that improve working lives for low-paid workers will have the biggest impact on lower-income households.

There are questions about what the knock-on effects are going to be. If you were really optimistic, you might say that some of these measures to improve job quality could even have a positive labour supply effect. We know that, in the 2010s, that was a big driver of improved income at the bottom and massively increased employment among low-income households. So an optimistic take on these measures might be that you could trigger some of those kinds of effects, but that is much more uncertain.

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

Q Could you say more about the impact of the current system of zero-hours contracts on the individual and, more broadly, on the wider economy and the labour market? I am thinking about poor retention, disengagement and the impact on the benefits bill. How does that system affect the economy currently?

Nye Cominetti: That is a tricky question. If measures to tackle zero-hours contracts are put in place effectively, I think that they will mainly smooth the income of those individuals rather than necessarily raise their level of pay. There might be a knock-on impact on the level of pay if workers have better outside options and can more readily bargain for pay increases or shop around for jobs, but the first effect that you would hope to achieve through these measures is smoothing pay—taking away the volatility from week to week. There is plenty of evidence that that is the element of those jobs that households struggle with most, not the level of hourly pay.

We know that, through minimum wage action, we have massively improved earnings for the lowest-paid workers, but it is the volatility that is most difficult to deal with, as I think anyone sitting here would readily agree. If someone is thinking, “Next week, my pay might go down by 20% or 50%, or maybe my hours will be zeroed down entirely,” it does not take much for us to imagine the impact of that not just on their wellbeing and psychology, but on their spending decisions. They might think, “I can’t afford to commit to that spending now, given that I’m uncertain about what my pay is going to be next week.”

If these measures are done well and genuinely smooth the incomes of those experiencing the worst volatility, I would expect improvements in individuals’ wellbeing. Potentially—again, more optimistically—you might see knock-on positive effects on the economy more broadly, if people feel more comfortable spending because they know what their pay is going to be in future. But as I have said a few times, that is definitely much more uncertain.

[Chris Murray]

What about worker retention? That was the other question—

[The Chair]

Order. Excuse me, but we are getting very tight for time.

Employment Rights Bill (Fourth sitting)

Chris Murray Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 28th November 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Gibson]

Q Quite a few witnesses have said of the improved employee rights that, in fact, the existing employee rights are often not exercised because the tribunals are slow and expensive—they prove expensive for both sides. We have poorer enforcement than most of our OECD colleagues around the world. That is particularly true for industries that, as you just highlighted, are not necessarily unionised, such as hospitality.

Are there any specific areas of the Bill that you think could be simplified? Obviously, we have been discussing other things outside the remit of the Bill, but within the Bill itself are there any specific areas that, if they were simplified, would make enforcement easier and more effective?

Margaret Beels: I have responsibility for the national minimum wage team, and when I talk to them about what they do, they often refer to the fact that the complaints that come to them are not valid. They are made without full understanding by the workers of their rights around the national minimum wage. The teams talk about training their inspectors for six months, and it troubles me that that is an area where it is difficult to know whether you are being paid correctly.

From my point of view, I would favour arrangements that are better at communicating with workers as to what their rights are. I know that ACAS does a brilliant job, and the national minimum wage team themselves and the other agencies all try to communicate better, but I think there is an issue with the national minimum wage. If you pay a worker the national minimum wage, the chances are that they are not being paid the national minimum wage. To play it safe, businesses should be paying comfortably above it to ensure that they are okay.

John Kirkpatrick: I do not have a huge amount to add to that. I recognise that most enforcement of the Equality Act 2010 comes through the tribunal system, which imposes a burden on the individual to understand their rights and have access to appropriate advice, redress and so on. We can do a certain amount of enforcement ourselves.

The other thing that we will do, as the enforcer of the Equality Act, is try to provide as much clarity of guidance as we can. In a sense, that is the first step in an enforcement process. The most recent example, I suppose, would be the guidance that we consulted on and published on the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023, which came into force only a few weeks ago. We felt it desirable and necessary to put quite a lot more guidance into the public domain to help both employers and employees to understand their rights.

In a sense, the lesson from that is that yes, that is something we can own the responsibility for doing in our area of work, as others do in other areas—ACAS does work on this, as do others. The important thing is that the initial law is as clear and straightforward as it can be. I urge the Committee to have that in mind as it thinks about the legislation before it. The clarity and simplicity of the underlying law is the thing that makes it easier to enforce.

