 Welcome to the 14th meeting of the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work Committee. May I remind everyone to turn electrical devices to silent or turn them off if they are likely to interfere with the sound system? I have apologies from committee member Jackie Baillie. The first item on the agenda for the committee is item 1, which is a decision by the committee to to take item 3 in private and also whether the committee's consideration of the draft report and the gender pay gap and the approach to the data inquiry should be taken in private at future meetings. Are we agreed on that? We will now come to our first set of witnesses this morning. We have on our panel today Carol Buxton, going from my left to right, who is director of regional development, Highlands and Islands Enterprise. Welcome to you. Then we have Lynn Cadenhead, who is the chairman of Women's Enterprise Scotland. Again, good morning and welcome. Then we have Linda Murray, who is the head of strategy at Scottish Enterprise and Elma Murray, chief executive of North Ayrshire Council and a member here to represent the Scottish local authorities economic development group. Welcome to both of you as well. Just by way of introduction, it might be helpful for committee members and those listening in for each of you just to indicate what your position is and your role very briefly before we move on to questions from the committee members. Perhaps we could start with Carol Buxton. Thank you. I am director of regional development with HIE. Within my portfolio, I work with policy makers in and within HIE, particularly around young people, how to attract and retain young people and how we deal with inclusive growth across the Highlands and Islands. I am Lynn Cadenhead. I am an entrepreneur and I am involved in a number of entrepreneurial companies in the start-up scene in Scotland for a number of years, both in retail and technology. I am here today with my Women's Enterprise Scotland chairman, Hathon, and we are responsible for creating a conducive environment for women-led businesses to start up and grow in Scotland. I am also chair of UNICEF in Scotland, so I am very interested in gender issues in children. I am also very interested in governance and have been involved in setting up a leadership and board governance course at Edinburgh Napier University recently. I am head of strategy services, Linda Murray at Scottish Enterprise. That job means that I get to do lots of things, so I guess that I am a generalist rather than a specialist in anything in particular. I have been with Scottish Enterprise quite a long time and, in previous roles, I have particularly focused on leadership and organisational development in companies. I have a particular interest in youth employment and I am currently championing the inclusive growth group in Scottish Enterprise and the Brexit response group. Good morning, and thank you for your time this morning. I am Elma Murray, I am the chief executive of North Ayrshire Council and, as a member of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, I have the lead role for employability. That is not specifically why I am here today, because today I am here representing colleagues from the Scottish Local Authority Economic Development group who are my colleagues that focus specifically on economic development in local government. I am very keen to share our experiences and the role for local government in helping women to advance and dealing with issues around the gender pay gap. One of the other matters that I have had the privilege of taking a lead role on over the last year is, in conjunction with Deputy Chief Constable, Rose Fitzpatrick. We have created the Scottish Women in Public Service Leadership group, which is designed to promote and support women in public services to take on greater leadership roles. We will start with some questions from Bill Bowman. Thank you, convener. Good morning. A couple of questions to begin with on statistics or around statistics. I think that the first one you might have made some comment on in written submissions, but just to hear your views. This is a question that we ask all of the panels. Are the panel confident that there is a definitive set of statistics within Scotland on pay, earnings and employment for women? The second question is, are any statistics available on those FDI projects supported by the enterprise agencies in terms of gender pay gaps, board compositions and management structures? I think that obviously there are a lot of statistics available on the gender pay gap within Scotland. However, I do feel that we talk about whether the mean or the median is the best one. I think that there are pros and cons of both. I think that for us, we feel in particular that not including part-time workers within the statistical definitions is a bit of a challenge given that we have over half of women in the Highlands and Islands work part-time, so really we are missing a very big chunk of the population there. I think that I am not saying that there is anything wrong with the current measurements and the statistics that are available, but I feel that we could expand on those to give us a better picture overall. In terms of foreign direct investment, I do not have statistics in relation to our FDI specifically, but if the committee would like, I can try and see if we have any of those available and provide them later on. I should also say to panel members if any of you wish to submit something further in writing after today's session, the committee would welcome that if there are issues that are raised that you want to come back in more detail on, then please do so, and that might be the first example of that. Who else on the panel would like to comment on this? Perhaps it makes sense for me to come straight after Carol. Like Carol on that last piece on FDI statistics, it is not something that I have to hand today, but we can certainly have a look at that and come back to you on FDI statistics around gender pay gap, board composition and general structure in the companies. More generally on that question about whether we have a definitive set of statistics, there are probably a lot of statistics. The challenge that we might have here in Scotland is about the