 I'm Douglas Fraser. I work at the BBC's business and economy editor in Scotland. I have the happy position of welcoming you to the Parliament on behalf of the organisers of the Festival of Politics for this discussion on future directions and options for the economy. This year's festival, I'm told, is the 19th such festival, provoking, inspiring, informing people of all ages from all sorts of backgrounds to engage in three days of spirited debate. This is the third day, so if you've already been here, maybe you can bring opinions from other sessions that you've been at. It's very telling for me, now living outside Edinburgh, coming back into the festival in August, how much politics has become the new stand-up comedy, almost. An awful lot of politicians have followed on from this festival of politics and are appearing on all sorts of other guises across Edinburgh. It's become, oddly enough, for the BBC. A key part of our news schedule now is following what politician is saying what and the last three days we've had three really important top lines from different politicians. Now, we're delighted that we've got guests here today and a good turnout as well. Thank you for coming here. I'm looking forward to hearing your views as well as the panel, and indeed your questions, your contributions for this debate. Probably shouldn't have to be said, but it gets said these days anyway that this is a place for tolerance of other people's ideas and respectful listening to other people's ideas. I don't think we're going to have the kind of debate where that becomes too much of an issue, but who knows in the next 90 minutes. You can, if you want to share your views on social media, at visit Scott Parle on Instagram. I'd also like to remind everyone, and I'll have to say this for legal reasons, I think, that you are being live streamed on the Parliament's Scottish Parliament TV channel as well. Today's debates held in partnership with the cross-party group on social enterprise and the Scottish Parliament's Futures Forum, which is you may find online that they've already been doing some work on some of the issues that we've been doing here. You can follow up by watching that again. Post-pandemic and in a cost of living crisis, how can new ideas help us to build a better economy? I'm joined to discuss all that by Emma Congrive and Jimmy Paul and Douglas Westwater. Just to give you a brief introduction, you can say more about yourself if you want to take that opportunity. Emma is a senior knowledge exchange fellow, which I think means that you understand how to explain stuff to people. Deputy director also at the Fraser Vallander Institute at Strathglad University, very helpful to us in the media explaining things. She has previously held roles as a senior economist at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and as an economic adviser within the Scottish Government. Jimmy Paul is director at the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Scotland, which is to reprogram Scotland's economy, as it put people and planet first. Jimmy's worked in leadership roles across health and social care for 10 years, including a co-chair at the Independent Care Review. He tells me he's just about to leave the job he's currently in, but he's not able to tell us what he's about to start. I think he knows, but we are not to know just yet. Douglas is chief officer to community enterprise, a leading social enterprise and community development consultancy, providing support as well. Douglas has worked in Scotland's third sector for 25 years and he's currently the chair of Social Enterprise Scotland and on the cross-party committee, which is telling me that John Swinney has just started to chair. So there will be an opportunity for you to take part in a discussion, but I think as convention dictates, we're trying to be unconventional here, but not in the style of debate, I don't think. We're going to start the discussion between ourselves here and I'm going to start with you Emma. We've got all sorts of economic ideas. The cynic might say jargon. The well-being economy, inclusive growth, sustainable development, just transition, social enterprise, business purpose, capital P and a circular economy, community wealth building as well. That's just some of them. What do you think are the threads running through these that are most important, most relevant and most applicable to Scotland? Yes, it takes a lot getting your head around when the next new phrase comes out to work out whether it's different or the same from what's come before sometimes, but they all point to the need for the economy to work in a way that kind of meets a range of different needs and they change over time. Obviously different needs come to the fore, different evidence becomes available and different preferences amongst politicians and society come forward and that really should and does shape the economic debate. Having that feeling that it needs to be more than just economic growth, growth for what sake is very much at the heart of a lot of those and it's not a new idea in economics. The need for some kind of shaping of what the economy does, containing it and ensuring that it works for more than just those who are at the top of the capital history, I suppose. It's an idea that goes back pretty much to Adam Smith. I think it was most discussed about Adam Smith, but he was very clear that the economy, the market can't just be left to itself. It does need these kind of guardrails around it and arguably that's how government came into being in order to provide those functions for ensuring that where the market fails the government is able to step in and shape things in a way that works for the many, not the few to use the phrases used at the moment. Questions remain on the right balance, the right sort of interventions and there's never necessarily going to be a right answer on that. There are just going to be different competing elements that need to be brought together and a consensus taken forward. All of these terms reflect that changing dynamic in the economy and in people who shape the economy. I think where we sort of run into issues is where you just get a lot of confusion. A lot of people, particularly businesses being unsure and that's what we hear a lot of what is expected of them. The next new thing coming along, a lot of people want certainty about where they go and what they invest in and what choices they make. Even people thinking about what careers they move into. There are so many things that people want to know about what the government's preferences are going to be and what the economy is going to look like in the future. That sense of the need to be a balance between competing forces has been a feature of the market and of economics since the word economists were kind of invented and I think we're still seeing that now. It's interesting you say it's about the parameters around the market. The market remains the dominant strand through this in a way that some radicals in the past have wanted to replace it completely. Absolutely. One of the things I find quite difficult at the moment is that we do seem to be forced into these kind of polarised positions of growth versus everything else. I don't think that is the way forward. I think saying that the economy and the market is not a key part of improvement of living standards and it's not a key solution to working through some of the issues we've got and we need to address climate change, poverty and inequality is losing sight of the good bits of the economy. The economy includes the public sector, teachers, social workers. They are contributing to our GDP as well. It has to be a much more nuanced understanding of what the economy is, how it works and how it can be made to function in a way that meets societal preferences but not throwing the baby out with a bath ward. Jimmy, over to you. To return to the long list of economic ideas, themes and possibly jargon, what do you pick out as the most important strands for you? Well, good morning everyone. First of all, the most relatable thing you were saying there, Emma, is about security and knowing what jobs you're going into and I'm really sorry. I do have a new job. I just can't share what that is right now and I know that's very mysterious. That was a really helpful summary, Emma, and the wellbeing economy, I'll give a definition of it shortly, but the purpose behind it was to be a picnic blanket for all of these different ideas, donut economics and circular economy, maybe less inclusive growth because of its dependence on GDP as a kind of sole measure or not sole measure, a key factor. Actually, we just do need to be much more nuanced, as you say, and critical in understanding of the limitations of GDP. Just walking up here, we're seeing all on the screens, the wildfires in Hawaii at the moment, the droughts, the floods that we're seeing, climate breakdown, and actually, can we continue to extract at the rate which we are? I just don't think we can. I just don't think that's synonymous with an economy that we need. So, a wellbeing economy is in a sentence about social justice on a healthy planet. The one thing I might challenge Emma Ron is some of that underlying frame of contributing to GDP, contributing to the economy. A wellbeing economy movement suggests that we should flip that, and the economy should serve us rather than us, kind of maybe working longer hours or being more efficient in workplaces, actually. We need to flip that a little bit. And to define that further for you all, our co-founder, Catherine Trebek, and lots of our colleagues through their research, through their time spent with communities all over the world came up with five wheel needs, as we call them. Ysbyty, nature, purpose, fairness, and participation. All things that we should have in order to live good lives. And I doubt that anyone in this room or watching will disagree with those things as something we should pursue. But actually, the challenge comes in, the how we get to that point. And in order to make that feel clearer for you guys and for us as an organisation trying to be that picnic blanket, we talk about the four Ps. Now, if you've got the thousand pieces of Scotland, you've got business, you've got the markets, you've got the public sector, you've got people with lived experience of a range of things and many more groups that you need to play their part in order to build this economy, it feels like a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle and to make that feel better, we talk about the four Ps or the four corners