Daniel Johnson
Scottish Labour · Scotland
“When people feel threatened, they resort to violence. That is why I absolutely associate myself with the minister’s words. We must all take responsibility for our words and reflect on the current circumstances and situations.”
“We could forgive the Reform members for being inexperienced, but they have made this debate about them, so let us talk about them. I do not think that they do themselves any favours whatsoever.”
“Daniel Johnson: Were it only about the terminology that Reform is using, it would be one thing, but it is not. Let us look at some of the words used by Reform politicians, both here and in other places: calling for “cold rage”, describing our justice system as being “two tier” and describing recent migrants as being of “fighting age”.”
“Malcolm Offord opened the debate by saying that, through its motion, Reform rejects the SNP’s version of mediocrity. What was clear from the rest of his speech was that that is because he has his own very special version of mediocrity. The whole of Reform’s approach to the debate is summed up by the motion.”
“Likewise, on energy—we need to talk about what a sensible mix looks like, but, if you wrap yourself up in climate denialism, you absolutely delegitimise your argument. We do need to talk about migration. Did my party get it right when we opened up so quickly to accession countries? That should be debated.”
“Are these the politics that you want to enable and represent? [Interruption.] Thomas Kerr is laughing. If he thinks that violence in this city is funny, I am outraged— deeply outraged. He should think very carefully, because people in this city were injured.”
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“However, we know that we must do more, and we are therefore consulting on our voluntary good practice principles to ensure that our national community benefits guidance is fit for the future. A number of members are anxious about the proposal. I highlight that it is being put forward with the UK Government, and it is ultimately for the UK Parliament to legislate on it. Nonetheless, I am happy for us to debate Westminster legislation in the chamber, although I realise that the Conservatives have protested against our doing so in the past. It is important to acknowledge, however, that there is no single quick fix to the multifaceted issue that is electricity consenting. The proposals require action, co-operation, honesty—as other members have pointed out— and, at times, compromise from all stakeholders.”
“The consultation suggests that an independent reporter be given powers to make an examination in the most appropriate way. For example, they may specify a site inspection, further written submissions, hearing sessions or inquiry sessions or a combination of those. In addition—crucially for this debate—the reporter may still specify a public inquiry. As Mark Ruskell pointed out, however, the reform is about ensuring that a wider range of options than just a public inquiry are available to allow communities to make their views clear. A number of members referred to community benefit. In the past 12 months, more than £30 million of benefits have been offered to Scottish communities by energy companies.”
“The examination process will be more effective than before, and—crucially—just as independent. That is what putting community voices at the heart of the consenting process means in practice. As several members pointed out in their speeches, the proposals on public inquiries seek to make the process more efficient. At present, that route takes an average of 18 months and involves written submissions, hearings and inquiry sessions. Not only is it sometimes a lengthy option; it can also be intimidating, complex and time consuming for all participants. Liam McArthur, Michael Marra and Daniel Johnson gave examples of processes that took even longer than 18 months and pointed out—rightly, with regard to all those cases—that politicians have to be honest with the public about the problem that such a delay represents.”
“The Presiding Officer: Before I call the next speaker, I ask you directly, Mr Lumsden, to desist from commenting from your seat. 16:58 Alasdair Allan: We have rightly heard from members about the need to defend community voices. Our Government is taking action to strengthen the voices of communities in the electricity consenting process. As several members, including Sarah Boyack, have mentioned, the proposals that we are talking about will make it a statutory requirement for communities to be consulted before any application is made. That represents an improvement in the voice of communities, and they will be able to make their voices heard loud and clear, helping to influence proposals at the earliest possible stage. Ministers will retain the right to reject applications if developers have not engaged sufficiently.”
“If the Conservatives want to reject that, they are the ones who will need to explain why this country is uncompetitive, they will need to explain to people why our electricity bills are higher than in other parts of the world, and they will need to explain to business and industry—[Interruption.] The Presiding Officer: I am very sorry to have to interrupt you, Mr Johnson. We will stop shouting from our seats. Daniel Johnson: This transition is necessary. It is vital. It is vital if we are going to lower bills, and it is vital if we are going to secure investment. Unfortunately, the Conservatives have revealed today not only that they are anti-business, but that they are driven only by populism. Douglas Lumsden: What rubbish! Daniel Johnson: Frankly, that needs to be rejected. Douglas Lumsden: He should listen to the people.”
“Daniel Johnson: As I was saying, we would be left wholly at the mercy of countries such as Russia. We need to act for energy security. We have among the highest electricity costs of the countries in the Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development, and they are made higher and more unstable because of the previous Tory Government’s decision to get rid of our gas storage. If we want cheaper electricity, we need to invest in renewables. Ultimately, successful, competitive economies are those that secure affordable access to reliable energy. That has always been the truth. It was the truth for the UK in the 19th century with coal, and it was the truth for the United States in the 20th century with oil. This century, the successful economies will be those that secure reliable access to affordable, renewable electricity.”
