 Welcome everyone, and the first item of business for this afternoon is a debate on motion 1 prove number 1 in the name of Angela Constance on improving entrepreneurship among women and young people in Scotland. I would invite the members who wish to speak in the debate, to press their request to speak buttons now or as soon as possible and minister cabinet secretary. Forgive me if you are ready, but be ready at 14 minutes. I'm very pleased to open this debate on promoting entrepreneurship amongst women and young people this afternoon. If we are to achieve our potential as a nation, it's important that we give as many people as possible the opportunity to reach their potential as individuals. Through entrepreneurship, people have the opportunity not just to create jobs for themselves but to create jobs and exciting opportunities for others, thus contributing to our goal of sustainable economic growth. Last November, the Scottish Government published Scotland Can Do. This is our national statement of intent towards becoming a world-leading entrepreneurial and innovative nation. A key aspect of Scotland Can Do is in the focus that it has on helping those less represented in the world of entrepreneurship and enterprise. We want everyone in Scotland to be in a position to realise their full potential in this field. In particular, it is recognised that women and young people could benefit from further assistance and support, not only because they are less represented, but also because of their huge economic potential. For example, it has been estimated that if women's participation in enterprise matched that of men's, it could boost our economy by around 5 per cent. For the sake of all our futures, that kind of bonus quite simply cannot be ignored. I am sure that colleagues will welcome the fact that Scotland Can Do is backed by £3 million of financial support this year alone. At the same time, we are very clear that neither money nor desire is enough to achieve that lasting cultural change that is also required. Scotland Can Do is clear about the importance of collaboration right across the public, private and third sector. Equally, we wish to promote a values-led entrepreneurship where the goal of economic growth goes hand in hand with the goal of forging a better society. I believe that it is only in this way that we can be sure of reaping the full benefits of entrepreneurship for our nation. It is clear that the journey of developing and entrepreneurial mindsets and behaviours must begin in our schools. Enterprise education is not so much about teaching enterprise as it is about being enterprise in a whole approach to learning and life. Equally, it is important that our young people have the opportunity to experience and develop an understanding of the nature of business, for example through high quality work placements. It is evident that a lot of great activity already goes on in our schools, either independently or with the help of organisations such as Young Enterprise Scotland, MicroTigol, Bad Idear and the Social Enterprise Academy. That has been encouraged by the likes of Sir Tom Hunter, who in his support of MicroTigol has recognised the importance of embedding entrepreneurial attitudes from an early age. Some of the stories of pupils' entrepreneurial endeavours are really quite inspiring. However, there are many demands on teachers' time and we therefore need to make it as easy as possible for school staff to take up the baton of enterprise education and run. That is why, as is outlined in Scotland Can Do, we want to develop a resource for schools that will make it easier for them to identify and draw on the range of support that is out there. In that way, even more school pupils will get an understanding of what entrepreneurship means for them. Building on the platform, we are also keen to help our colleges and universities to develop a stronger focus and expertise, particularly in drawing out the entrepreneurial talents of their students. The young innovator's challenge is an example of something that we have supported in recent years and aims to do just that. It is run by the Scottish Institute for Enterprise and the challenge is all about guiding students through the process of developing a business idea and then building it towards an actual solution. The focus of this year's challenge is on social innovation, with Scotland's students being invited to submit ideas on things like healthcare and green energy. It is a very good example of the diversity of entrepreneurship and its relevance to everyday life. Meanwhile, we are proud to be supporting the roll-out of the bridge to business initiative, which aims to inspire, support and connect college students into business. That follows a very successful pilot at the city of Glasgow college, which saw more than 400 students take part. Apart from the education system, I think that we can be proud of what is developing into a rich support network for budding young entrepreneurs in Scotland. We have heard of the excellent work on going with the Prince's Trust, which offers grants and loans to ambitious young entrepreneurs through its Youth Business Scotland scheme. In addition, we are the future, which last year ran the largest entrepreneurship event for young people in Britain. This year, we are taking some of Scotland's brightest young entrepreneurs over to San Francisco for its first international start-up summit. In a similar vein, we are also supporting the power of youth to run a series of residential events this year and next. That will support the development of young entrepreneurs with international scope. We can see that young people have options as far as exploring entrepreneurship is concerned. The key thing, as far as I am concerned, is to make sure that all of our young people are aware of those opportunities and have the confidence to take advantage of them. Femail entrepreneurship is an equally high priority for this Government. That is not only a question of diversity or inclusion—crucially important, though that is. It is also a very simple economic imperative. As I mentioned earlier, if women's participation in business matched that of men's, it could boost the economy by 5 per cent. That equates to around £7.6 billion and is not insignificant by anyone's reckoning. It could also create around 35,000 direct jobs. That is why I was so pleased recently to attend the launch of the new Women in Enterprise Action Framework, not far from here at Cranican and Crowdy, just up the high street. I thank the cabinet secretary for giving way. On the very important point about women in business, would the cabinet secretary agree with me that any policy to encourage enterprise for females for anyone has to be traced back into the skills and training that are available and, looking to Labour's amendment today, the lack of places, both part-time and full-time, for women and returning women in our colleges is a severe impediment to letting them pick up the qualifications and skills that will then spur them on into that enterprise? I am glad that Ms Marra could turn up to this afternoon's debate. Once again, we are revisiting some well-rehearsed arguments in the chamber with regard to college reform. As Ms Marra well knows, the difficulty with headcount as she measures it treats courses of a few hours long the same as an HND course. What we are trying to do with the very important college reform is ensure that, through regionalisation, there is very much a more localised response to skills needs. As we have moved towards full-time courses with recognised qualifications to the benefit of young men and young women, that has had very positive outcomes. We have more full-time students studying for recognised qualifications. That is up by 2000. The number of higher national certificate achievements is also up by 36 per cent. No, thank you, that is not to the exclusion of part-time courses or, indeed, older learners. If people are serious about women taking their very rightful place in the economy, we have to ensure that women from all backgrounds can access the provision that will get them into work or self-employment or other well-paid career opportunities. As I was saying, it was a great opportunity to meet the female proprietors of the store at Crannock and Crowdy when the Women and Enterprise Action Framework was launched. It was certainly great to see that some of their stock and produce in the shop was the result of female edge winners. It is important to note that 46 per cent of the winners of Scottish Edge were women. The action framework that we launched sets out the range of actions to help and encourage more women to set up and succeed in business. That is a very exciting piece of work that I have been involved in and that the Scottish Government has been pleased to support right from the start. Indeed, we have supported Women's Enterprise Scotland to lead on this important work with no less than £70,000 over two years. Among other things, that has helped with the development of an exciting new network of female role models and mentors. At the event, I also had the great pleasure of meeting some of the ambassadors who hail from a range of backgrounds, business sectors and locations. They have all gone through their very own unique journey and get to where they are now, which I believe makes an extremely well equipped to connect and engage with a wide audience. That audience might range from schoolgirls right through to experienced female business women, but the key thing is that we encourage more and more women to see themselves as entrepreneurs and to be ambitious in what they set out to achieve. It is well known that women can and do face different and additional challenges and barriers, particularly when balancing the demands of family and caring responsibilities. However, in my view, that makes women potentially more equipped to be successful in the world of business, but nonetheless we have to be concerted in our efforts to take down those barriers. In conclusion, I believe that the Scotland can do framework and Women's Enterprise framework sets out a direction of travel that can help us radically change our economic fortunes, as well as the way that our society functions. The new economy requires new ideas, not to mention ideals. That is where both women and young people have a very significant role to play in terms of promoting those new ideas and ideals, but also in growing our economy. I move the motion in my name and intimate that I will not be supporting Labour's amendment today, as it misrepresents the nature and ambition of college reform and is trying to take the debate back and not forward. However, I will be supporting the Tory amendment, as I am already on record, along with the COSLA spokesperson of welcoming the final publication of the Wood report. Both myself and the COSLA spokesperson have described the Wood report as a landmark report, and I will now be working very closely with COSLA to bring forward the plans to implement that report. I will be reporting back to Parliament on the 17th of this month, I believe, in the form of a ministerial statement. I move the motion in my name, Presiding Officer. I now call on Jenny Marra to speak to and move amendment 10214.1. Ms Marra, you have 10 minutes or thereby please. I apologise to you for being slightly late to the chamber this afternoon. This is not the first time that we have come to the chamber to address the impact of gender inequality on our economy, nor will it be the last. However, I hope that this debate will not rage on for too much longer. I hope that, very soon, there will be recognition across Scotland, the UK, Europe and the wider world that only when women are an integral driving force in the economy will our economy be stronger, more prosperous and more sustainable. Today, we are focused on what can be done here in Scotland to allow women to set up their own businesses. Already this year, we have seen movement from the Scottish Government on the role of women in our economy and decision making. Nicola Sturgeon committed to gender quotas on the boards of private companies as she launched the white paper for independence in September, and Shona Robison upset her loyal horses in Dundee SMP last week by committing to 40 per cent gender quotas on public boards. The minister may still have to win that debate in the unreformed ranks of her councillors and party, but she will find friends on those benches for that policy, long committed as a party to 50-50 representation and driving it through her own elected structures. Labour tabled amendments on 4040-20 gender quotas for public boards two years ago. The SMP voted against my amendments that day, but I am delighted that they have now been one round to the policy today. Why are women's voices important on those boards? For the same reasons, I think, that we must do everything we can to let women's business flourish. When only one part of the community is predominantly represented, decisions are made predominantly in that section's favour. That applies to business and consumption, as well as decisions for public services. I am co-convener of the cross-party group on computer games in this Parliament. The industry is dominated by men. In several discussions, both private with the sector and in Parliament here in the cross-party group, the gender issue has been raised. How can we get more women into the industry, into the computer games industry? How can we get more women to start their own gaming companies? Why is this important? I ask the industry experts, and they answer me this. Because women are becoming bigger consumer of games and online experience, and so more female-intuitive products will sell better to more female consumers. That makes sense to me. Clearly, the female market in gaming is not yet fully exploited, but it will probably only be so when women are designing the games and leading the companies that market and sell them. Having more women in business is about economic expansion. It is about exploiting new markets and finding opportunities in new markets. I put the issues to the entrepreneurial exchange in a conversation that I had with them yesterday in advance of this debate. The entrepreneurial exchange agreed with that. It also raised issues of confidence among women to take that plunge into business. It identified the tendency for women who are returning into work after their children's early years to take the decision at that point in their lives to set up a business, perhaps in their late thirties or early forties. It is with that in mind from the industry experts that I analysed the findings of the Government's proposals for women in enterprise. There is much in there that I think will be very useful—the mentoring and networking schemes and the role model project. I was pleased to see that the Scottish Government will be reaching out beyond the public sector networks and working hand in hand with the Prince's Trust, Entrepreneurial Spark and the Entrepreneurial Exchange. As ever, those schemes will be successful with key ambassadors and awareness of the support that is available for them. On gender-specific support, point 4 in the minister's report, I know that the Scottish Government will hold the conversations with the banks to encourage them to develop their female customers' businesses, but I wonder if the minister will return to the chamber at a later date to update us on how those conversations go and what commitments or initiatives that the banks in Scotland are taking to take that forward. I think that it is good to hold the conversations, but if that is going to be part of the Government's strategy, then we need to be able to scrutinise what action has been taken and how that is going. I turn now to the amendments to today's motion. Labour will be supporting the Conservative amendment tonight, as we agree that there is much in the wood commission that is to be commended. Indeed, I had half expected this afternoon's debate until I received the motion to be on the wood commission report since it was released earlier this week, but I hope that we will have a chance to debate this very important document in full before the summer recess. Johann Lamont and I met with Sirian Wood just last week, and we are very grateful to him for the time and commitment that he has put into examining the challenges around youth employment in Scotland. It is a seminal report, and it has a lot of key recommendations. I know that the cabinet secretary will want to bring it before Parliament before the summer recess to make sure that we scrutinise it and do it justice straight after its publication. On the Labour Party's amendment to the Government motion this afternoon, we have put college places into the agenda of this debate, because I really do not think that we can seriously consider new opportunities for women and youth skills and ignore the underfunding of our colleges. Indeed, central to this debate and to the proposals in the wood commission, which the cabinet secretary is backing, are opportunities in further education. It underpins both the wood commission and the substance of today's