 F awaken back. I do hope that you all enjoy your networking and the workshops. We're just about to move on to a question-and-answer session with our cross-party panel. You'll have gathered by now just how important it is that we have these opportunities to get together, and a really important part of the conference is that connection. I was previously privileged to take part in this cross-party panel and I'm just going to share a little of my experience. I was taking part in the panel, I took a question from a business owner and I expressed my interest and support for for their work in trying to expand an outdoor pursuits business. Fast forward a few months and I found myself being fitted with a helmet and a harness. Next thing I'm in a land rover and I'm heading up a rugged hillside. A few minutes later I find myself standing on a wooden platform with the business owner saying to me, there's the Solway Firth, there's the Isle of Man. Brief seconds later I'm clipped to what was at that point Europe's longest zip wire and I found myself whizzing across passing belted galloweys, foliage, farms and the like, but I suppose the important part of that story is that I had an opportunity to visit that business and understand the challenges facing those who wish to get businesses off the ground and to see them sustained and developed. Anyway, enough of that. It's my great privilege to introduce our panellists today. We have John Swinney MSP, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery and, as we've heard, Interim Finance and Economy Minister. We have Liz Smith MSP from the Conservative and Unionist Party, Daniel Johnson MSP from Scottish Labour, Maggie Chapman MSP from Scottish Greens and, of course, my colleague with his deputy, Presiding Officer, hat on at times, Liam McArthur MSP today representing the Scottish Liberal Democrats. This is now your opportunity to put questions to the panel. I want to encourage as many questions and answers as possible and, as I would often say in the course of my weekly normal days, because short, concise questions and responses will enable me to get more people in to this session. We'll hear from more of you. Please just put up your hands. Do you stand if you're able, if you just share your name and organisation? Who would like to kick off? My name is Graham Galloway. I work with a charity based in Carymure called Cary Connections. We haven't really heard enough about the impact that the third sector has on the Scottish economy so far. There are 45,000 charities, social enterprises and community interest companies in Scotland that generate over £5 billion for the Scottish economy. The actual impact is significantly higher than that because the social return on that money is huge on the support that charities give to our statutory organisations. We're here talking about a 10-year strategy. The reality is that for most small charities, they can't even look three years into the future because they're stuck in an endless round of short-term funding issues. My question to the panel is how do we support the third sector to look at a 10-year strategy? How do we give an option for a long-term view for the third sector in Scotland? I'm probably not going to put every question to every panel member, but to get us off, to kick us off, if we could each address that briefly and we'll start from this end of work to the right. I think that, just from your start, you said that you're from Carymure, which is, of course, a wonderful town in Angus that I had the privilege to represent for many years, so welcome indeed. I think that the issues on supporting the third sector has a critical role to play within our society in a whole variety of different walks of life, whether that's in the delivery of some of the essential support and services in communities that are available, or alternatively, as the provider of commercial goods within our economy. I heard a superb example last night from Gary Lane, who was from Dovetail Enterprises in Dundee, who manufactures furniture and mattresses as part of a social enterprise. It's a glorious example of what should happen, which is that they were able to pitch for public procurement work from Social Security Scotland, who have got new offices in the city of Dundee opposite the V&A, and they have won a contract there, and they are supplying that. That's what should happen. I'm not going to sit here and insult you by saying that that happens all the time. It doesn't happen enough in my view. The procurement workshop today that will have wrestled with some of those questions, I think, we've got to make sure that the procurement process is easier for social enterprises to be considered there. Secondly, I think that our enterprise agencies have got to be active supporters of social enterprise. You are businesses, you are not charities, so you merit as much business support as other organisations. Thirdly, in terms of public funding—I'm very close to those issues and I know the difficulties—ideally, where there is public funding available, it should be available on a more sustained basis. The longest it's ever going to be is going to be three years in reality. We don't often get that far because we perhaps don't have the line of sight about future budgets that will enable us to do that. I'm putting a budget through Parliament just now, which has only got a one-year horizon in it because we've got such uncertainty about the public finances. Ideally, a longer line of sight would help to support organisations such as your own. First of all, for your question, it's exactly the same question that was asked at the recent SDI conference, because, as John Swinney rightly said, the work that you do is absolutely critical, not just because of the impact on the economy, but because of the excellent work that you can do from a social dimension. Daniel Johnson and I sit on the finance committee in this Parliament, and one of our concerns is exactly on the last point that John Swinney raised, is that you're not able to plan ahead for what you want to do in taking decisions about the future sustainability, because you're having to live from one month to the next, not really knowing what your finances are going to be. I think that there's a lesson for the Parliament in this. We're trying to get greater transparency on where money goes and how effective it is when it's being delivered on a project. We would like to see budgets that have more scope for at least a three-year period. That's something that universities and colleges would like to see, for example. It's a really good question that you've asked. We've got a role right here in this Parliament to try to make it possible to have a greater future for you by better budget. Liam? I should probably start by declaring an interest. My wife is the director of a third sector enterprise in Orkney. As you've heard from John and Liz, third sector is absolutely integral in every community across the country, but that's no more the case than in a community like Orkney. I won't repeat the points that have been made in relation to funding. I think that that's well understood. I think that we've made some progress, but we need to