“To come to the chamber and point the finger in every direction other than their own is frankly reprehensible, and for this reason: it is not just a difficult thing that we are trying to do; it is necessary. We need to do this. Mr Kerr said, “Drill, baby, drill.” Stephen Kerr: No—I was quoting. Daniel Johnson: The simple fact is this, Mr Kerr. We have 6 per cent of the extractable resources left under the sea bed. That is what is left. If we do nothing, we are left wholly at the behest and the mercy— Stephen Kerr: Will Daniel Johnson give way on that point? Daniel Johnson: No, thank you. Nobody took any of my interventions, so I am not going to take any in this short debate. Stephen Kerr: He misquoted me. The Presiding Officer: Let us hear Mr Johnson.”
“Who was the great socialist who increased that target? It was none other than that well-renowned socialist, Boris Johnson. In listening to many of the Conservatives who have spoken this afternoon, we would be forgiven for thinking that they had been out of power for years, but the election was only in July last year. The reality is that the vast bulk of the decisions that have been made—or at least a very considerable number of them—result from their time in office. Whether we are talking about the target or its implications for what we need in terms of transmission, the grid process or applications, or the consultation processes, all those things stem from decisions that the Conservatives made or did not make in their time in government a mere matter of months ago.”
“It is a great pleasure to follow the previous two speakers, who have summed up the debate very well. I am not surprised that there is controversy and that people are concerned about what is being planned, as what we are trying to do is exceptionally difficult: we are trying to completely change the nature and the basis of our energy economy. We are trying to go from a position, 25 years ago, where two thirds of our energy was being generated from fossil fuels, to one where that is completely replaced by renewables. That is not easy—it is hard. Michael Matheson was absolutely right to detail the chronology. It was indeed the previous Conservative Government that upped the target for offshore renewables from 30GW to 50GW. Stephen Kerr described the position that we are in as being the result of “socialist” decision making.”
“He said: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle” and that “If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.” 16:43”
“Will the Scottish Government enshrine the view that people enjoy from their house and their land as part of the planning process, as is the case elsewhere in the United Kingdom? Will we finally get a fully costed alternative to overhead lines? Will the Scottish Government insist on proper consideration of undergrounding, particularly in areas of natural beauty where pylons and overhead lines would have a disproportionately negative impact on people and communities? Alasdair Allan: Will Mr Kerr take an intervention? The Deputy Presiding Officer: Mr Kerr is concluding in 15 seconds. Stephen Kerr: I will close with a quote from Edmund Burke.”
“Will Stephen Kerr take an intervention? The Deputy Presiding Officer: I suggest that Mr Kerr does not have time to take any more interventions. Stephen Kerr: On the issue of pylons, I do not want to see my country turned into a wirescape. In Central Scotland, we already have that in large measure. What, in the name of goodness, are we doing to our beautiful country? I do not want my country’s landscape to be turned into a wirescape. What about the communities that are being invaded by those monster pylons? Small communities are campaigning against deep pockets and powerful interests. I ask the minister to confirm that the community consultation on pylon construction, which was recommended in NESO’s “Clean Power 2030” report, is not simply a cynical box-ticking exercise, because many people feel that it is being conducted in that way.”
“The performance figures that I outlined in my first answer to Annabelle Ewing, on the numbers of jobs that have been safeguarded or protected and the amount of capital that can be invested as a result of the agencies’ work, have not come about by chance. Because Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and South of Scotland Enterprise have been so targeted and focused on what they are trying to do, they have excelled, and they have never been in a stronger position. I absolutely stand by the point that, from a business support perspective, business cares about what is coming to it in support, and not how many jobs we are creating in the public sector. The Deputy Presiding Officer: I call Willie Rennie. Please be very brief,”
“The cabinet secretary referenced her appearance at the Economy and Fair Work Committee last week. At that meeting, she said: “I want distributable funding in the economy portfolio. I do not want just to create public service jobs”. She added: “the fact is that a public sector organisation might need to change and adapt”.—[Official Report, Economy and Fair Work Committee, 8 January 2025; c 12.] She seemed to be suggesting that the focus and configuration of the enterprise agencies need to change. Is that an area of work that the Scottish Government is undertaking? Will she outline what steps she is taking to reform the enterprise agencies? Kate Forbes: On that point, the enterprise agencies have been at the front of the queue to adapt and make sure that their focus is far more targeted and streamlined.”
