10/10/2012 Newsnight Scotland

to work out where the limits are Tonight on Newsnight Scotland:

another stay of execution for the workforce at Halls of Broxburn. But

tonight the factory remains threatened with closure and the

loss of 1,700 jobs. A government task force is trying

to save the plant. But do such government initiatives have any

real effect, or are they just giving people false hope?

Also tonight, the very latest on the referendum agreement or non-

agreement between Edinburgh and London. Signed sealed and delivered,

Good evening. 1,700 workers at the Hall's of Broxburn meat products

plant heard today that there's one more chance that their factory will

survive, but not at full capacity. And even then the omens don't seem

too good. The task force led by the Scottish government met the parent

company today, and all agreed to a few days' grace while one last

attempt is made to secure a buyer for the plant as a going concern.

Even if that works out, some job losses seem inevitable. Jamie

McIvor reports on what we can expect of a government sponsored

task force in this sort of situation. Can it offer any more

A task force to help Kilmarnock face the closure of a bottling

plant. To help the Murray economy survive defence cuts. It has almost

become the inevitable response whenever a big job loss is looming.

But our task forces sometimes simply about politicians and public

agencies doing what they think voters expect of them? Knowing that

odds may be stacked against them? Most companies have already been

through a lot of the options in terms of future viability of the

sight of that business. In many cases, it is perhaps too far down

the line for something to be done. In other cases, potentially

government and public bodies can provide some initiative.

The axe has hung over Hall's since July. 17 and the staff are still

waiting to hear if they are going to lose their jobs. -- 1,700 staff.

We just feel now that we want it over and done with. It is just the

waiting that is more than anything. Trying to help, yes, a task force.

There's still hope that somebody might by the factory. But now the

finance secretary accepts some job losses are certain.

I cannot foresee all the jobs being safeguarded. I think we have to

allow the discussions to take place to determined whether any further

steps can be taken to ensure continuity of business.

What sort of things do task forces generally do? Ideally, they would

save both the jobs and the factory. But getting a private company to

change its mind is a pretty tall order. Some of political -- some

more practical aims might be to find a buyer for the factory. If

this fails, the task force could find he -- help for those looking

for jobs. I have not got any skills. My skills are in a slaughterhouse.

It is not going to take me anywhere. Just looking for a job, it

terrifies me. There's no doubt that government

action can get results. Two years ago, this plant faced closure. The

Scottish government and public agencies helped engineer a solution,

and it is still open. But on other occasions, when a factory still

closes, proving what different a task force made can be tricky.

It can be difficult to make those measurements in terms of what would

have happened had this not occurred. Nonetheless, I think we need to

involve all of the various agencies, involve the workers themselves,

clearly engage with them at every stage and find out from them how

effective they feel the So, while task forces can do good,

and certainly do no harm, do they sometimes come about simply because

politicians see it is a role to try to help? But can that also risk

offering false hope? I'm joined now by journalist Alf

Young, who's done time on industrial development task forces

on the west coast, and from Edinburgh by George Kerevan, who

also writes about business and economics.

First of all, just on the specific situation, do you see any hope for

this? I don't really see much hope. It is

a terrible thing to say when 1,700 people are going to be thrown out

of work. But I think the story of why this plant has got to and where

it has come from, this has been in the ruins for some time. It was

part of the Grampian Food Group. There was huge expansion into a

multi- billion-pound turnover but pretty thin profits, which was bank

with age boss. In 2008, with the banking crash and problems with the

cost of keeping food production going, they had to sell. They sold

to this group in Holland, who are unusual in that they are a

consortium of 18,000 farmers in South Holland. It is a co-operative

organisation, probably the biggest food prices are in Europe. It has

got big, modern plants all over the place. This is not a new place, it

is old. Whether the company is larding it in saying how much money

it is going to present or not, I suspect it is losing money. We're

going to see cereal prices go up again, so the whole food chain

question of getting pigs ready for slaughter, doing that, you put all

these things together, you get the austerity environment where people

are spending less on food and trying to cut down their household

budgets, it just does not look good. This was an accident waiting to

happen. George, given that gloomy analysis,

obviously this task force has been trying to do something. But

realistically, do you think there is anything they can do?

As a package said, task forces have two project. They can take a

situation to try to help the work force. That is quite legitimate if

it is a major employer in a small area, as is Hall's. I remember when

Danny Alexander was the minister, and put a taskforce into Motorola.

That was reasonably successful. So it is positive for the work force.

The other situation is trying to save the plant. I agree with the

analysis and would go further. The Dutch company is a mess as well. It

has just fired its chief executive. It has got the squeeze on it as

well because of the rise in food stocks. They are in real trouble

and they are closing plants and firing people right across Holland

and Germany. But the task force are already --

also a useful, whether they work or not. If you have a particular firm

that plays a strategic role in your supply chain, and that is the

problem for Hall's, because it is the major meat but as in Scotland.

If you lose Hall's, Scottish meat If they can't save the plant, are

these task forces really doing any more than what is available anyway?

I think they are talking what is available anyway and focusing it in

a very delicate way. I agree with George to an extent, when Motorola

went out of their plant, there was a real focus on trying to get

people, the jobs in that sector. In that time, they were still quite a

lot of electronic assembly around in Scotland so that there were

places for them to go. It may well be that there are many very highly

trained people working at Halls of Broxburn, but there are also quite

a few, the woman hair she said, -- the woman in the film said, she is

unskilled. In that sense, this is more like an 1980s thing, people

are plaint -- trained in one industrial thing. There is another

factor at Halls of Broxburn, quite a significant factor of the

workforce of from Eastern Europe, particularly Poland. That changes

the dynamic again because an Eastern European workforce having

come all this way to get a job are quite mobile in terms of looking

for jobs elsewhere. Whether the directive helping you with your CV,

or the kind of sectors where there is some work to be had if you can

present well and interviewed and so on, that kind of thing, that is

fine in some areas but if a great many of workers are mobile in the

sense they are immigrants from Eastern Europe, they will naturally

dissipate Again and go to other places looking for work elsewhere.