debate. I was very surprised at the minister's response to my intervention in her opening speech, because she seemed to suggest that I misrepresent the nature of college reform. The Labour amendment this afternoon says that the loss of 140,000 college places since 2007-2008 is undermining the achievement of this objective. The 140,000 less college places since this Government took power is a figure straight from the cabinet secretary's agency, the Scottish Funding Council. I wonder whether she would acknowledge that headcount has reduced because full-time equivalent and full-time courses have increased. I also wonder whether she would acknowledge the funding floor that has been allocated to this college sector of £522 million, increasing to £526 million, and how that is more than Labour ever invested in any one year in the sector. The cabinet secretary can dance on the head of a pin on this, but anyone in this Parliament who speaks to people in their communities who are on waiting lists in colleges and knows the struggle that women and returning women are getting to get into college will know that her statistics really do not represent the reality of the situation. From Ms Marr's response to the cabinet secretary's intervention, do you not accept that FTE's full-time equivalents is the accepted measure of how many people are at colleges? That is the accepted measure, which is accepted by all statisticians, including Spice, who just recently said that FTE numbers are stable. Indeed, the Scottish Government has 116,399 extra places in 2012-13, exceeding our manifesto commitment on full-time equivalent places. I accept the information that the Scottish Funding Council gives me, which is 140,000 less college places and a much more difficult environment for women to get back into college. Women making the decision to go into business in their late 30s or early 40s, as identified by the entrepreneurial exchange, are less likely to do so if they have not been able to pick up qualifications and skills and college skills in their early 20s. We know that the Scottish Government's current focus on 16 to 19-year-olds is having a detrimental impact on women's returners, so, as always, we need to trace that policy further back. To ensure that women can make the decision to start their own businesses, college places must be available to them. We make no apology for highlighting the college sector again. It underpins the growth of business and the critical recommendations in the Wood commission. If the Scottish Government is committed to both those objectives, it would be wise to vote for our amendment this evening and to seriously review the number of college places that Scotland needs. The objectives of the Wood commission and women in entrepreneurship are seriously undermined if they fail to do so. I now call on more defrasers to speak to and move amendment 10214.3. Mr Fraser, up to seven minutes, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, as the first man to speak in this debate. I suspect that the debate will be subject to its own gender imbalance. I'm feeling a little bit outnumbered. I'm sure that you will protect me, Deputy Presiding Officer. I welcome the Scottish Government giving us the opportunity this afternoon to debate this very important issue of improving entrepreneurship. It's fair to say that our record as a country, generally in this area, has not been a good one. Over many years, our business start-up rate generally has lagged behind the UK as a whole, although I note that the latest stats show that new business and corporations are at an all-time high. We have, as Angela Constance has pointed out, a gender gap. For whatever reason, men are more likely to take risks in setting up businesses than women. Some of those concerns were identified by the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee last year and highlighted in our report the two Parliament on the Scottish Government's draft budget for 2013-14. Last week, the Strathclyde University Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship published its Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report for 2013. There were some interesting observations in here in relation to the difference between men and women when it comes to setting up businesses. According to the Hunter Centre, men and women entrepreneurs tend to create different types of businesses and fund their start-ups differently. Half of all businesses run by women are consumer-orientated. Compared with their counterparts in other similar nations, Scottish female business owners are less likely to export and fewer of them expect to grow the business significantly in the next five years. Compared to their counterparts elsewhere in the UK, female entrepreneurs are more likely to completely self-fund their business, which has an impact on the scale of businesses that they can create and how quickly they are likely to grow. There also seems to be, according to the report, a difference in motivation between male and female entrepreneurs in that wealth creation tends to be of secondary importance to most women, but not all. According to the report, women entrepreneurs tend to identify existing customer needs that are not currently being met and use information from previous working experience and from networks, especially family members, to create solutions to meet those unmet needs. The Cabinet Secretary for Work and Welfare refers to the CANDU programme on women and enterprise, and certainly those initiatives are welcome. The CANDU programme sets out a framework to increase entrepreneurship and innovation activity from individuals and businesses in Scotland, resulting in more business being formed and new products and services from existing businesses. It is a stated ambition that people from all walks of life develop entrepreneurial skills. If I have a criticism of this approach, Deputy Presiding Officer, it is that it is heavy on ambition, but it is light on detailed proposals to take that ambition forward. In our contribution in her amendment, Jenny Marra draws attention to the cut in college places under the SNP Government having a negative impact on women coming into the workforce and developing entrepreneurial skills. I think that that is a perfectly fair point to make, and we will be happy to support the Labour amendment, but it is perhaps a distraction from the main theme of this debate. If Jenny Marra will forgive me, I would rather turn the remainder of my remarks to our own amendment, which refers to the excellent Wood report that was published on Tuesday of this week. We, on this side of the chamber, have argued for years for an improvement in vocational education, and I am delighted to see Sir Ian Wood's commission supporting this objective. We know that, while unemployment as a whole is coming down, youth unemployment is still a problem. According to the report, youth unemployment levels are currently 18.8 per cent, more than double that of the average working age population. One in five of our young people aspire to get a job that cannot get one. Of the 50 per cent of our young people who do not go to university, very few leave school with vocational qualifications with labour market currency. For school pupils, work experience, which is absolutely vital in the modern world, is generally limited to one week in S4. As Sir Ian Wood's report says, it is simply not good enough. The report recommends that youngsters of all abilities should have the opportunity to follow industry and vocational pathways alongside academic studies. The report proposes new school, college vocational partnerships, as well as an option to do the first year of a three- to four-year apprenticeship, while still at school. There is also a very important focus on the need to improve the status of vocational education, so it is not seen, as it often is, as a second best alternative for those who are unwilling or unable to go down the academic route. We should look to the example of Germany, which, for years, has been a leader in Europe in terms of science and innovation, and has undoubtedly retained its manufacturing base to a much greater extent than we in this country have. I have no doubt that a major factor here has been the attractiveness of careers in science, engineering and technology, not necessarily at a graduate level but also at a technician level. There is no sense in Germany that people who do those jobs are in any way second class to other professions. I think that that is absolutely crucial in terms of how we are going to approach the subject and develop better career opportunities and a more entrepreneurial culture for our young people. We need to learn from Germany, and it is very good to see someone who is recognised in Sir Ian Wood's report, particularly the recommendation that a focus on STEM subjects should be at the heart of the development of Scotland's young workforce. There is a great deal in Sir Ian Wood's report, and I appreciate that it was only published on Tuesday. Therefore, it is unreasonable to expect even the minister, cabinet secretary, as able, as we have today, to come up with a detailed response so soon. However, what my amendment does is welcome the recommendations and ask the Scottish Government to bring forward plans to implement them as soon as possible. I very much welcome the cabinet secretary's indication of support for this and her indication of support for my amendment. I think that it is important that we all work together to see better vocational education in Scotland to help to assist employment and entrepreneurship among our young people. For that reason, I have pleasure in moving the amendment in my name. Thank you very much. We now move to open debate speakers. I call Willie Rennie to be followed by Christine Grahame up to seven minutes this afternoon. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. It is a pleasure to take part in this afternoon's debate. I am not especially qualified, I think, in either being a woman nor am I young any more. I am ready to stand beside Murdo Fraser in his defence on that side of the debate. Some say that that is not a change. It is a pleasure, however, to take part in the debate this afternoon. A celebration of the potential that we have in Scotland in our women and young people, I agree with an awful lot of what has been said this afternoon. I want to put on the record my party's support for the all hands on deck approach of the Wood commission. It is an approach that we need if we are to improve youth employability. The message from Sir Ian's report is that giving more young people the chance that they need to get on in life is a collective responsibility. It needs public, private and third sector to play their part with every school, college, university, business and government stepping up to the plate. That is truly a real challenge that has been thrown down, but one in our party in the Liberal Democrats we are accepting without reservation. We are pleased to support the Conservative party amendment today in that light. There is no doubting the talents and the potential of women and young people across Scotland, but we need to do so much more to unlock that potential to ensure that every individual has the opportunity to fulfil it. I recognise much of what the minister says about the rich support network that is out there to try to nurture that support so that those young people can achieve their potential with the range of organisations and facilities that she has outlined. It is just as much that we recognise the work that the Scottish Government is doing in this area. It is also worth recognising some of the significant changes that have happened at a UK level that assist us in that ambition. The shared flexible parental leave brought in by the coalition Government at Westminster should be welcomed as a means by which both parents can keep strong links with their workplaces and one through which organisations can be helped to attract and retain women employees. Likewise, the tax-free childcare that will help working families across Scotland with the UK Government having increased in the latest budget the cost cap on tax-free childcare to £10,000. That means that families will receive up to £2,000 of childcare support per child, which is two thirds more than was originally planned. That complements very much the work that the Scottish Government has been doing on expanding childcare and nursery education in one that we support as well. However, I want to concentrate on one area this afternoon. One is someone who studied biology, which is close to my heart. That is the STEM subjects in Scotland. It is hugely valuable economically, but it is also one where we need to put enough more effort to unlock and retain the potential of female STEM students and professionals. Around two thirds of those studying life sciences and further higher and postgraduate education are women, but that is not reflected in the workplace where just 46 per cent of employees are female. The rate of loss of women moving from higher education to employment in STEM is more than double the loss of their male counterparts. 73 per cent of female graduates leave the STEM industry and 21 per cent of those are unemployed. That is a massive loss to Scotland's skill base where STEM and life sciences are flourishing. At board level, if we look at board level, fewer than one in five directors of life sciences companies in Scotland in 2010 were female, and only 9 per cent of professors in STEM subjects were women. You can see the decline as they progress through or climb up the ladder in the university sector. The number of women declines quite rapidly as you progress further up the ladder. Tapping all our talents, women in science, technology, engineering and maths, and a strategy for Scotland, which was published by the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2012, concluded that that wasted female talent is a serious loss across the whole economy and that a doubling of women's high-level skill contribution to the economy would be worth as much as £170 million per annum to Scotland. That is why more needs to be done to ensure that that talent is retained, valued and recognised in the STEM sector. There is a lot of good work that has already been done, however. A recent conference of the Equate Scotland focused on supporting and developing female STEM staff and students highlighting the positive impact of the Athena Swan recognition scheme. At an industry level, GlaxoSmith Climb, the pharmaceutical company, has signed the wise chief executive officer charter to demonstrate the company's active support of increasing the participation of women at all levels in STEM. That is something that we should recognise and celebrate. The Labour Party amendment picked up on the massive hit that college places have taken place under this Government. Colleges are essential for training and skills, and we need to ensure that the opportunity of high-quality further education continues to be an option in Scotland. Life-long learning, the ability to upskill is essential and is particularly valuable in areas such as STEM, where courses can be focused to meet specific employer demands or can focus on refresher training for those who have taken a career break. We will be supporting Labour's amendment today. Addressing the gender imbalance STEM will take the same kind of all-hands-on-deck approach as the Wood Commission has espoused for tackling youth employment. We should embrace both of those challenges without hesitation. By doing so, we will be unlocking not just the individual potential of women and young people but also the valuable contribution that they can make to Scotland's skill base and our economy. I now call on Christine Grahame to be followed by Christina McKelvie up to seven minutes, please. I am going to speak to the very early part of the Government's motion that the Parliament recognises the positive impact of entrepreneurial activity by women. I am going to do so by referring to some of the very entrepreneurial women in my own patch in the Scottish Borders and Midlothian. Some of what I am going to say will be examples of matters that Murdo Fraser raised about the kind of activities that women enter into. Most of them are in fact in the consumer area and family-orientated, so I was interested in his speech as I identified that in my own. We are better to start than there is one in my own patch in Gorebridge, and the woman in question is Lynn Mann of Supernature Oils in Gorebridge. It started as so often enterprises do for women as a sideline, and when she at first said she would commit two years to help getting a family business off the ground, but now it is full time and an expanding job. Although she says herself, her father encouraged her to be entrepreneurial, she had to overcome cultural and social hurdles facing her as a potential business woman and I will come back to that. I would also just say in passing that the role of my own parents in encouraging young women to be adventurous and ambitious is very significant. My own father made sure that his four daughters knew from the start that they