JACK McCONNELL, the First Minister, yesterday defended the Scottish Executive’s Fresh Talent initiative, which aims to attract more foreigners to work and settle in Scotland.
Mr McConnell said that his role would be to convince people that the plan was “right for Scotland”.
The initiative came under renewed scrutiny a fortnight ago when Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, unveiled a tough new immigration policy, with some critics claiming that the policy would hamper the Executive’s drive to woo bright youngsters to Scotland.
Mr McConnell told BBC Scotland’s Politics Show yesterday that he understood people had concerns about immigration, but that the real threat to Scotland’s future came from depopulation.
“The way to preserve schools, hospitals and services in this country — and the way to have a strong economy in the years to come — is to have more fresh talent in this country,” he said. “Depopulation will mean less people working and therefore less resources for public services. It will mean not just smaller numbers of people working in the economy but it will mean less dynamism in the economy.”
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He said the rate of population was already slowing down, partly he believed, because of the image of modern Scotland and partly because Scotland was giving a strong signal that it was a welcoming country.
“[We are] one of the few places in Western Europe that says we want to have this position,” he said. “The reality is we’ve got a scheme that’s attracting more talented people to come from around the world to Scottish universities. That will attract more businesses to Scotland because they will be able to have access to the best graduates. That will give Scotland a competitive advantage inside the United Kingdom.
“The best way that we are going to attract the right people to come to Scotland is to have an open, welcoming culture that attracts people here on the basis of our landscape, our quality of life, our education system and the strength of our economy.”
The SNP criticised ministers for what they said was a lack of progress on the Fresh Talent initiative. Nicola Sturgeon, the party’s leader at Holyrood, called on the Executive to raise its game to meet Scotland’s population challenge.
“Scotland is the only country in Europe with a falling population and we need radical action now to attract more working people into the country,” she said. “It is now over a year since the first announcement of the Fresh Talent initiative and yet there is still next to no detail on the programme, its success rate to date or how Labour aims to build on it in the future. It is a policy that has made no progress and has no substance.
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“To make matters even worse, the very ethos of the Fresh Talent initiative is being undermined by UK Labour’s competition with the Tories to keep immigrants out of the country.
“Only by putting Scotland’s needs at the heart of our immigration policy will we be in a position to defuse Scotland’s demographic timebomb.”