where we start. The first is purpose. What's the express purpose of our economy? Is it to grow at any and all cost to people and planet or actually is it to serve us? We know and we can talk about the limitations of GDP all day but the fact that wildfires and droughts and these things require trades of good and services that are positive for GDP growth but unpaid care work isn't a factor in that. It's just one example of many that we could share on why the purpose of our economy needs to shift. Prevention, so how do we to use that famous metaphor, stop just pulling people out of the river further downstream and go upstream and understand why they're falling into it and design our economy to deliver prevention? Predistribution, so putting a P in front of redistribution so instead of again thinking further downstream how we might through taxation fix issues that we've come up against, how can we design and programme our economy to get things right first time round and you might think about initiatives like community wealth building or progressive taxation as a way to achieve that. And the last P if I had to choose it's my favourite would be participation. How are we meaningfully involving people, society, communities in the shaping of our economy? Now I'm not an economist which is why it's so nice to share a stage with people that have a deep knowledge of the economy and you'll hear from them in greater detail on that soon. I also have lived experience of the care system I grew up in harsh poverty and to be in a space like this and on a panel like this discussing the economy I think we need more people with different lived experience and diverse perspectives shaping the economy so the conversation's not just about markets and business. Jimmy, thanks very much. A lot to return to there and as I said earlier you can be asking your questions before too long as well but I'm going to turn to Douglas now. There's a lot of churn around these ideas at the moment. I'm wondering if this is a particularly appropriate time for so many things to be bubbling up in discussion in the Scottish Parliament and beyond. This discussion is very much a creature of the time it's in. Quite some time after the financial crash caused such a crisis in faith in the way the market works but also Covid has shaken us up so much and Brexit has as well but Covid did to a more fundamental level about people's values and their relationship with their work for instance so how much is this a creature of the moment that we're in at the moment? Well I mean I certainly think it's been pushed forward by those things but these concepts of I mean someone said to me recently the Scottish Government is brilliant at strategy and best in the world at strategy and ideas and probably not so great at making them happen so I think when bad things happen like cost of living and Covid and so on politicians of course think well what we're going to do about this we need to change things so you get a tsunami of ideas so all of these things have come up and I think probably from a social enterprise perspective and I'm sure I'm not going to sit here and tell you all the flaws of it but I'm sure some people can ask some pertinent questions so since I'm here at social enterprise by Scotland I'll tell you how amazing it is I think as these things have come out community wealth building right we need to invest locally I think the social enterprise sector along with many other sector but certainly the social enterprise sector we're going well yeah obviously we've been doing that for years and then we'll just transition to yeah I've been doing that for decades and then we'll say ah we need a place based economy with 20 minute neighbourhoods oh yeah we've been doing that for a long time so I think there's a feeling that social enterprise has been a model of the economy and a model for delivering trading and delivering enterprise has almost become into its own now because of all this stuff so it's pushed that forward where there's a meeting of strategy and then I think there is social enterprise isn't by any means the only solution but there's a model there that can say oh yeah look we can achieve all of that and so there's something around delivery now that we need to be pushing forward as a nation so social enterprise is this sort of basket in which you can put all of these things I'm hearing also that the well-being economy is the basket in which you put all of these things I mean there's maybe a semantic point about definitions of these different terms that we're using but why social enterprise in particular? Well I think social enterprise pretends there's a model to achieve the well-being economy as a tool in the box and potentially there are lots of tools but I suppose when cutting to the chase the census was out which the sector were involved in so social enterprise sectors worth around about 4.8 billion turnover approximately and I was challenged yesterday about finding some statistics so I googled how big the Scottish economy was and Emma will probably correct me and this is probably wrong since it was googled on the train this morning but a turnover of the Scottish economy of about 170 billion add another 10 billion on if you want to include oil so I suppose social enterprise if you look at the potential impact the model of social enterprise is how you generate money and then what you do with it it's not about being shy about generating money I tell people to generate as much money as you possibly can it's about how you generate it and then what you do with it so with 4.8 billion you can do quite a lot of reinvesting back in 100% of profit reinvested back into communities and back into organisations and I suppose we just have to visualise imagining 170 billion reinvested back into a nation just imagine what difference that could pretend I mean you would transform the economy forever and that's really the model of social enterprises about reinvesting that and there's potentially a vision to do really quite radical things with that Jimmy the word enterprise became very much part of politics in the thatcher years but she didn't always attach the word social to it of course are you comfortable are you with enterprise because it hints of sort of entrepreneurialism as well what place does that have in what you'd see as the well-being economy it's got a really central place with big fans of what you do and everything you've described there and as long as purpose is at the heart of what we're doing and as long as we're thinking about reinvestment and pro-social business models and ways in which wealth is shared more equally and you know other things like what is the CEO's wage as opposed to the least paid person in that business and the fact that the ethos of what your work stands for and social enterprises and other pro-social work asks those questions and it considers power how is power shared between staff and executives and also it's it acknowledges the role of the planet and the fact that we cannot a couple of weeks ago we reached earth overshoot day didn't we for Scotland for the UK it acknowledges those questions as well so providing you're considering these things it's absolutely a key feature of a well-being economy Emma pick up on these themes if you want you I think you're being credited with being the economist on this panel and therefore trained to believe in gross domestic product as the god up there now it has been critiqued very extensively what do you think the problems are with it but also the strengths the reasons why we might want to hang on to it yeah so I would I'll challenge that that's part of the economic orthodoxy I think it's part of some parts you know the what is assumed that economists believe in but the way I was taught economics and the way I now teach it at Strathclyde is much you know it's not how we taught to think about these things a whole point of being an economist is you're able to take in a range of factors and be able to kind of come up with a solution or a way forward that is able to take take on many different costs and benefits you know particularly government economists that's what we were trained to do so the kind of the economic growth the billions that may be produced by a certain investment in terms of you know in the economy would be balanced against us trying to be able to cost up the potential negative impacts on the environment or would be looked at in terms of okay so but what would that mean for you know you build a new train line yes you'll get economic benefits out of that in terms of of businesses but you'll also be reducing commuting times for people and that's the core benefit that you cost and put into the model alongside those other factors that you might assume economists are more concerned about so I think there is this misconception that that is all we care about but it's not how we are trained to think about the world I think what you find is that there are the economy is made up of people you know and businesses are groups of people that have a particular interest and when you talk to a lot of businesses we talk to are totally on the same page in terms of they want a business that obviously is able to continue to trade but that looks after its workers because obviously they need their workers in order to do that they don't want to be you know the harmful externalities but there is externalities like things that happen as a result of the pollution being a key one but you know within the economy because it's people we also have power dynamics we have politicians with a lot of power we have some businesses and business leaders with a lot of power but I'll come back to your question in a second so we just have to realise it's people making decisions for various reasons most of them want to do well by their fellow human being their employee but they also have to be able to pay the bills there's all these competing factors that come into your mind when you are just trying to operate and produce a service or a good which you may want to challenge whether that should be the heart of what people get up every day to do but I think that pragmatically that's the situation that we're in and we just need to be really careful not to assume that some people just because they're in a business that's a for profit business that's harmful in some way and I'm oversimplifying here So if you're running a business you're not getting up in the morning to say I must improve Scotland's GDP that's not your top priority you're trying to make payroll at the end of the month to see what their focus is and