would and should have the same opportunities as their brother. That was in the days when girls, at least working-class girls like me, generally left school at 15, got engaged at 18, married at 20, had a first child at 22. I, partly due to my father's intervention, did not follow that route map, but so many of the girls in that day did. Indeed, not that culture, but some of the route maps that girls are destined to take is deeply embedded even all these years on. Back to Lynn Mann, who laughingly on Supernature Oils' website explains how she had 22 jobs before the business took off, but how somehow all that experience has been useful in making the family business of cold pressed rapeseed oil succeed. That, together with support from the Edge Fund and Espark, has done the trick, as I saw for myself on a recent visit, where she and her husband had an expanding number of employees pressed, infused and bottled the product. She is now a women's enterprise ambassador helping other women find those business feet. There are other models, mentors as it were, in waiting. There is Ruth Hyncks, master chocolatier in UK confection of the year in 2011, located in Peebles with her business Coco Black, dangerously delicious chocolate, and extraordinary sculping of chocolate exhibits. She has also now expanded into a chocolate and pastry school above the cafe at the Cuddie bridge Peebles. I am warning you if you cross that threshold, do not count the calories. Her entrepreneurial DNA kicked in when a young age she asked her parents for money for some must-have gizmo at the time. She was told that she had to raise the money herself, dismissing a potato growing enterprise because it would take too long for them to develop to be marketable and that there would not be a high profit margin, she made her first chocolate Easter egg. The rest, as they say, is Hyncks history. There is Deborah Riddle of Bredshare, a community interest company that is involved in the community in making nutritious bread using only natural ingredients. I have had a go, marginally successful. It is currently located at Lamanca near Whitmure Farm, where you will find Heather Anderson and her husband, with her impressive organic farm and produce. They are in the process of this becoming the first community-owned farm in Scotland that I even have bought a share. I was also, however, interested in the cabinet secretary's reference to healthcare, entrepreneurial exercises in healthcare, because, as we know, women of enterprise and entrepreneurial abilities are not only to be found in business. My last example is of Linda Davidson and Rebecca Wade, two midwives. How can they be entrepreneurial if you are still listening to me? How can those midwives from NHS Borders recently won an award for partnership working with Scottish Borders Council to enhance child-reading and parenting services in the Borders, working with very vulnerable young mums and sometimes young dads from anti-natal through to looking after the baby and, indeed, even looking after themselves? Well, they are pursuing the idea of a specialised residential facility for vulnerable young parents and their babies, to provide support and to help them to learn how to be successful in sometimes to break a cycle of bad parenting that they themselves have been through. It is early days, but their ideas are rooted in their pragmatic experiences. I think that this is where women have the edge. They are very pragmatic and not only exciting but sensible, and I hope to help where I can to take these forward. There are many, many more women that I have met across the constituency and business, the professions, the bulgey sectors—I am sure that you have—full of good and practical ideas, and we should, as a nation, applaud, encourage, support and value them. However, that is not only our job in delivering childcare, mentoring and help with start-up, for example. It is not just the job of the formal education system, but that of family and friends and the surrounding community—changing that culture, which Lynn Mann, where I started this speech, met, and which many still have to meet and have to overcome. Many thanks. I call Christina McKelvie to be followed by Kezia Dugdale. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Young women and there are now more women graduates and male ones should still be victims of outdated and ingrained chauvinism is shocking. At least half of the skills base for a new independent Scotland lies with women. Graduates are not, but too many of them remain frightened to test out their own entrepreneurial talent. It is almost as if the culture is willing us to fail, one young woman told me. That setting up a business is too big a gamble and you are somehow bound to fail. That is the attitude that we have to break and is an attitude that we have to take head on. Go on, try it, start out on your own. The worst that can happen is that your first attempt does not work out, but you might end up the next to need erotic, for instance. It is not so different from your first job. It is not likely to be where you stay all of your life, but the experience that you gain will take you to the next turning in your life. Increasingly, the number of women entrepreneurs to match the number of men would generate more than £7 billion for our economy. That is just a huge impact, and this Government wants to achieve that goal and it wants to make sure that the infrastructure is in place to encourage women, especially young women, to pick up and run with their entrepreneurial ideas. Last week in the garden lobby, there was an event that looked at aids and adaptations for people, and I met Catherine Bland. Catherine had an accident, which meant that she was on crutches for a number of months, not letting having crutches get in the way of her busy life. She developed a homemade product that she called the Hopper, and it is essentially a big belt apron with lots of pockets in it that holds everything that you need for your busy day. She liked to bake, so she would have our baking stuff. When she was liking to read, she would have our magazines, she would have our phone and for other people, for medication and things. She now developed that homemade idea as a product and has helped to transform the lives of many, many people with injuries and disabilities. It is a simple idea but a brilliant idea. There is a 13.3 per cent gap between men and women's full-time hourly rate and a 33.7 per cent gap, when you compare women's part-time hourly rate to men's full-time hourly rate. If you had any doubt that women are undervalued, what about the fact that parental childcare is not counted towards GDP and is categorised as leisure? If we test that out, many of us across this chamber would have either brought up toddlers or had spent time with toddlers. Did you call it leisure? In some cases it was, but in lots of cases it was hard work. I will tell you something, your people management and your negotiation skills are very well honoured in that situation. But just seven of Scotland's top 30 listed companies had a female executive two years ago. Own the 37 out of 242 board positions, both executive and non executive, and the top 30 companies were occupied by women in 2012. Even though there are annual increases, 27.6 per cent is the figure in 2012. That left 84.7 of the seats filled by men. Currently, Scottish women make up 52 per cent of the population. In October 2013, the level of female employment in Scotland reached its highest level since 1992 at 69 per cent. If you look at the progress on that, female self-employment has increased over recent years from 80,800 in 2008 to 93,900 in 2013, showing an increase of 16.2 per cent. Currently, only 21 per cent of SME employers are women-led, and only 31 per cent of self-employed Scots are women. To address that enterprise gap, the Scottish Government established a series of workshops in 2013 chaired by Professor Sarah Carter, former head of the Hunter Centre and Strathclyde University and Jackie Bryton of Women's Enterprise Scotland. A great advance, this can do attitude reaps rewards, and it reaps great rewards. Women, as I said earlier, now make up the majority of university graduates, but we do not see that reflected in our boardrooms. At the moment that the Scottish Government does not have the legislative power required to change that situation, we have some of it and we are doing what we can, but we need that yes vote to take it further. My colleague, Cabinet Secretary, Shona Robison, says in her women on board report that our aim for Scotland is to make the best use of the talents of all of our people, regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or religion. I do not think that there are just words, I think that the actions that have been shown now and certainly I do believe that everyone across this chamber would support that as well. By taking actions on those issues, we will be improving economic participation, by removing the barriers that stand in the way of women realising their potential, £7 billion worth of improving economic participation. It will also contribute to making Scotland a wealthy and fairer place, something that I think we all want, ensuring that no one is held back because of their gender and ensuring that public bodies are more fairly reflective of the society as a whole. We can do and improve the situation. We are already very active and listening and challenging assumptions. I think that we all do that every day of our lives. We encourage employers to offer more flexible home-based and part-time work and we are seeking to get rid of the stereotyping that goes on in the modern apprenticeship programme. Cabinet Secretary, we are very well aware of how that is one of my bugbears when we see posters that show the men with ladders in the girls' way, the women with scissors because they are cutting hair when the boys are building. I would like to swap that round, Cabinet Secretary. Let's give the women the ladders and the hard hats and let's give the men the aprons and the scissors. I think that that would be great. Anyway, that is just to be aside for me. We have made great strides in apprenticeships and we know that and we continue to make those strides, but getting women into apprenticeships has to be a priority. The most crucial and obvious changes in the transformational childcare policy and once we raise the money to do that, the difference that it will make, the difference that it will make to the opportunities for women is threefold, more women in work increases the tax take, more job opportunities in childcare to meet that aspiration and a more positive, motivated outlook for women and their children. History has dictated that women stay at home, mind the children or elderly relatives and not only don't get paid for it but give up any right to a career that they previously had. Poor supply and high costs of childcare prevent women from working. It is in recognition of that reality and the follow-on truth that their absence constricts their economic growth, that this Government has promised an entirely different approach to childcare will make that difference. We have the foresight to see that if we open the doors, women will come through into the workplace with competence, with confidence, and if we create those opportunities, the results are endless. I very much welcome the strategy as I do. I welcome the opportunity to debate it. I am pleased to see the shadow cabinet secretary in her place and focusing on the gender aspect of her brief. I have been reflecting on the past few years and, in particular, the youth unemployment crisis that we have had and what we have experienced into a degree that we are still recovering from. Governments of all hues across the whole of Europe responded by appealing to the big multinational companies. They were competing to bring new jobs and new facilities to their respective shores, often with cash incentives. A couple of years after that, many of those companies were embroiled in tax avoidance schemes, which led to a huge amount of public outrage. The political response to that was to start to talk about a more responsible capitalism. Yes, pay your taxes, but if you receive public money, we expect you to do more things. We expect you to pay a living wage. We expect you to build in apprenticeships into your contracts. We expect you not to promote zero-hours culture. We expect you not to be involved in blacklisting or ever have done so, but it has always been about bartering with the big guys. Too often, the big guys win. Yes, we can make demands of them, but if we go too far, you push them away and you lose the investment in your own country's future. Could we imagine a different type of economy, a economy built on homegrown business that prides itself on being decent employers, rooted in the communities that they employ, as well as the communities that they buy and sell from? Realising that ambition requires a change of culture and, arguably, we do not value businesses enough in Scotland. We have a proud history as a nation of public service, but perhaps we are less proud of people who choose to make their own money and how they go about doing that. Pro business in Scotland tends to mean that you believe in low taxes and you believe in deregulation when it could be about being an enterprise nation, a nation that is confident that engenders skills and the belief in the great traditions of our nation and giving those to the next generation. Setting up your own business is not only a thing that could be good for you but good for your community, and that type of attitude has got to start in schools, colleges and universities. It is only when we get a critical mass in the next generation will we be able to drive the cultural change that we are looking for, and that applies in a number of ways. If you think about the debates that we have had in the chamber about work readiness and what it means to be ready for work, it is very often talked about in the context of matching the skills that come out of our schools and our colleges with the skills of what business needs. However, it is always a supply chain for somebody else's business. We never talk about work readiness in the context of setting up your own business and what that looks like and might mean. There should be much more emphasis on setting up businesses in all courses across colleges and universities and, indeed, in schools. Young people should be taught about rates and how they work. They should be taught about tax and what HMRC is and what happens when you fall on the wrong side of it. They should be taught about digitising business and the new opportunities that come from that. Markets—how to pitch, turnover versus profit—can you recruit to grow? What is the balance of risk? Those are all staple issues for business students, but they should be built into all courses in all different types of areas. It should not just be a unitary extra. This week's class, we will talk about how to set up your own business. It should be embedded into the ethos of what happens in our colleges and in our universities. Setting up a business should be an option for all students, and students in their colleges should be told that it is an option for students like you. I look at what my own college, Edinburgh College, does in Edinburgh and a number of different campuses. You have mechanics, joiners, hairdressers, web designers and fitness instructors coming out of that every week. They are all predisposed to work for themselves, but so often it is not an option to them. They could start out with a start-up, but they need a bit more help. It does not necessarily have to be a lonely activity. You pair that web designer with the fitness instructor, and there is a whole new business model there that could be explored. It could be the job of a college or a school or university to encourage that type of activity. What needs to happen is that we need to de-risk the process. Colleges could help by investing in some of those individuals to help them to put their first foot on the ladder, knowing that the rewards of that investment could come back to the college. Incubating those types of ideas and encouraging people to work together, knowing that the benefits of that come back to the college community and for the benefit of everyone else. I spoke earlier today to a former chair of the FSB in Edinburgh, who is an excellent female role model for women in business in her own right. I asked her what she wants from a strategy that encourages women into business. She said more role models. It was really funny because I had a similar conversation with an academic at Edinburgh University yesterday about the challenges around trying to engage women in science subjects. She said role models too, but it is not just to be the role models at the top of a particular industry. It is not about the elite, it is about role models at every stage of the journey. Yes, Michelle Moan is a fantastic role model for women in business, but so is the women that Christina McKelvie was talking about, or Christine Graham was, in their own communities already operating and running