John Grady

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley) for securing this debate. I regularly meet fantastic employers in Glasgow who want to employ young people, but the college places to train them in the skills those businesses need are not available. That is an absolute failure and is making Glasgow poorer, despite the fact that we have fantastic opportunities in manufacturing. Glasgow has a city deal through the Glasgow city region. That is something to build on for regional devolution, because it is local employers, local businesses and local colleges that understand how best to get the skills in place to grow the local and regional economy, but we have an absolutely botched reform of local government being carried out in Scotland in the minute—the SNP is making a complete mess of it. The Prime Minister was right when he spoke in Scotland on Friday about the need to get power out of Edinburgh and into the city regions and the regions of Scotland, so we can help businesses to thrive, give young people the opportunities we want them to have, and seize Scotland’s great future.