 Good afternoon! Our first item of business today is an economy energy and fair work committee debate on motion 17360 in the name of Gordon Lindhurst on its business support inquiry, and I would encourage all members who wish to contribute to this debate to press their request to speak buttons as soon as possible. I call on the convener Garden Lindhurst to speak unrhyw gwrth. Corolau, ysgrifes, ddigwyddau, rhai gwrs yna gwybodaeth y mawr yn y twil. Rhyw bwysig i fynd am gael, rhawn. Rhawer i fynd i fyny, pgWidhouse, fyddwn yr ystod oedd, gan dysgu'r trwydau yn unrhyw gwrs lleol, yn gweithio chi ffyrdd sy'n gweithwyr, busg yma. Rhawer i fynd, gen swellfa ac rhaoddi, rhawn. Felly, rhawr i fynd i'w byddwyr—ryf I will focus in my speech on the content of COSLA's response to our report and try to overlook the grievous tone. The letter from the Scottish Government was, by contrast, a ray of sunshine. I shall focus on the tone and try to overlook the content, which I am sorry to say was somewhat scant. There are four areas of the committee's report that I wish to address. Transparency, accountability, alignment and engagement, but perhaps some context first. Business gateway was envisaged as a one-stop shop for business start-up and support. The Scottish Government's flagship for small and medium-sized enterprise. A decade has passed since the service transferred to local authority control. A perfect time to assess, perhaps, where we are and where we want to be. A chance also to follow up on a narrower piece of work by our predecessors, the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee, who advised in 2011 that business gateway should be operating at peak effectiveness and suggested that we might want to take a future look at the performance of business support services, the future being now. In fact, that could have been the committee's first inquiry in 2016, before what members of the House of Lords referred to as the other matter came along. Is there an election tomorrow? I will say nothing further on that point. We began with an inquiry into the economic consequences of leaving the EU, but I digress. The remit of this inquiry that we are concerned with today was to understand the range of support services available to new and existing SMEs at a local level, with a particular focus on business gateway. To do that, we wanted to engage with businesses directly. We received 355 responses to an online survey, 41 submissions to our call for views. We visited companies in Lanarkshire, Inverness and Aberdeen, as well as Edinburgh, and we studied the enterprise Ireland approach during a visit to Dublin. We took evidence from support providers, representative bodies, financial lenders, local government and others. We heard that the variety of support, advice and products available to businesses is a strength. No wrong door being the phrase. However, opportunities to align local and national economic priorities were missed. Business gateway was not included in the enterprise and skills review, although it has been involved since. We recommended a number of ways to improve transparency and accountability, including publication of regional budget and performance information. The inquiry also led us to look at how others provide business support. We found the approach in Ireland to be a mix of tailored local delivery and national strategic direction, and recommended a review to see which aspects of that model could work in the Scottish context. How was our report received? The cabinet secretary said that he recognised many of the points that he raised about business gateway need to be addressed. He told us that he and his cause of the counterpart agreed that we can do things better and that they would work to co-produce solutions as part of a single system approach, so far so encouraging. Although perhaps Mr Hepburn could provide us with a few more clues today, particularly on the work with COSLA to improve transparency around performance and his own officials' review of the Irish model, the Scottish Government's response referenced Scotland can do several times. The committee heard very little about the initiative during the inquiry. Doubtless again, we can hear elaboration later in the usual can-do manner. We do not want to invoke the cynical rebuke of satire, but Jim Hacker's first rule of politics was never believe anything until it is officially denied. The committee was deeply concerned about the lack of transparency with business gateway. There is no regularly published information on local targets, performance or budget allocation. We were not looking for a league table approach, but to encourage more openness. COSLA rejected our findings, citing the availability of economic indicators and a benchmark framework, both of which we had considered during the inquiry and found wanting. The local government benchmarking framework includes only one element for business gateway and provides nothing on business gateway, only spend. The SLEED economic indicators report covers three strands, but none with enough detail to scrutinise performance. There is nothing on performance against targets. In fact, targets are not mentioned at all. There is no reference to the budget allocated across different council areas. COSLA said that they were, and again I quote, moving towards output and outcome-based measures of performance. That does sound encouraging, does it not? Only they did not say how. We recommended an independent body monitor performance against targets. COSLA rejected that, defending their position on the basis of local democratic accountability. That is indeed an important point of principle, although in that context I rather doubt that it will satisfy FSB Scotland. Susan Love pointed out that business gateway is a national service and inconsistency and delivery was for her the ultimate question. She asked, who do I speak to at COSLA? What will I do? What is the Scottish Government going to do? Is the local authority going to do something? The sanctions for failure to meet contract are completely unclear to me. The expertise of bodies such as FSB and the chambers of commerce should not be overlooked. They would be well placed to provide feedback in the interests of continuous improvement. We called, as a committee for the business gateway stakeholder group, to be re-established, to encourage collaboration and better alignment with other services. Confusingly, COSLA said that consideration would be given to a form of public sector partners. They had previously told us that they could see no advantage in a formal relationship at the national level. Presiding Officer, I have no wish to be unduly negative. We all know that the relationship between central and local government can be difficult. Parallys, even. There are sensitivities. There are balances to be struck. There are also times when an inadequate response is just that, and we should call it out. As an American Secretary of State once observed, a memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer. Let me be clear. There is a good story to be told with business gateway. Our report welcomed the monitoring of client satisfaction and the systematic way that this is being done. We also heard praise for online services, understanding of local needs and early stage support. We saw examples of innovation and best practice, and there is cause to be upbeat about how we birth, nurture and grow businesses in Scotland. We should celebrate those areas where the service is seeking to replace vanilla spaces with go-to places. There is also ample room for improvement, however. In the words of Bill Gates, your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. We applaud local authorities for what business gateway does well, where they strive to be best in class. However, COSLA cannot afford to be complacent. Scottish businesses cannot afford for COSLA to be complacent. Indeed, the Scottish Government, the Cabinet Secretary and others cannot afford for COSLA to be complacent. Our report recommends where they can do better and balance local needs with the single system approach. Because to borrow from the Scottish Government's response, we want businesses to have the right support in the right place at the right time, and I leave the motion in my name. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I begin by thanking the convener, the committee and all those who took part in their inquiry and shared their views. Their contributions have, I believe, shaped an insightful and highly relevant report on the state of business support in Scotland. As Mr Lindhurst set out in his opening remarks, it comes 10 years after the passage of business support through business gateway into the hands of local authorities. It is an entirely appropriate juncture to look at those matters. The findings of the committee's report bear open and frank discussion. I am very pleased to have that opportunity this afternoon, along with members from across the chamber to contribute to that discussion. It is supporting business effectively in Scotland is an absolute necessity. In particular, I am clear that small and medium-sized businesses are no more or less in the very bedrock of the Scottish economy. They make up the overwhelming majority of Scotland's business base. Their needs are in constant flux, changing either due to pressures from outwith or within, in response to new conditions that they find themselves operating in. It is crucial that our system of business support adapts to those changes in kind, remaining responsive, appropriate and tailored to the needs of its users. That is essential in order for businesses to feel empowered to succeed and in order for our economy to flourish. Business gateway delivers a tremendous important service throughout Scotland, but it simply cannot, as it operates today, be as responsive as businesses need it to be. I want to take a moment to revisit the successes of business gateway and then to build on that point. As Gordon Lindhurst rightly said, there is a good story to be told. It is important to properly acknowledge and reflect on the real effect of support that it provides on a daily basis. It is late last year as part of small business Saturday. I was able to visit Indiglas, a contractor and distributor of specialist glass products, based in my constituency in Cymru. They provide architects, designers and construction companies with advanced industry knowledge-providing solutions to transfer light to the heart of buildings. With support from business gateway, they have delivered award-winning campuses for the Glasgow School of Art and the City of Glasgow College and a range of other impressive projects. All the finance and economy ministers have been able to see examples first hand. For example, the Minister for Public Finance and the Digital Economy visited adventures in Inverness. Adventures built camper vans for rent, allowing people to explore the Scottish Highlands and vehicles constructed from as many local, sustainable products as possible in order to ensure that as many new customers can reach their websites possible. They sought help from business gateway and received one-to-one digital boost support. The Minister for Trade, Investment and Innovation visited BEDACS, a family-run air conditioning and ventilation business. It operates throughout Scotland and has grown substantially over the past 15 years, winning a number of accolades and employing more than 20 people as well as being a living wage employer. It received support from Glasgow City Council to develop a growth plan and workplace innovations funding to support staff development. In March, this year, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Economy and Fair Work put a visit to Elevator in Aberdeen, a business gateway deliverer whom I know we are also visited by members of the committee. Like those committee members, the current secretary saw evidence of the collaborations that put Elevator and Business Gateway at the heart of the local business ecosystem. Those represent just some examples of the excellent outcomes that business support can yield for many users. As in that sense, Wright acknowledged the diligence, commitment and expertise of the many business gateway staff across Scotland. In acknowledging that, we must also acknowledge that things can be improved. That embodies the Government's attitude towards improvement. It is rightly good work, it is recognised and celebrated, and there are reasons to be proud of that work, but we should never be so proud that opportunities to make things better are ignored. When we undertook the Enterprise and Skills Review in 2016, it was on the same basis. We acknowledged that there are issues and wished to address them. In the same way, the committee's report raises a number of issues that we readily acknowledge. We are not here to debate whether or not business support could be improved. Instead, we are here to debate how it can be best improved. That spirit of collaboration is essential. We are to learn from this report and proceed in the right manner. I am pleased to say that we have already