comparability of those statistics and whether or not all the data that we have available actually helps us to make some decisions and choices about what we want to do. Certainly my experience not being a statistician or an economist is that quite often you can look at the numbers and you think that the number tells you one thing, but actually when you dig underneath it it is telling you something quite different. For me it is about greater transparency and how we can make that comparable. Thank you convener. Not so much from the private sector point of view, but I think that the public sector is a very large employer in Scotland and it is probably worthwhile considering what statistics we have there. Local authorities particularly have a range of statistics that they have to publish annually through their statutory performance indicators, but again, similar to the point that Linda was making, there are a whole range of bits of information that it would be helpful to dig under. I could, for example, give you information about the proportion of employees that are male or female and what grades they are within my organisation, but what is important then is to dig below that to look at how many are part-time and how many are full-time and what the average earnings are for work-out to get a real understanding of the pay gap. My expertise is in the start-up area, so I do not have any relevant information as to the public sector or other organisations, but I would say in general that my understanding is in the short answer to that is no. There is a significant death of appropriate statistics that we need. In particular, we have scant information as to the gender pay gap between men and women who are starting up our businesses, but there is a general perception that the gender pay gap in start-up businesses persists at around 20 per cent for female entrepreneurs and women-led businesses. My understanding is also that there are quite a lot of gender-disaggregated statistics in some areas, but, unfortunately, they are not published. If they do not publish them, they remain unrecognised. Lynn Cadenhub, when you are talking about the pay gap in start-ups, is that the actual entrepreneur or the people working in the enterprises? Again, it is very difficult to be definitive because there is so little information, but the information that we have relates to female entrepreneurs who start up their business. In general, they pay themselves 20 per cent less than a male entrepreneur who starts up their business. Even when they write their own paycheck, they still pay themselves less. Just on that last point, do you have an idea of why that would be? It is about the approach that female entrepreneurs take a different approach to their business, so they have a much more sustainable outlook towards their business. They are less interested in rapid scale-up and aggressive growth. They are more interested in looking after the people and reinvesting the money that they create into their businesses. If there is an issue in the business, a female entrepreneur will tend to pay herself last and pay herself less in order that she can sustain the businesses, whereas it tends to be the other way round for male-led businesses. On that question, are there any statistics that would suggest that businesses that are started by women last longer than businesses that are started up by men? There is quite a lot of information that shows that women take a very different approach to growing their business. They are sustainable. We have recently done a report for the Scottish Government. We have about 50 references to documentations, and there is quite a lot of information to reference that, so we can give the details of that afterwards. On the gender pay gap regulation committee effect on 6 April, what are the panel's views on the pay gap report and legislation? Obviously, we have a duty as a public sector organisation to publish our gender pay gap, which we do. In terms of the private sector, the number of employees currently who have the size of company that has to report is probably for our region and the Highlands and Islands, we probably have a relatively small number of businesses in that category. I think that it would be potentially worth exploring what a sensible level might be, or a level that would give a better feel across the whole of Scotland as to what that gender pay gap might be, rather than just for the largest companies. There are two things in there. One of them alongside the comparability thing that I mentioned earlier is transparency, so I think that having much more of that data available about what goes on in the private sector. My experience working in Scottish Enterprise is that the thing that quite often changes the perception and the thinking in companies is for other companies' experience to be shown to them, so it is much less about Scottish Enterprise or an account manager turning up saying that you should do these things because they are good for your business. Actually, I think that what will be really helpful in that, so whether companies are very big and it is quite challenging in your area, Carol, is that real businesses will be speaking about what their experience is as a business to other business people? Carol, you touched upon the fact that 98 per cent of private sector enterprises operating in Scotland have less than 50 employees and the legislation only relates to companies over 250 employees. As it currently stands, what real impact would it have on the gender pay gap and if it was reduced to encompass more companies, what impact would trying to meet that gender pay gap have on the operation of a lot of small companies? I think that the points that Linda makes are very valid. It is about being able to demonstrate to companies the actual benefits of reducing that pay gap and, more importantly, what lies behind it. We have found in our organisation that we have more women working part-time, for example. More recently, we have women at higher grades working flexibly, but that might mean working full-time compressed hours, which enables them to work full-time but in a different work pattern. We have seen that that has enabled women to progress up the grades, for example, maybe more quickly than they would