A Wholly Unjust Transition for Aberdeen and the North East

On 22 May the Scottish Government sponsored Just Transition Commission published its fourth and final written briefing based upon a “people-and-place approach”. The previous three papers focussed upon Grangemouth, Shetland and Dumfries and Galloway. This fourth paper entitled “A Just Transition for Aberdeen and the North East” makes for stark reading.  Having conducted two days of reviews, interviews and group discussions the Commission concludes:

• There is no just transition plan for Aberdeen and the North East, particularly for oil and gas workers.
• Deployment of renewables needs to accelerate, and employment therein made more attractive.
• Domestic supply chains are key but emaciated.
• Retraining and skills are essential.
• The Scottish and UK Governments need to cooperate and work seamlessly together
• Most key players are in denial and therefore progress is glacial.

In essence, if this was a report card it’s a D. A solid D. This matters a lot because more than 100,000 direct and indirect jobs are risk. And given Scotland’s deindustrialisation track record it looks like our wheels are thoroughly stuck in the same old tram tracks as coal…steel…shipbuilding…refining.

The report inevitable has several pages of recommendations. Regrettably these lack three essential things: associated costs; a credible integrated timeframe; and any clear accountabilities.

Even more curiously the report lacks three other key aspects, the realpolitik of Transition if you like:

• Any systematic examination of the key players positions, needs and roles (this crucially needs to address the institutional hostility between Edinburgh and London)
• Any examination of the “money side”: costs, the underpinning economic drivers for the status quo, the key players therein, and the desired transition
• Any appraisal of institutional capacity, especially capacity to retrain thousands of workers, build Scottish supply chains, reorient whole complex systems

There are pages of recommendations, albeit sans commercial, political, institutional capacity insights. No timeline. No costs. No specific accountabilities. No integrated road map for the overall journey. It’s like trying to embark on a round the world cycling trip with a child’s globe as guide.

So, we have deindustrialisation Groundhog Day. This report partly describes what’s not working. But elects to shy away from the “why?” and has almost nothing to say in practical terms on how to credibly get our wheels out of the tram tracks.

Meanwhile there is a growing exodus from the sector. Workers unsurprisingly see the writing on the wall (geological as well as this UK and Scottish governmental bourach) and are voting with their feet. Moving to jobs abroad or out of the sector. Key expertise, much of it painstakingly grown over decades, bleeds away. The renewables sector offers a minority potential roles, but this sector offers on average lower wages and cannot conceivably (given the almost wholesale absence of e.g. Scottish manufacturing supply chains) balance the losses from oil and gas.

Transition, indeed transformation, is hellishly difficult on the scale we require in Scotland. It has rarely been affected elsewhere. And our track record in Scotland and the wider UK is pretty grim. Just to get properly started, as a minimum this requires a few fundamentals to be fixed:

• Strategic alignment as UK and Scottish Government levels and a deep commitment to work together towards common medium and long-term goals. These goals to be set within joint road maps. And road maps to be “live”, fully costed, credible and public.
• Creation of integrated, empowered, well-staffed joint teams to work on multiple key aspects of the transition (e.g. technical, fiscal, environmental, supply chain, skills, costs)
• Broad and deep discussion with local communities, worker and employer groups about “the how” (and their role therein in creating success)
• Appointment of senior figures with broad industry and political credibility (and staying power) to oversee the key chunks of policy development and implementation

None of these are currently in place. Not in Holyrood. Not in Westminster. Not in GB Energy. Not in the Just Transition Commission. What do we have instead? Hundreds of position papers, blogs, media pieces, tweets. Endless commentary (like this I suppose), very little of which is of any practical use whatsoever.

What’s really the problem here? Governments don’t know how to tackle this level of complexity? We don’t really care about oil and gas workers when push comes to shove? There is a plan…it’s just not finished? Or in the public domain?

The Transition Commission’s summary is about right. There is no credible plan. If this was a fire smoke is already belching from under door. We can hear the flames crackling. The heat is becoming intense. Meanwhile we are standing nearby. Observing. Writing about how severe the fire is becoming. Blogging about it. Tweeting about it. Wringing our hands about it. While the precious industry burns down right before our eyes.

This is the vacuum in which political insurgents flourish. That hopeless, impotent, angry place. Where uncertainty, rumour and inequity are rife. Where “wait for the experts to sort this out” or “the government cavalry will come charging over the horizon” doesn’t work (or happen). Where multitudes lose their jobs, and their families their main source of income. Where poverty and inequality grow. Our industrial past falls apart, unloved, uncared for, and even despised by some of those with an eye on a “cleaner future”. Lochaber. Sutherland. Bathgate. Linwood. Methil. Irvine. Grangemouth. Aberdeen?

I had hoped for better. Aberdeen and the North East (and Scotland more generally) deserve better. There is plenty of expertise around to fill out the huge gaps here. However, I’m not sure there’s any Scottish or UK political appetite or capacity to deal with the current complex and highly challenging reality. That wouldn’t matter were it not tens of thousands of jobs and a big chunk of our economy are inexorably hurtling towards the scrap heap.

This is negligence at best. Rank cowardice at worst. We can and need to do a great deal better than this. I am just not sure where the Just Transition Fire Service are. Or who they are. Or whether anyone has even picked their eyes up from X and actually called 999.

Neil Gilmour is a former energy industry senior executive recently returned to Scotland having led numerous successful world-scale projects