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

Q Margaret, I have a question for you, specifically about the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority. It strikes me that a lot of our discussion is about things like zero-hours contracts and wage enforcement, but the GLAA deals with a different set of labour market challenges: the excluded or isolated groups, such as shellfish workers, or the victims of modern slavery. It is a first responder to the NRM—the national referral mechanism—so it has a different set of responsibilities.

First, what is your assessment of how effective the GLAA has been, given how it was constructed, and how has it been able to perform its functions? Secondly, specifically on modern slavery—thinking about those the GLAA was set up to protect, such as the Morecambe Bay cockle workers—how do you see those functions working in a single enforcement body?

Margaret Beels: It is really important that, in setting up the new body, the three bodies sit down to think about what they do well, so that when we bring them together, we will bring the best of what is done. One of the recommendations in my most recent strategy is to encourage them to start the dialogue with each other at every level—so what an inspector from, for example, the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate does when they go out, versus what is done when a compliance inspector goes out from the GLAA.

I gather a lot of evidence from stakeholders, and they will say, “This works really well here,” or, “That works really well there.” In informing the fair work agency, there should not be a presumption that something will always be done one way because that is done by this lot; instead, we should look at the journey of non-compliance. It is important to help businesses to be compliant; that is, by far, the best way to achieve compliance.

Who is good at doing the communication with businesses, then? The national minimum wage team do that as well—they have their geographical compliance approach and they try to go out to help business. How do we build that into the structure of what is done? When it comes to deliberate non-compliance and modern slavery, you need to have the teeth to deal with that. The modern slavery dimension will move across into the fair work agency, but then it will have the whole spectrum of looking at how things are done.

Resources will be important to the fair work agency. All the bodies will talk about the fact that they do not have the resources that they would like to do the full job that they are there to do. I go back to challenge them: “Can you show me the value for money in what you are doing? Are you being as efficient as you might be?” My strategy talks about the use of artificial intelligence—are they building those tools into how they do things, so that they can have the maximum efficiency possible? Then, as they come together, will they listen to each other to make sure that they pick the best?

[Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)]

Q I experienced a conversation with sixth-formers in Torbay who were sexually harassed in the workplace. I would welcome your thoughts on how the Bill could be strengthened so that it is supportive of employers in their support for people who experience such a situation.

John Kirkpatrick: We start from the position that everyone has the right to a workplace in which they are free from the risk of discrimination or of harassment. In our view, that ought to be the way it works. We have lots of evidence, as I am sure you and other Members have from your constituents. For example, from our “Turning the tables” report, we know that a quarter of respondents had been harassed by third parties in the workplace. That is a particular issue for people in customer-facing roles.

It was interesting to hear Margaret talking about sectors that are vulnerable to exploitation. Some of those where we have found vulnerability—[Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Murray]

Q May I ask about the evidence we heard about industrial relations, both from representatives of business and from the many trade unions that we have heard from? How do you see this Bill affecting industrial relations in Britain, and what do you think will be the long-term impact of that on the economy?

Justin Madders: Over the last 14 years, there has been a pretty hostile environment for trade unionists. That has been ramped up in recent years, which is why we have seen in the last couple of years the highest number of industrial relations disputes for about 40 years. The solution is not to continue to legislate to make it harder for people to strike; it is actually to change the culture and attitude towards industrial relations.

We are trying to make sure that trade unions have the opportunity to operate on a level playing field, and I think that we have heard plenty of evidence from both employers and trade unions that when there is a constructive relationship, businesses benefit and individual workers benefit. There is plenty of evidence that trade union members usually have better pay, and better terms and conditions—that is recognised throughout the world—and that is something that we want to help facilitate under this legislation.

[Nick Timothy]

Q Do you personally want to see increased unionisation in Britain, and do you hope and/or expect that the Bill will deliver it?

Justin Madders: I think that is actually a challenge for the trade union movement. I think that they would accept that this is really up to them. Personally, as a trade union member and someone who has been actively involved in the trade union movement for many years, I see the absolute advantages and benefits of being a trade union member, but it is really up to them to get into the workplaces, explain their advantages to the workforce and then engage on a tripartite basis with Government, business and workers to improve everyone’s working lives.

Employment Rights Bill (First sitting)

Chris Murray Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Public Bill Committees

[The Minister for Equalities (Dame Nia Griffith)]

I also refer to my declaration of interests. I am a member of the USDAW trade union.

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

I also refer to my declaration of interests. I am a member of the Unison and Community trade unions.

[Justin Madders]

Mr Stringer, I do not think that I actually mentioned my trade union memberships. For the record, the individual unions are Unite and GMB.