have done in the past, or work at more senior levels. It is examples like that, which we can demonstrate to companies that there are different ways of approaching how to deal with it. Once you get into quite small companies, it is quite difficult and that might skew statistics. I am not a statistician, so I need to refer to colleagues who know more about that. However, when you get into small numbers of employees, it might skew data if you go down to too low a level. My question initially is to Carol Buxton and Linda Murray. My understanding is that the number of account managed companies that are high in Scottish Enterprise combined is around about 2,800. That would be about right. How many of those companies that are account managed by you are run by women? I think that we have got lots of different stats in there, Richard, around women. I am trying to cast my mind back to what we have. We do a survey of women who are accessing our services for the very first time. We have been doing that since 2011, and the most recent stats that we have is that it is sitting around 48 per cent. It is women-led companies who are accessing our services for the first time. I think that in 2011 it was in the low 20, so it was somewhere between 21 and 25 per cent. We also have done some work quite recently to look at where our primary contact is, which is not the same as being an owner or a leader. It just tends to be who we are engaging with most often. I cannot think of that as the whole of the account management portfolio in Scottish Enterprise, but that was a 15 per cent figure. It was women who were 15 per cent of the cases where our primary contact was. One of the challenges that we are having around this is ownership. Leadership in a company is sometimes split across men and women, so it is quite difficult to work out if it is primarily a women-owned company or is there a mix in there where it is equally owned. The fact that when we are asking these questions, people are not obliged to tell us what their ownership structure is in terms of gender. For me, that would definitely be a space where, the more that we can look at those things and the more transparent we can make it, the easier it will be for us to understand that in the coming years. In our area, the picture is probably similar. We have about 35 per cent of our account-managed businesses who either are in female ownership or a female in a partnership. Lower levels that have a female chief executive, which is about 14 per cent there, and the figure of women in senior leadership positions is around about 45 per cent in our account-managed businesses. What we do see is a difference between our account-managed businesses and our social enterprises where the figures are generally higher in terms of women in leadership positions. We are seeing increasing numbers of women coming through some of our programmes, for example leadership, entrepreneurship and innovation. Those figures are rising a little. Just on the issue of account-managed companies, one of the elements of the Scottish business pledge is to encourage the companies that you deal with to attain living wage accreditation. When I looked last night, fewer than 500 accredited living wage employers are in the private sector in Scotland, so even if they were all your account-managed companies, that would still add up to less than 16 per cent—less than 17 per cent. You would be dealing presumably with a large number of companies that are account-managed by you that are not accredited living wage employers. I know that, in the Highlands and Islands Enterprise evidence, you spoke about the living wage being a key component in addressing the gender pay gap. I wonder whether you have any comments on that. Certainly, it is very much part of our conversation with our account-managed businesses, promoting the business pledge to them and the benefits of various aspects of the pledge. I would agree that the numbers that have signed up and are accredited today are relatively low. That does not mean that they are not necessarily committed to doing that. However, our account-managers—that is a primary topic of their conversation with their businesses in terms of trying to demonstrate to them the benefits of signing up to aspects of the pledge, in particular the living wage. I think that about two thirds of the companies who are account-managed would pay the living wage to their staff, but they are not all accredited. There is definitely something in there about what companies do and whether they then go for accreditation. If you look at the numbers for the business pledge, the fact that the living wage is the mandatory element, we have got somewhere like 33 to 34 per cent of the business pledge sign-ups from Scottish Enterprise account-managed companies. It is a reasonable proportion, but there are still early days on that one. As a supplementary, why is their resistance to becoming an accredited living wage employer? I know that I would necessarily say that it is resistance, but I have not asked them if they are resistant to it or if it is just that they have not done it. I do not know what the reason is behind that. When you ask questions about things that are not particularly interested in badges, lots of companies will look at things and think that that feels quite political and that I am not interested in politics. I have certainly had some of those conversations with companies that I have met, so there will be lots of different reasons for them not having chosen to go down the route of accreditation while they still do that thing that we would like them to be accredited for. You are charged, presumably, as the principal economic development agencies in Scotland. You are charged with trying to break down those barriers and trying to point out that it is not political, it is both socially, economically and business-wise beneficial to you. There are examples that I have cited in their written evidence of companies that have become accredited living wage employers and have reaped the benefits of that. I absolutely agree with that. Yes, that is what we do in terms of trying to work with companies on a day-to-day basis and encourage them to do that. However, we know that it takes time and we know from other things that things