particularly through a series of quite extraordinary crises that we've had in the past a few years affecting different sectors in different ways Now the Fraser of Allander Institute in Strathglade does a lot of surveying of business opinion How much has business changed its outlook particularly I guess since the crisis of 2008 financial crisis hitting the banks in particular but lots of sectors in different ways towards what's known as ESG environment, social and governance is yet more jargon which you are more likely to hear within business than necessarily within this discussion but they're trying to feel their way towards a much more nuanced set of targets for business or a more nuanced means of getting to a target of a successful business Tell us a bit about that So people in businesses as I've said are just like you and I they are getting up in the morning trying to deal with what comes across their plate but also absorbing all of the news all of the new ideas that are coming out realising that they too need to play their part in that Obviously when you've got large companies big juggernauts you've got lots of people competing ideas potentially and it does take time to turn those juggernauts around but certainly we have seen this kind of this kind of move around to seeing some of these issues as things that are need to be addressed by businesses and potentially there is some commercial benefit in that for them but I think much more of a realisation I think particularly around issues around climate that people do need to in businesses do need to play a role here How much is that self-interest that they are being influenced by there is a real risk that their business model could be undermined or that their investors are going to pool money if they are not committed to environmental targets or that their customers are going to turn against them and how do these balance out I mean I think one of the good things about the market is that you can't stand still you have to react to these different preferences from people these different interventions from government you have to mould yourself around them so there will be that kind of we have to do this because otherwise we won't survive but there will also be people with different ideas about what's the best thing to do just from their own kind of background or their own preferences so you've got all of that coming together and I think that is one of the things about the economy that we've seen I mean I shouldn't use the word economy because I think it's just a meaning it's a termine a little bit but what do we actually mean by the economy I think that's a you know if we're talking about say profits seeking businesses you know or businesses that want to survive financially so they are they're feeling that they do need to make these changes in order to survive and we've seen so much flexibility over the past since the financial crisis which was the first major shock we'd seen in decades and since then the amount of different things that businesses have had to adapt to some have gone by the wayside but we still the fact we still have businesses open after the pandemic and many are thriving some are still struggling but that adaptiveness in real time because of people on the ground having to make changes and are able to do that it can be a much more dynamic and faster way than a government trying to shape you know obviously there are different models of how an economy is developed but a very centrally controlled economy doesn't move isn't very dynamic and you know politicians maybe aren't the best ones to know on the ground is I'm always very struck in having covered politics here and then covering business that a politician faced with a problem identifies the problem and worries at it and tries to find a solution to it very clear with business that they're clear sided about seeing the opportunity that comes out of it and it may be overwhelming the set of problems but nevertheless there are opportunities come out of it and recessions lead to a very successful companies emerging from the circumstances that we're in just one quick thing is about aligning this is a jargoniton aligning incentive but just being able to say you know get everyone on the same page and they know where they're going and that comes back to certainty as well businesses will adapt and will see those opportunities and will go for them if they're clear on what the route ahead is I think we see this with the green agenda this chopping and changing sometimes of actually what the next 10, 20 years is going to be makes it very difficult to actually get those incentives aligned on the same page and moving in the same direction so we'll come on to that in terms of the policy a bit later but Douglas to pick up on that you were talking earlier about the extent to which the social enterprise sector is a relatively small percentage significant size but a relatively small percentage how much do you see the majority of the economy which is the private sector economy looking to what you're doing in social enterprise for some lessons particularly around these environment social governance issues I think as I say there is a danger that the three of us will just agree so I'll try my best to say something that's maybe not quite in agreement but if we're looking to change in a respectful and tolerant way of course absolutely because I'll probably have a cup of coffee with these people genuinely I think if we want to change the economy that will not be done by the private sector that will not happen I think what the stuff Emma is talking about is absolutely correct of course it is and I think there's a huge strategic move in the Scottish Government to encourage, force, nudge the private sector towards being lovely and nice so you might get community benefit clauses and tendering, they might be encouraged to take on apprenticeships, there might be net zero requirements and of course some businesses are run by humans and they want to look after their staff and some are lovely and some are less lovely but fundamentally they are legally obliged to make money that is their purpose they are absolutely legally, culturally and institutionally there to make money that is their core purpose now along the way they might do good stuff and they employ people who pay taxes and that pays for social care but that's their role is to make money whereas if you have something if you want to turn to move the economy it has to move towards an institutional way that the core purpose is to make the difference that Jimmy is talking about and it's not just social enterprise but if social enterprise is a model it cannot make money it can only make a difference to the community its purpose is to make a difference to the world so there is an issue there around where that investment goes to the extent to which the private sector can actually make a difference it can be nudged that it will never change the world I wonder if anybody in the audience wants to respond to that because I'm imagining that some people will be employed within the private sector or may run their own companies and may have views on whether that's a fair assessment of what the private sector does is it, hand up there so microphones this because you are being streamed remember so other people will want to hear what you're saying my name is Eleonora and I work for the Scottish Council for Development and Industry and actually I have hosted an event with Douglas back in May and I think that is an interesting point what he is saying but at the same time I've been talking to many social enterprises and at the moment they are saying that it's not a shame to make money because obviously they have to sustain what they do and they have to look after the staff they have to make sure that they pay their bill and at the same time especially as a Scottish Council for Development and Industry we released a report about business purpose and about the fact that yes there are private businesses that are making money but at the same time they are looking after the problem of the people and the planet so I think in this particular moment we have a great opportunity that is for the private sector and the third sector or social enterprise to learn to each other because they are both strong in what they are doing and I think more and more private businesses have the goal of making a profit but doing something else that is why they are purposeful so it's quite interesting take from Douglas about the private sector and the third sector but I think there is a light at the end of the tunnel and I think more and more businesses understand that they have to step up and make the difference because many times it's easier for businesses to be more reactive than government and policies and I think especially in Scotland for what can see there is this interest and we are already moving I hope towards the right direction Any other points that people would wish to raise last year again Thank you Thanks Douglas Esther, Roberton and Fess Up I'm here as part of the Parliament's Futures Forum so I have a particular interest but I've also been interested in this subject for a very long time going back to when Catherine Trebek developed the humankind index as an alternative to GDP and obviously we now have Carnegie the research organisation developing their own measure and in fact was involved in SCDI because they were supposedly about the social and economic development of Scotland and then they became about the economy and interestingly have gone back to social because it is about what's the economy for the other issue for me is we've just had 300 years of the Adam Smith Tercentenary and as a fifer I was part of some of the celebrations there I grew up in the 80s thinking that the Adam Smith Institute were right in claiming that he was a free marketeer and of course I brought two quotes one professor said Adam Smith didn't believe in greed and the other was no society can surely be flourishing and happy of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable and I think it comes back to Jimmy's point about the wellbeing economy and what it's for and I do think this is a moment because I think the transparency issue the inequality the crisis of Covid and then the cost of living crisis has brought people's attention and people are thinking very differently we think it's time to grab that opportunity and I think my regular one was your point about the salary multiplier when I was growing up chief execs earned 20 or 30 times their employees if you go to local government or the health