Employment Rights Bill (Second sitting)

Chris Murray Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Uma Kumaran (Stratford and Bow) (Lab)]

I refer Members to my declaration of interests and my membership of the GMB union.

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

I refer Members to my declaration of interests and to my membership of Unison and Community trade unions.

Examination of Witnesses

Allen Simpson and Neil Carberry gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Timothy]

Q The impact assessment says that the costs of the Bill are around £5 billion, but earlier we heard that that is actually probably an underestimate and it is likely to be a lot higher. Could you tell us a bit about where those costs will tend to fall for your sectors in particular and how they will relate to other challenges that businesses are going to face with the national insurance rise, the equalisation of the minimum wage and higher energy costs?

Jamie Cater: A lot of those up-front costs will have to go into training, in particular for HR managers, people managers and line managers, not just to ensure regulatory compliance but for employers that want to think about how their broader culture and organisational culture reflects the principles of the Bill. Lots will go into ensuring compliance and wider training of staff.

I mentioned earlier that there was concern that the Budget announcements on NICs—you mentioned the living wage and minimum wage as well—may make it more difficult to take the risk of employing people who might require additional training and, more broadly, that training budgets might get squeezed. It is already difficult and has been made challenging over recent years for our members to recruit the apprentices that they need; I am thinking about the apprenticeship levy and wider skills policy.

The challenge, I suppose, is that given that training budgets are getting squeezed the money effectively goes increasingly into training managers rather than necessarily into the young people who need the trade and technical skills to work on shop floors and production lines. The risk is that that could further weaken manufacturers’ already unfavourable position when it comes to investing in the technically skilled workforces of the future. That is where we see the real risk.

Jim Bligh: I agree with Jamie on all that and would add two more specific examples. I have mentioned the administration burden, which falls particularly on small businesses but really falls on them all. There are two examples of where that might come in. One is on the collective redundancy proposals for consultation, which remove the single establishment. If you are a large business with, say, four or five different sites and you are making more than 20 people redundant at one of those sites, the expectation will be, according to how we read the Bill, that you consult across all those sites.

Previous witnesses have called this a perpetual consultation, and that is a concern that we have as well —that it would be quite hard to manage. It is administratively really difficult to manage something like that across five different sites in a business. It could also lead to uncertainty and confusion among employees, who are being constantly consulted on restructuring and changes to other parts of the business in other local areas that have no impacts on them.

The other point on zero-hours contracts is that there is a risk that with a short reference period of 12 weeks, you end up not aligning with seasonal spikes in demand, so you end up paying people substantially more to do contracts that actually are not required, given that that does not reflect a full season. So our proposal, like others’, is for something more reflective and closer to the Ireland model. We would suggest a 26-week reference period; that covers most elements of seasonality in a business.

[Chris Murray]

Q I am an MP from Edinburgh, and obviously that is a university city; it is a city with a lot of tourism and hotels and hospitality, and we also have the festivals in August, so we see a lot of this kind of stuff. Looking around my constituency, I can see a real difference in how employers treat their staff, some of whom will be really impacted by this legislation, but a lot of whom will not be, because they are already above that.

I think, Mr Cater, you said that a lot of your organisations already go beyond the provisions that are based in this law. Do you think that the legislation could lead to more of a level playing field, where the organisations that are already treating their staff well are unaffected, but others would have to change and improve—a kind of levelling up in how people’s staff are treated?

Jamie Cater: The important thing for levelling the playing field is the fair work agency, and making sure that we have an approach to enforcement of labour market policy and regulation that is properly resourced and does have that level playing field. I said right at the start that we support efforts to remove and address genuine exploitation and bad practice in the labour market. We have confidence that the fair work agency can begin to do that.

On our concerns about the Bill, we have talked a lot about statutory probation periods, but on guaranteed hours and so on, I think there is the potential to create a level playing field as long as we have the caveats that allow that genuine two-sided flexibility where it works in the interests of both the employee and the employer—retaining, for example, zero-hours contracts where they work for both parties, as in many instances they do, so that employers and employees can still benefit from those arrangements.

Some of our concerns around the right to guaranteed hours are in things like the definition of regular working hours, and the scope, which Jim has alluded to, of the reference period, where we think there is a risk of an unintended consequence because it captures a much broader range of flexible contracts than just literal zero-hours contracts or low-hours contracts. The example that we use in manufacturing is annualised hours contracts, where employees are guaranteed a minimum number of hours over a 12-month period. They have much more financial security in terms of pay, but those hours can still vary on a week-by-week or month-by-month basis. We would not consider that to be an example of, to use the words of the plan to make work pay, “exploitative zero-hours contracts”, but depending on where that 12-week reference period falls, and depending on how you define regular working hours and what the number of those hours might be, a form of flexible employment like that could end up being in scope when maybe it is not appropriate for it to be.