make a good deal more in providing line of sight and certainty on future funding. I think that in terms of the procurement point that John was referring to, I think that taking it back a step, I think that there's more that we can also do in terms of the co-design of those services so that in a sense what third sector aren't doing are simply bidding in for something where the parameters have already been set. I think also from a conversation I was having last night, actually there is more of a, in a well-being economy, it's not surprising that we're seeing more of a blurring of the lines between social enterprises and more traditional-style businesses, and I think that we need to recognise that, reflect that, and I think that in terms of the support that's provided to those social enterprises and businesses, the eligibility criteria and other aspects of how you access that financial and other support probably need a refresh because in a sense that you're constantly having to do that, I think, but at the moment, and given the visions going forward, it seems an appropriate point to look at reflecting that better in terms of the support that the enterprise agencies and others are providing. Daniel? So, I'll make two points, one broad point and one specific point about funding. So, in terms of the broad point, I've just been sitting in the tourism workshop where we're talking about the challenge of technology adoption and actually about staying relevant access to customers, and all of those things are absolutely true, and what struck me as a former retailer with a complete read-across retail, but actually it's a complete read-across for the third sector as well, and I think one of the things we need to recognise, these challenges facing business are actually just the challenges in terms of running an organisation, be it private sector, be it third sector, be it social enterprise, be it the public sector. So, let's actually give policies that actually have all organisations embrace the challenges that are facing them in terms of workforce, productivity, technology, et cetera. So, I think we need to make sure that all of those policies are addressed and encompass third sector and social enterprises. So, that's a sort of broad point. On the specific point, we absolutely have to get a minimum of three-year planning horizons. I think one of the things, and I accept what John is saying about the limitations that Scottish Government have, but what I would also say until the private sector organisations as a retailer, I'd have loved to have known what my revenue was going to be next year absolutely precisely. I never did. It didn't stop me from making plans, having a best case, an expected, an epistemistic scenario and setting out the parameters. Even if beyond the planning horizon, you can't absolutely have 100 per cent certainty that we could have at least the kind of insight into the decision making that might be that the future decision in terms of funding will be made upon. So, at least you have some insight, as opposed to essentially being a cliff edge and a black curtain beyond the current funding cycle. Thanks, Graham. Thank you very much for your question. I think one of the really important things in your question is the benefit, the social benefit of the work that the third sector taking broadly does, and I don't think we account for that effectively in either the way in which we support, as John says, through social enterprises and the enterprise agencies, but also actually in some of the structures and the processes that we have in place. I don't disagree with what Daniel said about multi-year funding. We've been talking about multi-year funding for over a decade and the security of that, but I think that there's also something else within that. It's okay to say, yes, we have that multi-year funding, but does that multi-year funding provide full cost recovery? Does the single-year funding that we have provide full cost recovery for a range of charities? The answer is no. Within that as well, so many third sector organisations, and I say this as somebody who's worked in and had to go through the process of grant applications, you know you can work for nine months of the year. In the last three months, you're starting redundancy processes for staff, you're starting funding applications, whether it's to the Scottish Government or it's to other funders, and I think we have to have a look at that process. Why is it that every single year, every single third sector organisations needs to show the same levels of proof that they are doing what they are doing to the same funders to get the same poultry sums of money? Why can we not streamline that? Why can we not have a central system that says, we know that you check child protection criteria, we know that you check vulnerable adult support criteria, we don't need to review that every single year. Maybe we should review it on a less regular basis, absolutely, but I think in the process of funding applications, particularly for third sector organisations that are relying on Scottish Government or other sort of lottery funding, those kinds of things, you don't want to be spending a quarter of your year in that funding doom because that's a quarter of your effort wasted, a quarter of your time not spent delivering the services that we know delivers the impact for society and community wellbeing. I'll take two or three questions together. I'm going to make sure I'm looking round everywhere. Can I take the ladies' second from the back row there? I'll take the gentleman behind and at the back here too. So we'll take these three and put them to the panel. Thank you. I'm from our retailer in Scotland. We have 12 stores. We've been opening our doors onto the Scottish High Street for 125 years, and we very much welcomed the freeze and the poundage rate and the rates. But sadly, again, just as we had to do through a pandemic, we were seeing businesses south of the border and also the Welsh Government following suit to give better relief and rates for the year ahead. We've seen December with the postal strikes, more people coming back to the High Street, which is better for our economy, and it seems that, really, for us to get that support and rates, does it protect the rate income that we give put back into the Scottish economy? I mean, our income is £265,000 a year in rates, and I think that a bit of help this year would certainly be welcomed. I think that this week, even more important, as you see the loss of Eamon Co, which we're pretty much trading in every High Street in Scotland near enough, and that's now being bought by an English retailer, which is more than likely going to close most of that footprint. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Back here. Bill Island from Logan Energy. We deal with renewable energy and hydrogen. I find the comment about looking one year ahead quite bizarre. We don't plan hospitals, roads, power stations, wind farms on a year-by-year basis that you look at the total cost of ownership, and I think that is a major problem with our political system, is that we don't actually look at long-term investment that we can put forward. I mean, we are doing this on a build-on-operate basis that we are going to be generating renewable energy for the next 20, 25 years and producing hydrogen for transport for heating. We're working with our becky distillery to decarbonise their whisky products and gin and vodka. All of that is long-term. That's not a year-by-year basis, that's a 20-year plan. So I think there needs to be a change in that attitude to invest in Scotland, Scotland businesses, Scotland infrastructure, and that's I think what's happening in the in Scotland wind, is that that's not looking at next year, that's actually looking at the next 50 years. Thank you, and I'll take the question at the back here too. Thank you. Edmunds, from Carbon Capture Scotland, we captured CO2 in Scotland. It's a little bit related to Bill's question actually. We're developing a process too that will remove a million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere per year before 2030. I was just wondering what the panel thinks are good ways to incentivise decarbonisation or indeed carbon removal in the short and medium term. Okay, thank you. I'm going to put those questions in the first instance to Liz. First of all, can I just pick up the point from the lady about business rates and the relief that your colleagues down south have had? I'm sure Mr Swinney will be asking me fairly shortly to have a little bit of engagement before stage three of the budget, and one of the things I would like to put to him is that through the Barnett consequentials there should be some money available to help with that. You're absolutely right. When we look particularly at leisure, retail and hospitality, critical areas of the economy are making a very good case on that basis. On the questions of planning ahead, one of the tensions at the moment, whether it's budget down south or budget here, is that some of the infrastructure projects that we would all like to see are hugely expensive and they are putting real tensions within the budget planning because some of those infrastructure projects are desperately needed, but they wouldn't be developed over a period of a year or even three years. Some of them will be 10, 20 years just as you've rightly set out. I think that we need to think very carefully about the planning that we have for infrastructure projects. One of the things in this Parliament is the fact that there is a national performance framework. Another issue that's come up at the finance committee is how well are we spending the money that we are delivering on key projects? I think that there's a good case to be put about measuring the value of what we're doing, so I totally accept the point that you've made. Also, in relation to the medium-term planning, I think that that's part of the same issue. We need to decide, budgets are about making choices, very difficult choices particularly just now. I think that we need to decide where is the best value, particularly as we're trying to strive towards net zero. That is a big tension at the moment about how weak, and I know that this is something that local government feeds back to us just now. There's a lot of tension about their desperate to ensure that they are greener with net zero at the top of the agenda, but they're getting into difficulty with how quickly that can happen. I think that that's a real problem, to be quite honest. It's a very difficult issue, and I think that that comes back to the heart of some of the budget issues that we're grappling with just now. I take the two topic areas. First of all, on rates relief, there's the illicit's correct. Those are integral decisions in the budget process that we are involved in. I've been very open with Parliament that we face enormous pressures in that budget process. I haven't been able to put into the budget all the commitments that people would want me to put in simply because of the limitations of finance and the corrosive effect of inflation. We really need to see an economic strategy that reduces inflation because it will be a corrosive weakening of so much of the investment in our economy if we don't succeed in that. On rates relief, I've responded as well as I can to date to the calls from business organisations to freeze business rates. That comes at a cost to the public purse of about £308 million. The total package of support and a lot of retail businesses will be touched by the reliefs that we have in place through the small business bonus scheme. We estimate that about half of retail and hospitality businesses will essentially be exempt from business rates by the nature of that. I accept, however, that there will be stores such as the Wilkie stores that have a larger footprint that will make them pay business rates. That is essentially the conclusion that I've been able to get to so far with the resources that are available to me, but, as Liz Smith says, we have further stages of the parliamentary process to go through. On the two points that two gentlemen raised, one on carbon capture and one on renewable energy, I would like to reassure gentlemen that we are not just looking at things 12 months ahead. That might be in immediate budget issues. However, there is an important point about policy certainty, because if you look at the question of policy certainty on renewable energy, we gave policy certainty 15 years ago that our Government would be committed to the decarbonisation of electricity. There was no wavering. There was no equivocation. There was no humming and hawing. We were decarbonising electricity. We gave that policy certainty. What then happened was that other people in the private sector, most of the power companies and investors, looked at the policy certainty that we gave and invested in renewable electricity to the point where Scotland has largely decarbonised our electricity networks in about 15 years. Why was that? It was not because the Government put loads of money in that the Government gave policy certainty, which was not going to waver and private companies were then able to invest. Thank goodness that we did that. That is where I come to carbon capture. It needs policy certainty as well. It is a tool that we are going to stick with for the long term so that investors can get behind the project at the back that I was hearing about last night, which is fascinating, and recognise that we can help to capture carbon in different ways and different forms to ensure that we realise that potential. It does not always need money from the Government, but it does need policy certainty and direction. On the question of carbon capture, I think that it is very clear where the Government is coming from. If you can offer that policy certainty, I think that it helps. It is not just all about one-year budgets, it is about policy certainty too. For those questions, on the rates, I will not repeat what Liz and John have said, but I think that one of the things that we need to do seriously in Scotland over the coming years is to think about what we mean when we are talking about taxation around property, around land, around those kinds of things for businesses as well as for citizens. I do not think that we have started those conversations early