service that's still true but you go to some of the big private corporations and it's many hundred times and people now know that and they know that's not acceptable so I could rant for hours but I won't I was at the land reform debate last night in virtual sense and the claim there was a more radical approach and finally the MSP who was chairing then listed all the bills going through parliament that are linked to land reform and as someone who helped design this place I was staggered that it was so fragmented so my question to you as a panel is what do you think both the parliament and the government can do because our role is to help the MSPs think longer term about the big difficult issues and our big project this year is about inequality so what would your advice to the parliament and government be about how to address these economic issues? Can I hold on that's a very good question it's one I think we'll lead on to once we've explored some of the issues if you don't mind but there's no other points anybody wishes to make at the moment about that Douglas's provocation there about the role of the private sector being so focused on making money I'll turn it to Emma you do the math crunching the surveys Fraser Vallander how do you respond to that ferocious provocation you've just said from the left? Yes I mean not just from the kind of work we do with surveys but from the work we actually do with businesses and going back to your point I don't think a lot of business owners would necessarily agree that that's their making money is their focus surviving and being able to continue doing what they are doing is a focus and that has a financial element to it but in terms of what drives people in business it's similar to what drives you and me in terms of what we do with our lives there are many competing factors there there are many things going on and I think we just have to be really careful about oversimplifying business bad because they make money versus social work is good it's much more complicated than that and I do fear that we get too polarised and when terms like the wellbeing economy do make businesses feel that they're backed into a corner and being told that they are they're the problem when actually for many and there will be some that are never going to change and are going to disrupt and greed will be part of their DNA as well but for many the solutions lie with them as well so yeah it will be good to get away from this polarisation Timmy there's the provocation for you do you feel what you're campaigning for is backing business into a corner I mean I've said earlier we are pro business that are social that consider people, profit and planet and I can understand why some businesses do feel backed into a corner or threatens too strong a word annoyed because we are quite vocal when we see an injustice we'll name it you spoke about the fragmented landscape accurately and we've got the business purpose commission which I think is going to do fabulous things if it is supported with incentives and money and investment but we also have the business advisory group to the Scottish Government and senior ministers there of which BP has been a member how is that the right thing to do and I agree with you there are many businesses, small businesses of course the stats show this that are surviving and have the right intention and exist to serve people with the right motives and intentions it's fabulous and they should be supported too but there are also those where greed is an essential factor in their model and we need to call out when that happens You're saying BP should not be part of an advisory panel? Absolutely on deciding what a wellbeing economy is the future of the economy and deciding how we get to an economy that serves people and planet I really think, we need to think carefully about where people are at on a journey all in understanding their contribution to greed their contribution to the destruction of the planet Do you not need to get a company like BP into the room to convince them because they would come back and say well we have a lot of targets on environment, social and governance and investing heavily in the transition whether it's just or not it's a big transition to renewable energy and you need the deep pockets of a company like BP Indeed we work at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, the extent to which we went into it having an argument over $100 billion of support for poor countries from richer ones at a government level we came out of it with a realisation that was a drop in the ocean compared with what's required for this transition and you need the private sector including companies like BP to be spending trillions financial sectors absolutely vital to this trillions upon trillions of dollars are going to have to be put into that just transition so you do need these companies with their track records and controversies you do need them coming into the room don't you You can have them in the room but I don't think they should be making decisions on things where there is a real contravention in their principles and what they stand for could be on board with them being in advisory spaces if it wasn't linked to the massive increase in shareholders payout in the last year or two since the increase in cost of living crisis and energy bills since February 2022 so I just think we need to critically analyse and be aware of the intention of these organisations and you know be open to understanding that they might be on this journey but I just don't think in that example BPR Do you think part of it is and Douglas was referring to this implicitly at least that they have a legal responsibility their first fiduciary duty is to their shareholders and that is deemed often to be dividends it's financial and their shareholders are not seen as people who get a benefit from environmental work and so on it it comes down to a bottom line because on the board of directors of a publicly quoted company you know what your target is does that need to be changed and probably at a legal legislated level so that the role of the board of directors is more nuanced and perhaps rather more complex puzzling and conflicted I think you've asked a question and you know what I'll say the audience will agree with I think that is an absolutely brilliant accurate assessment I just don't think we can continue as we are with greed at the centre and I don't extend that to all businesses at all I did a seminar over lockdown on a global governance debate that taught me something I didn't know because I've worked in the private sector but I've not been on a private sector board and the responsibilities of a company director actually aren't just about the shareholder dividend it's about the long term sustainability of the company and they're required to give due regard to community, to stakeholders, to staff and to the environment so actually the companies act already says that the difficulty we've got is too many directors think their job is maximise shareholder return and it actually isn't but it's about how do we hold companies to account now so I don't Emma, can I pick up on one thing that you were referring to earlier that one of the influences on the way businesses operate apart from shareholders and the need to deliver on all of these already quite complex set of targets they have to recruit and retain staff and motivate staff there's some evidence isn't there that generation Z Z is coming through and making demands from lower level of the hierarchy of businesses to say if you want to recruit us if you want to retain us and if you want to motivate us you are going to have to operate differently that actually staff are driving change within organisations in a way I don't think we've ever seen before so there are a few good things that have come out of the last 5-6 years but the fact that the labour market is so tight at the moment and as you say there's a new generation with different ideas coming through means that there is more of a need for businesses to work out what's best for their workforce in order to keep to retain and to recruit I think that's one of the things where I kind of sit on a more sort of more pragmatic side that actually that's an opportunity that we should be looking at as a case of how can we help businesses to understand what kinds of things they could do in order to kind of meet those needs we've been doing some really interesting work for hospitality businesses and trying to bring them together to do some peer learning from each other to try and work out how to solve some of the issues that are having an impact on retention recruitment for example how best to support their staff who they know are having issues with their health be it physical or mental health and how best to support them be it issues around being able to help people with who are on quite seasonal work balance their kind of money over the year to make these places attractive and not to make some of those downsides less sort of unappealing to their workforce in the hospitals in some of the biggest recruitment challenges at the moment. So of course the workforce does have more power now and I think that is one of those opportunities but businesses you know often especially the smaller ones operating they don't always have the chance to come together and get this advice and actually take a step back and you know they need to pay the bills you know they're on the phone to the bank for hours at a time you know to give them that space to take that step back and understand these different ideas we found the opportunity we gave them with this peer learning enabled them to do that take that step back out of their day job but the list of things they're dealing with at the moment is so big but I think there is that opportunity to say okay if you want to do something a bit differently you know here are some of those ideas and it's not just about paying the living wage which I think is really important and all businesses should be aspiring to but some businesses at margins they can't just switch to that immediately they need those kind of other things that kind of lead them on the path towards that perhaps but are things that they feel they can implement in the here and now and to move them further forward businesses are more reactive than government I think they've heard that from the audience as well but they still they still have to go things still have to work for them and they still have to be sure of its success as they move along in incremental steps sometimes in order to get to a final destination