 Good morning, and I'd like to welcome members to the 14th meeting in 2018 of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. We have apologies this morning from David Torrance. Agenda item 1 is for the committee to agree that its consideration of its work programme should be taken in private at a future meeting. Do members agree to take the item in private? Thank you very much. Our second item today is for the committee to consider an application for the recognition from the proposed cross-party group on social enterprise. I'd like to welcome Ben Macpherson MSP to the meeting. Ben is the convener of the proposed group, and Ben would like to invite you to make an opening statement about the purpose of the group. Thank you very much, convener. Very good morning, colleagues, and thanks for your time this morning. I was approached by Social Enterprise Scotland a while ago to consider reconvening this proposed cross-party group on social enterprise. I understand and know from colleagues who were here during the last session of Parliament that this was a very successful cross-party group, a very well-attended cross-party group. Simply was not reconvened at the beginning of this session because those who headed it up were no longer members of the Scottish Parliament after the election. As a constituency MSP for Edinburgh Northern Leith, I work a lot with social enterprises in my constituency. There are a lot of very successful social enterprises operating out of my constituency, so I believe that is why I was approached to set this up. Of course, working with Social Enterprise Scotland, I then reached out to colleagues and now have a diversity of colleagues, both as vice conveners and members of the cross-party group. Social enterprises, otherwise known as not-for-profit organisations, trade for the common goods, strengthen our communities, work to improve people's life chances and help to protect the environment. Empower communities and tackle social problems are known for their high-quality goods and services, which reduce inequality, lift people out of poverty and create jobs, particularly for people who are at a disadvantage in the standard jobs market. There is definitely a trend in our society at the moment towards greater numbers of social enterprises and greater numbers of people in business and whether social conscience is starting those enterprises. Furthermore, consumers are increasingly seeking out socially responsible products that are helping to drive that growth. The social enterprise movement, of course, is connected to the fairer Scotland agenda, inclusive growth agenda, the real living wage movement and the Scottish business pledge, all of which are important to all parties in this Parliament. Currently, social enterprises contribute £2 billion to our economy each year and employ 80,000 people. That was the last census that was done in 2017. There are 5,600 social enterprises that were identified during that census, and 35 per cent of those were located in rural areas. It is important to emphasise the point that social enterprises are not just operating out of urban Scotland but play a key part in rural Scotland and the rural economy. Importantly, 64 per cent of Scotland's social enterprises are led by women, so it is absolutely a key sector in terms of making sure that we have an inclusive economy as possible and that driving social enterprise growth is very much led by women. There is a lot more that I could say, but I am sure that you have questions about the strength of the social enterprise movement and why it is important that it has this voice here in Parliament. In the submission to the committee and to the Parliament, it detailed what the CPG's purpose is. To re-emphasise, it is to help to give social enterprises that strong, united voice here in the Parliament in the centre of Scottish decision making in order to influence policy making. Both with the Government but also to raise awareness among all MSPs, the public and the media, to demonstrate the wide-ranging social impacts of social enterprises and their contribution to the economy and to tell the inspiring stories about the human and environmental and social impact of social enterprises. Importantly, the purpose of the cross-party group would be to make sure that it has real purpose in promoting the growth and success of social enterprises in communities, the role in delivering services or helping to deliver and design public services and also to help boost even further the private sector use of social enterprise models. In establishing the CPG, there is a determination to assist the sector that is growing and the benefits that it has to all communities of Scotland, but also to work with other CPGs that are related to the social enterprise movement or would benefit from collaboration as well on their number that I have identified in the form and thereafter. I hope that that gives us an obsess of the ambition, the purpose and the need and rationale behind why I think that this would be a purposeful and positive CPG to re-establish here in the Scottish Parliament. Thank you very much, Ben. Do any of the committee have a question? Ben, we are now two years into Parliament. Why has it taken two years to re-establish something that you say is so successful? That is a good question, Tom. I was approached last year about re-establishing this group, so I do not know whether there were efforts by Social Enterprise Scotland in the year before to identify other MSPs to take it forward. However, I was at the AGM of Social Enterprise Scotland yesterday and I can assure you that there is strong ambition in the sector to re-establish this group and to have it here in the Parliament and a recognition of what it gave to the sector in the previous session and an ambition to re-establish that. Some of the time that was taken as well was to make sure that there were MSPs from across parties that were engaged in this. If the group was approved by the committee, I would also be seeking to recruit more MSPs to the group, but the five MSPs that are currently signed up represent a good spread of not just political parties but the different aspects of our society in terms of rural and urban representation and different backgrounds and interests in the economy and innovation. If I can follow on, what do you say to the comment that it might be that Social Enterprise is a general heading? Is it actually too wide to be effective in the end? One of the challenges around social business in general is that in the UK it is just no less from being a commercial solicitor before being elected. In terms of establishing social business models, we are in a period where that is something that is quite new to a lot of entrepreneurs. There is the new model of a community interest company