enough, and I appreciate that that is not going to support us now. It is not going to support you in your businesses from April, but I think that we do have the next few weeks to engage in the budget process, as John and Liz have outlined. However, we must not lose sight of the need for quite radical reform in how taxation works. On the planning and investment questions, I think that we are in the mess that we are in, in a whole range of different situations, whether that is the climate emergency or whether that is our economic situation, because we have failed to plan over decades. We have failed to do the necessary long-term planning and have the policy consistency alongside that that John has talked about. I think that there are attempts. We are starting to do that better than we have done before, and I think that there is still quite a lot of education for us as politicians, for business communities and for others to come into thinking what does this actually look like? One of the challenges, I think, is that in times of economic hardship, the almost knee-jerk reaction is to close ranks, is to look inward. Where we see some of the more radical approaches to dealing with economic uncertainty, it is bringing more people in, it is looking out to people. We are starting to do that, but we can learn much more effective ways of doing some of that if we look to other parts of the world. I am thinking particularly around some of the really quite groundbreaking and now normal approaches to budgeting and planning that they do in Latin America. On the investment point, I think that we may disagree on the specifics around that industry, but it is not only policy certainty. I think that there is something else to look at that the wider environment is why would people come in terms of the skills, in terms of the expertise? Why would people choose to come to Scotland to support those kinds of industries and those kinds of endeavours? We do not always make those kinds of connections. There may be money available or never enough, but there may be some targeted investment that is needed, but it is actually the bigger picture because treating those kinds of things in isolation in a vacuum, I think, misses the wider benefits that we could have for societies a whole. Thank you. I am going to take some more questions. Please do put up your hands. I am going to go here in the first instance and then there. Was there another hand there? No? I have got one there, one there. Let's take these two questions together. Hi, I am Louise McQuade from the Enterprise Scotland. I just want to touch on what we talked about this morning about upskilling and reskilling and looking at that from a rural perspective. I think that living in a remote and rural area, what happens in communities is that we find a way of just getting by because that is what we have to do. There is that mentality, well, that is just what we do. Therefore, there is no value in themselves, in their skills, in their industry. What I was wondering was what actions are you taking at policy level to go from a bottom-up approach rather than a top-down approach in one, seeing that these industries, particularly agriculture and agriculture in Orkney, the value that they have in themselves and the wider community, and how we can use that in education. We want to upskill, and there is a vast range of skillset, but they do not see that value in themselves. How can we embed that and bring that into policy in using rurality and the remote skills that we use on a daily basis, living in remote areas, to more central belt, because there is a massive skillset there and they have that attitude. That is just what we do. However, can we use those skills and how are we going to work that into policy, if at all, to utilise those skills and bring it to other industries from the rural context? My name is Kirsty Thompson. I am the founder and chief exec of The Circle, which is based in Dundee in Glasgow. I am a social entrepreneur, first and foremost. I am also a Wes ambassador. I would like to talk to you about the structuring that we have set up. We operate three premises across Scotland. Right now, that is over 50,000 square foot of premises that we are operating. We support charities and social enterprises in terms of affordable accommodation. We offer a consultancy support to charities and social enterprises, and we also offer an HNC-level qualification to those going through that training. Our purpose is very clear. We are a living wage provider. We adopt fair working practices. We are also a four-day working week provider. We, by our very nature, are focused on the people in our organisations as assets. We invest in their mental health and wellbeing right now through support through psychologists. I do not think that there is any denial on the purpose of what we are there to do. However, right now, my organisation employs 20 people. We are responsible for 31 other charities and social enterprises through the buildings that we run. Right now, the cost that we are covering is a 400 per cent increase in our energy costs, and we need to pay our wage bill every month. What is the Government going to do to support that? I am going to put that one in the first instance to Daniel and Lenthe Liam. I apologise, Presiding Officer, but I cannot hear business rates being mentioned and not say something about it. It is a topic where I struggle to remain a politician and not revert back to being a shopkeeper that saw one of my units go from having an RV of £11,000 to £45,000 and having to go through that whole journey of appealing. That has changed a little bit, but the fundamental point that I would make is that it is a levy that the Government does not want to touch because it is nice and consistent, but that actually almost demonstrates why it does not work, because it does not reflect the context that businesses face. A levy such as that, which has to be adjusted so much and altered so much on a time-to-time basis, actually shows you that it is a dysfunctional levy. We need more fundamental reform of that level of taxation. Businesses should be contributing to local services, but we need one that actually reflects the business context and one that does not actually inhibit their investment, which many sectors business rates do. On young enterprise Scotland and upskilling, I think that fundamentally what you are talking about is so important. People are a finite resource. We are entering a situation where the workforce is shrinking and that is not just in Scotland, that is globally. By the end of this century, the global population will be falling. Therefore, we need to ensure that upskilling is something that we are doing from the beginning but right the way people's working careers. We need to be thinking about the successes that we have had in skills, but building on that, making sure that we continue to have absolutely solid credible qualifications but that we ask ourselves what is stopping people from accessing them, what is preventing people from getting them. We also need to show young people the pathways. There is a huge amount in that, and I am covering it incredibly briefly, but I think