The Labour government is investing an additional £200 million in a transition plan for refining at Grangemouth in the space of just 9 months. It has also guaranteed full pay for all refinery workers for the next 18 months to help manage the affected workers into new industrial roles at the complex. The SNP government has known that oil refining in Scotland was under threat for at least 5 years but equivocated until the Chinese state-owned joint venture made its final decision in September. Crude oil refining is also only one core operation within the wider world-scale Grangemouth petrochemical manufacturing cluster. There are seven crude oil refineries currently operating in the UK. Grangemouth is the oldest one still operating. The refinery started operations in 1924 and has a Nelson Complexity Index (NCI) of 6.8. The UK average is 9. The European average is 7.6. American and Asian refineries are typically over 10. The refinery at Grangemouth would need to be rebuilt from the ground up and on a much larger scale to be competitive globally. 46% of Grangemouth Refinery's output is petrol and diesel. No new petrol or diesel cars will be sold in Britain after 2030. Scunthorpe is the last steelworks in Britain with operational blast furnaces capable of primary steel production. If these two blast furnaces were allowed to go permanently cold in the coming days, the UK would become the only G7 nation to lose its basic steel production capability. Scotland's last plate mill, Dalzell in Motherwell, is reliant on Scunthorpe to provide it with slab steel, which is then hot rolled into thinner plates for use in structural steel fabrication for projects like energy generation infrastructure, construction and shipbuilding. Demand for these secondary steel products will likely increase substantially with new projects for wind, tidal, and nuclear energy in the coming years. I have repeatedly asked the Scottish Government if it will actively support the redevelopment of integrated steelmaking in Scotland by advocating for the construction of an Electric Arc Furnace at the decommissioned Clydebridge Steelworks site in Cambuslang or at Dalzell. Their response was that it is a matter for the private sector. Scotland and the UK needs a proactive, effective, coherent state-led plan for industrial development, and not opportunistic, simplistic, facile takes like this one 👇🏻