their own businesses. It is those stories that we need to tell so that women who are thinking about setting up a business can see somebody like them doing the same thing and draw strength from that. The same applies to women who are already established in a business environment and want to help to expand and grow that business, to take that risk to employ more people to offer a different product. They need to be able to meet more women like them in order to take on that type of risk. The first challenge is to see more females in business full stop, but let us not miss out on the opportunity to make sure that we get that right and have the right mix of women put to the forefront in our public debate around this agenda. I am sure that the cabinet secretary will take that on board. I was getting slightly concerned earlier on in the debate when I was listening to Marta Fraser because I was agreeing with him in most aspects. It is perhaps getting slightly worrying that the convener of the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee and myself seem to agree on quite a number of matters, so perhaps some of my own persuasions are rubbing off on the convener. Like Willie Rennie, I am no longer young at heart, but I represent a minority group. When the cabinet secretary mentioned the Can Do initiative, it took me back to an earlier stage in my life in the aspect that I was probably looking forward to in my own career. It would have been so simple in my own case to sit back and think of barriers, obstacles and hazards, reasons why not to, reasons that could have been presented quite often by my family and teachers, not to get into a certain profession. Maybe it is my stubbornness, but I think that it is about the Can Do mentality. It is something that we need to realise. I think that the cabinet secretary probably realised from her social work training days. As a person who did not aspire to having a degree but followed a professional qualification, I am aware that it takes ambition and strength, and I am aware that it takes determination. I think that our young people have the qualities, determination and the qualities that can aspire for many to become entrepreneurs of the future. However, it is not just looking at where we are today. We have really got to look in the future. We have got to look in the mid to long term. In reading Sir Ian's report, although it was just launched, there are many aspects of that report that reflect the Can Do mentality that perhaps we can all aspire to. However, he does highlight some of the barriers that maybe prevent some of our young people from taking that initial step. Some of those aspects have been mentioned by other members, the cultural aspect. That culture is not down just to the way that we are taught in schools. That culture is sometimes embedded in home and in our families. Grandparents saying to their grandchildren, no, do not go into that profession. No, no, you would be better sticking to whatever. We need to try and ensure that we can break down that sort of stereotypical aspect. I remember when I was in the Equal Opportunities Committee and we were looking at the women in work, we went way back to looking at how we project things, even at nursery and the education of our young children, and how we actually present toys to our children. As a father of two young girls, there were four at the time, and when asked what they would like from Santa, they asked for racing cars. I thought at that time, we probably had maybe broken the mould, that my girls wanted racing cars as opposed to Barbies. When they did get their Barbies in a pram, they dismantled the pram and made it into a go-kart. Maybe we did get rid of the stereotypical aspect, and maybe they are doing things that maybe I had aspired to do but never managed. We have to look at providing the appropriate opportunities for our young people at the early stages. The curriculum for excellence is that pathway. That does open the doors for many of our young children. Many of our young children boys and girls to aspire to what they would like to be, what they want to be, and we shouldn't create the barriers. We should be looking at their can-do, what they would like to do, and reinforce that as best we can. Not every young person will aspire to go on to university, quite rightly so, but if they choose to go down the vocational route, we should be applauding that. Murdo Fraser was absolutely right in Germany—I said absolutely right, I'll take it back. Murdo Fraser was right, I can't give him an absolute, but Murdo Fraser was right in Germany. He rewarded, he applauded people going into those vocational aspects. Traidsmen, we need plumbers, we need mechanics, we need engineers, we need electrical engineers, we need people that— Yes? Dask the member—I think that it's a very interesting point about Germany. Would he agree that perhaps the German situation has been helped by legislative measures that have put the onus on business to actually take on young apprentices within contracts? Would he agree that perhaps the Scottish Government should consider similar legislative measures to encourage that youth employment? In another 90 seconds, Mr Robertson, you are there by. I think that the Scottish Government has done an absolute wonderful job in promoting apprenticeships. Over 25,000 apprenticeships, and I think that there is always the aspect of doing more, but certainly business themselves can open their doors to encouraging more apprentices. Only about 13 per cent of business at the moment offer apprenticeships to our young people. What I would be saying is, let's take that can-do mentality, let's promote that can-do mentality and let's get the job done. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Thanks very much. Now, I call on John McAlpine to be followed by Malcolm Chisholm. Seven minutes or thereby, we have a bit of time in hand this afternoon. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I think that the contributions today, particularly people talking about their own constituents, shows that there is absolutely no lack of talent and ambition amongst our young people and among Scottish women. A number of years ago, I remember that the big debate in Scotland was around the low level of business start-ups, and we spent a long time wringing our hands about whether we had a culture that was hostile to entrepreneurship. Some very bizarre theories, as I recall from a journalist's days, were advanced such as that the self-starters had all immigrated to Canada in the 19th century. I am very pleased that we have moved on from that rather negative nasal gazing towards encouraging and supporting the very many people across Scotland who are absolutely passionate about starting and growing their own business. I very much welcome the Government's commitment to increase the number of entrepreneurs and the role that can be played by the Scotland can do strategy that uses a Team Scotland approach to bring together companies, universities, public agencies and customers to take advantage of the opportunities that drive the establishment and the growth of new businesses. We cannot overemphasise the importance of the subject. I was very impressed reading through the Scottish Government's Scotland can do strategy document, and I just wanted to quote page 6, which, as well as innovation, says that demand from consumers is the most important factor in the success or failure of a business. Murdo Fraser earlier mentioned a report that said that women are more responsive to consumer demand, and that was a point that was also made by Christine Grahame in her speech. That is a very important point. I totally agree with Willie Rennie and others who have talked about the importance of STEM subjects and getting more women excelling in STEM subjects and making a career out of it. I have a daughter who is a professional engineer, and I should say that she did play with Barbies when she was young. In fact, she came home last Christmas and we had a big Barbie makeup stand that she played with when she was a little girl. She dismantled it and retrieved the spring from it and fixed my doorbell, so maybe Barbie has her uses after all. Although I am very, very encouraging of this, getting more women into STEM subjects and those technical jobs, I do not think that we should forget women's responsiveness to consumers and the female economy. A lot of the most entrepreneurial women I know work in fashion and beauty and hairdressing and set up their own businesses. I think that the challenge there is to make sure that those businesses are properly rewarded and taken seriously. The women that you are referring to, did they do that by choice or did they do it because they felt that that was the only opportunity because of the stereotypical aspects of the trade? I would say that the women who I am referring to that run their own beauty or hairdressing business did it by choice and did feel very passionate about it. As I say, as the mother of a professional engineer, I totally encourage women who are going into technical professions, but at the same time we have to be careful with the balance that we do not underplay the achievements of women in perhaps what we might regard as female industries. I think that we should take the female economy, women as consumers, seriously. It is a really important part of our economy. That is why the entrepreneur that I want to praise today is both female and young. She is a fashion designer and manufacturer called Kelly Alder, who is from Lockerbie. She designs and customises shoes and bags, and she is about to launch her own clothing collection called MISA, which stands for the Made in Scotland initiative. Kelly's business is called Glitzer Ati. As the name suggests, there is a lot of bling involved. She has an absolutely extraordinary talent at customising shoes using crystals, beads, diamontes and even seashells. I do not think that it is any secret that the cabinet secretary likes her shoes. I would be delighted to invite her to meet Kelly and to see some of her designs, because they are fantastic. She sold a lot of them online. Kelly left a well-paid job to start Glitzer Ati. I just want to quote a little bit from her own life story, if you like. She said, like many other young people, I thought that my dream of starting a fashion business would be nothing more than a pipe dream. However, after showing the world of Facebook some pictures of past designs, it took off with an influx of orders in several months. She is now running third in the international wedding industry awards, which she is very proud of and wishes the best of luck in that. The internet means that manufacturers such as her can be based in Lockerbie, in Dumfrieshire and they can sell all over the world. It is also important that we talk about female-orientated industries. She is absolutely passionate about manufacturing, because manufacturing is an important aspect of the fashion industry. That is why she called her clothing line the Made in Scotland initiative. I understand that there has been a move back towards clothing manufacturing to the UK from China and India, which I think is a good thing. It naturally means that the costs can be higher, but the quality is also higher, and that certainly comes through in Kelly's work. I can just perhaps mention the fact that she has moved into a shop front in Dumfrieshire. When I asked her in advance of this debate about the challenges that she faced, she talked about how there is a huge number of empty shops in the high street, and she was not able to get any of them because the people who owned them would much rather be empty than rent them for a reasonable market raid. She has moved into a shop that is slightly off the high street. Kelly is in her 20s, but older women also have a lifetime of experience and that ability to respond to consumer demand. I wanted to talk about a couple of them as well. Heather Hall and Linda White-Law have set up a community café called The Usual Place in Dumfries. It is a fantastic example of the benefits of social enterprise because they saw a gap for the training of young people who had additional support needs. The community café will work with the local college to help young people train and work in the hospitality industry. As a result, many of them hope that they will move into full-time work in the hospitality industry. They have now secured fantastic premises in the old Dumfries High School dining hall and have been awarded big lottery funding. Both those examples show that the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit is alive and well in Scotland. The global entrepreneurship monitor shows a rise in early stage entrepreneurship. With the Government strategy and commitment, we will see that continue. I feel quite optimistic about the future and feel that we have moved past that hand-ringing stage of the past. The cabinet secretary said at the beginning of her speech that the enterprise journey begins in school. I think that we all agree with that. That was one of the reasons why the administration of which I was a part 10 years ago set up the strategy determined to succeed, which was set up to develop enterprise skills in schools. There was a specific fund to facilitate that. I believe that that work is now embedded in the curriculum for excellence and there is no specific funding. However, it would be interesting to hear, perhaps on the wind-up beat, how effective or extensive that work has been. I do not really have any sense of that, but we all recognise that what happens in schools is of great importance. Of course, that work applies to boys and girls, young men and young women. However, like others, I took my cue from the subject of the debate initially, women and the economy. I was assuming until recently that I would be speaking about that general agenda about new opportunities for women, about occupational segregation, women and STEM subjects, equal pay and childcare. The reality is that a great deal of that agenda is still very relevant to the more narrow focus that we have for the debate enterprise. The overarching reality—and that was perhaps the most important thing that has been said in the debate so far—was by Jenny Marra when she talked about the impact of gender equality on the economy, because a lot of us come from the issue of gender equality from a human rights perspective, and that is absolutely right from the point of view of the rights of individual women. However, the reality is—and there may be some people who are not totally susceptible to that perspective—that there is a fundamental economic argument for gender equality. In a sense, that is at the heart of the debate today. Jenny Marra also rightly emphasised the theme of opportunities for women, so I will not repeat the issues about colleges, because I think that our point of view on that is well known. However, if I may just take this opportunity to repeat one point that I have raised in two previous debates in the past seven days, but it was the children's minister who was in the front bench rather than Angela Constance, I have got concerns in spite of all the good work of Skills Development Scotland that it is being skewed perhaps too much towards young people, because women over 25 are often not getting the support they need to develop their skills. The example that I have given in two recent debates is the Child Care Academy in my constituency—wonderful training opportunity for women returning to work, but over 25 the places are not being supported in the way they were in the past. I have just taken that opportunity with Angela Constance sitting there. Can I point out that the youth unemployment rate remains at 18.8 per cent, where the unemployment rate for women is 5.9 per cent? I do not think that for one minute we should be moving away from support from young people as intimated by Ms Marra in our opening remarks. I draw the member's attention to the fact that there are some very important initiatives, Fife College and Opetal, through the energy skills challenge fund, run by Skills Development Scotland, which is organising courses for women returners to get into energy, coupled with childcare support. I will take extra time. I will finish at that point if we could have 50 per cent of the funding for under 25 women in the Child Care Academy and 50 for over 25. That would serve the needs, I think, of my constituents. Willie Rennie talked about STEM subjects, so I will not repeat all the points there, but I think that we know through the Ross site of Edinburgh report that women with science, technology and engineering skills are one of Scotland's untapped resources. They focus, of course, on people with the skills that are not entering work, but the bigger problem, of course, is women often not going into those areas of work at all, which leads to the whole issue of occupational segregation, which I think was so helpfully and constructively covered by Sir Ian Wood in his report this weekend, like others I assume. That would be the topic of today's debate, but it is not, but I still think that it is relevant to today's debate. For example, he has a