“We should have a renewed debate about transport, stop talking about roads in binary terms and get the basics right, as well as delivering strategic projects. 13:10”
“Again, far too often, we talk about roads in binary terms—we say either that roads are good or that they are bad. We should not. Roads are vitally important in providing transport links between urban and rural areas. That involves delivering the major transport projects—Fergus Ewing is absolutely right to highlight the issues with those projects—but it also involves getting the basics right. The other night, I was talking to a haulier who told me that he is spending £30,000 a month on tyres, which wear out more quickly on the outside because we are not cutting back vegetation at the sides of our roads and our roads are not wide enough. He also said that there are not enough secure resting places for drivers.”
“Transport is the lifeblood and the fundamental foundation of the economy, and we need to start talking about it as such. It is not a peripheral topic or just another policy area; it is the foundation of the economy. That is especially true in Scotland, where we have so many remote areas of production. Of the comments that Ash Regan made, the one that I support the most is her point about the link between urban and rural. We must end the practice of talking about the urban economy or the rural economy and start talking about the urban economy and the rural economy. Our economic advantages rely on urban and rural working together, and the issues with transport get in the way of that. I recognise that I do not have much time, but I make the point that we need to have a renewed conversation about roads.”
“Fergus Ewing is right to talk about the importance of the A9, because the problems with that road are not simply an inconvenience. When there is a lane closure on the A9, that creates the mother of all bottlenecks and the flow of whisky that is so important to our economy gets interrupted. It is not only the whisky industry that is affected. All industries need transport links. I believe that, fundamentally, the economy is about moving things from point A to point B. Whether we are talking about getting supplies from suppliers to places of business or finished products to customers, goods need to be transported. If we want workers to be able to get from where they live to where they work, we need to ensure that transport is available.”
“That is true of any economy, but it is particularly true of the Scottish economy, given that what we make and produce in remote places—whether we are talking about the energy industry in the north-east, the whisky industry, which has distilleries in the Highlands and Islands, or the aquaculture industry—is so important to what makes our economy distinctive. Those places with productive capacity that make our economy distinctive and give it a competitive edge must have links with places in the central belt. Let us take whisky, for example. It is distilled in remote parts of Scotland, but it is often bottled in the central belt. We export 43 bottles of whisky a second, and 1.5 billion bottles are produced every year.”
“I, too, thank Ash Regan for lodging the motion. It is incredibly important, and I was pleased to be one of the signatories to it, because it makes points that need to be made in the chamber more often. Not only am I happy that she lodged the motion, but I do not disagree with a single word that she said in her speech, nor do I disagree with any of the contributions thus far. I say that so forcefully because the motion makes the important point that transport is not detached from the rest of public policy but is central to it. I made that point at a reception that I hosted on behalf of the Road Haulage Association. Transport is the economy—it is the fundamental connective tissue.”
“Fin Carson is absolutely right that, if the national performance framework is to be relevant, we need to be able to see how an area such as the rural economy is performing against it. We cannot and do not do that. Until that happens, the national performance framework will be meaningless. The Deputy Presiding Officer: We move to the open debate. I remind members that we have some time in hand. 16:11”
“However, the framework lacks two things, because both the things that I mentioned reflect that we need to understand the weightings and importance of what we measure, as well as the linkages. Measuring in itself is not enough. Another important lesson from Michael Barber’s delivery unit is that it is not just about reporting on certain measures but about the status that we give the measures. There needs to be a unit or other place where the measures are given focus and attention and where people are held to account. The greatest weakness of the national performance framework is that we discuss it only at times such as this. When was the last time that a cabinet secretary made a statement about how their portfolio was performing against the national performance framework?”
“That can be no clearer than in relation to housing. It is great that housing is part of the national performance framework—that is useful and important—but it needs to set out much more clearly how housing impacts on wages and employment. Those sorts of linkages should exist in the national performance framework. It is the place for them and, without such linkages, it will not be informative. Ultimately, I detect other bits of work in this area. I look at the framework and I see threads of things such as the balanced scorecard devised by Kaplan and Norton; I see hints of things that were worked on by people such as Michael Barber in the delivery unit, when Labour was previously in government.”
“For example, the percentage of businesses with high growth is flat, but the measure says that it is improving; and the number of people in sustainable employment is improving, but the measure says that it is being maintained. The national performance framework says that the number of people participating in the economy is being maintained, but the number is declining. We need context. Without context, the national performance framework provides no insight whatsoever. This is also about structure. What the Deputy First Minister was saying about reform was quite interesting because, for the framework to drive reform, we need to understand the linkages. The committee has been clear that it is important that the framework demonstrates an understanding of and sets out “interlinkages and co-dependencies”.”