Jimmy if we've heard about this is academics who are going into business sometimes they've got all sorts of pressures not much time you said you keep BP out of the room of advisors but what if BP asks you in and says we need to understand better what you want of us now you don't have to go with BP because it's all sorts of complexities about a specific company but in general a company that doesn't feel it's doing enough in terms of addressing the well-being issues you've got what do you do when you go into the room to advise them what's your message to them we have been in post for two and a half years and we've got a long line of organisations who have done exactly that they've come to us and said we like this idea, we understand the principles what do we play our part so we've had the Scottish Football Association write a report with us on the role of football in a well-being economy really fabulous report, we've worked closely with a big funder in Foundation Scotland who said look we feel that we're investing once harm has happened in a really downstream, reactive way how can we fund in a way that is more upstream and preventive and in line with the well-being economy we've done this but we wrote a report actually on business and the well-being economy of the Scottish Enterprise so we have a long line and that's a few examples a long line of organisations coming to us and asking that and I think that's a showing of serious intent you know how can we work together to better understand this and our door is open for those types of conversations well we'll have to ask you in that case let's take as an example football which isn't always seen as a conventional enterprise perhaps one of the earliest social enterprises was setting out football clubs on the remote of that project when they asked you what you could be doing together lots of things, the first is understanding the role of physical exercise in well-being, in building a sense of community and the impact of that on the lifelong health of those people it's not just when children are playing and starting to play football but it's also things like walking football for older people and the sense of community that brings in a time when coming out of Covid and changing population that loneliness is a real challenge that we're facing so those are a few things it's about community, connection, physical health benefits and that's contribution to prevention and any other examples of companies perhaps more conventional companies you've gone in and changed their behaviour and their perceptions there were lots and lots, we've got a project my favourite is working with a local authority so Perthyn Cymbros Council a council that has got some real struggles with its finance at the moment but also then working with the local health board, education and some charities in that area so Abalau are a key part of it and we've set up a project called Love Lethem Lethem, a place in Cymbros really high areas of multiple deprivation and the local authority and associated partners have said to us how can we play our part to build a well-being economy and the answer through a report we wrote about children's well-being budgeting was actually how do we shift the power towards children and communities and younger people so that we're co-producing a basket of measures that better reflect collective well-being especially for those children and we can then budget with the local authority with the help of others according to that so we're just setting up the phase two of that project the first well-being priority they want to address is frightening and disordered behaviour that's quite a special project and I say this coming from the independent care review which produced the promise which did participation in a really high quality colourful participatory way because we've done the same on this project and children are saying to us yes there are people on the street who are making us feel frightened because of the way they're acting some might be drunk, some might be acting in a certain way but we understand there are underlying issues to why that's happening and there's a really I shouldn't have been surprised but I think it's a symptom of the quality of participation in this project that real understanding of the deeper issues at hand and they want to address those because what's being presented is a symptom of inequality for example in this case so that's one example we've supported organisations like Jaw Brew who are a small brewery who now embody circular economy principles they use bread from their local bakery that's old in order to brew lots of their beer it's an incredible example but there are lots of examples from the micro to local authority to others I would love to get in with bigger businesses I would love to get in with those in the finance space and pensions but how much can you do in a week there's just a week left before you leave just a week left before you leave to that mystery Joel Douglas just to move us a bit more towards the issue that Esther Robertson was raising there about what are the implications of all of this for policy, for government and so on if you imagine the well-being economy by say 2030, 2035 and in your case your particular interest in social enterprise moving from that I should have figured out the percentage of the economy but as well below 5% of the total economy to as you're imagining almost all of it what how different would it look do you think if we managed to get by 2030 to 35 to a really significant shift in the way the economy operates yeah well I mean I think it's supposed to just without going back too far and defending myself I think it's important to say that some businesses are lovely and some are terrible so it's not a quality it wasn't a quality thing it was about the institutional purpose what's the purpose of that entity so I think if you've a butcher in a rural area private business, single guy work there all his life everybody loves it, that's where people gather there's some social impact there that's a wonderful business so I think if there's going to be a move certainly in terms of social enterprise growing the challenge really for government I think is about how we understand subsidy because the majority of social enterprises tend to be working in areas where the market is not operational because it's rural it's in areas of deprivation so people won't open a cafe or a shop or a cinema in that place because it's not commercially viable so quite often social enterprises will develop a business there and that means it's a really really hard business to run because the market conditions are really really challenging and I think there's a bit that seems to me there's a bit of a two different things in terms of that the government understanding how it subsidises the economy I think don't do any more strategy we've got lovely strategies, I love them but I think that's enough but I think they're there, I think it's brilliant that they're done I'm certainly not against them, I'm very very much in favour we need strategy but now it's time to go right how do we actually economically change that business so there's a feeling that if you look at the third sector in social enterprises and I hear this every single day of my life and I use this phrase myself about grant dependence, so you go out to a group and say look you're a bit grant dependent let's see if we can make you a bit more sustainable and that's really negative so it's actually in fact vast strategies of the economy and Emma will correct me again because I'm not an economist but it appears to me that vast ways of the economy are dependent on subsidy, the energy industry nuclear energy can't operate farming fisheries, they would collapse without subsidy but we call it subsidy because we think those bits of the economy are really important so we have to subsidise them but actually these bits of the economy are not so important so I'll finalise maybe with one example rural social enterprise working with people in a business running a business employing people with learning disabilities that I visited a couple of weeks ago will close probably because they can't make that business work because the people that they employ need a lot of support therefore it needs increased staffing to support those people and those people with learning disabilities are being trained and supported and sent out to get jobs in the economy so they are training those people up and then they're going into hospitality in various other industries and working and paying tax in their part of the economy but because at the beginning point there's not enough subsidy going into that that business will probably close imminently so there's something around because it's viewed as being grant dependent and therefore negative in fact if the government looks and says we'll give that industry the same subsidy that we give to farming in the nuclear industry because of all those people going into the economy and then paying tax and not being on benefits it would have a massive impact so it's just a different understanding of where you put that subsidy to make the economy work better this kind of leads on to community wealth building personally and maybe others here puzzled us to exactly what it means but one of the aspects of subsidy there is the use of the government procurement budget to keep things more local tell us a bit about that particularly the issue of an Emma referred to this earlier from the economist's point of view there are trade-offs in almost every decision you make when you've got scarce resources that to procure more locally you may get less efficiency and less of a particular service but nevertheless you keep the money within that local community I think part of that who would disagree with that and I think if you're in a local community or a local authority area and the university and the local authority and the NHS are all spending locally rather than to global companies or national companies based offshore that makes a huge difference and the issue I think we're going to have here is having gone on a visit down to when I spoke we had on a visit a few years ago with colleagues to Preston who helped to develop this and the chief executive was saying brilliant, great idea that we put it all out but of course they've got meals on wheels school dinners, a million toilet rolls that kind of procurement and he said we put that out locally and there was nobody there to do it because the local economy was and didn't have the capacity to develop that so again if we're going to