We want to ensure that there are no unintended consequences where arrangements like that, which provide financial security, stable employment plus flexibility for both parties—which should be retained—unintentionally fall within scope of the measures in the Bill, because that would mean that the Bill is not a level playing field; we would be in a situation where good options for both parties had effectively been taken off the table.

[The Chair]

We have a few seconds left.

Jim Bligh: For me, it is about enforcement and having a really strong, well-resourced enforcement agency. That means making sure that people are aware and can be supported to comply, and then that the enforcement, fines and so on come after that. That is about having a really well-enforced system. It is also about making sure that, on the other side, the employment tribunal system can cope. That is a really important part of enforcement. At the moment, at best, we have six-month employment tribunal delays; at worst, the delay is two years. That is an area of the system that we need to look at.

--- Later in debate ---

[Laurence Turner]

Do you see opportunities for marrying the levelling up of employment standards with productivity gains in construction?

Alasdair Reisner: In terms of industry productivity, there is a lot to do, but one of the biggest drivers will be people being happy and healthy at work, and being provided with appropriate training that drives their competence to deliver. So yes, I think there is something there. Ultimately, there are big challenges that sit outside the employment space. At the minute, we are not even measuring productivity properly. Knowing whether we are improving starts with having the first clue about what we are supposed to be measuring. I should say that there is good work going on in that space at the moment.

[Chris Murray]

Q I am particularly interested in how migration has affected the labour market. I know the construction industry has seen a lot of it, and there has certainly been a big public perception—whether it is true in reality is up for debate—that sectors that saw high levels of migration over the past 10 or 15 years also saw a degradation in working standards through the spread of zero-hours contracts, wage undercutting, and fire and rehire. Do you agree with that assessment—not that it is the case, but that there is that perception? Would strengthening workers’ rights as proposed in the Bill assure employees in your industry, who have a perception that global events—migration flows or changes in how capitalism works—affect them?

Alasdair Reisner: There is a characterisation that construction sought migrant labour as a way of undermining the cost of the existing workforce, but—I hold my hands up; I am a lobbyist for the industry—that is just not true. A lot of people do not understand that we are a relatively high-paying industry. We used migrant labour where there was a lack of capacity in the industry, and it was almost a balancing item to meet that capacity; it was not about undermining costs. I am confident that, whatever we do on employment rights, we will still have a challenge around meeting our future skills needs. I do not think migration is the answer; I think there is a long-term piece around us recruiting more effectively domestically.

[Chris Murray]

Q The point was about the perception that that is the case. Do you think that measures such as this will help combat that perception?

Alasdair Reisner: It cannot hurt to have measures that make the world of work in the construction industry more attractive to try to defeat that perception, but there are much bigger factors driving it.

[The Chair]

In the last minute, I call Jon Pearce.

Pub and Hospitality Sector

Chris Murray Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I represent the city centre of Edinburgh, so it is impossible to overstate the critical contribution of the hospitality sector, not just to the economy of my constituency but to Scotland and the UK as a whole. For example, the Scottish whisky industry produces £7.2 billion for the UK economy every year and, collectively, visits to distilleries in Scotland are the biggest single-ticketed venue in the UK, and those include Holyrood distillery in the centre of my constituency.

The pub sector in Scotland is absolutely critical, generating £2.3 billion in gross value added contributions in Scotland alone and employing 45,000 workers. Tragically, pubs in Scotland are closing at twice the rate of pubs in England. I want to reassure the House that my Scottish Labour colleagues and I are ensuring that the needs and opportunities presented by the whisky and pub sectors in Scotland are being heard right at the heart of this new Government.

I want to touch on a couple of the contributions made by the pub and hospitality sector beyond the economic. The first is tackling loneliness. Loneliness is as big a killer in this country as cancer, and pubs are critical to tackling it in the community. The second is providing career paths, particularly for the young. The contribution that these jobs make to developing the soft skills that we desperately need in the economy is vastly underestimated. I began my career by working for two years in the restaurant of the Hilton hotel in Glasgow, and that taught me a lot of critical life lessons that I use in this place, so it is important that we get the policy dynamics of this right. That includes tax and incentives, but it also includes the obligations we put on the sector.

We must learn from the Scottish experience of the disastrous deposit return scheme, which has been a real challenge for the sector, and the business rates uncertainty created by the SNP Government in Holyrood.