Don't be vague

Mr. William Hamilton (Fife, Central)

I should like to state at the outset of this adjournment debate that I am surprised and angry that no Scottish Minister is present for a debate that concerns directly several hundred Scottish workers.
On Tuesday 1 February I had the sad experience of meeting a group of working men and women who faced a future on the dole queue. They were the shop stewards representing the 500 hourly paid workers at the John Haig Whisky bottling factory at Markinch in Fife. Markinch is a small, nice community. It has depended heavily on the whisky bottling plant for most of the past 100 years. Now, 340 of those workers are to be made redundant. Another 220 of them are to be transferred to a more modern bottling plant at Banbeath in Leven.

I've always loved the view of the former Haig's bottling plant from the A911.