are badged in the past that companies will do the things that they want them to do, but they will not necessarily sign up for their accreditation. There are lots of examples that I can think of in the past with that and in various other badges that people have been asked to go for. It takes a long time to work with companies to convince them of the fact that the stuff that we all get at a macroeconomic level really makes a difference for them in their day-to-day running of the business. I am kind of mindful of what Portland has said, but we have in my own area examples of companies that would not sign up or become accredited simply because they do not want to put pressure on other smaller businesses in the area and they do not want to be seen as a business that does that. They want to be, I guess, quite consensual in the way that they work with other businesses in the local area. That is their decision. To an extent, we can put some pressure on them, but it really is their decision. The other point that I wanted to make was that the living wage is important. There is no doubt about that in terms of addressing the gender pay cap, but what is also really important is looking at how women engage in the workplace as well. Is it part-time work? Is it full-time work? How do they manage their childcare responsibilities? Do they spread their childcare responsibilities within the household? For example, what support do we give to households more generally to do that? Those are all quite important factors. We did a wee bit of research at the end of last year, which I can send in to the committee if the committee is interested in this, where we talked to businesses about what was interesting to them and how they expected to employ in the future. We talked to parents of our schools to find out what would encourage more women to come into work as well. We did some basic gender analysis of the area as well, which might give you some more input, which is not so much from the account managed point of view, from the Scottish Enterprise or High, but more from a local authority point of view on how we are working with local businesses to create inclusive growth in the area. There is a follow-up from Gillian Martin and, I do not know if Lynn Cadenhead wants to come in perhaps following this on some of the issues that we have discussed. I am interested in your responses to Richard's questions around the account managed companies and what the stats are and how many of them are actually run by women. The prioritised sectors of Scottish Enterprise are also sectors that have large gender segregation by their very nature. As a result, we have got quite large gender pay gaps as well. I am interested to know whether you feel that you have got a duty not only to address that but also to be looking at more female-run businesses and the types of businesses that are given priority to them in order to realise Scotland's economic potential. In that space, we have fairly traditional sectors. In some cases, they would be the growth sectors and the gender pay gap is pretty obvious in those sectors. We did a piece of work back in 2015 with the Equality and Human Rights Commission looking at gender issues within sectors, which was really quite illuminating for us. I guess what we do in that space about how we would work with sectors is that we use the information that we gathered from that exercise to go back out and say to sectors, do you understand that your sector as a whole is how it looks? Quite often, companies are focused on what it means for them specifically as a company rather than thinking about the sector as a whole. We would share that information with our colleagues and sector teams. We have done quite a lot of work inside Scottish Enterprise with our sector teams who are engaging with companies in those sectors to make sure that that is on the agenda as a topic of conversation. We would be looking at that and thinking, actually, what would Scotland's economy look like if we had more women engaging in those growth sectors and if we had more women engaging in those growth sectors, where they were paid equally alongside the men who are engaged in those growth sectors? Are you doing that work with your account managed companies? Are you doing that work on yourself? I am going to declare an interest to you because I am the convener of the Women Enterprise cross-party group. One of the criticisms that I have heard in the three or four meetings that we have had since I have been convening that group is that women have got written down here actually from a meeting that we had. I took a note that some women feel that their businesses have been dismissed as purely lifestyle was the word that was used and therefore have not been taken seriously when they have been asked for business assistance. That is a strain that has come through from quite a lot of the women who run businesses that I speak to is that, because they may run their business initially from home or it is internet based, it is dismissed as lifestyle, therefore they are not getting access to the same business support that others are. I was disappointed when I read that in the report as well, that people still have that perception, they perceive that they are being dealt with differently because their business has been allocated a label like lifestyle business. As an employer, what we are doing in that space is that everybody in our organisation undertakes equalities training on a regular basis, so that is everybody from the person who does your admin all the way through the chief executive. It is not just an equalities issue, it is a realising Scotland's economic potential. No, absolutely. I was about to say that what we do as part of that equalities training for our staff in Scottish Enterprise is that we talk about the business case, so we are not looking at it solely from the point of view of it as an equalities issue, but it is set within that equalities training piece that we do for our staff. However, we are speaking to our staff about what that means for the services that we offer. What might that mean for your engagement with companies? How might you be engaging with companies that are women-led? I, like Carol, we see a lot more women-led businesses coming through in