change the economy around that community wealth building which could be incredibly powerful fundamentally different we have to spend the next few years building the capacity of those local communities and that's not social enterprise it's local not social enterprise so that's small private businesses, local businesses small traders, sole traders social enterprises, co-ops but there's a period of time that somebody somewhere has to invest in those local areas to build the capacity so by the time community wealth building legislation is through and there's a legislative directive to invest locally then there's capacity on the ground to take those opportunities up and that could be a game changer to return to what I was asking earlier that by 2030-35 let's say how the economy might look different if what you're saying were brought into being where the policies flowed through from all the strategy that we've got, how differently things might be do you recognise any trade-offs that there are that by sourcing your catering for schools and hospitals from a global company you're going to be able probably to do so more efficiently than you would going to a local company if you have the capacity locally to provide that kind of service it will be cheaper of course so that's the trade-off it's like the example I was using to trade with that social enterprise that I was talking about is expensive because they employ people with learning disabilities so to make that commercially viable which would be ridiculous your cup of coffee would be £20 so you need to make these choices so that's a very common issue for social enterprises getting by is to make their product commercially viable gardening is a good example they can't compete with landscape gardeners or people with disabilities and support needs they can't win in procurement so I suppose what we would need to see is that embedding those well-being economy principles into things like procurement not just procurement then forces that to happen so you would say well actually we need within this procurement to 25% of the workforce has to be people with protected characteristics or something I don't know how you would articulate it but that means that social enterprises private businesses are going to go oh that's a bit of a nightmare but we need to do that to win that tender and that brings that social impact together and it will make things more expensive people need to realise there's more that will cost more so there is a downside yes of course but we're pushing that benefit down the river that Jimmy was talking about or up the river Do you want to talk more about community wealth building because there's legislation coming on this I understand what would you be looking for on that area in particular is going to make a difference Much of what Douglas has described agree heavily with that you talk a lot about things that are reasons to use the word force I'm also interested in the carrots alongside the sticks and the incentives so not just when I was in a previous role I headed up the diabetes and endocrinology unit of a hospital so I was buying insulin pumps for all of our patients across NHS Lothian and I could have purchased from somewhere local but we had an offer of quite a for us a cost saving for somewhere down in England and we made that decision because my mindset was how we're going to save money so it's about shifting mindsets but also providing some carrots and support as well as that I think we talk a lot about the rules and the regulations we also need to see some communities of practice and people coming together and saying I suppose this is what we try to do we all provide proof of concept examples of where it's happening to the traditional folk who can support others and build that domino effect of this is absolutely possible so alongside some of those rules and regs lots of carrots and also the role of imagination you're talking earlier about going into to talk to young people about the services that they get quite often these discussions are constrained by people's inability to think outside the tram lines that they're in how do you get to inspire people to imagine a different future for the economy mmm good question you have to I look back to a similar role where when I was one of the co-chairs at the care review we asked young people adults, children with care experience and we said to them what does a brilliant care system look like to you what does gold standard look like so asking open questions I think is the transferable thing that I would say around the economy and that's what we've done in Love Letham ask open questions about what does a good life mean for you what does gold standard Letham mean for you and then ask the appreciative inquiry questions that follow up from that so I think what I'm saying is you need to ask open questions you need to provide spaces that feel safe where there is real weight attached to what people share it's not just a kind of helicopter in opportunity and you need to make sure that the people doing it have the right skills in participation and that's why People Powered is my favourite P one of the most essential parts of the wellbeing economy it's building that capacity for people to ask good questions and feed that in back I'm doing this like it's a feedback loop into decision making that happens do you please put your hand up if you want to make particular points or ask questions and I shall scan the room and come back to you but before that Emma I just want to feedback in a loop as it were to the discussion we were having about what business does and there are positives that business brings to this on this panel it's not necessarily the main thrust of what you're arguing and promoting but one of the things that business can do is imagine a different future by deploying technology and actually if we look back to even the time that this parliament has existed and it's heading for its quarter century now the economy has changed utterly because of technology digital economy and online economy think of how many sectors have been utterly changed businesses driven out of business continues with Wilco collapsing it's all a result of changes in the way that we shop for instance is there something that the wellbeing economy wealth building and so on can embrace from business about how to innovate and how to embrace technology that actually business does very effectively for good and ill it's a very good question because there is so much that can go wrong as well as that can go better your failure is something that business is sort of built into business that things can go wrong as you were meaning wider than that in terms of actually what that translates to in terms of the workforce for example or the kind of unintended consequences which I think we're all quite mindful of at the moment due to the emerging new AI tools that have become available and that feeling that things are going to change again and it's keeping up with that it's difficult so businesses I think will always embrace new ideas and it's that testbed in a way that real world testbed to see what actually works and what doesn't we talk a lot about that in trying to understand policy what works you actually see in real time although there are companies will hang on for longer than necessarily they're sustainable for so it's sometimes you have these lives I think will co-probably their business model probably has been failing for some time but yeah it's a really interesting question about how you you kind of take what's good and what's working and kind of work to promote that and to to figure out better ways of making it working so we're actually involved in some work on the social care sector at the moment looking at innovation in that sphere in terms of the great things that could be done in terms of freeing up social workers and social care as time by doing some of those using innovation, remote monitoring all of those kinds of things but there's no straightforward answer there there's so many pros and cons it's not, there can be a default assumption that innovation is the right way forward but without taking that step back and actually looking at those unintended consequences I mean someone kind of said innovation would be having you know an Uber style model for social carers and you're like well that would be an innovation but is that actually what we want so you do, yeah we have to keep up with these things but we shouldn't be just assuming that innovation is always particularly technological innovation is always the right way forward Douglas did you think that there's a risk for the social enterprise sector that they see their role in general I know it's a very diverse sector but they see their role as retreating from the drive of technology to create more and more efficiency that it's being social it's focused on people and therefore technology is seen as a threat rather than something offering opportunities No I mean I think it's quite I mean I think this has been partly driven by COVID but I mean I would say and we've set up a within the organisation of work for we've set up a division that delivers digital support because particularly through COVID the demand to us is a support agency, someone speaking as community enterprise now not as social enterprise Scotland but as a support agency to social enterprises the demand for digital support went absolutely through the roof so that has been consistent since then and that's new that's in the last three years I would say so people are very very interested in how do we make our social enterprise is more efficient by doing can we do online training rather than expecting people to come from all over the country to open you know can we developer e-commerce can we digitise our CRM system to make things more efficient it's huge so I mean people are very much embracing it I think the issue in the problems with potentially where private sector is able to support is that there is no resource for that so someone suddenly does that think brilliant idea we design it out and we'll write any £30,000 to do that where does that come from if you're on your own business you might take a loan you might get some investment and to invest in the business but as a social enterprise that's asset locked to find that investment can be quite hard so to make the change can be challenging because of the business model ironically but there's certainly a lot of interest in it now there was a hand at the back there can we get a microphone to you do you please put your hand up the way things these things work