Will the Minister for Glue Please Stand Up.
A decade of delivery in the Highlands? It won't happen without the courage to act.
What’s the one thing standing in the way of progress and opportunity right now in the Highlands?
Political will, I would argue.
On Thursday, at the DealMakers’ Breakfast in Inverness - a business forum chaired by Kenny Kemp, Editor of The Business quarterly magazine, Baroness Margaret Ford set the tone. A crossbench peer, Chair of London Gatwick Airport and former member of the Scottish Government’s Investor Panel, she was unequivocal - the Highlands should be preparing for “A Decade of Delivery.”
She was joined on the expert panel by Chris Thomson, Managing Director for Infrastructure Solutions at BRUSH Group, Richard Park, Chief Executive of Hub North Scotland, and Joanne Allday, Head of Strategy at the Port of Cromarty Firth - who led and won the Green Freeport bid.
“A Decade of Delivery.”
The phrase captured the room, focused minds and had a ring to it. Imagine if that was possible, I thought, sitting in the audience.
The event was framed around the Highlands’ ‘Golden Age of Transformation.’ Which makes it all the more striking that the thing most likely to derail it isn’t geography, or capacity, or ambition. It's political will.
Baroness Ford spoke openly and plainly about Scotland as a small, agile nation that should be able to DO things. About her time on the Investor Panel, where the Panel examined regions like Western Australia and what made them so successful in attracting inward investment - and specifically, the role of a so-called Minister for Glue - someone who made sure everything held together to push that region forward.
Where’s our Minister for Glue for the Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport?
There were strong themes from the audience that painted a picture of what it looks like to do business in Scotland: “no joined-up thinking”, “too many consultations”, “too many quangos.” The result? A lack of tangible delivery.
I go to a lot of business breakfasts, but this one felt different. This time, there was more impatience, more irritation, and a sharper feeling of urgency. We’re sitting on something extraordinary here - and people in the room know it.
It was a Herculean effort to secure that bid win in 2023, fighting off competition from Clyde Green Freeport, Aberdeen City and Peterhead Green Freeport, and Orkney Green Freeport. We simply have to capitalise on it.
Joanne Allday led the bid and was on the panel. Her biggest challenge? Convincing decision-makers that the region wasn’t somehow the end of the earth - that Invergordon, Nigg and Ardersier were not just viable but uniquely placed.
Against those odds, they made the case and they made it stick. And there has been significant investment since. But as Kate Forbes, former Deputy First Minister, rightly said - you need a lead investor to crowd in the others. The real opportunity is in manufacturing the offshore wind components to secure the supply chain benefit - one we failed to capture for onshore wind, where components came from elsewhere in Europe.
What came through loud and clear at the Breakfast was the enabling role that Government must play to get this to the starting line. That means removing uncertainty and creating the conditions for private capital to follow - starting with the regulatory barriers around grid connection that currently make the North of Scotland uncompetitive. It must act as a stimulus and an enabler to attract the high-value manufacturing and technology companies that the Green Freeport is ideally placed to house.
The Ming Yang Decision
It’s very easy to call out the Ming Yang decision at Ardersier. The claim has been made loudly, by many - that it sat on a Minister’s desk for 18 months. That may well be the political characterisation, which lacks some nuance.
The decision-making process was protracted - and involved more than two years of engagement between Ming Yang, the Scottish Government and the UK Government. There was diplomatic pressures, including reported interventions from Washington, and broader geopolitical currents around Chinese involvement in critical national infrastructure creating headwinds long before the decision was made public.
Whether the decision was right or wrong is not for me to say. But what is clear is that the timing, the lack of clarity, and the absence of any explanation of what specifically could not be mitigated, left the Highlands with a £1.5 billion hole and no roadmap for what comes next. And that is a political failure.
We do have significant layers of decision-making on certain issues for good reason. It keeps us safe. But safety and clarity are not mutually exclusive.
And here lies the harder question that nobody in Government seems to be able to answer. If not Ming Yang, then who? GE Vernova has stopped taking offshore turbine orders. Vestas and Siemens Gamesa are the only two manufacturers currently supplying Europe - and neither manufactures in Scotland. UK offshore developers are already being told capacity isn’t there. The complexity of this situation doesn’t make the case for doing nothing. It makes the case for a political champion more urgent.
Joanne Allday, who led and won the Green Freeport bid, has since said that the Highlands is at risk of losing arguably Scotland’s biggest industrial opportunity for the next 10 to 20 years. It could be lost this year.
That should stop every politician in Scotland in their tracks. There are only two Freeports in Scotland, and this one could reshape the Highland region for a generation.
The Political Landscape
Let’s recap on the political landscape surrounding the Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport.
The Freeports policy was a UK Conservative policy, part of the Levelling Up agenda - with Rishi Sunak championing it as Chancellor before it was formally delivered under Boris Johnson’s government - designed to create regional wealth so that so much wasn’t concentrated around the South-East, and in the case of Scotland, the Central Belt.
The Scottish Government pushed for it to have the word “Green” in front. Joanne Allday confirmed at the Breakfast that this added 18 months to the process. The Green element reflects the need for a just transition - a legitimate and important ambition, but one with a real cost in time.
In 2024, we had a change of Government at UK level - which means we’re asking a Labour Government to push forward a policy they neither created nor instinctively championed, but which most certainly sits within the framework of their pro-renewables and pro-transition agenda. There is a case to be made here and someone needs to be making it.
The Highlands typically doesn’t vote Labour at first-past-the-post UK elections, which means there is no Labour MP going to bat for this within the party of Government. That is a structural gap - not a criticism of any individual - and it matters.
The Election Nobody Should Waste
And let’s not ignore the elephant in the room - we are in the middle of a Scottish Parliament election. Politicians are at hustings, including at the DealMakers’ Breakfast, asking for your trust, at a time when trust is at a low ebb.
What is your party’s plan for the Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport?
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of prepared responses to that question. What I don’t understand is why no-one is making it their business to campaign on it. The room (and business at large) wants a plan for delivery, not a rationale as to why it’s not their policy, constituency, or remit.
Where Does That Leave Us?
We unashamedly need a Political Champion for the Green Freeport.
We need that person - whatever their political colour - to work cross-party to deliver a policy that they perhaps didn’t originally champion, but to recognise that it can have far-reaching positive impacts for the Highlands and Islands for a generation. At least.
I go back to a statistic that continues to stop me in my tracks - according to Highlands and Islands Enterprise, 74% of Scotland’s economic growth will come from the Highlands and Islands over the next 25 years.
Read that again.
The time is now. But if we don’t act, we will lose this opportunity. And we really have to ask ourselves - if we can’t deliver this, what can we deliver?
The potential benefits are so much bigger than any of us. To reverse working-age depopulation. To ensure the next generation can work, live and thrive here. To keep the lights on in the glens, as my late Grandfather would have said.
Our Minister for Glue needs to keep all sides together - strong enough to hold us and smart enough to handle the heat. The Highlands has waited long enough.
Will someone please stand up.
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