recommendation about support networks that should be developed if you are entering a modern apprenticeship in occupations that are currently heavily gender segregated, and that relates to some of the other recommendations that will come to you in a moment. I was going to talk about how gender stereotyping starts in the early years, but I have no time for that. Focusing particularly on the subject of today's debate enterprise, it is relevant to occupational segregation and gender stereotyping, surely to the start fact that only 21 per cent of Scotland's 339,000 SMEs are led by women, and men still are twice as likely to start businesses compared to women. If women-led businesses were equal to those of men, we are told that Scotland's GVA would increase by a staggering £7.6 billion, which reinforces, if anything, the general point that Jenny Marra made about gender equality and the economy. I did not think that Scotland can do report had a great deal of focus on gender, but it is fair to say that the women in enterprise follow-up documents certainly did have, and some of the recommendations of that have been commended already. Today, mentoring, network and peer group support, role model projects and female ambassadors and the cabinet secretary gave examples of that, and there are others that could be given, for example, the women in renewable energy network is a good example of that. One of the other recommendations is exploring the creation of a soft loan fund, which leads to the general point that there are a lot of suggestions in that report. We need to know how it is being implemented, whether it is being implemented and how effective it has been, which leads to Jenny Marra's point about the banking recommendation, an excellent recommendation, gender specific support for bank staff in order for them to be able to develop female customers' businesses. However, as Jenny Marra said, let's have a report back about how effective that has been. Those recommendations in the Women in Enterprise report from the Government were matched by a lot of the suggestions that came in the Hunter Centre survey of women's own businesses, because the priorities identified by that report were access to finance, which is very relevant to the banking recommendation. I mentioned a moment ago that access to networking and contacts is mentoring. Again, it reinforces the points that have been made in the Government's report. I am almost out of time, so there are lots of quotes in that report as well. I was wanting to— I can give you some extra time. I can use more than one quote. I was going to pick one out, which reinforced Kez Dougdale's point, because I was quite struck by some of the individual quotations from women in that report. One was to promote and advertise more successful women-run businesses that will serve as an example and inspiration for all the rest. It goes on to say that it would also help that the number of non-patrivising events for women were increased or that there were more female networking groups. There are lots of very positive things in that particular report, but I will credit to the Government in terms of its Women in Enterprise report. Of course, the devil, as always, is in the delivery, so I hope that we will hear about that in due course. Many thanks. I now call Clare Adamson to be followed by Anne McTaggart. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I think that the debate this afternoon has shown that there is a good deal of consensus across the chamber about this issue. I would like to start, though I know that the cabinet secretary has said that she will not be supporting the Labour motion, and I am quite disappointed in the nature of that motion and that we cannot reach consensus on that this afternoon. I am going to call from the Audit Scotland report on Scotland's colleges from 2013, which says that, in line with Scottish Government policy, the Scottish Funding Council issued guidelines to colleges to reduce courses that did not lead to a recognised qualification or lasted less than 10 hours. Those are the very courses that Jenny Marra includes in her enrolment figure count that completely misrepresents the current situation in Scotland's colleges. Of course, that enrolment account includes ILA-funded courses, which I am sure are greatly enjoyed by the people who took part in them. They did nothing to enhance workability skills or women's prospects in the workplace. The Audit Scotland report goes on to say that the total number of students attending college, as expressed by, full-time equivalents, has remained broadly constant. I thank the member for giving way. It is an important point that she is right, but should she agree with me that the actual number of full-time equivalents has changed because the Government redefined the reduced hours of what a full-time equivalent is and so created an extra student? Will she not agree with that? It was reduced from 700 to 720 hours, and it is now 640 hours. That explains the discrepancy in the figures. Ms Marra, I fully supported the Scottish Government when it tackled the Tory model of the incorporations of colleges that was leading to colleges being in competition with one another. The regionalisation model and all colleges have risen to the challenge in delivering for the aspirations of that regionalisation model. That is why we are in a much better position to meet the requirements of both the young people, women's returners and men's returners in colleges and the businesses in those areas than we ever have been since the incorporation of colleges by the Tories, which she seems to support. I think that it is very important that—and it has been recognised across the chamber this afternoon—that this is an endemic problem that we have rather than something that has to be challenged in all areas, and the lack of women entrepreneurs and young entrepreneurs, the same barriers exist for women who want to be entrepreneurs and exist for most women in the workplace. I do believe that we have to challenge those areas if we are going to effectively increase the number of women in businesses in all areas, especially in our entrepreneurs. Anyone who visits my parliamentary office in this building will see a prominent display of what I believe is one of the most powerful messages about women. It is a poster from Close the Gap, which shows a scowling young girl sitting beside a smiling young boy, and the caption reads, Prepare your daughter for working life, give her less pocket money than your son. I think that it is a very powerful message. I am often challenged by young people visiting my office about this image, because they say that it is so unfair. It is unfair, but there is something about us as we get into business and grow older that sometimes that unfairness becomes invisible to us. It is very true for women in Scotland that it is still the case. It is shocking that more than 40 years since the Equal Pay Act 1970, when women are still paid less on average than their male counterparts, and a recent report from the UK's Office of National Statistics in December 2013 makes for alarming reading. According to the ONS in 2012, the gender pay gap in the UK winded from 9.5 per cent to 10 per cent for full-time workers. From part-time employees, many of whom are women, it is even wider, and it grows from 19.6 per cent to 19.7 per cent. Those figures should worry us. The payback gap is just one example of many others, including women's representation in politics and STEM professions. The number of women in senior positions of the workplace and in our boardrooms demonstrates that we are a long way away from achieving gender equality. That affects women in every sector, in every area of employment. Scientists, technologists and others are no better served by the current system that we have in this country than other women workers. I listen very carefully to what my co-convener of the cross-party group on video games technology said about that sector, but I was a bit concerned about Jenny's summing up of what the sector has been saying to her, because that is much bigger than just a consumer-driven necessity. If they are only looking at women in that sector and that workplace purely to sell more games, they are missing what society is losing out on from not having women involved in every area of working life. I was very glad that Willie Rennie raised the Royal Society of Epicurus 2012 paper, Tapping All Our Talents. The Royal Society of course is dealing with more mature sectors in the games industry, but I think that they could learn a lot from what that report told us about women in the workplace who are qualified in STEM subjects. The report says that women who remain in STEM workforce are still segregated by occupation, they are segregated by grade segregation. Those forms of segregation significantly impact on both women's ability to achieve their potential and their earning capacity, and the number of women who advance to the most senior positions in STEM remains proportionally smaller than that of their male counterparts. As a society, we have to examine what message we are sending out to women if, in all areas of early working life, women do not achieve equality. We know what the dangerous outcomes of that can be. It was very recently that South Lanarkshire Council agreed to settle its equal pay claim for 3,000 individuals, many of whom were women, on the failure to implement the Equal Pay Act in 1970. That led to women being denied a proper wage for their work that they had been undertaking. It was 20 years in the making, and the council will now have to face a £75 million bill. I will say to my Labour colleagues in the list very carefully to what Malcolm Chisholm said about gender equality being human right. What message are we sending to the young women in North Lanarkshire where Labour has failed to settle their equal pay claims? Mums, sisters and brothers as well, because there are men involved in that too, they have been told that somehow they have less work in their communities. I urge everyone to tackle inequality in all areas of working life. Many thanks. Before we move on, I remind members to use full names. It is important for those who are watching our proceedings that it is a matter of accessibility. I am pleased to have been given the opportunity to participate in this important debate. I would like to add my own support to the calls for greater participation of women in Scottish business. I would like to begin, though my contribution by highlighting what I believe is the road block to the full inclusion of women and young people in entrepreneurial activities, and that is the continuing cuts to courses of further education. It is simply undeniable that the loss of 140,000 college places since 2007 is undermining the efforts to upskill our future business leaders. Scotland needs to provide the training and skills that are essential to meet the long-term needs of the economy, and we cannot achieve that if we cut the funding for courses most accessible to women. If women were to be responsible for a higher proportion of the business start-ups in Scotland, the potential for economic growth is staggering. Research from Women's Enterprise Scotland has shown that, in Scotland, only 21 per cent of the 343,000 small and medium enterprises are run by women. It is thought that this gender imbalance could be costing our nation up to £13 billion every year. A reversal of this trend would be transformational for our economy, for gender equality in Scottish business, and would significantly improve the lives of thousands of families across Scotland. In order to achieve that, women require the opportunity to learn new skills and build their capacities, capabilities and confidence in flexible and welcoming environments. The Scottish Government is making that task harder by closing off routes to learning for thousands of potential entrepreneurs, and the effect of that decision is reflected by the size of the gender gap in Scottish business rates. Last week, I used an oral question to ask the Minister for Energy, Enterprise and Tourism what specific measures the Scottish Government has taken to increase the gender gap in business start-up rates between men and women. In response, the minister did not detail one specific measure that the Government has taken to encourage women to start their own businesses. As a consequence, I remain deeply concerned that we could be doing much more to capitalise on the entrepreneurial potential of Scotland's women. We should not make the mistake of presuming that Scotland's women are less keen, less able or less enthusiastic about becoming self-employed. Recently, Women's Enterprise Scotland published a report on the state of women-led businesses in Scotland, which highlighted that 87 per cent of women entrepreneurs want to grow and expand their businesses. The report also identified specific areas in which women need support to help them to achieve their aims. Occupational segregation has been identified as a key roadblock to encouraging women as business leaders, and the report made specific recommendations to address this through changes such as the promotion of flexible working arrangements. In addition to that, I believe that we can best tackle gender segregation at its roots in the early years of education. We need to challenge the enforcement of gender roles on young people in schools and other places of learning, and we should encourage women and men towards employment in non-traditional occupations. It is only through challenging the expectations that we have of men and women in our society, and by providing equality of opportunity that women will be able to take their rightful place at the top of the table of Scottish business. Thank you very much. I now call Christian Allard to be followed by Sandra White. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I am delighted to speak today in this debate, but I am not quite sure if I am qualified for the job. Improving entrepreneurship among women and young people in Scotland is what the Scottish Government motion says. And, like Liberal Democrat Willie Rennie, I'm never a young woman. But it was a Liberal Democrat, a woman, Charlie Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby, who claimed that George W. Bush had said to a UK Prime Minister, the Prime of the French is that we don't have a word for entrepreneur. I would say, Presiding Officer, that the Prime of the word entrepreneur, a French word, is that it's too often a word associated with men, and men are not always that young. In the north-east, we know what an entrepreneur looks like. After all, Aberdeen is the powerhouse of the UK, said another UK Prime Minister, the present one. However, this entrepreneurship culture was not born with the discovery of oil and gas in the North Sea. With the whisky industry farming and fishing, the creation of new and innovative businesses operating at home on the road, so generations upon generations of north-east entrepreneurs contributing to the wealth of this nation. Myself working more than 30 years in the fishing industry, I met many of those entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, I will only need a few fingers of one hand to count the number of women I met during all the years women heading seafood businesses across Scotland. We heard a lot this afternoon from different members, and as much as I would like to congratulate all the contribution before me, we celebrated women entrepreneurs like Christina McKelvie, for example, it was a very good example of the crutches that maybe could need some help about this particular entrepreneur, and maybe ask Christina McKelvie to give me the details. There is a real issue at there, and the real issue is to tackle his occupational segregation. Because one of the most respected entrepreneurs in the north-east is a man who came from the fishing industry to successfully create one of the largest enterprises servicing the oil and gas sector here in Scotland and across the world. Sir Yanwood has a kind of attitude that the Scottish Government is promoting, and like the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Yanwood wants underrepresented groups to realise the potential as entrepreneurs. How wonderful is it, Presiding Officer, that Sir Yanwood has published his commission's report on Tuesday. The final report of the commission focuses on the importance of business and industry working with school and colleges as a key factor in ensuring young people are more prepared for work and better informed in career choices. And this is very important for young people, young girls and young boys, like my colleague Dennis Roberton. I think if you can tackle that occupational segregation as early as possible, it's the key to success. There are also recommendations on encouraging and supporting more employers to recruit more young people. It also contains a number of recommendations on advancing equalities within education and youth employment. Here we are, once again, this government is working in partnership with the people than now the north-west on how to develop the potential that we have