is that hands start to go up the final five minutes of the meeting so you have more than five minutes now and now is the time to put your hand up first of all yes thank you for the interesting discussion my name is Dr Wendy Wu I come from Edinburgh Napier University I'm funded for impact investment symposium I can have a passion and research in this area for long years I just want to pick up the technology side you know our observation to work with social enterprise is come from few perspective because I think Dougner said due to the resources constraint and the social enterprise actually had a lot of good practice you know being engaged with technology the challenge actually come from how to scale up I think in terms of how to scale up probably it's a matter of work with higher education because researchers has a lot of IP sitting on the shelf and which can apply to the society, to the community as a solution and then probably we engage with impact-oriented investors and to risk invest on this area so we can kind of prototype the solution in the marketplace so that's one thing related to technology another thing I want to pick up is on social enterprise side and also Dougner's comment as well I mean from our observation we're working with the social enterprise Scotland as well I mean we just felt the social enterprise as a sector being discriminated I mean compare with private sector because social enterprise has a lot of good practices and the social enterprise also has solution in terms of ESG but wealth management guys we heard from them they just say the green finance product fine but they all struggled in terms of dealing with social side and that's where we felt from economic perspective we say economics but exchange but how do we build up the kind of central mechanism to enable these levels of exchange but knowledge spin in from that sector to the private sector so that's my observation thank you Well can I stick with you because obviously you've thought through that and on the second point you're raising can you tell us what your feeling is that can be countered I think this discrimination maybe is kind of still hidden being awakened and on the surface level like government put a lot of policy to you know promote social enterprise but as you know Duncan said because social enterprise is grown up from the community grassroots you know so therefore there is power dynamic as well in terms of implementation and this A and the B in terms of the resource side you know because there are so many good practices happening in Scotland you know actually we're leading this agenda globally as well but it's because of lack of resources and then we wouldn't be able to amplify that impact so that's where we felt it's a great area we need to pay more attention from political side also maybe from capacity building as well because the structure is already put it there to become a barrier for the sector when we're talking about economy and then we think about private business right away and then we discuss that kind of trade off why do we need trade off the purpose if everyone talking about purpose we have the golden diamond in our hand because there's compassion because we care so I would say there's a mindset change as well structure is set up this kind of unwritten so private business come top right and then maybe other co-operate and then higher education then down to the community because community shouldn't be in that kind of hierarchy community should be in the heart in the heart of everything we do and then why we do what we do I don't know whether I articulated clearly Did I hear you correctly saying that part of this is when you when a social enterprise goes to a private funder that finance is also part of that discrimination It's part of that discrimination if I shouldn't pick this let's pick up the name Scottish National Investment Bank Why the threshold investment for community is one million how many business in the community can reach that one million threshold why this one million become the scene I mean we obsess with growth strategy I mean what do we mean by growth everyone is going to grow old grow to the point we die what do we mean by growth you know so I would say growth is really aligned with Jimmy's point but we growth community would save space everyone don't dare to voice themselves because we don't have the judgment being empowered and we grow resilience and the growth capacity to deal with changes uncertainty in the community we're facing the environment and growth respect towards nature towards each other To return to your first point to ask Jimmy about that about technology as you see it I had a discussion from your other co-panelist here what's your response to technology in the well-being economy I think it depends you know are we I suppose again some of the framing is is it getting away from us are we passive recipients of technology and AI and all this innovation or do we have the scope to try and shape what direction that takes and for what purpose and Emma beautifully explained the need for purpose to be at the heart of technology and innovation done some work in previous roles digital health and care institute and some of the things they're developing to ensure the health of elderly patients those who are struggling with alcoholism and things like that absolutely incredible and brilliant and that is one good example of use of technology and artificial intelligence to improve lives I think what we do have and I'm going to steal this quote from one of my favourite people in Scotland his name's Jim McCormick he heads up the Robertson Trust a big funder he said at an event a couple of weeks ago change has never been faster but it's never going to be this slow ever again so we have the opportunity to imagine hope and inspire and try and work towards that and align ourselves including technology and innovation and artificial intelligence towards serving this or be passive recipients of wherever it takes us and just run with that Jim McCormick is one of my favourite people in Scotland as well so there's something we've got in common I'm not seeing other hands at the moment sorry am I missing one because of bright lights yes you're right in front of a bright light so that's why I didn't see you Thanks very much I hope it's okay to slightly change tack here I don't have any skin in this game I'm not an economist or anything but I am a tax payer and my question is really for the panel I understand why there's been a focus on business both private business and social enterprise because as the economy grows and becomes more wealthy the idea is that it trickles down but we've already heard from the woman who was there that the inequality gap has hugely increased in the UK and presumably in Scotland as well so my question is what do we do about that is taxation the only tool available to us if so is our tax system working at the moment and what do we have to do to make it work better or are there other things that economists actually I don't think this is a question for economists to answer it's really for politicians but what would your suggestions be Emma first of all is it the case that inequality has increased my sense is that awareness of inequality has increased a great deal more than the actual figures suggest so when you look at the figures for inequality and there are different ways of measuring it which I won't go into but in terms of historical trends it shot up during the 80s and 90s and stabilised relatively stabilised during the 2000s and it has been pretty stable over the last decade or so if you're just looking at the gap between say it's not the richest 1% they've gone stratospheric but say the top 10% is in terms of income versus someone at the bottom so yeah awareness of inequality has increased but actually the trends sometimes tell a different story a lot of that driven by public policy in the early 2000s particularly I think that idea of trickle-down economics actually I think is pretty I'd meet fewer economists that is a realistic way to consider the trickle is minuscule by the time it gets to the bottom it's not a model that has seemed to be the evidence points to actually being real sorry I think we can all agree on that one the next question was getting at something we heard earlier on predistribution as opposed to redistribution is the tax system as a means of redistribution the best way of going about addressing inequality or should we be addressing what Jimmy mentioned much earlier on about predistribution and how would you define that taxation is just one root so I think in terms of thinking about predistribution this actually goes back to one of the terms right at the start you mentioned the inclusive growth which I know it's not well understood in terms of what it actually is but part of it was around that using the proceeds of growth to redistribute but this flip side of it was ensuring that growth when growth happened or when people in terms of who was involved in creating that growth that the right conditions were in place for them to tackle some of these issues around inequality so going back to your example people with learning disabilities that they need to be part of the labour market rather than just relying on say the social care system or the social security system to give them a minimum standard of living they need to be part of that model from the beginning so it's ensuring that the right conditions are in place to allow that so it's probably not the same form of predistribution that Jimmy would talk about but it's that idea that you can't just rely on what comes out of the tax system it has to be embedded in terms of the economic model and there will be trade-offs in that in terms of potentially lower growth but more sustainable in terms of the long term so I think that not just because I worked on it when I was in the Scottish Government but since then it actually makes a lot of sense to me that that's the way you can frame some of this and when you talk to Gary Gillespie he has said when I've spoken to him about it that the wellbeing economy is kind of maybe the next step along from that but it's still at the heart of trying to get these systems to kind of work together Do you want to pick up on that because you introduced us for today at least to the word predistribution and to say a bit more about how you think it could work as opposed to redistribution through the taxation system Can I do the politician thing and answer that first and I'll detour back to you if that's okay First of all really glad you asked the question