Alex Cole-Hamilton – Daily Business Magazine

Alex Cole-Hamilton: we need to focus on skills (pic: DB Media Services)

Could the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats do a deal with Labour, asks TERRY MURDEN

He’s taken a speedboat trip on the Clyde, tried his hand at judo, learned a few dance moves, and the day before we meet he was preparing to drive a go-kart. Nobody does political stunts like the Liberal Democrats and Alex Cole-Hamilton is leading by example.

The party’s Scottish leader, like his UK counterpart Ed Davey, believes they help draw the public’s attention to what can be dry and serious issues. Taking on former Commonwealth judo medallist and Highland councillor Connie Ramsay created a few headlines around his pledge to restore services to Highland communities. “It’s a bit of fun and it gets people talking about things like health services and transport,” he says.

We meet at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh where he’s dressed more soberly to meet academics taking part in the Science Festival. The place is buzzing with children trying out games and puzzles to help stimulate their interest in all things scientific. There’s a robot in the corner and some microscopes for examining parasites, as well as lots of helpers in yellow sweatshirts that might have been enlisted to match the party’s colour code.

It all fits in with Cole-Hamilton’s desire to put skills at the top of the economic agenda. He wants a new industrial strategy for Scotland that focuses on “what we’re really good at and what we can be good at” and that means throwing the weight and levers of government behind businesses that can make strides in life sciences, energy, food and drink, fintech and financial services, defence “and more”.

He says the government should be “mapping where the gaps are and will be, and fitting training and education systems around it, so that the country secures the skills it needs in everything from social care to engineering and construction.”

Education has always featured highly in the Liberal Democrat world. Remember Willie Rennie’s penny on income tax campaign to help raise funds for schools? Fundamentally, Cole-Hamilton says there needs to be more attention given to Scotland’s colleges and vocational skills system, and safeguards for the future of world-leading universities.

To that end, the party secured £70 million for the college sector in the last budget negotiations and more money to save Corseford College, Scotland’s first college for young adults with complex & additional needs. It also campaigned to save facilities for Scotland’s rural college in Fife.

“Scottish education just isn’t what it used to be. We used to have one of the best education systems in the world, but under the SNP it is now just average,” he says. “The whole education system isn’t producing the range and depth of skills that businesses and our economy need. It’s ridiculous that the Scottish defence industry is having to hire 300 welders from the Philippines.

Cole-Hamilton with supporters and willing dog

“Our plan will invest in education at every stage, starting from a young age and continuing throughout adulthood. We want every child to get the support and attention they need at school, so they leave with the skills, confidence and resilience to be happy and successful, whatever they choose to do next.”

With the SNP 1/33 to return to government, all the other parties are in a fight for second place. Labour leader Anas Sarwar may still be talking of victory but there have been murmurings about alliances if the SNP is to be denied another five years in power. Just before our chat, Cole-Hamilton was telling the media there would be no alliances. Minutes later he hinted at another Lib-Lab pact.

“Certainly no alliance with the SNP and no deals whatsoever with Reform,” he tells me. “They’re both part of the same problem. They represent a divisive approach to politics.”

It’s noted that he didn’t mention Labour or the Conservative party.

“Look, it’s no secret that we have a lot of common ground with the Labour party and I have a personal friendship with Anas Sarwar. That doesn’t mean I’m racing to join his government as a minister.

“It’s a vision of change I could get on board with more than I could the other parties but at the end of the day there are no pacts or alliances.”

Have there been any talks with Sarwar? “No,” he says. “But in a parliament of minorities I think the public would take a dim view of people turning their faces away and not talking, not trying to strike a deal. It’s a parliament of consensus and we have shown in the last parliament that we were prepared to put aside our differences.”

But if the ultimate aim of all the opposition parties is to remove the SNP, then why not join forces? Given the current polling, it would take more than two parties to unite to keep the nationalists out.

He seems to pull back. After all, he’s fighting to win seats, not cosy up to other opponents. “Ultimately, this all comes down to arithmetic and it’s not something I am thinking a lot about at the moment,” he says.

Instead he references the ability of the LibDems to get things done from a position of opposition on Edinburgh Council. “I don’t fear government but you don’t need to be in power to wield power. I’m not afraid of being a minister, but I don’t leap out of bed every morning and wonder how I can get there.”

Aside from skills and education, his big driving issues have been health and care and he rejects the notion that improving standards inevitably means raising taxes.

“LibDems are never ideological about tax. We are evidence led and I think it is important to say that, because while the people with the broadest shoulders should always carry the biggest burden we can’t start driving people away or creating behavioural change, and that happens if you create a high tax environment. We need wealth creators to come to Scotland.”

He says his social plans would be supported by growth “and if there are three words that encapsulate economic drag in Scotland they are planning, skills and housing. We need to reform all three.” A part of the solution, he says, is getting people currently economically inactive back to work.

He points to failures of energy policy and the Scottish government “foolishly” auctioning the seabed in one go. “This was with a cap of £100,000 per square kilometre. Who puts a cap on an auction? We lost out there.

“And because there was no phasing in the ScotWind leasing, it all happened once, and we don’t have the skills pipeline to make the jobs happen, so in large part turbine manufacture will go offshore, not to Scottish workers.”

On oil and gas, he believes the energy profits levy, which is seen to holding back invesstment, should be reformed. “It has served its purpose,” he says. “Now it needs to be more predictable and more proportionate.”

Asked whether the Energy Secretary Ed Miliband should approve the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields, he says: “We recognise that we are still dependent on oil and gas and while we need that supply if it makes more environmental sense to take it from Jackdaw and Rosebank than it does to import it – with the additional carbon that creates – then we should look seriously at doing it.”

PERSONAL CHECKLIST

Birthplace: Hertfordshire

Age: 48

Education: Aberdeen University

Career highlights: Spent time as a youth worker, was LibDems health spokesperson

Other interests

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