here in Scotland. We need this collective team Scotland that we heard this afternoon about, this collective team Scotland approach to bring companies, universities, public agencies and customers together to exploit more opportunities that drive growth and increase export. Let me illustrate this, Presiding Officer, here in Scotland and where we are at and how this collaborative approach is working and working well. Last month, I added the pressure to attend a skills summit in Aberdeen delivered by the Scottish Council for Development and Industry, SCDI, and Skills Development Scotland, SDS. In partnership with OPITO, OPITO we heard this afternoon is the oil and gas industry's focal point for skills learning and workforce development. The event launched Scottish Apprenticeship Week 2014 and considered many issues such as employer engagement in schools. Apprenticeship is very important because in the north-east we know that a lot of young entrepreneurs have started as apprentice in a younger career at a younger age. I was very impressed with the speaker on the day in Aberdeen that the organisers had lined up and with a number of organisations that attended and participated in the discussions. I was particularly impressed by the first speaker, Scottish Government Cabinet Secretary for Training, Youth and Women's Employment, Angela Constance. Presiding Officer, I was not the only one to be impressed. Scotland's US Cabinet Secretary had to leave Aberdeen shortly after a speech and let me illustrate to this chamber how it was received. The chair of the Aston University Engineering Academy, Professor Alison Holstead, told the Scottish audience how impressed she was with the Government Cabinet Secretary working in partnership with others to help young people and women to see the economic potential unleashed. Professor Alison Holstead told us how different the UK Government works down south and I'm afraid she blamed most of it on someone who came from Aberdeen, not an entrepreneur but a politician, the UK Secretary of State for Education and the Member of Parliament for Surreyth, Michael Gove MP. We were warned by this professor from Birmingham that the Westminster Government has a real lack of understanding when it comes to educate young people to be ready for work in the 21st century. She told us that we were on the right path here in Scotland. But as some said before me and also Wood's Commission report concluded, we must understand that in many areas such as advancing equalities with Scottish education and youth employment, there are clearly no quick fixes. When it comes to occupational segregation, schools are clearly an influence at a crucial stage and all those problems are in entirety could never be resolved solely by school. The Equal Opportunities Committee that Dennis Robertson spoke about before me in his report Women and Work noted the view from industry that sector representatives should be brought into school to enhance careers advice by controlling gender stereotypes because, President Officer, the subject choice at school is absolutely key to addressing gender segregation at the place of work. This is why I would like this government to go further than the recommendation on Surrey and Wood's Commission and to open primary schools as well as secondary schools to business and industry representatives. It has to be representatives and not individual businesses in my view. As much as headteachers have opened their schools doors since the implementation curriculum for excellence, teachers haven't got the time to consider multiple requests every year. This collaborative approach must be coordinated. Jenny Marra talked earlier this morning and in her appointment and I'm sorry I have to say regarding the number of places in colleges she has no leg to stand on. Nothing should stand in the way of both gender taking advantage equally of opportunities available in modern Scotland, President Officer, and I trust this government to deliver the share vision for the women and young people across Scotland. Thank you. I call Sandra White to be followed by Margaret McCulloch. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I apologise to the chamber and the cabinet secretary for missing the beginning of the speech. I really must read my notes much better than that. I'm very sorry about being a couple of minutes late. I thank the Government for bringing forward this debate. I think that it's most welcome and very timely. We've entered into a stage in Scotland which basically is historic. To talk about entrepreneurship, women and young people have been given the opportunity. I think that it's very timely in that particular point. I'm not saying that as a political point. I'm just saying that the emphasis is there and I think that it's great to be able to speak about it. It's also very important that, as heavy industry has been in decline as we all know throughout various parts, it will look to other ways to engage people and, as said previously, in particular women and young children. I want to mention Ailsa Mackay in this particular aspect. I don't know where Ailsa would have been talking about entrepreneurship, but she would certainly have been talking about the economy of women in the country and the excellent work that she started and has been continuing through others as well. I'm sure that Ailsa would have been absolutely loving this particular debate. If I could turn to the Labour amendment and I think that it's already been mentioned, which I think that I'm a bit disappointed in as well, but unfortunately I'm not overly surprised when the head count figures that Labour has take absolutely no account of the length of the courses, the intensity and the economic relevance of those courses. I really thought that Jenny Marra would have welcomed what's been announced, not just by the Government, but also if you could just let me finish in the bit that I was going to talk about there. I would have thought that Jenny Marra would have welcomed £13 million in funding to create an extra 3,500 college places. I'll give way to the member. I thank the member for giving way, Presiding Officer. The 140,000 less places in colleges are figures straight from the Scottish Government. Sandra White? I'm sorry. Once again, a very misleading contribution from Jenny Marra of the Labour Party is what you say if you say it often enough. Perhaps people will believe it, but I'll come on to that later on as well. I was going to say that I thought that you might have welcomed that, but I thought that you might also welcome John Henderson, the chief executive of colleges Scotland, who says that it underlines the Scottish Government's recognition of the vital role of colleges in contributing to the strengthening of the Scottish economy. He was talking about the extra money that has been put in to create extra places, and in fact your colleague Alex Rowley believes that the merger of the colleges, particularly in Fife, was a real opportunity for that area and a fresh way to look at developing skills and training. I thought that you might have welcomed it in some point anyway, but, as I said, I wasn't surprised by that. I think that that has been a very good and interesting contribution from a number of people. Murdo Fraser and Malcolm Cheswm both mentioned the commission for developing Scotland's young workforce chaired by Sir Ian Wood. It is a very substantial piece of work, and I think that it gets to the nub of some of the issues that we have not just been debating today, which has followed on from debates previously as well, and I too, like Murdo Fraser and others, I look forward to debating this further and implementing a number of the representations that have come from the commission. Another area that I thought was absolutely spot on came from Dennis Robertson and Ann McTagger also. I think that they are really going to spot on when they mentioned about education, because it does not just start when you enter the workforce, it starts when you are being educated. Education has a real role to play in confidence in building for women, in particular, to push through the fact that it is out there in the big bad world, as we might see it, the stereotyping of women, how they dress, how they look, what career choices are really up there for them. We know that the media in all forms does it as well, but the curriculum of excellence that Dennis Robertson mentioned by Ann McTagger in that regard is absolutely relevant to ensuring that young girls and women have the confidence in themselves to build up to that particular point. I think that we all have to challenge the stereotyping of women, and I would hope—I do believe that women in enterprise framework can do framework, will improve entrepreneurship among women and among young people. We cannot forget that it is targeted to them also in that respect. I thought that Kezia Dugdale was in a very interesting contribution and very much appreciated as well. One of the areas that she was talking about was role models. I think that that is really important because I think that every one of us women here who are involved in politics, we go out and speak to not just members of our own parties, but young women as well, and they see us as role models. Do you agree with me that the role models that you are referring to, the women in the renewable energy Scotland wires, are perfect examples of role models and ambassadors to try and bring the renewable sector into our young people and show that there is a pathway to the new energy for Scotland, and at least 20 per cent of it is now involved in that profession? I think that that is a very good example, Presiding Officer. Certainly when I go around schools, renewable energy is one of the top issues that young people and young women as well as talk about. I think that that is a very good example, but the point that I was trying to make as well was that young women look upon as women politicians as role models. I think that we all have to sort of take a wee step back and think sometimes how we behave, not just in this place but perhaps in other places too, because we are seeing as role models for young women and what we put forward here. It does affect. I will just ask the women and not just here but throughout the Parliament to sit back and take a wee reflection sometimes, but not exactly great role models. I will come back to Christine Grahame. I am not mentioning Christine Grahame, but mentoring and networking streams were also mentioned. I think that it is an excellent way to involve women, and I always encourage young women to do that. We talked about entrepreneurs, as Michelle Moan has mentioned, but Kezia Dugdale and Christine Grahame and others had mentioned, I think that it was Joan McAlpine mentioned that local entrepreneurs are in their areas. I am not going to go and talk about all the local entrepreneurs in my area, but there are lots and lots, not just of young women but young people as well, who are local entrepreneurs. Kezia Dugdale was absolutely right. You can get someone like Michelle Moan or others who are an entrepreneur at that level, but all the local people who have local businesses, women and young people are absolutely fantastic and we must make sure that they are known to everyone as well and give them the praise where they say, actually, that they should be there. In our area, we have Sky Park, I would not name the names, but basically they have lots of young businesses as well in Glasgow, and they all take heed from each other, and I think that they take encouragement from each other as well. Local role models are absolutely great as well as local entrepreneurs as well. Last year, the Equal Opportunities Committee produced a report that was widely welcomed across the chamber on women and work. Among the issues that the committee looked at during the inquiry were occupational segregation, flexible working child care and the recommendations that the committee made are now a matter of record. The committee did all of that against the backdrop of the slowest economic recovery in 100 years, a prolonged crisis in which women have been hit hardest. If members wish to chat, perhaps they could do so outside the chamber. The committee did all of that against the backdrop of the slowest economic recovery in 100 years, a prolonged crisis in which women have been hit hardest, women's unemployment, outstrips men's unemployment and the growing prevalence of underemployment is more likely to affect women. I want to pay tribute to the work of all the members who served in the committee at that time. They have given us a comprehensive report, which we need to keep coming back to, and many of the findings of that report are relevant to today's debate. The reality of life for women in Scotland is that, while we have seen huge progress over the decades, we are still far too often swimming against the tide. Assumptions about gender roles can influence a woman's chances in life. Occupational segregation persists in work and in training. Flexibility in work still does not serve women as well as it serves others, and there still just isn't enough childcare when it's needed and where it is needed. Many of those inequalities and inconsistencies are reflecting the gender gap that we can see in the world of business too. In the action plan that we are discussing today, Professor Sarah Carter points out that men are twice as likely to start a business as women. Not only that, but the levels of women's ownership in business in Scotland are low compared to even other high-income countries. Perhaps if there was a fairer distribution of that high income, then we wouldn't be quite so far behind our neighbours. However, I want to focus my remarks today on the practical, the steps that government, industry and their partner organisations can take to help women in work and promote women in business. As a woman who did set up my own business, I want to identify the action points that I feel are the most significant and warrant further discussion. The labour motion stresses the importance of education, and we have already explained in some depth why we believe that college cuts are short-sighted and why courses changes have adverse affected women. As discussed, there is a growing consensus around the need to bring more women into so-called non-traditional roles, the STEM subjects and modern apprenticeships. To that end, I would welcome the recent progress that we have seen with career-wise, industry placements and the much-needed SDS equality action plan. However, the minister will know that this year saw the introduction of new contribution rates in the modern apprenticeship programme, and there are certain occupational errors where, after 10 years of rates being frozen, we are now seeing reductions. My concern is not only that some of those occupational errors are important to the Scottish economy, but there are training providers who will no longer be able to cover their costs. What impact could that have on apprenticeships and what impact might that have on women in training? The action plan calls for engagement with a number of organisations, including the Prince's Trust, Scottish Enterprise, HIE and Business Gateway, to develop mentoring and networking for women. I fully support those efforts and the role model project that action plan calls for gender-specific support and rightly so, because sometimes gender and neutral policy reinforces pre-existing inequalities instead of addressing them. The action plan calls for collaboration with Cooperative Development Scotland to raise awareness of the consortium cooperative model, a model that I have spoken in support of before, because it could help entrepreneurs to compete for public contracts. Presiding Officer, the inequalities that women face are a waste, a waste of talent and potential that is costing our economy £7 billion. To sustain those inequalities is immoral and it is illogical, so together let's close the gap. Thank you very much. Before I turn to closing speeches, I finally call Gordon MacDonald. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Scotland's economy depends on a number of key sectors, including oil and gas, food and drink, financial services, life sciences and creative industries, but it also depends on small businesses to deliver economic growth not only across these important areas of our economy but in every business sector. There are just short of 350,000 small businesses in Scotland providing over one million jobs, which represents half of all private sector employment in Scotland. In order to continue our economy growing, we need to encourage the creation of new businesses, the expansion of existing businesses and encourage those who can to export and sell online. The people of Scotland are this country's greatest assets. We have a highly educated population, with 39 per cent of our working adults having either an HND degree or professional qualification compared to the 35 per cent for the UK as a whole, and here in Edinburgh that proportion is even higher at 54 per cent of the adult population. What we need to do is encourage, nurture and support budding entrepreneurs. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, published by the University of Strathclyde Business School, measures how well we perform in that area. Regarding start-ups, it compared Scotland's total early stage entrepreneurial activity with the other 26 innovation-driven sovereign nations. It found that Scotland had significantly higher rates of developing or new business owner enterprises across the working population than Italy and Japan. Scotland's rate at 6.8 per cent was on a par with other European countries like France, Germany and Norway. That rate, however, differed between male and females, with the male TEA rate in Scotland being 8.5 per cent compared to the UK's 8.7 per cent, and female start-up rates being 5.2 per cent in Scotland compared to 5.8 per cent across the UK. The GEM report suggested that women entrepreneurs differ widely in their motivation for starting a business, including career constraints, work-family balance and financial freedom. The report also found that significant wealth creation tended to be of a secondary importance for most but not all women entrepreneurs, and as a result, many of the new businesses are in personal services and retailing, where relatively low start-up capital is required. By encouraging and supporting women to start-up new businesses to the same level of male start-ups, to grow existing businesses and where possible start to export, we would generate more than £7 billion for the economy. The Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship estimates that that would create around 35,000 direct jobs. Women's Enterprise Scotland carried out a survey of women-owned businesses in Scotland that found that access to finance was the most frequently mentioned need, with only 50 per cent finding their banks helpful. Business support was identified as another area where assistance was required not only at the early stages of developing a business, but later when businesses are at the point of wishing to grow. Those who had access to a mentor found that a vast majority of them proved to be very helpful in providing advice. Business Gateway was identified as a main source of business support, helping around 10,000 start-ups every year, with two-thirds of businesses started by women finding their service helpful. The Women Enterprise Scotland survey also found that women recognised that, despite the challenges, they should consider growing their businesses. Part of their key findings in the survey highlighted that 87 per cent of women-owned businesses aim to grow with 27 per cent aiming to grow rapidly. Another area where we need to encourage more entrepreneurship is with young people. Entrepreneurship should be recognised as a valid, viable and rewarding career choice for all young people. The self-employment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds is currently a disappointing 2 per cent. The way in which the report, Policy Brief on Youth Entrepreneurship, highlighted the barriers that the young face is preventing some from turning ideas into projects. They arise in the areas of social attitudes, lack of skills, inadequate entrepreneurship education, lack of work experience, under-capitalisation, lack of networks, and market barriers. That is across Europe, not Scotland or the UK. We need to address those issues, and part of that is being addressed by curriculum for excellence that ensures that enterprise education is embedded right across a young person's learning. In addition, there are good examples of schemes at encouraging young people to consider starting their own business, containing the Scottish Government's report Scotland Can Do, which highlights the vision of Scotland as a world-leading entrepreneurial and innovative nation. I would like to highlight two of them. MicroTiCo is a groundbreaking enterprise challenge run by the Wild Hearts Foundation that has brought together over 10,000 participants from school children to business executives. MicroTiCo's vision is to ignite the spirit of enterprise across our culture. Taking inspiration from the spirit of Wild Hearts' microfinance clients in the developing world, MicroTiCo challenges teams to grow £1 into as much money as possible in just four weeks. Its unique combination of inspiration, business mentorship, positive peer pressure and ethics produces incredible results. Today, more than £500,000 has been returned from just 1,900 £loans. In addition, there is the young innovators challenge, which was won by a young female graduate from Edinburgh College of Art. A competition aimed at encouraging young people in college, training or university to come up with innovative ideas. Funded by the Scottish Government, a competition is run by the Scottish Institute for Enterprise. In 2013, competition entrants were asked to create innovative solutions to challenges set by industry leaders. Finalists then pitched their ideas to a business panel of experts for the chance to win development funding of up to £50,000 and business support. The Scotland Can Do report highlights what we can do to support more young people and females to become entrepreneurs. A yes vote will release the energy and confidence in order to take up that challenge. Thank you very much. We now turn to closing speeches and I call on Liz Smith with around seven minutes, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I think that this debate has been very interesting. If nothing else, we have learned how to amend a doorbell, thanks to John McAlpine's step-by-step instructions. As many members have said, establishing a new business or harnessing an old one and developing it with new opportunities is a huge challenge to anybody. Those people who have the ideas and the special skills that they believe will bring substantial dividends and not just financial ones are very precious assets within any economy, not just because they are also the willing people who take on the accompanying risk. Several members have also reminded us that the scale of that venture can vary enormously, and it can obviously involve a very different mix of leadership, initiative and innovation, as well as the usually considerable need for good financial backing. Of course, there is also the long-standing debate about whether entrepreneurship is innate or whether it can be taught. Christian Allard mentioned the French connection, as I would expect him to do, but the term goes back to the 1730s. It was not until the 1950s when the economist Joseph Schumpeter examined entrepreneurship in detail, most especially what factors give rise to what he described as the gale of creative destruction, whereby something new and better emerges out of the process of industrial mutation. I like that concept and I raise it because I think that there is an analogy with Sir Ian Wood's deliberations published earlier in the week. Sir Ian, obviously, himself, a hugely successful entrepreneur, has, via his own leadership, sought to take the initiative and innovate when it comes to the structure of Scottish education. Like Tom Hunter and Jim McCall, he knows only too well that, if Scotland is to lead the world when it comes to entrepreneurship, then it has much more to do to inspire women and young people. If women now account for approximately a third of global entrepreneurs, and they are encouraging signs also about the rise in female self-employment, we also know that women often feel constrained. Perhaps it is an issue of confidence, as was mentioned by Jenny Marra. Sometimes it is economic difficulties, sometimes it is family commitments, and it sometimes attitudes. Christine Grahame was very good at outlaying some of her constituents in that respect. Her economic profile is often different. That was a point made by my colleague Murdo Fraser, and it should be acknowledged as such, since it has huge implications for policymaking. It requires a diversity within skills and training. Again, it is a theme from which our perspective is one of the most important themes within the wood report, dismantling the structural straight jacket when it comes to responding to the needs of a wide diversity of pupils and fostering their own ambition. That report sets out a vision that is based upon the successful application of what works best in practice. Something that I think is always a good guide for successful entrepreneurship and it recognises that providing the best opportunity for everyone does not depend upon putting them all through the same educational experience. The report also recognises that addressing the attainment gap is essential if we are to enhance that educational experience. Spreading the good practice of entrepreneurship will be held back if we cannot do something about that attainment gap, because it is simply unacceptable that we still have one in six senior pupils leaving school without being functionally literate, almost half of young people in Scotland leaving school without higher qualifications, only one in four Scottish businesses being willing to hire people directly from education below that higher level and among 16 to 24-year-olds now being almost 20 per cent of the total unemployment. Now, there are good changes happening, but those are stark statistics which undoubtedly hold back the desire for better entrepreneurship. However, as I think that three members have mentioned, there has to be an accompanying change in attitudes. There are some lessons to be learned from abroad that Gordon MacDonald has just mentioned, and especially from some of the key European neighbours, where there is an absence of the unfortunate tiered structures that do label young people and which tend to restrict social mobility, where there is the greater flexibility of movement between school, college and university. I think that there is a very strong need for the collective responsibility that was spoken about by Willie Rennie in his contribution. For far too long, I think that Scottish education has been undermined by quite a powerful feeling of gender stereotypes, which have reflected fairly deeply in trench cultural and social economic preconceptions, and they have had a detrimental effect on the Scottish economy. Take, for instance, the extremely troubling statistic that in 2012-13 just 3 per cent of new modern apprenticeship starts in engineering were undertaken by women, or the fact that females are far more likely to undertake level 2 apprenticeships than males. Claire Adamson made the point about the Royal Society. Professor Dame Jocelyn Burnell is the new and also the first female head of the Royal Society in Edinburgh, and she is one, I think, of 36 female physics professors in the UK. She made the comment that you can convert the teachers and you can convert the kids, but if they go home to find that, having said that they want to be a physicist and the parents question why on earth they would want to do that, then it obviously makes life very difficult. To the commission's credit, I think that they were extremely alive to exactly this problem, which explains why they have advocated that schools monitor the gender split with particular reference to the STEM subjects and engage with employers so that real life experience is articulated to all students regarding gender. Margaret McCulloch made the strong point of her own experience in that regard. Of course, schools are only part of the equation and it is therefore entirely appropriate that the Scottish Funding Council and Skills Development Scotland are also tasked with promoting the merits of STEM subjects to both girls and boys. On this point, the retention rate for young female graduates in STEM subjects is truly shocking. The statistics were given to us by Willie Rennie, and that is a major area of concern. What makes it a little bit more troubling is that the next batch of successful Scottish entrepreneurs will inevitably be involved in the life sciences and information technology, yet we still face a situation where the new qualifications perhaps do not reflect that just as strongly as they should. I, for instance, hire geology as one classic example of the debate around that just now is very strong. Just to finish off, Deputy Presiding Officer, I think that this is a hugely important area of development. It does require changing attitudes just as much as it does about policy work. We have great pleasure in supporting the Government's motion, the Labour amendment, and the amendment in the name of Murdoff Fraser. Many thanks. I now call on Jenny Marra with around nine minutes or so. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I think it's been an enjoyable and interesting and wide-ranging debate this afternoon across a number of different topics on mainly concentrating on women's business, women's access to training and skills and their businesses. I think we've heard some really great and nice and local stories this afternoon about women's success in business, especially from Christine Grahame, her experience in the Borders, and Joan McAlpine's region down in the south of Scotland, particularly taken by the minister's love of Joan McAlpine's friend in her business. I'm quite tempted to perhaps look them up myself. However, I think that the stories about women in their communities setting up successful businesses are always good to hear. I know that all members around this chamber have their own stories, and there are certainly many from my region, too. However, I was reflecting as I listened to both the members on their stories and thinking about what came behind their stories, what led them to that point, and what challenges they faced as they were setting up their businesses. I was struck by the focus of the women in enterprise report on access to finance. I hear from so many local businesses—as I'm sure all members do—about the difficulty for emerging companies to access traditional methods of loans and finance from banks. When they speak to the banks, they say, actually, it's a perception issue. We are engaging on a local level. I think that there is still this gap in the middle that we do need to bridge. However, I was also reminded, as I was listening to the members, of a story from my region about a micro-financing project that has been set up in Dundee, which is helping women to set up their own business where they find it difficult to access traditional finance from banks. I was particularly struck by the story, because micro-financing in my head is something that is very much connected with the developing economies in this world. Where profit-driven financing is very difficult to come by, some charitable and self-sustaining micro-financing projects step in. I have to say that I was surprised, but perhaps encouraged that those projects were actually taking place in our own economy. I wonder if the minister—sorry, the cabinet secretary—would be open to perhaps, in her conversations with banks, to expanding that remit, to have a conversation with the micro-financing projects that are working in Scotland to see the challenges that they are facing in getting finance to women and in starting their own enterprise. I wonder if she would have those conversations to ensure that all financing options are meeting the needs of female entrepreneurs to do what she can to improve the financing situation and to report back to the chamber on those conversations. To turn to the other points that were raised in the debate this afternoon, the minister, in her intervention to Malcolm Chisholm, suggested that I was asking her to choose between college places for young people and college places for women. I think that the Scottish Government has already made that choice. I believe and Labour believes that training and skills for young people and women returners in our colleges underpins our economy. It says so in the Wood commission report, which the Scottish Government has rightly accepted this week. We are not suggesting that college places for women returners and young people are a choice. The Scottish Government has made that choice. We think that further education is a key priority and places for both young people and women returners should be fully supported. The Scottish Government gave higher education a much more generous settlement than FE, but that was their choice and that is the responsibility of government. Malcolm Chisholm said in his always eloquent contribution that there is a fundamental economic case for gender equality. With all due respect, I think that Clare Adamson misunderstood my point on the economic imperative behind gender equality. I did not think that I had to labour with this chamber my own and Labour's commitment to gender equality for human rights issues and the reasons of general wellbeing, but, for the record, we believe that gender equality enhances all of these, but we wanted this afternoon to highlight the economic imperative of women's participation and unexploited markets. Clare Adamson also said that colleges are now in a better position to support women returners. I have to say to the member that I fundamentally disagree with that point that she made. Again, I would say to her with all respect that the SNP are ignoring their own figures coming from their