I think people who aren't economists need to be in spaces like this more often so thank you I'm no expert in the history of inequality and how far we've come or not in the last 20 or 30 years but I do know 20 richest families in Scotland have the same wealth as the poorest 1.6 million Population of Edinburgh, Glasgow and the Highland combined the world inequality report 2022 told us that the richest 10% took more than half of all new income and 76% of all wealth that was generated whereas the bottom 50% captured just 2% so not only do we have an economy where wealth is unequal it's certainly growingly unequal when you look at it from this lens to answer your point about predistribution there's actually lots that we share in that definition absolutely in terms of getting the economy to do more of the heavy lifting is how we describe it and there are elements of tax that are essential to that, I've spoken about the other P's as well, these need to work together but really understanding what might be seen as less progressive taxation, VAT if you earn 10 times more than we we still pay the same amount of VAT on a chocolate bar and is that fair the fact that we've not really explored the potential for windfall tax on unfairly earned incomes these things should really be thought about that we could I know we're more scarce resourced than we have been 10, 15 years ago it was almost the first thing I was told as I started my career in the NHS hard times are coming but the pie is definitely not equally shared and what can we do to make sure that through taxation that pie is more equally shared, is it acceptable whether we've come a long way or not in the last 23 years, is it acceptable that one in four children in Scotland live in poverty and that might be worse because that figure is from pre-pandemic levels so you know are these things acceptable and that's not even considering the planetary element of how our economy operates we are short of time to discuss the big question that actually Esther who's still with us asked earlier on and this is about applying what we've been talking about to what now needs to happen we've got lots of strategy but it's a tactical approach to how you can use the powers constrained by democratic politics of course but the ability to persuade people that this is going to be these are going to be good changes that they will vote for what can we do with the powers of this parliament what would have to be done at Westminster and how much is constrained by a reality of being in a very open economy where we can have all of these things but if what we say is we're going to ditch GDP growth as a target it changes our role relative to the rest of the world economy that we operate within I'm going to ask you to begin to sum up really what do we need to do to achieve the kind of things that you would like to see in the economy well I think we've obviously talking about a new kind of economy and I think we said earlier on I'm certainly not sitting here saying this is anti-GDP I think one of the first things I said I want certainly all the enterprises we working with to be generating as much money as humanly possible generating money is good it's about how it's generated and colleagues here talked about the differential between staff there's the living wage, as Emma said some organisations we work with can't afford that but they should be paying living wage so I suppose it's about what economy do we want and it's how do you generate money and then what do you do with that money that's the two fundamental big questions and what a government can do is look at those two questions and say well okay what we need strategy first, well as we've said that's kind of there but then we need structures could be put in place to make that happen and they have the power to do that so things like free bus travel for young people under 21 setting up south of Scotland enterprise I think was a good thing to do to create that different kind of economy in the south of Scotland so the government has the power to say well what structures would really help, those kind of things really help and then it is back to taxation it's what happens with money and it's a finite pot of money and I think we have to have fundamental question about what kind of Scotland do we want and therefore how are we going to use those finite resources and we can't dual the A9 and pay for this and sort social care and pay everybody the living wage because the money just runs out so there's hard questions to be answered and I mean a government needs to listen to people and then make those decisions about strategy structure and money If it comes down to it spend a bit less on your roads budget because you want to see a very different structure of subsidies to be able to support social enterprise Absolutely they need mechanisms in there I think there are some constraints around social enterprise my colleague here talked about the investment being a real problem and some support, somebody has mentioned growth and there are some support agencies in Scotland that will say well we will support you but only if you are going to increase your turnover by 400% most social enterprises will say well I don't want to do that I have no aspiration to do that so there is something around tapping into those structures that needs to be changed Priorities Emma and on the ground what's achievable if you are in the business of writing manifestos or advising ministers still Yeah so I can't let an opportunity to go by about talking about my favourite topic which is council tax so that encapsulates so many of the things and the challenges we've talked about today council tax in desperate need of reform everyone agrees but it's not happening Everyone accepts people who have to change it and the reason why the politicians don't want to change it is because they don't think it will be acceptable to the people that are going to be asked to pay more so where is that we need almost like a movement of the people who are going to have to pay more to be like no actually that's fine and there's a lot of people that would be in that boat myself included I think but still there's this fear that the public won't accept it and therefore the politicians won't go near it so it's not a case of you know if it being businesses that are being the kind of a slow in demand businesses want a better functioning property market as well then property taxation is how you do that and they feel the same way about business rates also based on an old economy of bricks and mortar but why is that not happening and that comes down to this parliament being able to make those hard decisions but it doesn't feel able to because it doesn't think the population is behind it so how do you fix that this may be your last word does anything else you want to add about in terms of what the government would need to prioritise I think it is about consistency and that is my key my key thought in terms of going forward and council tax comes into that but also rather than just saying that this is what we believe in this is what we are doing actually putting those policies in place that actually make them happen even if they are unpopular and I think that goes down to so many different areas we've talked about if they want a well-being economy then they just have to get on and do it and stop with the hot air in terms of saying they will and then not doing anything about it Jimmy, last word to you in terms of priorities and what is achievable and step by step getting to where the vision is well again before I do that I do this the other way around I should have done the pitch right at the start for what wheel Scotland is and what we do and I will be brief an organisation looking and the phrase wheel comes from the well-being economy alliance but the purpose is to bring us together to advocate for change so advice for people in the room or watching what you can do is join us as a member you will be very welcome as an individual or as an organisation we are really keen to work together to be that collective voice to influence government to make sure you can feed into the various and many consultations on the various things that are underway for the Scottish Government right now and our new director is Aileen McLeod formerly of Scottish Cabinet formerly member of European Parliament and she is stepping in on a six-month basis so a real upgrade, she is incredible but what some tangible steps then to be different from what we have already heard and because the chair of my board is here who is head of open government at Scottish Government I think we could double down in our efforts to centre as Wendy said communities so I would love to see more work done around citizens assemblies and meaningful participation which forms the mandate of the people so that politicians know it's almost flipping it you guys are the mandate, we're the mandate and politicians know that in order to be voted in they need to adhere to these principles and get behind an economy that works for people and planet the other thing would be to do what Wales have done which is set up a future generations commissioner and make sure that every decision we make we have a lens on the unborn and our younger children and the planet as well as us right now because as we've heard on this panel that is too often an afterthought thank you very much there's so much more to discuss about this and maybe you want to continue that discussion in the parliament for everybody here thank you very much for coming along somebody made the point that you don't have skin in the game as a taxpayer, as a voter we all have skin in the game you don't have to be an economist to do that I'd like to thank economists and non-economists Emma Congrive Jimmy Paul Douglas Westwater for a really interesting discussion, thank you very much indeed for your contributions there I'd also like to thank our partners the cross-party group on social enterprise and Scottish Parliament's futures forum as well for their considerable assistance in putting all this together and all the audio-visual people who've been doing the work as well and a reminder that the festival of politics is not over yet there's a discussion of Scotland's poverty problem which starts at 1.30 and where are the ethics in artificial intelligence still to come so there's a lot of attractions on Edinburgh at this time of year but thank you to the organisers for putting this one on and a very fine programme of events as well so do stick around if you'd like to attend these otherwise have a very good Friday thank you