that this is one of the urgent topics of our time. Upskilling and re-skilling is what we need to get much, much better at if we are going to have a smaller workforce. April is a horrific cliff edge. 400 per cent is not the worst multiplier that I have heard in terms of the increase in utilities bills that organisations are facing. I do not think that there are any simple answers, but I think that one of the fundamental things that we really need to do, because not all of that is within the auspices of the Scottish Government, is to really urge an action to try to get ourselves off gas, whether that is commercial premises or domestic premises. Is that quick? No, but the sooner we accelerate that action, the sooner we will see the benefits of it. Again, that is a huge topic and a very brief answer, but I do not think that there is enough cognisance of what a cliff edge April is bringing for businesses. There is one local business that shows me that their renewal quote is going to show that their utilities are going to go from a five-figure sum to a six-figure sum, and that is being faced by a lot of organisations, private, voluntary, third sector or what have you. I think that John Earlyeron said how delighted he was to see Graham a former constituent here in the chamber. Can I say how ecstatic I am to have one of my own constituents here in asking a question that happens? A good deal more rarely than it is for probably anybody else on the panel. I think that I would echo what Daniel said in relation to the importance of that point about upskilling and reskilling. I think that the point that you make about the particular dynamics in a rural and island community, I mean that Orkney has been fortunate to have relatively low unemployment over recent decades, but high levels of under-employment and certainly low wage. I think that some of that stems from the undervaluing of the skills that are there. We rely very heavily on volunteering, for example, for the contribution that the third sector etc and charities make within that community. That is fantastic, but I think that to some extent it has contributed to that undervaluing of those skills. I think that the only cautionary note I would lodge is that for very good and sensible reasons that the Government in the previous session brought forward requirements for home care workers, for example, to go through training that would allow the accreditation of the skills that they had. For many in the isles, and obviously, Louise, you are out in one of the north isles, though not quite as north as the one I was brought up on. That led to those in the home care sector in a lot of those isles saying, you know what, I am going to step back from this, because I cannot afford the time to come into Kirkwall to go to Orkney-Call to do the courses. I agree that we need to find ways of upskilling and reskilling, but let us make sure that we do it in a way that does not actually make the problems, particularly in highly pressurised services or businesses, even worse in the way that we do it. I had an opportunity to chat last night with the enterprise that you are engaged in in Dundee and Glasgow and hopefully further afield in due course. It is a wonderful example of what can be done to regenerate within communities, to give back, et cetera, and part of what I was saying earlier about blurring those lines between social enterprise and more traditional businesses is reflected in what you do. Daniel is right in terms of the urgent need to decouple our electricity prices from gas, I think, as exemplified by what you say. The other example that you were using last night was because of the model that you are operating. You have a dozen 17, 18 metres within those premises and therefore you are dealing with additional standing charges, et cetera, et cetera. I think there need to be creative ways about dealing with those specific aspects, but I think more broadly we need to get to a situation where our electricity, particularly as we are decarbonising energy generation as a whole, we need to find a way to decouple from gas prices, because I think that that is the only sustainable way that businesses like yourself, but across the field, are going to be able to survive. I think that as a response from Government, I am going to bring in the Deputy First Minister here. Thanks very much, Presiding Officer. Just one comment to add on the skills point that I think addresses the point that Liam is raising, although he will then follow up by saying to me, yes, but only if the broadband is good enough. That is about digital learning opportunities. I think that there are a lot of very good examples. The two colleges in the south of Scotland in Borders and Delfreson-Galloway have launched a Hubbard-Spoke model that allows the distribution through digital technology of learning to a vast array of village halls, the length and breadth of the borders. It does depend upon broadband, so I know that it is a challenge, Liam. Do you believe the point before me? Well, I know exactly that, but I have heard you talking about these issues before, but I think that it is part of the answer to the point that you raised. On Kirsty's point, I think that we all probably agree that the energy market is failing completely. It is absurd what is going on, just then, totally absurd. The danger is that organisations, such as your own and many other organisations, who are of themselves, are perfectly sustainable operations, but they cannot possibly deal with changes in energy cost of the magnitude that you are talking about. It is just preposterous. The energy market needs to be fixed, so I completely gave my colleagues about the reform that is required there. In the short term, however, you face challenges in April. The answer to that has to be a revisiting of the windfall taxes on energy companies. The profits that were made yesterday and announced yesterday by Shell are ludicrous, totally absurd. We are making those points to the United Kingdom Government, who have the power here. That has to be remedied, because the market is not supposed to work like that. It is not supposed to generate those absurd conclusions. On the one hand, you have Shell making exorbitant profits, and on the other, you and countless other people here are absolutely going to be facing tough times. I had a constituent who came to see me, a very successful businessman. I doubt that he will ever be a supporter of mine politically—a very different political views on the world. He said to me that there is a massive wealth redistribution exercise going on here, and it is completely and utterly dysfunctional. It is wealth distribution from loads and loads of people here in the businesses that you are operating in to a very small cohort of shareholder groups in the energy companies. That needs to be remedied, because the gain that has been made in the long-term energy market reform and the short-term, the windfall tax needs to be revisited. I will just be completely candid about our public finances. I was rehearsing those issues with Daniel Johnson just yesterday. The Scottish Government's budget—I have fully allocated all that we have—is for me to have a