social enterprise as well. We are very mindful of that and take it very seriously and make sure that all of our staff are given adequate training. Is there anyone else who would like to come in on that? I think that we will come back to the statistics that we have talked about previously. My understanding is that the maximum number of account-managed companies by Scottish Enterprise that are led by females is about 11, but I take the point that there is some variety in terms of how the definitions are made, but that is what we have been talking about. We are working with Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands and Business Gateway to try to help them to improve the number of account-managed businesses that are coming through, but it is still very low at around about 11 per cent. That comes back principally to what we were talking about earlier, that women do things differently. They have a different growth trajectory for their businesses, so you are never going to get the same amount of businesses coming through. If, for example, the system sets requirements for a business to be achieving a turnover of £5 million within three years' time, women might achieve that a bit later, so automatically they are getting excluded from the process. That may be perception, but it may be reality. We have lots of different conversations from women on that. The key thing is to keep coming back in general to the economic argument. If women started up businesses at the same rate as men, there would be an additional £7.6 billion minimum contribution to the Scottish economy. Recent information suggests that that is going to be a lot more. I also want to pick up on what Carol was talking about. It is very important to consider part-time businesses here. It is essential, because women have different requirements in terms of their businesses. Part-time businesses with lower wages may be suit some of them, so it is very important for them not to be dismissed. It is not just a perception that women feel prejudged and dismissed in businesses. For very many women out there, that is an actual reality, as a lot of our research recently has borne out. I am going back to the sector's question that you asked. We have recently done some work on occupational segregation within the Highlands and Islands. There are specific sectors where that is much more pronounced than others. It tends to be predominantly male-dominated sectors, such as engineering and construction. We cannot ignore the fact that some of the interventions here need to be taken at a much earlier stage, rather than necessarily within the workplace. We are doing quite a lot of work at the moment with partners around a science skills academy, which is about encouraging more young people into STEM education and considering careers involving science, technology, engineering and maths. There is an issue there where girls get disassociated from that as they grow a little bit older. That is a priority for us, ensuring that young people are becoming engaged at an earlier stage and how we can work with partners to ensure that. There are also issues, particularly in more rural areas, where things like the availability of childcare is extremely important. Even transport to workplaces can have a big impact on whether people with caring responsibilities can work full-time or part-time. There are quite a lot of things that are indirectly associated, and there are also some unintentional consequences of some actions that are taken anecdotally. This is absolutely anecdotally, but quite a number of schools, for example, are going to start closing early on a Friday afternoon. As an organisation, we have had quite a few requests recently about flexible working because there is not enough childcare to deal with looking after your children on a Friday afternoon, so you have to make other arrangements, i.e., to look after them yourself or with your partner. I think that there are lots of aspects that add to this, and it is important that we try to look at things in the round. Dean Lockhart and then Ash Denham had a couple of follow-ups on this. Thank you, convener. Yes, it was a question on gender pay gap in startups, because I think that it is a very interesting discussion. It sounds like there are particular sectors where startups are predominantly female-led, for example social enterprise and perhaps other sectors. Other sectors are perhaps engineering where they tend to be more male-led. Is the gender pay gap in startups therefore led by different levels of profitability in those different sectors? I have been involved in a couple of startups where, obviously, it is the profitability of the company that drives the level of salary for the founder or even the key employees. I do not have statistics available to hand on startups specifically. The figures that we have got were really related to our account-managed businesses, which tend to be slightly ahead on the growth. I do not know if Lynn Scott has any stats. I do not have any particular stats around startups, but it will most definitely be related to the sector, but we can certainly look in and come back to you with something on that. A wider discussion does not necessarily need to be in relation to startups, but even with your account-managed companies, is profit a driver to some extent of the gender pay gap? I think that the honest answer to that is that I really do not know. We have not explored it in that detail. The difference between social enterprise and business gives a bit of an indication for that, because my gut feel would be that pay levels in the social enterprise sectors are potentially lower. On specific startups by sector and gender pay gap? Again, not any stats, but based on information that we gather from our local businesses in the area, there is something about, particularly for females, creating their businesses, which is that it is predominantly to suit not just growing a business but to suit other aspects of their life. The business is not looked at in isolation of its profitability, it is looked at from the point of view of how it fits with everything else that a woman requires to do at this point in her life. If there is a difference in how many women look at that at that stage, then yes, you will