received supportive contributions and opened up productive dialogue with a number of partners on that basis. I cannot comment or respond for COSLA in respect of the committee convener's perspective on their response, and I am sure that he will follow up with them. However, we have engaged with COSLA, and we have always well engaged with the Federation of Small Businesses and the Scottish Chambers of Commerce and its local networks. FSB, for example, has been clear and consistent in raising issues around transparency and accountability. Like the committee, the Government agrees that that is something that we need to address in order for businesses to know where to go, what things go wrong and to drive forward improvements. Throughout the on-going process, we must not lose sight of the pivotal role of local government. It is critical that local authorities are, as those being close to many of the issues at hand in their area, remain key partners in the process. That collaborative approach is central to our existing policies on entrepreneurship and enterprise support, where it has already generated remarkable results. In that regard, I want to take a few moments to talk about Scotland Can Do, which was mentioned by Gordon Lindhurst. I say to him, quite genuinely, if the committee wants more details or any more information on the Scotland Can Do initiative, we will always be happy to provide them. However, Scotland Can Do does embody the principles of collaborative approach. It is a platform that is developed with our public, private and third sector partners, which represents our shared ambition to become a world-leading entrepreneurial nation. It emphasises that collaboration and champions are an approach for sustainable growth and innovation go hand-in-hand with wider benefits to society. This ethos, that positive outcome, occurs where partners work from common principles towards common goals underpins our work. We are joined by a thriving community of partners who are committed to improving the resources that are available to their peers. We look to the community to help to develop and implement policy, and their energy commitment has allowed us to develop our enormous collective impact. It is making no mistake since the introduction of Scotland Can Do in 2013, the effectiveness of Scotland's business support environment, as measured by the global entrepreneurship development index, which has risen from 13th in the world to 5th ahead of all other parts of the UK. I fully believe that we can bring this energy and goodwill to bear on the recommendations made by the committee. These developments speak to an attitude that I believe is shared by all of us in this chamber, by our partners as well. Identifying areas where improvements can be made does not mean laying blame at anybody's door. It is instead an opportunity to foster constructive, collaborative dialogue and explore together how the needs of Scotland's businesses can best be met. We, along with our agencies and wider partners, are already committed to the work that is necessary in making that happen. I hope that this engagement can continue today in this chamber, and together we can exchange ideas on how best to improve business support. One of the very first steps is rightly this debate. I look forward to hearing contributions made to getting on together with the work at hand. I thank the clerks and others for their hard work in preparing this valuable report, and I acknowledge the hard work of everyone involved in the business gateway network. Three years ago, the Scottish Government embarked on its enterprise and skills review with the objectives of delivering a more coherent enterprise support system, strategic alignment between the various enterprise bodies and delivering higher growth to the economy. Three years on and following the committee report into business support, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that those objectives are not being met. Before I turn to the detailed recommendations set out in the report, it is important to remember the broader context of the Scottish Government's enterprise policy. In Scotland, we spend over £2 billion a year supporting enterprise and skills. That is around £100 more per head than the rest of the UK, but we still lag behind in many areas, including business formation and research and development. The latest numbers show that economic growth in Scotland continues to trail behind the rest of the UK. That is why the background highlights the importance of ensuring that we have an enterprise system, including business gateway, that is fit for purpose. Turning to the report itself, we heard evidence from a wide range of witnesses and stakeholders that there is a lot to commend with the business gateway network. The minister rightly highlighted a number of successful examples, but the report also highlights real concerns across a number of areas that business gateway is not delivering the support required by start-up and SMEs across Scotland. The first concern highlighted by the report is the Scottish Government's cluttered approach to economic policy, which is holding back economic growth. According to Pamless Stevenson of the Scottish Local Authorities Economic Development Group, a quote, we continue to be faced with clutter on a daily basis. She referred to the Scottish Government launching a number of new initiatives, none of which involved consultation with business gateway. That was echoed by Business Loans Scotland when they told the committee that we are not sure whether we are totally aware of what one another is doing. That is certainly the case for the understanding by SMEs about what support is available. Other witnesses agreed, according to the Scottish Chamber of Commerce, that finding the right route to business support can be frustrating for firms in need of support. The report also found a lack of alignment and accountability. In its submission, the FSB called for business support to be designed from the user's perspective to take into account the needs of business, but it also highlighted that duplication or failure to join up with other services makes that difficult to achieve. That was an issue identified by many other witnesses, and it led the committee to conclude that the lack of clarity on the strategic alignment between business gateway and the other enterprise agencies is disappointing. Another problem identified by the committee was the lack of transparency that the convener outlined, especially in respect of business gateway budgets. To the committee's surprise, it is not possible to determine how much money is being spent on business gateway services at a local government level. During much of the inquiry, we had to rely on budget information obtained by the Scottish Conservatives' freedom of information request. That found that the business gateway budget has not increased in the last decade and that there is a wide variance in spending across different local governments. The committee, based on that, rightly concluded that it was unacceptable that financial information on business gateway is not recorded and published in a consistent manner across local authorities. The committee recommended that budgets should be published annually in a consistent format to ensure full transparency. It is strongly linked to transparency and accountability, where challenges are identified around target and performance measurement. Local authorities are responsible for setting their own targets. There is no reporting on what those targets are, performance against targets or spend on business gateway services. In response to the committee's survey, one witness noted that, where there is poor performance, it is accepted and the targets simply get reduced. Not surprisingly, the committee also found that unacceptable. We looked at the practice in Ireland and each local enterprise office there publishes local targets, their priorities and spend and performance against target, ensuring full transparency. The committee has called on the Scottish Government to examine whether that model can also be applied to Scotland. The final concern that I have time to highlight is the inconsistent quality of delivery of services across Scotland, with some businesses calling the delivery of service a postcode lottery. SCDI expressed concerns that evidence from its members suggests that there is a very mixed bag in terms of the support that they receive. That divergence can be seen in the limited data available, showing that Elevator, which runs business-accelerated services in Aberdeen and Dundee, delivers 25 per cent of all the business gateway start-ups in Scotland. Business gateway was reformed by the SNP in 2008 to help support start-up businesses across Scotland. That report clearly shows that the Scottish Government has neglected this vital part of the enterprise landscape over the past decade. While there are examples of good practice and we should highlight and promote those examples of good practice, business gateway under the SNP is not delivering the support that is required by SMEs in Scotland. I must say that the response that the committee has received from the cabinet secretary in relation to its recommendations is disappointing. It shows a lack of understanding of how much reform is required in the area. It shows that the Government is not willing to properly engage in this debate on how we can encourage and expand on Scotland's start-up sector. Let me conclude by saying that business gateway needs reform. That is very clear from the economy committee report. I look forward to hearing from the minister in his closing remarks on how that will be done. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I welcome the committee report into business gateway. In order to grow our economy, we need to grow our own business. Home-grown businesses stay, they are rooted in Scotland and are much less likely to move abroad. That means that they pay their taxes here, they employ their workers here and build local economies. We need an industrial strategy that puts indigenous business at its heart, helping people to establish and grow their businesses. Many people have ideas about what they would want to create a business around. They know what they want to do, but they do not have the knowledge about business regulations or access to finance, and they need to be supported with that. Business gateway was set up as a one-stop shop to sign post support. However, it does not appear from the committee report that that has integrated with other agencies. Indeed, Susan Love of the FSB told the committee, I have not seen a commitment from other parts of the public sector to support business gateway as a gateway. Most agencies have been preoccupied with their own brands and programmes. The Scottish Government has not helped with that by funding a lot of additional programmes. While new initiatives are always good for government to announce, it would appear from the report that they are causing problems rather than solving them. The committee pointed out that the business gateway has not been included in the enterprise and skills review and that is incredibly disappointing. If the very vehicle to facilitate entry into the enterprise support system is not included, how can those organisations be expected to work together? That was something that the committee was critical of and recommended that business gateway be included in the review. I believe that they are right in that. Phase 2 of the review recommends a single access point for business assistants to ensure a more coherent and joined-up system. It would appear that, had the review included business gateway, it might have had a better idea of the business support landscape and would have considered what was needed to change in order to help the gateway to fulfil that role that it recognises is required. There are around 100 employee-owned businesses in Scotland with a total turnover of £940 million. That average is out at approximately £9.4 million per business. When you compare that with other businesses, with at least five employees who have averaged around £5.66 million per business, it shows that employee-owned companies have a much greater turnover. Given that rate of return and the likelihood that most of it is retained in our communities around those enterprises, surely we should be encouraging them. The Scottish Government will point to the co-operator Development Scotland and to the community enterprise agencies to bodies that would be able to help and assist. However, if you cannot reach those bodies through business gateway, then they are not accessible where they are most needed. I concur with the points that she is making about employee-owned businesses. In that regard, she welcomes the fact that we have created an industry leadership group, which I will co-chairing and set out an ambition to rapidly and greatly increase the number of employee-owned businesses. We already have an average ownership compared to the rest of the UK, but we want to go much further, and that is what we are going to do. Indeed, I