credible energy reduction price package for you, which would take, I do not know, probably £1.5 billion or £2 billion. It is just beyond us, so it needs that intervention as a windfall tax in the short term, which we are pressing the UK Government to consider. Thank you. I am going to take further questions. We will go here in the first instance. Are there any others? Then to yourself. I will take those two questions. Hello, my name is Christine Stewart. I am a designer and entrepreneur from Orkney. I have two questions. Firstly, I heard lots of encouragement for new businesses, new entrepreneurs in Scotland. Thinking about Kirsty and what we have been talking about across the day and last night, how are you supporting the existing entrepreneurs that are battle-scarred and have been disabled by the storm over the past few years? I heard Nicola mentioned design and that makes me think about design thinking and how are you using design thinking in Parliament? My name is Sarah Downs. I am an SME business owner based in Aberdeen, but I am also the IOD chair of the Aberdeen and Grampian branch. I sat in a CBI dinner with the Deputy First Minister not that long ago, where he shared a stage with Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power and Simon Roddy, vice-president of Shell of UK Upstream. There was a fascinating conversation that evening around the table, around the transition. You have already mentioned the windfall tax and the decisions that the Government is making there. What I want to bring is from my local IOD members who are a huge percentage supporting the oil and gas industry and renewable energy industry and the transition. As the situation hits at operator level, there is obviously a knock-on effect into the supply chain. That supply chain is also having to pay more for its energy bills, more for its business rates and all the other changes that are happening for all businesses across the country, but on top of that, its main buyers are going to put projects on hold. They are going to start investing in other regions of the world and the profits that are being reported are global profits, not obviously UK profits, to bear that in mind. My question to the Government is what are you going to do to support the supply chain that are invested in its transition? Almost all of them are already in diversification strategy stage, if not already implementation, which has been since about 2015, but they are being hit doubly hard when decisions are being made. I am not saying that the decision is right or wrong, but what are you going to do to support that supply chain, please? I am going to, before I pass over, ask my colleagues to be as concise as possible. On entrepreneurship, that is absolutely critical. In fact, I will have the privilege of chairing a reception next week in this Parliament about young entrepreneurs. It is a combination of ensuring that young people are inspired—some young enterprise people, I was speaking to last night. I think that they do a wonderful job in inculcating that ambition to be an entrepreneur and to look at the challenges that they face with that. Entrepreneurs only thrive when they have the right environment around them, and that is partly in education. We are in the education brief for quite a long time in this Parliament and an awful lot of the dialogue that we had at that time was what we have to do to ensure that the curriculum in Scotland matches up with the aspirations of young people. We could spend the rest of today talking about that, but we have to free up the spirit of entrepreneurs and make sure that they feel particularly welcome in Scotland, that the right policies—whether that is in housing or in a lot of things to do with social enterprises, but in tax policy, in education and just a whole lot of things to do with communities that they feel inspired. I think that you are absolutely right about what entrepreneurship is all about. On the question when it comes to the transition, I think that this is one of the, going back to my first answer, I think that there is a real tension here about transition. We all want to see that transition being very effective. We know that it is the right thing to do, but we also know that oil and gas is critically important to the Scottish economy, not least because of the number of highly-paid and very skilled jobs in the north-east of Scotland. We have a lot of thinking to ensure that that transition works effectively. To answer your question about the supply change, I think that there are a lot of global issues to do with supply change. There is just a Scottish UK issue, but I think that that is an important point that you have raised. Just on the question around entrepreneurialism, I think that you live in Orkney and we have already heard some of the comments around how rural businesses, rural entrepreneurs have to be innovative, have to be creative and are by your very nature. I think that one of the things that we need to ensure that we have got right, especially for the storm weary folk that have been through the last few years, is ensuring that we have the right sectoral and regional focus. What will work in the central belt will not be the same as what will work in Orkney or in rural parts of the north-east or wherever. I am not always sure that our regional economic planning allows us to get those things right. As part of the national strategy for economic transformation, we will see regional economic plans being developed with much more agility, I hope, around what is needed for people where they are, rather than trying to import a solution from a geography or a sector that does not work. I think that there is a need for that kind of targeted support. To your point about bringing design thinking and designing our economy, we know that the economy that we have at the moment does not work for many people, so let us bring people in and talk about what the economy is for, how we can develop the kind of economy that we know will sustain local communities, be part of regional supply chains, be part of national and international trade and other relationships. It is quite a brave thing to do to say, actually, let us not start from scratch because we are not starting from scratch, but let us actually not replicate the mistakes that we have been making, certainly for the last 20 or 30 years, in those kinds of environments. On supply chains and the transition, you mentioned the tension between seeing the global profits that we have had announced this week, viewing those as they are global rather than UK-based. I think that Liz pointed to the Scottish versus global supply chain tension. I think that we do have a naughty issue there to make sure that we tackle, but part of the issue is making sure that we do not just think about transitioning the supply chains that we currently have, we think about what are the new, what are the different supply chains that we need, why can we not support and focus investment to regenerate manufacturing and industry in Scotland, so we are not as reliant and we are not as vulnerable to global shocks in the way that we have seen, whether it is a boat getting stuck in a sewer's canal, for