Ironically Hewlett-Packard is closing its Scottish manufacturing plant in a move to the Czech Republic, where costs are cheaper. The first of the 700 workers to leave the company, including agency staff, go in October with redundancies finalised by January.

Hugh Henry, Labour MSP for Paisley South, is quoted saying, “It does seem strange that a company can cut 700 jobs then create 700 jobs and then be given £7m of taxpayers’ money. It doesn’t seem right. We need an explanation about the ethics of this and whether it represents best use of taxpayers’ money.”

A spokeswoman for HP said all employees, including manufacturing workers, would be made aware of the new roles and would be able to apply, although there was no specific programme in place to retrain manufacturing staff for the IT jobs. “It is erroneous to suggest we are using [public] money to rehire people. They are such different roles." she added.

“This is a large company and manufacturing is a very different part of the business. The decision to move out of Erskine for manufacturing left a vacancy in Erskine. It is an HP-owned site. We are moving the site away from the manufacturing heritage and it is becoming more of a services, support, sales centre. The £7m is welcome but there is a significant amount of money being put into Erskine by HP.”