“That is how we understand economic growth from a broader economic perspective. The fact that GDP is absent—it is not even set in that context—from the national performance framework as currently set out shows its weakness. Likewise, the NPF is just a snapshot. We have the measurement showing where performance has been maintained or has declined or improved but, without the broader time series, we cannot really understand what that means. Sometimes, the Government is undermining its own measures. On some measures, it says that performance has been maintained when, over a five-year period, it has been improving; or it says that performance has been maintained when, over a five-year period, it has been declining.”
“We are meant to understand how the budget is helping and the reason why the icon from the framework sits there. It is not so much a tick-box exercise as an exercise in sticking the right icon in the right budget area. No one will really understand why, and there is certainly no explanation as to why. There is also inherently a fudge at the heart of the national performance framework. The Government has become undecided or awkward about how it should frame economic growth and where economic growth sits alongside other policy objectives. That is a great shame, because the national performance framework is exactly the place where that should be articulated. It is not about GDP growth—I reject that. It should be about GDP growth per head sitting alongside the Gini coefficient, which is an expression of inequality.”
“I do not think that anyone should really object to the Government attempting to set out how broader policy should sit alongside economic outcomes, how it attempts to weave together the broad range of different things that it sets out to do and how it measures them. It is not that the national performance framework is the wrong thing to do— the problem is that it does not really have the status, importance and, dare I say, coherence that it needs. That is what absolutely every member has been alluding to. They might not have been quite as vociferous as Mr Hoy, but that is the common thread. When we look at the budget, it sums up the problem with the national performance framework. The framework is there, but as a bunch of icons. We are meant to understand what that means.”
“It is always great to take part in a Finance and Public Administration Committee debate. I feel as if I am back with my own people. I was going to congratulate the committee on bringing the topic back to the chamber, because it is rarely discussed outside the confines of the committee, but I must stand corrected because, just this morning, the Deputy First Minister raised the national performance framework at the Economy and Fair Work Committee. However, the way in which she did so was quite interesting and quite telling. She said that the national framework “should” inform policy and that it “should” be the lodestar by which policy is framed and set. I might just be being a cynical Opposition politician, but I thought that that demonstrated a bit of the gap that exists in relation to the national performance framework.”
“We need to get it right. A lot of fair comments have been made and I will take them on board. I thank members of the committee for the report and their contributions.”
“In my contribution, I touched on views that we have heard in the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, and it is absolutely clear that there is a lack of focus on rural and island communities within the national outcomes. Kate Forbes: The short answer is yes. In no way do I want to dismiss the excellent points that have been made in the debate. All the thoughts, perspectives and evidence that committees across the Parliament have gathered are precisely where we need to start with making fundamental reform. If what the RAI Committee has heard can be fed into that, that will, to my mind, be key. If we focus our resources on reform, that will allow us to take more decisive action. That is exactly how I think the Government should operate and govern. The national performance framework sets out the kind of country that we want Scotland to be.”
“I know that members recognise and endorse those ambitions. In the report that we are debating, the evidence base is clear that there is an appetite for change to do that more effectively. That is why, with the support of the Parliament, I would very much like us to recover some of the early ambition and to create a renewed and reformed national performance framework that can drive the next decade of public sector reform. I propose that we look again at every aspect of the national performance framework to support the development and implementation of a stronger and more strategic and impactful framework for Scotland. I hope that that gives a direct answer to a number of questions— Finlay Carson: Does that include consideration of specific policies relating to rural Scotland?”
“That is not to dismiss the previous work—we need to build on all that work, which has got us here today. However, we need to revisit and revise proposals that were made as part of the review. When the national performance framework was first introduced, taken in parallel with the recommendation of the Christie commission, the hope and the expectation was that it would shape, and change for the better, the way that we govern in Scotland, and would put the focus more on agreed outcomes. We hear often in Parliament the refrain that we should focus on outcomes, not on inputs, and that we should remove policy and budgetary silos, thereby enabling spending to be targeted effectively, and encouraging and supporting investment in prevention. Those are all issues that I think every committee, in budget and policy scrutiny, regularly returns to.”
“I am Interested in the cabinet secretary’s points around use of the performance framework as a vehicle for change. Is one of the problems with the current framework that it is very static? It is a set of measures—it does not actually set out a vision for change. Does it need to contain such a vision, or does a vision for change—a theory of change— need to overlay the performance framework as a part of that fundamental review? Kate Forbes: That is a good question, and I would like us to explore it as we proceed with a more substantial overhaul. Reforming the national performance framework needs to mean change and matching of ambition with action, which goes straight to the heart of some of the comments that conveners have made in their speeches.”
“To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to grow Scotland’s arts, culture and creative sector. (S6O-04156)”