Labour make serious error over local jobs

Sat, 7 Nov 2009

In response to a recent Telegraph article in which Labour’s MSP, Duncan McNeil claimed the Scottish Government had not done enough to keep open the TSC call centre, SNP Councillor Chris Osborne sought to set the record straight. Councillor Osborne asked: “Was Duncan asleep during this whole episode? “The TSC centre closed because the contract it had to take calls for T-Mobile was awarded to a company in the Philippines. The nature of companies outsourcing some of their work to other companies is now common place and when multinational companies see fit to move work abroad there is very little governments can do about it. “However, what this SNP government did was to continually press TSC senior management to find a replacement contract that could be carried out in its Greenock office. Now the Government is trying to entice new investment into the area to replace the jobs lost at the TSC centre. Furthermore the Scottish Government has awarded millions of pounds to Riverside Inverclyde so that regeneration can bring jobs into the area. "That is far more than Duncan and his Labour colleagues have ever done in Inverclyde. “What was done to replace jobs lost at IBM some years ago under Labours watch? What did Duncan do to help replace jobs lost at Ferguson’s shipyard when Labour awarded a ship building contract to Poland? “Labour are clearly making political capital out of people losing their jobs at TSC and that is completely unacceptable. The hard truth is that Labour’s local MSP has been about as effective as a used teabag when it comes to tackling Inverclyde’s economic difficulties. “The TSC call centre has now re-opened and over 200 jobs have been created - no thanks to the local Labour party who are in disarray over the issue.”