own Government. There are 93,000 fewer women studying part-time since 2007, since this Government took power. This figure is from the Scottish Government. It is from the Scottish Funding Council, the Government's own agency. I do not think that we are really in a position in this chamber to ignore or dispute these figures. Clare Adamson, I appreciate Ms Marra accepting the intervention. It is Audit Scotland that said that the guidelines said that they had to reduce courses that did not lead to recognised qualifications other than were less than 10 hours. Can she say what courses that are not recognised qualification and were less than 10 hours help women into employment? I absolutely can. Non-recognisable qualifications in colleges are often access courses that women really use to get back into education and refresher courses. If the minister will not make those a priority in counting them—whatever the advice from Audit Scotland—that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how women in Scotland access further education and their way into training skills and then into employment. I hope that that is something that the minister can reflect on. We should definitely be counting those courses. The Wood commission rightly came up this afternoon, but I reiterate to the cabinet secretary that we have a full and proper debate because Syrian Wood spent a considerable amount of time and care over this report before the summer recess is on us. There were a number of points that were rightly raised by the Conservative amendment and by the Conservative speakers. Engagement of the private sector in schools is something that Ian Wood stressed with myself and Joanne Lamont last week, that businesses should be going into schools more often to make the case and to raise aspiration among young people as well. The inadequacy of one week's work experience was highlighted by Murdo Fraser. I completely and utterly agree with that. I have work experience with students from Dundee in my office at the moment—I know my own experience of this and colleagues—to get a flavour of different types of work in the public sector and the private sector in different kinds of businesses. It is important for young people, especially young people that do not have the connections through their parents or family or family networks to get that experience. I think that Ian Wood was suggesting perhaps four, three or four weeks' work experience over the years, and that is something that this Parliament should take very seriously and address. Ian Wood was also very concerned about— Yes. I find it quite interesting—I am not necessarily giving you my opinion here—that the one-week work experience is something that the East Dunbartonshire Youth Council has campaigned very strongly to keep when East Dunbartonshire Council did away with it. I think that in this area it is probably as well that we need to listen to young folk as well as everyone else. Jenny Marra. Absolutely. I think that work experience needs to be enhanced. I think that they were right to campaign to keep it, but there needs to be more than one week. It needs to be funded and it needs to be structured. Ian Wood was also very keen to address gender segregation in the workplace at something else that has been raised this afternoon. I think that Murdo Fraser raised an important point about learning from Germany and the focus on STEM subjects, which is absolutely key. Willie Rennie picked up on that as well. Talking about the rate of loss of women from higher education in STEM subjects into employment is double that of men, and that is something that we need to seriously address. More needs to be done to ensure that talent is retained in our workforce. Willie Rennie stressed the importance of college places and refresher courses underpinning entrepreneurship and the Wood commission's proposals. I thought that my colleague Kezia Dugdale made a very important intervention, as she always does, about work readiness. I think that she made a very critical point about work readiness to set up her own business. She talked about colleges looking at tax, risk, marketing across courses so that students, when they come out, are not just willing to apply for a job, but they are willing to then try to access finance themselves and set up their own business for their own self-employment and to create jobs in the wider economy. We are greatly concerned about the low rates of participation by women in entrepreneurship. Women's enterprise is difficult to accurately define and enumerate, but we know that it is estimated that, in 2012, only around 21 per cent of Scotland's thousands of SMEs were majority-led by women, and that is a figure that must concern us. Those reports, Presiding Officer, today are welcome. They are emanating from the Women's Employment Summit, but I would very much welcome us coming back to this in six or nine months' time to see if the initiatives in those reports are working and take stock of progress. Many thanks. I now call Angela Constance to wind up the debate. Cabinet Secretary, you have until 5 p.m. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I think that this afternoon has largely been a very positive and, at times, humorous debate, but nonetheless a very constructive debate and informative debate as we move forward. Presiding Officer, if we are really going to reignite that spirit of entrepreneurship, which Scotland has been renowned for, we really need to do so with women and young people playing a full and active part. The reality is that we cannot successfully reignite that spirit of entrepreneurship without women and young people. As people are our greatest asset, we very much need to be tapping in to all our talents. There is a strong and growing network of support that is becoming increasingly focused on the needs of women and young people. Women's Enterprise Scotland is leading the implementation group to ensure that the aspirations that we all share actually translate into action. We are actively tackling the gender gap in enterprise. The Women's Enterprise Framework and Action Plan arose from work that was led in collaboration by Professor Sarah Carter after the Women's Employment Summit. The point about collaboration is very important. All the key public, private and third sector partners are signed up to this. In this instance, this includes the Royal Bank of Scotland, Business Gateway, Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Prince's Trust. If I can quote Jackie Bratton, MBE, who is the chairperson of Women's Enterprise Scotland, who said, "...we are the only country in Europe that has got this kind of collaborative policy framework that we can now go forward and actually create an environment that is far more supportive." In terms of young people, it has been acknowledged throughout the debate that enterprise and entrepreneurship have become a distinct outcome of curriculum for excellence. Self-employment can be for young people a route out of unemployment, but it also has to be seen in its own right as a positive career choice. We do very much have to view enterprise and innovation as important to everyday life and work. In that regard, I was absolutely delighted to see four apprentices, aircraft maintenance apprentices from Preswick Airport, who were amongst some of the winners in the youth initiative challenge, the first apprentices to win in that accolade. I would also like to draw to members' attention that the very successful bridge to business initiative that has been piloted in Glasgow City College, which I spoke about in my opening remarks, is also going to be rolled out across the college estate. There are already six colleges that are interested in that. Given the breadth of the work that is already going on across the public, private and third sector, I believe for the sake of our young people and women who are making their way in the world of business currently, and those young people and women who want to make their way in the world of enterprise and entrepreneurship, and organisations such as the Association of Scottish Business Women and Women's Enterprise Scotland, it is imperative that we debate those issues in Scotland's Parliament, because all those stakeholders deserve a debate that is very focused on enterprise and entrepreneurship. For that reason, I want to thank those speakers who have focused on enterprise and entrepreneurship. I recognise that this debate has far broader synergies about the economic experience of women in the wider world and, of course, the Wood report, which I will come to later. However, it was excellent to hear of those great examples of innovative women who are making their way in the economy and in the business world, the length and breadth of Scotland. Of course, Christine Grahame mentioned Lynn Mann from Supernatural Oils, who I have had the pleasure of meeting. Lynn is also a role model and mentor, so she is very much leading the way and supporting others to follow in her footsteps. Christina McKelvie spoke about inventions with social purpose. Joan McAlpine made an important point that, as well as getting more women to be active in areas of the economy where they are currently underrepresented such as in engineering, we also need to value the work and the businesses that women are attracted to establishing. I can say that Joan McAlpine is a very much look forward to receiving that invitation to meet her and her constituent who is designing fabulous shoes. I am, of course, a great supporter of the creative industries. However, on a more serious point, and it was a point that was tapped into by Joan McAlpine and Murdo Fraser, that women have a tendency to start up different types of businesses. Murdo Fraser also said that women's start-ups tend to be self-funded, and that raises the question of access to finance. I am, of course, more than happy as requested by Jenny Marra and Malcolm Trism to report back in the appropriate format, whether it is to Parliament or to them individually, about how those broader discussions about supporting women to access finance to make their business aspirations become a reality. It is also really important to recognise, because Murdo Fraser touched on the point that the motivation for some women to establish their own business is not quite simply just to make money. However, 87 per cent of those female-led businesses are businesses that are actually seeking to grow, so we should never underestimate the ambition of women seeking to make their own way in the world. I very much enjoyed Kezia Dugdale's contribution. She largely focused on a different type of economy and the imperative need to support home-grown businesses, and I suppose that what I would like to draw her attention to is that values-based businesses is emphasised in Scotland can do, and alternative models are discussed, celebrated and supported, such as the co-op model, which Margaret McCulloch also mentioned, employee ownership and also social enterprises. There is a very important point that talks about growth for the strength of all. I would also like to contribute to the work that Women's Enterprise Scotland is doing in terms of leading the way, in terms of role models and mentoring support, and that is a good example of action that is taking place here and now. Willie Rennie spoke eloquently about the leaky pipeline and the proportion of women's science graduates who either do not pursue or who drop out from STEM careers and how that costs the economy £170 million. I very much hope that the Liberal Democrats, at some point in the future, use their debate time to bring back their amendment that was unsuccessful in being selected today, and I hope that he has reassured that this Government works very closely with organisations like Equate, and indeed we fund organisations like Equate, who are crucial in the implementation of career-wise, which is essentially about early intervention role models and work experience for young girls, so that they can actually experience what it is like to pursue a STEM-related career. I have absolutely no doubt, Presiding Officer, that we will indeed return to the issue of occupational segregation, because it is an agenda that I feel utterly committed to, because while I, as the former social worker, will always value the work that women are traditionally attracted to, there is no doubt about it that we need to improve the representation of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematical related careers. We are not alone in that problem—it is a problem faced right across Europe—but there is an opportunity for Scotland to be an exemplar and to lead the way in this area. Presiding Officer, members rightly spoke highly of the very recent and very timious Wood commission report, and I very much welcome the cross-party support and interest in the work of the commission for developing Scotland's young workforce. If I can reiterate that in terms of this Government's position that we very much do view this as a landmark report that has the capacity to transform the career prospects of young women and men in this country, and as I said earlier in my opening remarks, I will indeed be returning to Parliament to focus very much on the implementation of the Wood commission on the 17th of this month. With our partners in local government and COSLA, we will have to work through all 39 recommendations, how they are implemented and how they are resourced, but that is something that I am very much cherishing the opportunity to do. When we established the commission, we were very struck on the benches that the countries with the lowest levels of youth unemployment were also the countries with the very well-established vocational education and training systems that were highly regarded by employers. Our ambition is indeed far, far greater than returning to pre-recession levels of youth unemployment. We have to be doing far, far better by our young women and our young men both in times of economic growth and economic challenge. I am always struck by the fact that prior to the world turning upside down in 2008 and the economic downturn, that in this country youth unemployment peaked at 14 per cent at a time of economic growth. That indicates strongly to me that not only do we have an economic problem to reverse, but that we also have systemic issues through every stage of our society to address if we are going to ensure that all of our young people get the very best start to their working lives. I am very pleased to report that early progress is being made on the wood agenda. A few months ago, there was an announcement made with regard to Levenmouth in Fife, Ayrshire College and North Ayrshire College yesterday. I have also announced some very interesting work. There is a steam of head going on ahead to make good progress with early pathfinders, and the Government has also announced the expansion of the modern apprenticeship scheme from 25,000 starts a year up to 30,000 starts a year, fuelled by a growth in stem subjects. We have, of course, touched on issues in and around the college sector today, but it is important to recognise that the wood report describes the college sector as re-energised and well-placed to take forward this agenda. If I can end on a quote from Sir Ian Wood, who says, our commission sat at an opportune time to look at significantly enhancing Scotland's approach to vocational education and youth employment, the reforms that have already taken place in schools and colleges, as well as the growth in the number of modern apprenticeships, provide a strong platform for change. I hope that we can all move forward on that vein. Thank you Minister. That concludes the debate on improving entrepreneurship among women and young people in Scotland. We now move to the next side of business, which is consideration of a parliamentary bureau of motion. I would ask Joe Fitzpatrick to move motion number 10230 on substitution on committees. Question this most will be put a decision time to which we now come. There are four questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first question is that amendment number 10214.1 in the name of Jenny Marra, which seeks to amend motion number 10214 in the name of Angela Constance on improving entrepreneurship. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment number 10214.1 in the name of Jenny Marra is as follows. Yes, 51. No, 64. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed to. The next question is that amendment number 10214.3 in the name of Murdo Fraser, which seeks to amend motion number 10214 in the name of Angela Constance on improving entrepreneurship be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The amendment is therefore agreed to. I was surprised, too. The next question is that motion number 10214 in the name of Angela Constance as amended on improving entrepreneurship be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. The next question is that motion number 1020 in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick on substitution on committees be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. That concludes the session time. I now close this meeting.