that was established by the UK Government a number of years ago, and that is gaining some traction. The breadth of the social enterprise term and the inclusive nature of it is about how we generally utilise private business activity for the common good. In our economy and in company law, there is no single way of doing that at the moment. Yes, we have community interest companies, but most of those operating in the social enterprise sector at the moment are private limited companies. For example, it is important that they are included and acknowledged as being key to the inclusive growth agenda that this Parliament is supportive of and absolutely behind in my experience. I know that there is a co-operative CPG, and that is very specific. There is a credit union CPG, and co-operatism CPG and credit unions are many of which are social enterprises. However, without a social enterprise CPG, we are not able to encapsulate that wider private sector ambition and growth that there is in our economy and give them that voice and that ability to influence Government and to raise more awareness about what they are doing and to increase the acceleration and momentum that there is in the sector at the moment. Take social bite, which many of you will be aware of. That is a social business established by limited by guarantee. I know that it is not one of the members at the moment, but there is a possibility that it could be. I am using it as an example because it is well known. If there did not have a CPG on social enterprise, then there is no place for that in terms of the CPGs that we have here in the Scottish Parliament at the moment. It was just a very quick one. I see that there are some organisations there that cover the highlands and highlands and islands, but I am sure that you will appreciate their difficulties for particularly organisations on the islands to travel down. I was just wondering how you may be looking to encourage social enterprises and those interested in them based in Scotland's islands to attend to be involved and how you might facilitate that. That is a really important question. In the census, it notes that the highlands and islands are very significant in terms of the density of social enterprises located there. 21 per cent of Scotland's social enterprises are located in the highlands and islands, out of only 9 per cent of the population. It is cognisant of that. The membership base in terms of the initial members of the CPG that Social Enterprise Scotland has put forward includes Newstart Highland and others who are in the highlands and islands. We would need to be cognisant of how we would utilise technology, for example, in order to make sure that, if those in the highlands and islands were not able to attend in person, they were absolutely able to be part of the cross-party group, including through video conferencing, for example. It would be worth contacting to look at ways in which they could be involved, should the group get the go-ahead. I would make sure that the secretary made that clear and reached out to as many social enterprises in the highlands and islands as possible, particularly given the figure that I just gave about how popular a model is and how many social enterprises operate in the highlands and islands. I was just interested in the fact that you were saying that there is a bit of a crossover with co-operative cross-party groups and credit unions. I think that you also said maybe housing and social enterprises. It was more a practical question because you talked about perhaps doing joint meetings, which would obviously make some sense. You also said that the previous CPG was extremely successful with large numbers of attendees around 50 to 80 at meetings. That seems quite large to manage. Also, if you were then hoping to have joint meetings, just in terms of the practicalities of that, do you think that you would maybe have to limit your numbers? I appreciated that I was not here during the last establishment of CPG. It is a really good question around how we make sure that the membership is representative of the social enterprise movement and those with an interest in growing the sector, but also make sure that the numbers at meetings do not become unwieldily and impractical. I know that Social Enterprise Scotland has not been cognisant of that in the specific social enterprises that they have included in the membership so far. In terms of collaboration, I am certainly keen to think about how the CPG would collaborate. I sit on housing and credit union CPGs already. Given the momentum behind the inclusive growth agenda and how important that is to all of Scotland and how we develop our economy, is there an opportunity to bring those cross-party groups that are operating in that area together at some point during this session to have a joint meeting on inclusive growth and what we are all doing to advance that and what we can do together to affect policy change and make that representation to the Government? I appreciate that the committee rooms in this Parliament probably are not big enough for that, so we need to look at how, practically, that would be doable, but perhaps it would be a matter of delegation from each CPG and how we do that forward. If I may convener, I wonder if you were going to have to book the chamber. It raises another issue, which is more general, around the fact that CPGs are supposed to be around informing members, and they are not public meetings. Sometimes, the lines get a little bit blurred around that with some CPGs, so would you be quite clear what the remit of yours would be? Absolutely, to make sure that it is not just a good way of social enterprise Scotland getting people together for a discussion. To me, one of the aspects that I am very clear about in my own CPG membership of current CPGs and the establishment of this one is to make sure that it is very solution focused around how we inform members and then use meetings as a mechanism to make sure that we are relaying messages to Government, looking to effect policy, looking to reach out to private sector, if appropriate, in this case. Thank you very much, Ben, for coming along today. The committee will consider whether to approve the application for recognition at agenda item 3, and you will be informed of the decision. Thank you very much for all of your time and your questions. We will now move to agenda item 3, which is where the committee will consider whether to accord recognition to the proposed cross-party group on social enterprise. Do the members have any comments? Are we content to approve the cross-party group now? Thank you very much. The committee will now move into private session to consider agenda item 4. Once that consideration is complete, the committee will move back into public session.