welcome that, but it has to be accessible for people who would set up those employee-owned businesses. One of the ways in doing that would be to make sure that business gateway was able to signpost them to the organisations that will help them to do that. Small businesses are also critical to our economy, and, again, they are rooted in our communities. We recognise that they require additional support—for instance, a small business strategy—to help them to grow. They need access to the new Scottish National Investment Bank, and they need access to Government procurement. Currently, only around a fifth of Scotland's £12 billion procurement budget goes directly to small businesses, even though they account for 98 per cent of the Scottish business community. Scottish Labour would break procurement contracts into smaller units so that it would be much easier for SMEs to bid for them. We would also tackle the culture of late payments, which are a huge problem to SMEs, and we would require any company bidding for public sector work to ensure that they paid their own suppliers within 30 days. It would appear from the committee report that the landscape for support is cluttered in making it difficult for organisations to know who to contact. We have seen Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Scottish Enterprise narrowing the organisations and sectors that they assist. The committee quoted the example of Bad Girl, Bakery and Muirford, which had not received assistance from HIE to expand to Fort William because they were categorised as retail. When a business is able to expand and grow, then surely it qualifies for support. The committee report is a wake-up call to the Government to create an integrated business support system that helps to start up and the growth of Scottish businesses, and I hope that the Scottish Government will take heed. Andy Wightman I thank the clerks and Spice for all their assistance and everyone who gave evidence to the economy committee's inquiry into business support. As Gordon Linter said in his opening remarks, the inquiry focused on business support to SMEs at a local level, but with a particular focus on the business gateway service. It was a timely inquiry when we decided to do it, given that it is a decade since the service that was previously delivered by local enterprise companies was transferred to local government. First of all, in the context of some of the remarks that have been made about our inquiry, I would like to commend all those who, on a daily basis, deliver a business gateway. I and colleagues on the committee visited a number of businesses and a number of business gateway offices across the country, and we were generally impressed with the level of service that was delivered by advisers on the ground. Of course, it was always a danger—you do committee visits like that and you get to see all the good stuff, but, nevertheless, it was impressive to see the range of work. It was also during those visits that we learned of the different approaches that different councils take to that, and I will come back to that in a minute. However, I also think that it is important to stress that this inquiry was not an evaluation of the quality or content of business gateway services per se, but an evaluation and an inquiry into the nature and structure of that service in the context of wider support for business. On one reading, this has got nothing to do with the economy committee. A business gateway is a local service. It is delivered by local government with local government revenues. However, it is legitimate for Parliament to inquire into how critical services such as business support are delivered. We know that different authorities do that in different ways. We have heard good reasons why Glasgow does not do the same as other authorities. However, one of the reasons that we wanted to look at this and discover that it was important was because, in one of our key recommendations, we concluded that it is regrettable that there has been a drift away from the original intended purpose of business gateway. COSLA explained why that has happened, but the point that we were making was that that has happened without any strategic plan or review to inform that change. The policy intention of acting as an entry point for businesses has not been fulfilled. COSLA does not agree with that, and that is fair enough. Our findings are open to challenge, and the Government's response, as well as that of COSLA, provides plenty of that. I welcome the broadly supportive tone of ministers' response to the committee. I think that there continues to be confusion over whether and how the enterprise and skills review engaged with the topic. Rhoda Grant made some remarks to that effect a moment ago. In the cabinet secretary's letter to the committee, he says that the enterprise and skills review did not explicitly involve business gateway, and that is a matter you note. He goes on to say that that review was a discussion about improving national systems, and as such would not have been the right forum to take account of the local nuances of the business gateway offering. In the Government's response to recommendation 52 about the drift away from the original rationale, ministers said that the enterprise and skills review concluded that the division of responsibilities between national agencies and local delivered business gateway was right. I am not sure how a review that explicitly did not look into local service delivery could have concluded at the end that the division of responsibilities was right. I think that there is quite a lot of fudging in retrospect about what the enterprise and skills review did say. COSLA, as I say, did provide a robust challenge to some of the committee's findings, and that is welcome. It has to be said—Dean Lockhart raised this—that we were frustrated with the difficulties associated with collating obtaining data on performance. I think that my dear colleague Jackie Baillie is going to bring some light to bear on that particular concern that we have. Contrary to what COSLA asserts in their response, we did not ever allege that local government is not accountable per se. What we did find was that, from the information that is available to us, it was not clear how the service could provide the kind of information that would allow accountability to take place, not just to councillors and officials, but to the wider community who expect a good service from things such as business gateway. Likewise, we do not argue that business gateway issues should be subsumed into some wider national programme, but there should be better alignment. That is why the Irish experience appears to us to be very instructive and why the visit to Dublin was of such keen interest, not only because it was my first trip to Ireland travelling on my new passport and from where I travelled directly to the court of justice to hear our article 50 case, but it also was in the company of my dear friend Jackie Baillie and Gordon MacDonald. We had a wonderful day in Dublin. Ireland is interesting because, together with Finland and Denmark, it has been identified by the EU as three of the top performing countries for business support. A service has evolved there that provides what appears to be a good integration of national programmes through Enterprise Ireland with the work of local enterprise officers embedded with local councils with service-level agreements and funding agreed with Enterprise Ireland. Importantly, substantial discretion and freedom remains for local councils to develop and pursue their own priorities, but a consistent framework of accountability and alignment appears to deliver a good service. I welcome the commitment by ministers and COSLA to take note of the Irish experience. Business Gateway is and should remain a local service providing locally-based business support to those that are needed, but I think that our inquiry has demonstrated that there is quite a lot of work that could be done to improve how that is delivered and particularly to make sure that we have better integration with national services. Angela Constance I think that a good place to start is the cabinet secretary's response to the committee report when, in correspondence, Derek Mackay said, the answer as to how we best support our business base does not come from one voice. It is through the breadth and diversity of opinion that we will ensure that the right choices are made. I believe that that is a mature reflection of where we are at. I am very sad to say that that mature reflection was somewhat lacking in the COSLA response to the committee report. I want to be absolutely crystal clear in stating my fundamental belief in local democracy and local accountability. For example, I really want to see the local governance review, herald a new relationship between local and national government and the communities that we seek to serve. It is also fair to say that the committee in calling out the risks of the withdrawal of European structural funds has stood up for local government and the local business support programmes. Brexit, whatever our views, has never been far from our thoughts. However, the central point that members of the committee across the political divide coalesced around is that Business Gateway is a nationwide service that is delivered locally, a good service, as the convener of the committee said, but with ample room for improvement. A number of specific recommendations were made around reviewing key performance indicators in collaboration with stakeholders and the business community, external monitoring of performance against targets, better publicly available local information on financial inputs and outcomes, transparency around budgets, etc. None of which, in my view, is rocket science or particularly radical. Is it not, I suggest, the humdrum of the normality of everyday life? Yet we have seen a real resistance, sadly, from COSLA to much of this agenda. COSLA persistently stated throughout the response that Business Gateway is a local service subject to scrutiny by democratically elected councillors who are accountable and have to operate within the standing orders of their councils that are audited annually and subject to best value. That is absolutely true, but it misses the bigger picture of a modern, participative civic democracy that rates high on transparency, is inclusive in its approach and is able to develop meaningful partnerships with communities of place and interest so that services are shaped by the needs of users. In other words, accountability and scrutiny of one sphere of government will take place at many levels in many different ways. It does not come from one voice. That brings me to diversity and the recognised wisdom that support more women, rural Scotland, people living with a disability, young people and those from our BME community into business is not just the right thing to do, but for the sake of our economy and to reduce the cost of inequality. It is also the smart thing to do. It is absolutely necessary. Therefore, statements such as Business Gateway as a universal service, which is available to all, does not, in my view, do enough in terms of recognising and removing the seen and unseen barriers faced by underrepresented groups. Again, lack of data was an issue and no solid overarching commitment to find the best ways to reach underrepresented groups to tap into all of our talents. On that point, the committee made a very specific and practical recommendation for a wider range of more tailored and targeted programmes. Again, COSLA's response was somewhat lacking, stating that, with limited resources, the partners must focus their efforts on those businesses most likely to achieve a result. That response is simply not good enough, because, in the context of that reply, it implied an inherent bias by a mission against businesses from underrepresented groups. Jamie Hepburn. Again, I make the point that I cannot speak for COSLA, but I just underline very clearly through our race equality action plan, through the commitments that we have made through the women enterprise action framework and the action group that IHR, we are very clearly determined to see significant and vast improvements in this area. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am pleased to hear that the minister once again put his commitment on record and also to say that committee and fairness heard some great evidence, for example, from Glasgow about their very proactive outreach to underrepresented groups, their tailored programmes for women, their work with social enterprises and supporting employers to recruit and retain people with disabilities. There is one area that I would particularly like to press the Government benches further on. That is the recommendation to create a national head of women in business to co-ordinate national policy and to work towards the establishment of a national women's centre for business. The cabinet secretary's response was that the minister for business was committed to developing, I quote, the concept of a women's business centre. Again, it is somewhat lacking in specific detail on the if, when and how, and to be frank, I found it a bit limp. I would be really grateful if the minister, in his closing remarks, could just be a wee bit more rock and roll and fill in some of the blanks for us. Alternatively, he could just say that I were doing it and make a very clear commitment to the national head of women in business, a creation of that post, and to establish a national women's centre for business. At that point, I shall now draw my remarks to those, Presiding Officer, thank you. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am very pleased to be able to take part in today's debate by the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee on supporting the business community and the business support. As someone who served on a local council for 18 years in Perth and Canos, I had the first-hand experience of how local authorities deal with business support services, and I must admit to finding the conclusions of this report all too unsurprising. The decision back in 2008 to pass the then still relatively new business gateway services to our local councils was and still is the right one. Although the vast majority of Scottish businesses employ fewer than 50 people, there are significant differences in our local economies across Scotland, particularly in our more rural areas, which require local flexibility and discretion to suit their needs. Having more localised services also ensures that there is a diversity across the understanding of the local economy, and that will give us the availability of ensuring that areas are supported. That is not to say that they should not have a high expectation nationally of what should be achieved at a local level. Unfortunately, the Scottish Government's current national economy strategy is, however, confused and muddled. The Fraser of Allander Institute has warned that the cluttered landscape of a myriad of different strategies, of different advisory groups and of different bodies has not achieved the Scottish Government's stated aim of a single economic strategy, which all public sector initiatives would align behind. To be fair, the Scottish Government ten years after setting out the approach, the enterprise and skill admitted that the current situation was entirely the opposite to its stated ambitions. The review failed to consider business gateway, and the committee report described it as a missed opportunity. I would call that a glaring omission. In fact, the SNP's muddled approach to supporting the economy is particularly evident when it comes to business gateway, which, as the committee report has identified, has been seen to be unsuccessful in obtaining some of the entry levels that we would have seen across other sectors. At the very start, it talked about trying to find and ensure that Scotland has its place, and yes, there are a number of good things taking place within business communities, but they are not all singing from the same hym sheet, and they are not all getting the same support. Although the business rate across the UK has expanded by 26 per cent between 2010 and 2018, the same measure in Scotland is only 16 per cent. The rate of Scottish business growth since 2016 has also slowed significantly to 1.6 per cent relative to 4.5 per cent for the rest of the United Kingdom. We are also slipping behind the rest of the UK when it comes to retail sales. Although there is undoubtedly a factor to play, the lack of sufficient support provided to businesses by business gateway is certainly a factor. For my own experience in Perth and Cynroth, I can say that the business gateway was next to no scrutiny taking place within that organisation, and that is not how we should be running that sector. Andy Wightman The member just said that he felt that there was a lack of scrutiny taking place in Perth and Cynroth council during his time there. Is that an omission of his own shortcomings? Certainly not of my own shortcomings by any stretch of imagination, but there was more transparency and accountability needed to be done on that. I had the privilege of being, for the last four years, the convener of scrutiny when we looked into some of those locations and found that there were areas of lacking. I was quite happy to identify that when we had an SNP-led administration when I was leader of the Opposition. As the committee has reported and highlighted targets for local authority, there is now the opportunity for us to see where we can take that forward. For the significant opportunities that local government provides to spend and the importance of local economy, it is very important that we do that. The committee is absolutely right to demand greater transparency and greater reporting, aligning to the targets that have been set by the Scottish Government and the economic plan. Local targets are nevertheless still key to the different sizes of complexities in business communities, and the business community itself requires to have that. Local authorities should be required to publish information on targets and performance annually, as suggested in the report. They should also be encouraged to better interact with the business support services and the business gateway in their local areas. Local elected members have ownership of the strategic direction and more information about the transparency and accountability that are taking place. I note from the committee report that discussion talked about signposting, and there was a lack of signposting by business gateway to the funding options for small and medium enterprise. The issue about signposting is vitally important. Many of our small businesses, particularly in the rural areas, need small amounts of money to allow them to expand their business. That could be a specific bit of equipment or a specific machine that is required. Microcredits situations are particularly attractive as much support can be given in the forms of loans, which tend to have a high payment rate, and the money can be re-cycled in support of other businesses in the future. Now, we see that the Conservatives' led administration on Perth and Kinross has indicated and put forward two initiatives to ensure that funding small grants and the support of small loans are now taking place. I very much welcome that new opportunity within Perth and Kinross. Other councils should be encouraged to take such local initiatives and continue to support them. In conclusion, we need to ensure that the business gateway services are more accountable and more transparent, both in terms of service and delivery. There have been success stories, but they have been too few. Targets must be set by local authorities, tackling into and ensuring that the national guidelines are set. Elected councils must take responsibility for setting the direction and implementation of local business support services, because by doing that, we will achieve much more, and that is what business wants us to do. I am sure that Mr Stewart does not mean that the Presiding Officer only disrespects when he addresses you as the Deputy Presiding Officer. I am sure that that is very helpful, and I am sure that no slight was intended. Jackie Baillie, to be followed by Gordon MacDonald. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. As a member of the economy committee, let me start by thanking the clerks, Spice and all the witnesses for their assistance with this inquiry. A decade on from the transfer of responsibility from Scottish Enterprise to local authorities, it is right to consider business gateway and the support available for small businesses in our communities. It is a bit of a cluttered landscape, but at a local level, there is considerable support for the work of business gateway, and that is to be welcomed. However, there are areas that require improvement with any service. If sustainable economic growth is a key priority for the Scottish Government, and I would argue for the country as a whole, we need to make sure that all actors are pulling in the same direction and that there is signposting and collaboration across agencies, because, after all, we need to make sure that business opportunities in every part of the country are supported and developed. However, it is not altogether clear that this is the case everywhere. Some business gateway services, as we have already heard, are second to none, very much exemplars in the field, but others are not at that same stage of development. As somebody who worked in local government, I am a believer in localism, but I do not like it when it is used as an excuse to defend unsatisfactory services and deny any need for improvement. Before turning to the responses from the Scottish Government and COSLA, I want to highlight two key recommendations from the committee. First, we think that there is much to offer from the governance structure and approach taken in enterprise Ireland. Never mind the good outcomes achieved. A national approach and policy framework is giving a clear direction but is very much predicated on local delivery. That local delivery in Ireland is undertaken by local government, but they share common standards and reporting frameworks, so there is consistency across the country. That said, there is also local variation and flexibility to take account of local economic circumstances. That, I would suggest, is a useful model to follow that respects different responsibilities and I commend it to the Scottish Government. I also want to highlight a specific recommendation about a national women's centre for business and echo many of the comments made by Angela Constance. We received clear evidence that women-led businesses need specific tailored support. Women set up businesses differently from men. They capitalise them differently from men. We will have more success if we tailor our approach. We know that, if women started up businesses at the same rate as men, we would add £7 billion to GDP. What is not to like about that? In one second, I will get you to answer a question for me. I believe that we need a national head of women in business to co-ordinate policy and action and a national centre for women in business to drive forward good practice across all business support services. Let me ask the minister, as he intervenes, to answer that specific question. Angela Constance phrased it better than me, but will he be a bit more rock and roll? Will he today agree to that recommendation? There you go. Jamie Hepburn I am always rock and roll. Just to reassure, I recognise the points that have been made and the time that was allowed to intervene on Angela Constance's point. The Women Enterprise Action Group has been a concerted matter of discussion at our very next meeting. We will be discussing how we take forward the concept of establishment of a women's business centre informed by research. I am taking by Sarah Carter, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Hunter Centre at Strathclyde Business School. Jackie Meilley I will take that as a yes. Let me turn to the Scottish Government's response. It is a veritable blamange of warm words. Let me offer you an example of that. We will make progress without prejudice of a predetermined destination. In real language, that is, we do not have a clue about the destination, but we will hurry towards it. I know that the response is broadly positive, but it is little wonder that you cannot really work out if the Government is supporting individual recommendations or not. Let me turn to the Scottish Government's response. Where to start with this? Let me associate myself with the remarks made by Andy Wightman. As I said, I used to work in local government, so I am a fan, but this is one of the most negative and defensive responses that I have ever seen. Instead of embracing the committee's recommendations as an opportunity for self-assessment to change and develop, COSLA has simply pulled up the drawbridge. They said that we did not understand what they did. Being insulting to the intelligence of the committee is a sure-far way of winning friends and influencing people, but then COSLA might share some of the blame for this perception that we did not understand them. Because the committee was supplied with limited evidence, despite repeated requests, let me share some of that with the chamber. Parliament asked for information from the Business Gateway national unit in COSLA on 23 October. There was a discussion in Parliament on 25 October. COSLA was chased on 2 November. We got a little bit of high-level information back, but not the range and detail of the information that was required. On 21 November, the committee took the unusual step of writing formally requesting the information, because we had run out of patience. Let me be clear. That was regional data about performance. It should be collected anyway. It is everyday stuff and should not have been difficult to do. We were then told that we could only have it if we kept it private, which is frankly ridiculous. That is basic monitoring data. Finally, in mid-December, just in time for Christmas, the committee