instance. We need to build our resilience, and that kind of resilience starts here. We do need to take that focused look at what the Scottish economy can do for Scottish supply chains and Scottish manufacturing. I think that that is a really important thing for us to focus on. I am beginning to think that ordinary constituents are like London buses, but long may this continue. In terms of the point about entrepreneurship that Christine raised, I appreciate that it is more difficult, because in the sense that you are dealing with so many different entrepreneurs and businesses in different sectors that they are in, but that is not a reason to not find ways of providing the support that they need. Some of that needs to be through agencies such as the enterprise agencies, but oftentimes it will be trying to find ways of facilitating the peer-to-peer support, because the support that they need is not from government, I am here to help. It is probably either within their own sector or across sectors, and providing the forums and mechanisms of facilitating those sorts of conversations is probably the best thing that government and its agencies can do. In terms of that point about building design into policy making, I think that I was in the breakout group dealing with the development of strategies, and we were being encouraged to be creative. That is actually what you need to do. You can always discount the idea, but unless you stress test that you have at least considered it, then you are going to be stuck in doing the same old, albeit it might be a little bit better, and you can do it digitally. I think that as policy makers we need to be able to expose ourselves to those ideas in terms of policy making. It will take us out of the comfort zone, but unless you are thinking about those ideas, you are not thinking creatively, then in a sense you are going to be applying probably yesterday or today's solutions to tomorrow's problems. In terms of the transition, we talk about a just transition the whole time. I am not sure necessarily we have got our hands around what exactly that means. In somewhere like Orkney, I see this exemplified as a community that has been heavily reliant on oil and gas, and the energy sector at the moment is swept up. The implications of the Scotland round is the talk of transitioning the terminal in Flota to a green hydrogen terminal in due course, almost exemplifying what we are talking about in terms of the just transition. I would probably disagree with Maggie, and so far as yes, there will be other supply chains that we need to develop. However, if we are to be honest to our commitment to a just transition, we need to consider, for those who want to come along the journey and transition into this new sector, we need to be able to, back to Lucy's point, upskilling, reskilling, providing the support that allows them to transition. Again, something that came up in our breakout group was that a strategy without funding is fantasy, and I think we need to recognise that this is going to cost, that transition is going to cost. I suppose that the final comment that I would offer is that there is no lack of ambition in terms of the targets that we have set. As John says, there is policy certainty, not just because the current government set that objective, but it has been one that was set previously by the Labour-Lib Dem coalition. It is one across parties that has buy-in, and I think that that gives confidence that there is not going to be any handbrake turns along the way. However, what the UK Climate Change Committee has repeatedly said over the last couple of years is that the ambition is great, but there is a lack of clarity around the action plan that will take us through to the point of delivery. That is something that we are all invested in, because the Parliament is a whole set of those targets, but we need to be challenging government to come forward with that pathway to achieving those targets. Regrettably, we have gone beyond the time allotted for this particular session, so I am going to have to call a halt here, but I would just like to ask you to thank the panellists who have joined us today and to ask them to retake their seats. Thank you very much. Thank you too for your excellent questions. I would now like to invite John Swinney MSP, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery, to make his closing remarks. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Given the time, I will keep my remarks as brief as I possibly can do. First of all, you set a good example by indicating the dangerous practice of agreeing to things that you are asked to do at a panel in a parliamentary session. I am afraid that the temptation of a zip wire across the subway first does not do much for me. I am afraid, however, wonderful that the Galloway landscape is. It would not do much for me, but I agree to wear the Young Enterprise Scotland tie, and I managed to tie it myself using one of the glass panes along there as my cover. It demonstrates that I can tie my own tie after all these years. Thank you to Young Enterprise Scotland for giving that to me just at the start. Can I just tell you a couple of things about the last question around that? I did not get a chance to say to Christine about support for existing entrepreneurs. In our national strategy on economic transformation, there is a huge emphasis, as the First Minister talked this morning, about encouraging an entrepreneurial culture and encouraging entrepreneurial people. We have to make that happen on the ground. Our enterprise agencies are critical to that. Business Gateway is critical to that, but you will probably be familiar with other organisations. I have a huge amount of experience of a local organisation in my community called GroBiz, which has helped to inculcate an entrepreneurial culture. We want to make sure that those interventions assist people in a lot of that peer-to-peer discussion, which I recognise to be critical. You asked about design thinking. One of the best things the Scottish Government did, and I had absolutely nothing to do with that, was appoint a chief design officer. The chief design officer is influential on so many of the discussions that we have. Our design of our child poverty strategy was hugely influenced by the chief design officer, the approach to employability. Again, chief design officer was instrumental in busting some of the myths that we had about the way in which we had to tackle employability. The scope of design thinking is critical in how we design public services. There are two observations that I would make on all of this. The first is that we are going through an absolutely perfect storm just now, so lots of organisations and lots of sectors will be affected by that. The systemic issue of energy costs and supply pressures that come from that have to be addressed, hence my comments about windfall taxes. Secondly, we have also got to properly and fully support the transition and put the resources in place to enable that to happen. Because of the number of interventions that the Scottish Government and the United Kingdom Government are making specifically in the north-east of Scotland to