The other factor here, it is the fact that we are in a recession.

Because Broxburn is not this great depressed region. It is pretty much

in the green-belt area, and mice -- I might be misrepresenting you, but

I think yourself included, wanted to take out of the Green Zone to

help this huge expansion of Edinburgh that was going on during

the boom period. If it wasn't for the recession, it would be easy

enough to get jobs, presumably. Maybe. It is pretty clear it the

recession has put a dampener on jobs across the board, particularly

Edinburgh, and Broxburn is in Edinburgh. With reasonable

transport you would have thought that people would be able to get

jobs quickly. Certainly the recession has put a dampener on it.

However, in a sense, the way your packet was reading it was,

politicians are doing this simply for pro forma, to go through the

motions because it is expected of them. From the public's point of

view and the workers in Halls of Broxburn, they have seen the banks

being saved. I know there was a different situation and the entire

economy would have collapsed if the banks would have gone. But people

see government intervening anyway, so there will be pressure from

people saying, you should be giving us some extra help. What was true

when I was involved in economic development matters in Edinburgh

council is that councils had much more responsibility and resources

to do that sort of thing. It is probably better done at the local

authority level than at government level. You have been working in

this area for years, would you agree? It is quite hard for local

of Reuters. There was a time when local authorities could do that and

there was a time when we had a new towns that had development

corporations who could make interventions. But in an era of

council tax freeze and shrinking budgets in local authorities, I

think local authorities have much less, to do anything when they are

faced with a crisis like this. Another day closer to Monday, and

it is still not absolutely officially certain that the first

minister and the Prime Minister will shake hands on a deal to hold

a referendum. Or is it? Mr Cameron told his conference that he will be

up here on Monday to do just that. Meanwhile Mr Salmond made it clear

that he still sees the agreement as something less than a done deal.

Whether our athletes were Scottish, Welsh, English or from Northern

Ireland, they drape themselves in one flag. There was of course one

person who didn't like that. He is called Alex Salmond. I'm going to

go and see him on Monday to sort out that referendum on independence

by the end of 2014. Because there are many things are what this

coalition government to do, but what could be more important than

saving our United Kingdom? So let's say it, we are better together, we

will rise together, and let us fight that referendum with

everything I've got. There are still.. Things looked optimistic to

sign an agreement next week, but these are not done until they have

done. You must not pre-empt them because of couple of things are

being talked through. Both sides are looking to an agreement, but

the Prime Minister and myself have we can be done by next week, but as

of this Wednesday, the agreement is not done. I am joined by Brian

Taylor the political editor. What are these issues? It is two things,

there are going to be statutes to bring about the transfer of power

for the referendum. And with that they will be a referendum of -- a

memorandum of understanding between the government. So the first point

is to get the wording right on that memorandum to stop it is not that

they don't trust each other, they just want the wording clear and

defined. The bigger one of that is the issue of campaign finance, the

limits that would apply to to two sides. Not just the campaigns

collectively but the individual parties contributing. I think a way

around that will be a compromise that allows... Of this is because

presumably the SNP are worried there are more parties against

independence than there are for it. A correct. If you follow the

standard customary rules, parties are allowed to spend up to a

proportion of the Shia of the vote they got, which puts the SNP Number

One, but it puts the rivals 2, 3 and 4 with the rest nowhere. So it

would be three major parties against one. The SNP will want to

equalise that, I think there will be compromised was that but it will

be scrutinised by an outside body, the Electoral Committee. I do not

think this being an obstacle. I think the deal in all but name is

done. I think in broad times, the deal is done, F think it will be

signed on Monday and go ahead. think the British government sees

this as another bit of business and Alex Salmond sees it as the treaty

of Versailles. He sees it as the treaty between the neighbouring

heads of government, but let's be clear, the UK government know

exactly how important this is. They are trying to give the impression

that it is workaday, it is government as usual, it is a

sensible Association and just part of the business of governments.

They do not want to be associated with any high-falutin razzmatazz on

Monday, they want to play it down. I am not saying that Alex Salmond

is trying to overplay his hand, but he is trying to stress the relative

importance of it. The UK government are trying to do the opposite.

issue of, it will be up to the Scottish Parliament to say that 16

and 17 year-old can have the good. There are firemen -- fireworks

among some in the House of Lords. If you transfer, the power to hold

a referendum will be transferred to the Scottish parliament in 2014. So

you transfer the associated stuff as well, the franchise, the

organisation, the power to set the question which will be in the hands

of Holyrood. The 16 and 17 euros, the Lordships led by Lord Forsyth

were saying, in numbers, how long - - hang on a cotton picking second.

This is part of a backstairs deal but it could set a precedent as

they said for elections to the Commons or other elections. It was

the unelected House of was discussing it, ironically! Lord

Wallace, the Scottish minister said, no precedent what's the weather. A

referendum is for one term only, in other words you set the terms of

that referendum and it said its no precedent. The Lords do not seem

convinced. If you even take Scottish elections, you can hardly

say to 16 and 17 year-old, you can vote for the referendum but not the