agreed to make the information public. The majority of information that we requested on 23 October remains to this day outstanding. That lack of transparency is a real problem. Growth is a national priority. We cannot have a situation where some of our agencies are pulling in different directions. It absolutely needs to be a joint effort and Business Gateway needs to be a critical part of that. That is why I think that it was a missed opportunity not to have included Business Gateway in the review of enterprise and skills. However, that said, I am glad that they are at the table now, but there needs to be a recognition of the challenges ahead and a commitment to embrace change and improvement. In examining the performance of Business Gateway, we should put it in context of the growth of new enterprises. Since 2007, the number of registered businesses in Scotland has increased by nearly 17 per cent. As of March 2018, there were 343,000 SMEs. The latest five-year survival rate of startups in Scotland at 44 per cent is the same as the UK average. Part of that increase over the 11 years is a result of our university sector. Scotland's universities are empowering spin-off companies from the inventions and knowledge obtained from university research. Universities in Scotland are doing that far more than any other part of the UK. We found that Business Gateway plays a key role in growing the number of new businesses. The Federation of Small Businesses also recognised that and has said that one of the strengths of the Scottish system is that startups have access to a wide range of business support, more so than elsewhere in the UK. The FSB agreed with the committee's findings that Business Gateway is a generally good national advisory service with high satisfaction rates. That said, it also highlighted that there are differences in quality around the country. That difference in quality is difficult to measure. As the committee found, there was a lack of transparency. There was no readily available published information on targets, performance against those targets and budget allocations for Business Gateway at local authority level. The FSB stated in evidence that significant improvements are required around governance, transparency and scrutiny of the national service. On the question of transparency, that is in stark contrast to what committee members found when we visited Ireland. The Irish model is something that we should consider if we want to improve our approach in Scotland. In Ireland, targets and budgets are published regularly. To briefly outline the Irish setup, it has one overarching agency, Enterprise Ireland, which is the equivalent of Scottish Enterprise and 10 county enterprise offices, operated by councils, which carry out Enterprise Ireland's work locally. Each local enterprise office has to publish local targets, priorities and spend. Those targets are agreed with and monitored by Enterprise Ireland. Each local enterprise office produces an annual local level report, which provides a local economic baseline and transparent targets. On top of that, the local enterprise office co-ordination unit, run by Enterprise Ireland, publishes an annual impact report, which details key results and initiatives of each of the local enterprise offices. Enterprise Ireland meets local authority managers regularly to monitor the work being undertaken locally and offer any support that they can. I search online. I found the local enterprise development plan for the enterprise office in Donegal covering the period 2017 to 2020. The 60-page document profiles the county, what it wants to achieve and how it intends to do that. There is a set of metrics that measure how well they are performing and creating jobs, number of start-ups, support for existing businesses and so on. Compare that to what the committee found in relation to business gateway that there was only one published benchmark, the number of business gateway start-ups per 10,000 population. I thank the member for giving way. Did he feel that there was still enough local accountability and control within the Irish model? I am sure that if you wait about one minute, you will hear my answer to that. I do not accept the causal response that reporting at the local level is a matter for each council. If we are to continue to encourage the establishment of new home-grown enterprises, it should be a matter for all of us to ensure that we have a consistency of good service for entrepreneurs and SMEs across the whole of Scotland. In Ireland, a mix of local delivery, national strategic direction and national evaluation allows for local authorities to be held accountable. That is something that the committee believes that we are missing in Scotland. The Irish Government's department for business enterprise and innovation told the committee that having central accountability has improved networking and sharing of best practice between local authorities. That is something that we could benefit from across Scotland. In answer to John Mason's question a minute ago, any further to this, initial concerns in Ireland about the lack of autonomy and flexibility within the structure had not been the reality. One of the local enterprise officers told the committee that they had found that they had the flexibility to do things differently depending on their local needs. It is clear that this Government is committed to creating conditions where businesses are empowered to succeed. I was glad to see that Scottish Government officials are ready in contact with their counterparts in enterprise Ireland. The approach that is taken in Ireland seems to offer a more holistic method. I look forward to how that can inform future developments of our business support landscape in Scotland, but I will leave the final word to the FSB, which said, that we welcome the Scottish Government's commitment to work with local government to make improvements to the service. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in today's debate. I thank the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee for the report. It was interesting to read the report specifically on how other business experiences and how they had compared with my own when seeking help for companies from organisations such as business gateway and its predecessor at the local enterprise companies. Over a period of time, I had dealings with several different local business gateways and local enterprise companies and I have to say that my experiences would reflect the submissions to the inquiry and its findings mainly that it was a very mixed picture. I think that there will be a very strangle route in finding the service and potential funding stream that relates to the issues that a business might have in either start-up or expansion. Given the very wide variety of potential businesses and business experience that is presenting to the business gateway, I recognise the disparity in responses with business gateway fairing better with those at the basic beginner level than those already with business experience. I have tried several occasions to utilise the services of business gateway but found navigating the system quite frustrating. Although I found the advisers themselves very willing to enable, to me there was a lack of clarity around what it was that they were supposed to be delivering. I have never really gone past the first couple of meetings with business gateway. I would say in my experience that they do not move fast enough to keep up with a business plan and very often businesses cannot wait at the length of time that is required to work through the business gateway process. I think that the whole point of public bodies is to courage entrepreneurship and to ensure that those with good business ideas get the very best opportunity to succeed and add to our economy. Given that the biggest proportion of businesses who do not make it will falter within the first five years, it is crucial that they get it as right as possible at the inception. I think that the initial business plan is important but any business person will tell you that the initial business plan rarely resembles the actual pathway and new business eventually travels. Therefore, any help and advice offered needs to mirror this adaptability and flexibility. I think that that is what I feel at an area that business gateway and other agencies need to consider and improve upon. The advice and funding landscape is a cluttered one. Moreover, it can be confusing and frustratingly slow-moving with too many hoops to jump through, for what I think can be quite basic advice and progress. Progression on to Scottish Enterprise business support offerings is not always signposted and, if you have not travelled this path before, you can certainly delay business progress. I think that there are some very good funding and advice avenues available, but signposting towards them is not often apparent, which I think is reflected in the committee's report. The aim, of course, is to encourage entrepreneurs, risk-takers, job creators and wealth creators to help to feed a prosperous and sustainable economy in as wide a sector diversity as possible. I think that Scotland does have a fantastic legacy on the work stage that we should be very proud of. We can and have proven before to punch way above our way. However, as recent statistics have been mentioned, the level of new start businesses trails behind in the rest of the UK, despite the investment through the business gateway and Scottish Enterprise. There are support networks out there. The trouble seems to be a lack of visibility of services, a lack of continuity between the offer from those services, leading to confusion when seeking the most appropriate support. I note from the committee's report that they suggest that business support agencies need to be more integrated and lead to more partnership working, and I agree with that. It is not just about initial support for a new start business. It should be about support for business growth through all of a business's evolution, and again, that pathway for me is not clear. How expansion is funded, support for marketing, innovation and technology are all available—a good advice is all available—but, again, unless you know how to navigate the system, a business can miss out on that important support. It has also been noted today that the business support network has not been properly audited, and I think that that has to change as well. I would say that the whole system has to be audited and streamlined and made more fit for purpose. When someone has that spark of an idea and the bravery to pursue it, they need to have that encouragement. The pathway should allow them a resource that allows them to deliver from that spark right the way through to a global leader if that is their ambition. The number of new start businesses that are registering is lower than the rest of the UK, and the number that is reaching big business status is also low. We can point to a Scottish economy that is heavily reliant on SMEs with a few big businesses. I think that we would have grant mentioned this, and I think that I would make a slight disagreement with her. I think that one of the main stepping stones for an SME into a bigger business is capturing projects in the public procurement process. That is an area that the Scottish Government can definitely do better. Too many public projects end up awarded to companies from outwith the shores, not giving our companies the opportunity to deliver them to a bigger company. The journey of an entrepreneur is a difficult one, and it is usually taking several attempts and much personal risk and sacrifice along the way. It probably requires an injection of personal equity and loans against property. It probably means that you are the last person to be paid at the end of the month, if you do get paid. It will mean an ordinary long hours. After all that, if they succeed and they are still there after five years and reach a position where perhaps they can begin to reap rewards of their bravery and effort, we find that the Scottish Government wants to tax them higher than any other part of the UK. The system is not entrepreneur friendly and the system is not best designed for business growth. Rather than punish them for daring to be successful, we need to encourage them to take risk. To support our public services, we need to grow the tax base and to develop a well-paid workforce by increasing that tax increase by developing the economy. We need to give them the very best start and chance to succeed at that journey. The current support system is cluttered in clumsy. It needs to be reviewed and streamlined with clear definitive objectives put in place. It is a hard enough fraud to be a business owner. The least that we can do is to give them the best possible start. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate on the Economy, Economy and Energy and Fair Work Committee report on business support. I take the opportunity to thank the clerks for all their concern in producing the report. The key area that I scrutinised was business gateway. Business gateway is a huge importance to businesses in the earlier stages of development, particularly in start-up mode. Broadly, it was intended originally to be a one-stop shop to service clients. As time went on, the direct focus was diluted. The full scope of the committee's review is clearly too extensive to be adequately referenced in the few minutes that I have, so I will simply touch on some of those aspects that made the greatest impression on me. It is 10 years since the Scottish Government transferred responsibility and control of business gateway and local regeneration services to local authorities, albeit after a brief period in which Scottish Enterprise has administered that function. At the same time, local enterprise companies were abolished. In 2007, the Scottish Government stated that it is appropriate that it should be delivered by local authorities with whom those businesses already interact on a range of local issues. Many positive aspects were uncovered. There are 57 business gateway offices across Scotland employing 356 people, and in the past 10 years, nearly 100,000 businesses started up with the creation of more than 108,000 jobs. Those and other statistics seem impressive. However, it soon became clear that the picture across the country was rather patchy. Not all offices operated to the same standard, and there was evidence of differing standards and results. There seems to be an opportunity to identify good practice and to seek to share this. However, there seems to be no clear mechanism for that to happen. Rural areas in particular seem to feel that they received a less effective service and they believe that being distant from areas of high population disadvantaged them. Time and financial constraints limit opportunities for rural businesses to access support, which may be relatively geographically remote from them in cities and towns. Some people using the services felt that they were confusing and time-consuming to navigate. The partnership with Scottish Enterprise and other agencies seemed at times less close than should be the case in order to allow seamless service to businesses. There seems to be a need for better alignment between those bodies. There was also evidence that some companies did not engage with business gateway due to frustration at the length of time that it took to navigate through the online information. There appears to be a general impression that business gateway is a little divorced from the big picture due to its delivery through local authorities, and that perception also needs to be changed. Perhaps due to its highly localised model, there seems to be a lack of transparency and accountability within the business gateway network. I know that Cozzler rejects that position, but there seems to be clear evidence in support of that view. It is unclear how targets are set and how performance is measured. Some of those giving evidence felt that targets had stagnated, while others felt that, if a target could not be met, then the target was simply reduced to accommodate lower performance. The appropriateness of some targets was questioned. Concerns expressed about local authorities working in isolation simply choosing their own targets. The committee's recommendation that business gateway's core targets should align with the strategic direction of the Scottish Government's national priorities and economic plan seems fairly obvious as a recommendation, and one that I would hope would be complied with. Some questions were raised as to how accountability worked across offices as well as at regional level. Even that seemed obscure, and however true or not that may be, the perceptions were presented as such and need to be addressed. Questions were also raised while it was not possible to ascertain how much was spent on business gateway in each of its 57 offices. How did the offices perform against budget? Little detailed information at the regional level of business gateway was available. Spice estimates that approximately £15 million is spent annually, and that does not seem a huge sum of money to deliver such a fundamental and key business support. Evidence indicated that some councils have reduced their budgets, while others have let them stagnate. The lack of ring ffencing of funding seems to be driving service inconsistencies across the regions. Yet, with all its apparent shortcomings, business gateway does deliver for many up-and-coming businesses, and many more good stories are merged than bad ones. I welcome the response of the Scottish Government, which appears to offer a positive way forward and one that might address the issues rightly raised in the committee report. Business gateway offers a service that is used, valued and appreciated by many. 50,000 existing or new businesses are supported every year. 700,000 people visited their website and read 2.7 million pages. Encouragingly, almost half the new startups were led by women. That is all continuing good news for business gateway. Perhaps the business gateway's role needs to be better defined. That would assist this important service to fill perceived gaps in the support landscape. It is important that the role of stakeholders and partners offering support services does not duplicate the work done by others. We were consistently told by witnesses that the support landscape was cluttered, which resulted in confusion and difficulty in identifying which agency a client should approach. There is some evidence to suggest that some clients simply gave up. Those various agencies should not see themselves as competitors, but as collaborators in delivering a seamless service to their end-users. Its natural agency should be a little preoccupied with promoting and servicing their own bands and products, but not at the expense of their clients. Perhaps a more formal arrangement is needed to drive this home. Hopefully, the committee's report will trigger work on better access to information for new and existing businesses. The Enterprise and Skills review highlighted the need for a single digital access point to address concerns about businesses being passed back and forth between agencies. I believe that business gateway will benefit from this, as will other agencies and, most importantly, users of the service. The importance of getting this right cannot be overemphasised. Within their mandate, business gateway should be at the heart of supporting new business, as well as being a preferred partner in business expansion. Clearly, the concerns are mostly around business gateway structural issues and consistency of service, which should be relatively straightforward to rectify with some effort from stakeholders. It is right that business gateway should be nuanced to take into account local priorities, but it is also essential that it should take into account our national priorities and policies. It must also demonstrate value for money. Further, it must measure its performance against acceptable standard key performance indicators, and it has to become more transparent and more clearly accountable. I believe that the committee's report draws out those important points, and I am pleased that the Scottish Government has responded positively by commending the committee's report. I now move to the closing speeches. I call Alex Rowley to be followed by Jamie Halcro Johnston. I would like to commend the work of the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee in producing this very thorough report into business support in Scotland. Gratitude should also be given to the various stakeholders that help to contribute to the report, and the businesses themselves that help to provide valuable insight into the reality of seeking business support in Scotland on the front line. There seems to be agreement in the chamber today that the response from COSLA perhaps leaves more questions than answers. However, it is crucial that we get joined at working at every level of government and, hopefully, the committee or the deputy convener can follow-up with COSLA and iron out any difficulties that they have perceived. I also think that there is another thing that we can agree on across the chamber today, and that is that support for start-ups in local businesses and entrepreneurs across the country should be welcomed, encouraged and strengthened. There seems to be an agreement in the chamber and from the Government that, in those areas, we can do better. Again, taking that to the next stage demonstrates why the committee report is important. The vast majority of businesses in Scotland are sole traders, making up 69 per cent of the business base, with a further 30 per cent of businesses being classed as small, employing between one and four to nine people. Those businesses contribute vastly to our communities, with many of them being the lifeblood for our high streets at a time when high streets across the UK are struggling. We should be doing all we can to ensure that businesses such as those have clear access to whatever support is available to ensure that their businesses can flourish, help and employ people in our communities and reverse the decline of our high streets. What is very clear from the committee report is that, although there is a lot to be celebrated in the current Scottish landscape for business support, there is a huge gap in the form of joined-up Government of the various support services on offer. The committee report makes it clear that signposts and co-ordination between multiple stakeholders and their partners remain an on-going challenge. It is noted in the report that, when the committee scrutinised to a 2018-2019 draft budget, it found gaps in business support despite a cluttered landscape of programmes and services, so that needs to be addressed. In 2008, when the Scottish Government transferred business gateway and local regeneration activities to Scotland's local authorities, the intention was to steer businesses through the multitude of programmes and services that were available such as enterprise agencies, city deals, private sector programmes, growth deals and other regional partnerships. However, it has been noted that, now, even 10 years later, signposts and co-ordination between multiple stakeholders and partners remain an on-going challenge. Indeed, the committee report notes that the policy intention for business gateway to act as an entry point for businesses seeking business support has not been fulfilled. In its written submission to the committee, COSLA highlighted the uneasy mix of national and local priorities, so we need to look at that. The enterprise agencies are gatekeepers to the additional support that is available in the growth pipeline and account management, but the national priorities that are placed on them by the national government do not necessarily fit with those that are relevant to local government, which is a greater focus on local priorities. We need to work together, because what that paints is a picture that is recognisable to many working within and alongside local government, a lack of joined-up approach between the Holyrood Government and local government, so there is more that can be done there that we can do better. Whether that is in-house building strategies, planning or, in the case that we are talking about, business support, we need more joined up. There clearly needs to be a rethink in the way that we interact between local and national government, how that is communicated and how that is planned. So, hopefully, those discussions can lead from this report. The Scottish Government's failure to work closer with local authorities to review set targets in appropriately fund business gateway has resulted in the business landscape becoming cluttered, misaligned and confusing for businesses to navigate within. Only £15 million of Scottish Government funding is spent annually on delivering business gateway services not nearly enough to promote in the Scottish economy at the local level. Over decades of austerity has also meant that local authorities are struggling to deliver essential services, so we need to address the funding crisis that local authorities place themselves in. Most of all, we can do better in growing our economy and supporting business start-ups and business growth. Can I place on record my thanks to the excellent clarking team who supported the committee's work throughout the inquiry? Our convener, Gordon Lindhurst, has already or eloquently set out many of the main themes that the inquiry covered and our conclusions. Following the enterprise and skills review and the current Scottish National Investment Bank bill that will require close co-operation with the enterprise bodies, our inquiry has been a timely one. Smaller, medium businesses are the backbone of the economies of regions such as mine in the Highlands and Islands, particularly in its most rural and remote parts. Access to services such as business gateway are vital to help to support local businesses, both those that are already established but also in nurturing the vast pool of untapped entrepreneurial talent across the region. For