try to help that transition, there are various other measures, such as some of the strategic developments of carbon capture, which can assist in establishing a bridge from where we are today to where we need to get to. The crucial point that I want to say is to reflect that we have got to make this experience completely different to the experience of de-industrialisation in Scotland in the 1980s, for which we are carrying enormous social and economic damage still in our country. We have to get that right in how we manage that transition. Can I draw the day to a close? First of all, on behalf of the Scottish Government, I thank all of you for participating in this day of discussion. I also thank the parliamentary staff and the Government staff who have worked together to enable all the practicalities to be overcome. I hope that you agree that the forum and the format of today and last night's event give us the opportunity to engage in that sustained dialogue, which I know that my parliamentary colleagues of all political persuasions are involved in their communities on a regular basis. There will not be a week goes by when members of Parliament are not engaged with businesses, either addressing problems that businesses are facing, such as the energy cost issue that we have talked about today, or finding out something new. Parliaments are only as good as the extent to which members of Parliament are listening and out there engaging. I know from what comes into me in my mailbag as a constituency member of Parliament, but what comes into me as a minister from members of Parliament and others are reflections on that engagement that happens on an on-going basis. Andy Murphy's point this morning that the business dialogue must be on at all times is a critical point that we all must remember, and I take that very much to heart. There have been a couple of bumpy issues that have been raised, whether it is energy prices or deposit return scheme or short-term lights, which are challenges for different parts of business. I assure you from the Government's perspective that we are constantly engaged on those issues to try to address the points that are raised with us. I commit the Government to the earliest possible engagement on all of those questions to ensure that we get those correct. There has also been a strong theme today on the emphasis on female entrepreneurship, and I would have to say in the course of my parliamentary exchanges that I appear in front of quite a number of parliamentary committees given the breadth of responsibilities that I currently carry, thankfully only for a temporary basis. However, the issue of female entrepreneurship and the encouragement of female entrepreneurship is an issue that is very much on the agenda of members of Parliament. The Government recognises the importance of us responding seriously to the Anasture review, which we expect to receive shortly, to enable us to make the greatest impact that we can in encouraging more women to become involved in entrepreneurship in the fashion that the First Minister talked about earlier on today. There has also been a recurring theme today around the question of skills and the availability of skills and the availability of people. We find ourselves in really quite an unusual position just now as a country, where we have very, very low levels of unemployment. Unemployment sits just over 3 per cent, very high levels of employment. Employment sits over 76 per cent, so we have an incredibly tight labour market. We saw a decline in the last 12 months of almost 1 per cent point in economic connectivity in Scotland. You might say to me, well, 1 per cent, come on, get a move on, do more than that. Actually, 1 per cent in a group who face the greatest of challenges of access to the labour market is really quite a formidable achievement. We are trying to intensify our activity. The work of the chief design officer and our employability schemes are designed to get in among that grouping as effective as we can to support people into employment, but we have to maximise the opportunities to engage people in economic activity and to support them in so doing. I want to reassure you all today of the importance that we attach to making sure that we expand the labour market. You heard what the First Minister said this morning about migration. Migration was helping Scotland for the best part of the last 20 years after the EU expansion in 2004. It has helped us for the best part of one just short of 20 years. The loss of that is inhibiting us now. We have to maximise levels of economic activity, which is why we are so focused on that point. We also need to make sure that our college and university system is responsive to the needs of the labour market in the future, not the needs of the labour market yesterday. That is an on-going challenge. I would really invigorate an example from one part of the country where an entrepreneur was telling me that they wanted to set up a new business. The skills did not exist in the local economy. They went and knocked the door of their local college, and the local college put on a specific focused course to create the skills that they required. They could not have been happier with the whole arrangement. I was delighted with that, but I am not going to say that that is going to be the norm in every part of the country. We need to make it the norm to address the issues that have been raised today. I thank everybody for your participation today, for the open way in which you have communicated with us today. I hope that you take from my comments a willingness to absorb, to listen, to understand where we are not getting it right and where we can remedy that and address those challenges, and to commit to working with the business community in Scotland in an on-going dialogue to make sure that we can realise your ambitions than the ambitions that we all have for our country. On behalf of the Parliament, I thank everyone for attending and for participating in today's discussions, because I know that you are all very busy people indeed. I thank the Parliamentary Committee on Fair Work, the Parliament's team, who have helped to put on today's event, because I know from feedback from colleagues that it is incredibly important to all MSPs that we hear directly from you, and we are very appreciative of the time and your participation in making the conference such a success. There will be notes produced of the workshops, and they will be distributed as quickly as possible. We will also reach out and ask for your feedback, and we would be very appreciative if you could give us that, because then we can ensure that this continues to be the success that it is and as useful as it possibly can be. I very much hope to wish you to welcome you back into Parliament in the near future. For the time being, we will conclude and lunch will be served in the garden lobby, and I hope you'll have an opportunity to carry on chatting and getting to know one better, to get to know one another better there and to continue to have the discussions that we've been enjoying since yesterday evening. In the meantime, I close this meeting of business in the Parliament.