many, business gateway is the first port of call for business support, yet the committee's report finds inconsistencies in business gateway's coordination with existing agencies. The cluttered landscape is referred to by the Fraser of Alland Institute and many members today. During the committee's evidence stage, I raised questions on the cohesion and collaboration between business gateway and those other key partners in local economic development such as Highlands and Islands Enterprise. In many ways, the Highlands and Islands distinct geography and business environment is reflected by those institutions that support businesses locally. It is not long since this Parliament had to fight off the threat of having Highs Board folded into the Scottish Government's strategic board losing its own identity and oversight. The inquiry has also been an opportunity to meet with a range of business support services in different parts of the country. Alongside other members of the committee, I visited business gateway high and four SMEs in the Highlands as part of the evidence-gathering process. Ease of access to financial support was an on-going problem for some of those businesses, as the report noted. I met with services in Orkney and in Shetland and the divergences and discrepancies are stark. For example, both in Orkney and Shetland, the services co-locate with Highlands and Islands Enterprise does not. The committee's business support survey set in its summary that, in general, too many agencies involved and the business support landscape is confused. The Scottish Government's own 2017 enterprise and skills review recommended that they streamline services. The question has to be asked. Why has the co-location of services and the integration of CMR systems not been made a priority? More can and should be done to improve agency to agency referral and to recognise that it is all too easy for rural firms to suffer from passive officialdom. A proactive approach is the best way forward and an appreciation of the challenges, particularly in productivity, that we have to address. In its written response to the report, the Scottish Government has said that the enterprise and skills review concluded that division of responsibilities between national agencies and locally delivered business gateway was right. Given the lack of co-ordination in some areas and the different approaches adopted across Scotland, that is a difficult position to hold. It seems that there is no real clarity as to where those responsibilities do or ought to lie. I would also like to briefly touch on inequalities. The committee report asked the Scottish Government and its agencies to review the funding streams available to new and existing female entrepreneurs. We know that economic growth simply will not reach maximum potential until more women are supported to start businesses. Women's Enterprise Scotland published research that showed that our economy would be boosted by billions if the number of female-led businesses matched those of men. Angela Constance and Jackie Bailey called on the minister to be more rock and roll. I think that they hope that he would be more Mick Jagger, but he probably will have to settle for Mick Hucknall at this stage. I am sure that the minister will take that as he wishes. I welcome the commitment that the Scottish Government made in its written response, particularly to encourage entrepreneurship in underrepresented groups and to work towards a national women's centre for business. It will be an area where I am sure that all members of the committee will be keen to monitor progress in the coming months and years. There have been a number of positive contributions from around the chamber today. My colleague, Dean Lockhart, identified the key failings of the Enterprise and Skills Review and other aspects of Scottish Government policy in reducing the cluttered landscape and business support. He highlighted, as others did, the real lack of accountability and measurable performance, which inevitably can lead to inconsistent delivery and a lack of real impact on many of the Government's economic priorities. Alexander Stewart highlighted his experience as 18 years as a councillor, but he also highlighted the lack of transparency and accountability and the needs of rural communities and businesses, which Colin Beattie mentioned. Brian Whittle spoke again using his own experiences of engaging with business gateway and the frustrations of others that he spoke with about the responsiveness of the service and the administrative burden of seeking support. Entrepreneurship is a fast-paced world and it is important that the support is offered, moves at a similar pace. Other contributions from Rhoda Grant mentioned the bad girl bakery, which I and a number of the committee colleagues very much enjoyed our visit to, but she also talked about late payments, which is a real issue for many SMEs. Andy Wightman highlighted the Irish model and the importance of local services and their integration with the national strategy. Again, that was an area that Gordon MacDonald covered too. Angela Constance expressed disappointment, as others did, with the COSLA response. She is certainly not alone among committee members in that. Jackie Baillie highlighted the need for business gateway to provide a good service across the country and not just in one or two areas. There is much in the work of enterprise bodies, both at national and local level, that is to be commended. I have met many dedicated members of staff in services such as Highlands Alliance Enterprise and local business gateway. People have shown great commitment to driving forward our local economies and supporting those local businesses that are needed. However, the committee's findings of clear structural flaws, which cannot be ignored by the Government or by COSLA, practical national solutions with a local reach must be found, with the emphasis on cohesion, decluttering and developing a national strategy that ensures that business gateway has a clearer remit. One thing that is crystal clear is that there is not a shortage of potential growth and talent in Scotland. The challenge to the Scottish Government is to seize that opportunity and deliver for Scotland's economy. I would like to thank all the members who took part in today's debate, a fruitful exchange of ideas on how best we can support our wonderful businesses across Scotland. I would also like to thank the committee for the work that they have done and the clerks for supporting them in that. The committee's report gives us much food for thought as we look to deliver the right type of support for businesses in Scotland. At the first point, the committee saw that not including business gateway as part of the enterprise and skills review was a potential missed opportunity, but, while business gateway was not explicitly mentioned in the review, it has already been heavily involved in the work to create the new operating model for a single-system approach. We very much recognise the crucial role of business gateway in the business support system. Councillor Stephen Herll and the leadership team at COSLA are committed to working closely with the Scottish Government and wider partners to ensure that business gateway is part of a single-system approach that is responsive to the evolving needs of our business space. I take on board the point that Alex Rowley mentioned around alignment, and that is very much part of those discussions between us and COSLA going forward. We both see the committee's report as an opportunity. It is part of a learning curve that sets out the challenges of developing our robust co-produced solutions involving wider stakeholders and where there is clearer accountability and transparency. It is a challenge that we readily accept and we are already taking steps to act upon it. We are working with COSLA and others to address structural concerns raised by the report, which reinforces the clear role business gateway has within the wider support system and clarifying responsibilities. We cannot have a situation where our business space is not sure when it should go to business gateway. That work will involve closely working with the Federation of Small Businesses and the Scottish Chamber of Commerce and making it clear where, within local authorities, accountability lies for the performance. A single portal initiative that we are taking forward, working to identify all of the services that are available to businesses, is very much central to the activity, and we include everything that is happening across business gateway and all government agencies. That is a point that was mentioned by Colin Beattie and others. The committee also highlighted the support system in Ireland and elsewhere and how it goes about achieving national strategic alignment, accountability and local delivery. That system is evolving from a similar situation to that that exists in Scotland at the moment. We think that it is wise to take a closer look at the structure of enterprise support in Ireland and the other best-de-practice examples globally to see what lessons we can learn, using them to inform our work on what is best for our business space and the unique make-up of our ecosystem approach for enterprise support in Scotland. Those points are raised by Gordon MacDonald, Andy Wightman and others, but it is important to recognise that we cannot just cut and paste the solution in Ireland. That is tailored for Irish businesses and Scotland will have specific needs. For example, some Irish services are fee-based and that might not be something that we would obviously want to do in Scotland. I will take the member's intervention. I would like to ask why it has taken a critical report from the economy committee to force the Government to address the issue. When it has been clear for years, business gateway has not been functioning as it should. Ivan McKee I thank the committee for bringing forward the issues. It is not clear to say that it has not been functioning. It has been functioning in many great examples that have been highlighted by many members across the chamber, committee members and others, about the great work that business gateway has done. The committee report has highlighted some areas that need to be addressed, such as patchy performance and some of the framework that needs to be looked at. As I said, we are very clear about taking that forward with COSLA to address those issues. We are also working together on how best to measure the performance of business gateway and how we assess whether or not we are providing value for the business base. That means co-developing solutions that create greater transparency over how money is spent and addressing concerns about the consistency of service across different local authorities. Ensuring stakeholders such as FSB and Scottish Chambers play a regular and active role in developing solutions. Continue to develop a stronger team approach than the wider business support system and building on the work that Scotland can do. I create a situation where service users do not feel they have been pressed past from one organisation to another but feel they have been dealt with by one single system. The work of Scotland can do was raised by some contribution in the chamber today. It is important to recognise that Scotland can do, taken forward by the private sector and entrepreneurial Scotland, is very much a framework in which we have, for example, Scottish Edge, which is bringing forward many businesses through the support that £13 million has invested in those businesses, leaving the region more than £100 million additional pounds of investment. It can do venture fest and the work of women and enterprise and youth enterprise, so a whole range of support activities that are driving entrepreneurial culture within the Scottish innovation ecosystem. All of that together is work to lift Scotland from the 13th most supportive economy globally to the fifth in the world ahead of all other parts of the UK testament to the work of those involved in the Scotland can do movement. Another area that we are working together on is mainstreaming best practice and further continual professional development, building on the good work business gateways that Scotland is already doing and using constructive feedback to drive improvement. Can I just check on time? Are you pressed for time? I can give you some extra minutes. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. The committee also rightly raised the issue of engagement with women and underrepresented groups, and we are also looking at how the business support system can be more effective in this area. Building on our work to help more women's start businesses through the women and enterprise action framework with a collective impact approach of the can do has helped to increase the proportion of women actively starting businesses, reducing the gender gap in this area at a time when it is increased in the rest of the UK. Scotland's performance here is now in a par with the best in the world, for example the US and Canada. Points raised very eloquently by Angela Constance and Jackie Baillie. Jackie Baillie will be aware of my interest in this area through my former membership of the cross-party group on women and enterprise. Angela Constance has asked for more rock and roll. I am not going to do that this afternoon, but I am sure that there will be opportunities in the near future where that may well happen. Watch this space. In terms of the request for the national head of women and enterprise, I know that that is something indeed, indeed I will… Angela Constance Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Minister, given that you have promised some further action in the future, I wonder if you could give us a wee bit more detail about the how and when we can make some substantive progress towards establishing the national women's centre for business and the head of policy role as well. Ivan McGee Thank you very much. I promised rock and roll. I did not promise specific actions on those measures, but I take very much on board those points. Hetbarn has already mentioned that this is one of the items for discussion on the next meeting of the women and enterprise group that he chairs. It is also worth raising and mentioning another point that Dr Noreen Arshead of Dundee University has now been appointed as an independent adviser to the minister on increasing women entrepreneurship across Scotland. The rest of Mr Hetbarn will be taking forward an evidence-based approach to identify the best concrete steps that we can do to deliver in this area. Rest assured, the Government is very serious about making further improvements to deliver in that area. It is also worth mentioning the other point that the committee raised about our desire to make similar progress in helping our minority ethnic and migrant entrepreneurs realise their full potential. An area that was highlighted in the recent FSB report, the huge potential exists in that area. We are working with Business Gateway and COSLA in taking forward research geared towards helping those groups to make full use of the public business support available. Turning to the issue of funding, we are working with COSLA and partners to assess if Business Gateway can do more to make small businesses aware of the various funding options that are available and that the options that are put forward are relevant and that businesses get the right support to put them in the best position to secure that funding. Rhoda Grant and Brian Whittle mentioned raising the issue of public contracts and procurement. I can let you know that, over the last year, the number of businesses that Scottish SMEs fully 59 per cent of public contracts were won by Scottish SMEs, and there is now 11.5. That will have to be a quick intervention, and then I will wind up, please, Brian Whittle. I think that what I would be interested in is the value against the total value that is awarded from a public procurement perspective. I do not have that data to hand, but we will get back to you. That is certainly also increasing, and 11.5,000 businesses are now working with the supply and development programme up 17 per cent on the previous year. That is an area that we recognise, but it is an area that we are making good progress, we believe on. Dean Lockhart mentioned one or two pointers on the economy. It is worth taking this opportunity to remind that, in the last quarter of 2018, we have data for the Scottish economy growth faster than the UK economy. Unemployment in Scotland is now at 3.2 per cent, a record low, significantly lower than that across the UK. It has been for a specific period of time. Youth unemployment in Scotland is significantly lower than the rest of the UK for a number of years now, and productivity growth in Scotland up significantly more over the last year than that across the rest of the UK. Scotland's economy is delivering. We recognise that there is room for improvement. We thank the committee for its report in this area, and we will work with COSLA closely to take on board those recommendations and move forward to make Scotland's economy even stronger and deliver for our small business community. Colin John Mason, to wind up for the committee. Around eight minutes please, Mr Mason. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. There has clearly been a lot of positive things said in this debate. I will start with them. Some of the positive things said about business gateway. The convener, Gordon Linter, said that it is a good service. Dean Lockhart said that there was a lot to commend. Jackie Baillie said that some business gateway services are second to none. Colin Beattie said that it listed the number of interactions that have been, and especially the positive fact that there are more women now interacting than before. Jamie Halcro Johnston gave a specific example of one of the visits that we made to the bad girl bakery, and their cakes, I seem to remember, were very good. We decided not to have a photograph of me standing under a sign that said, bad girl bakery. To move on specifically to some of the issues that have been raised, and specifically the COSLA response, which has been touched on by a number of speakers so far, and I think that, as others have said and Jackie Baillie specifically said, we have had quite a strong response from COSLA. I was a councillor for 10 years, and I am very enthusiastic and want to be very supportive of local decision making. However, there is clearly a balance to be struck here between what is a national service, namely business gateway, and the fact that it is locally controlled. That balance applies in other sectors too, for example in education and schools, but it does strike me that the variation among schools is much less than the apparently huge variation across Scotland in relation to the business gateway model. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily, but it does make it very difficult for the committee and anyone else who is wanting to look at it to even try to make comparisons around the country between, say, what is happening in Lanarkshire, what is happening in Aberdeen, what is happening in Inverness and what is happening in Glasgow? That has been reflected in our report, and it did lead to quite a strong response, as we know from COSLA. I do very much welcome Ivan McKee, the minister's statement that he is working with COSLA on all of those issues, and we look forward to seeing where that goes. However, as Jackie Baillie said, COSLA could have been a bit more forthcoming, and that might have better informed our report. I was interested in Alec Rowley's suggestion that the convener and myself could meet with COSLA or COSLA representatives and discuss some of those issues. I would have to say that I personally would be open to that, although I cannot speak for the convener himself. Moving on to a few other points that were made in the committee report, business gateway not being an entry point for all business support. A number of speakers again have referred to that. The fact that the enterprise and skills review did not include business gateway, which did seem a bit strange to us, although I know that there are reasons for that and the lack of clarity on strategic alignment. I am hopeful that the strategic board, which is still relatively new, will bring together not just the bodies that are immediately there, such as the Scottish Funding Council, Scottish Enterprise and so on, but will also bring in business gateway a bit more. As we went round and visited, we did see quite a lot of different models from what I had expected. For example, in Inverness, we visited a small business that had not had much input from business gateway but had good input from Highlands and Islands Enterprise. By contrast, in Lanarkshire, we met a much larger business that was operating internationally. However, because it did not fall into a sector that Scottish Enterprise would support, it was still being supported by business gateway despite its size and it had obviously a very good relationship. Moving on to targets and performance, that was one of the things that Gordon Lindhurst specifically talked about in his opening remarks, so I will not spend too much time on that. However, the committee did find it difficult to get information from the different council areas as to who was setting the targets, who was monitoring them, and it did appear to us that even the councillors were not getting the information and knowing about the targets that they needed to properly monitor. Andy Wightman made a lot of good points in that regard. Of course, local councils are accountable, but I do not think that any of us in the committee were questioning that. However, the lack of data to hold business gateway to account by local councillors concerned us. The word alignment is a good one. We do not want business gateway to be subsumed in any way into national things that we are doing, but we want better alignment. In that regard, Gordon MacDonald talked about the whole Irish model, which I think is very interesting and very relevant. I was also interested in the minister's response to that, saying that we cannot cut and paste the Irish model directly on to Scotland, which I agree with. The question is, is it local specialism or is it inconsistency? It is a national programme, but who is it accountable to? Some of the questions that we tried to look at. I certainly agree very much with the committee recommendation that there is a scope for greater sharing and mainstreaming of best practice, not just between business gateway and the outside but within the different parts of business gateway. In Glasgow, for example, there is an emphasis perhaps on growing businesses more than starting businesses, which is interesting. Is it complexity or is it clutter? Businesses find it difficult—I think that Dean Lockhart mentioned this—as to who to go to, and we picked that up as we met businesses. Some had immediately got a good relationship with the right body, but others toiled, as Brian Whittle said, to get that experience. However, I suspect that Brian Whittle's experience could have been very different in a different part of the country. I was interested in passing in his comment that a tax is a punishment in some way in businesses, whereas I would see tax as a contribution to good public services. Colin Beattie mentioned wanting seamless services, which is obviously what everybody really is wanting. The whole idea of the drift away from the original remit, which I think that we can broadly accept had happened. The idea that it had been set up, as things wrote a grant, said that it had been set up to be a one-stop shop. That is certainly what most of us imagined, even though it became apparent that that is not the case. There are many ways into getting business support, other than through business gateway. Perhaps the most telling point again from Andy Wightman is that, if the drift has happened, there was really no strategic plan or review that caused it to move in that direction. The enterprise culture—I think that we have not really touched on too much today, but I think that we have picked up, both in this report but also as the committee has done other work, that many young entrepreneurs, it turns out when you speak to them, it was their parents, their families were also entrepreneurs and they have picked that up from there. The question that I think that we have as a society is how to get more young people, maybe like myself, whose parents were employed by big organisations to start up their own businesses. Finally, on diversity, Angela Constance majored quite a lot in that. I would very much agree with what she said, need to get more BME young people into starting businesses, need to reach out to the underrepresented groups. When we visited the Lanarkshire model, which is a contracted-out model, I was taken by the evidence that they gave that, once they got a woman officer within business gateway to be giving advice, a lot of women starting businesses really appreciated that and were very, very positive about it. In conclusion, I thank all the witnesses who took part, particularly the hosts, who had us visiting them. I think that at one meeting we were out driving in the dark near Inverness and couldn't find the place, but the little local business patiently waited for us and gave us lots of good information. We were in Lanarkshire, were in Inverness in Aberdeen and I really benefited from all those visits. I also thank the clerks and SPICE for all their input. I think that we gave business gateway and business support more generally a fairly thorough inquiry. As others have said, we saw a lot of positives, but I think that we agreed that we have not yet got the balance right between having a national service, while supporting that it should be under local control and with local democratic accountability. Therefore, I am happy to commend this report to Parliament. Thank you very much. That concludes the debate on the business support inquiry. It is now time to move on to the next item of business, if you would change your seats accordingly.