see that difference in profitability and what is driving them. Just really coming back to it, again, it re-emphasises the point that we have a lack of information and a lack of relevant useful statistics around here. As a general observation, women are more interested in four things. They are interested in profitability, they are interested in people, they are interested in the planet and they are interested in purpose. That is the drivers for the majority of women who are setting up and leading their businesses, and that will have an effect on what they pay themselves and what they pay other people, because, again, it comes back to sustainability. Women businesses have a different growth trajectory and that will affect people. It is just to come back to Gillian Martin's question about there being priority sectors in the economy such as IT and energy, which have very low levels of female participation in them. It has been put forward that perhaps those industries could be encouraged to have higher levels of female participation. Do you think that there is a case there for making the support, maybe making the funding conditional for those sectors in order to try and get a higher level of women into those sectors? I feel that conditionality is quite a difficult topic. I think that there are ways that we want to work with businesses to very much encourage them to do that. Some of those sectors, the IT sector, for example, have quite a lot of FDI in that sector. At the moment, given the economic climate, it would be quite a challenge to see things that could be perceived as an additional barrier to investing in Scotland. I am afraid that I am sitting on the fence in terms of conditionality. We would very much like to encourage people to do things differently. I think that it is about recruitment practices in terms of flexible working and how people can widen their recruitment pool to make it easier for women to join that workforce. Another thing in more rural regions is that the roll-out of digital connectivity is enabling people to work in a different manner, for example, particularly in some of the more IT-related sectors, if they can work from home, which can make a big difference. We have had small examples of that within the Highlands and Islands, but nothing on a huge scale as yet. I would echo what Carol has said. There have been plenty of people from Scottish Enterprise at various committees in the past, so it will come as no surprise that our approaches we prefer to encourage people, the idea of a car, as opposed to a stick. That doesn't mean that we do not have those conversations inside Scottish Enterprise about where we might want to focus our efforts and what we might want to do, but in our engagement with companies and sectors, we would definitely be looking at taking an approach that is about encouraging people to look at what they do in a business and presenting the evidence from other businesses about why that has worked for them and what they might do in that space, rather than a straightforward conditionality clause. I will pick up a point partly in relation to the response to your question, but also something that was raised earlier on by Carol. There is a lot of work going on in education just now, because one of the other responsibilities for local authorities is education authorities. We do a huge amount of work with the STEM subjects and encouraging particularly female participation. Examples of good practice for that, if you look at Ayrshire, we have got this Ayrshire girl can, which is the hashtag that has been developed with the college, which has been really, really highlighting the range of jobs that are available in the science, technology and engineering sectors and how attractive they can be to young women. We do that from a fairly early age in school right through. We have also, through the developing young workforce initiative that is in place across Scotland, been inviting many more businesses into classrooms and into schools so that they get the opportunity to link up what a real job is alongside what qualifications and subjects that young people need to study to take them forward into that particular job area. I feel that some of that work is already happening and we maybe need to work harder at that. I quite like the idea of making funding conditional on gender. The real reason for that is that, although it is very good to encourage people, I understand that. Encouragement only goes so far and sometimes you have to be mandatory about things and set down the rules and responsibilities and what people need to do. The other element is, again, coming back to reinforcing the economic argument to people as to why diversity is good for their businesses. For example, in STEM areas, there is significant evidence to show that women in companies really do power radical innovation. Radical innovation leads to profitability. If you set down the facts, statistics and the hard facts and appeal to the people in that way, maybe you will get them to come on board a bit more. John Mason If you will permit me to do a follow-up first to that last round of questions. If a business is coming in and it is perceived as a barrier that we should be encouraging them to take on more women, we are also hearing evidence that that business is losing out because there is a pool of talent out there that they are not tapping into. How do we balance that up between the barrier or perceived barrier and missing an opportunity? From my point of view, it is about supporting businesses to look at how they undertake recruitment. In terms of conditionality, I am not sure what your thoughts were around what you would be saying, if you would be setting percentages of gender workforces. Would it have to be 50-50 or what around how businesses would be expected to achieve that? A couple of others on the panel have said that how we can demonstrate to businesses the benefits of having a diverse workforce that is well represented by both genders and how that promotes innovation and how we can encourage women into more leadership positions. I think that there are good examples of where gender diversity supports businesses and Lynn has spoken about that. I think that what I am trying to say about the conditionality aspect is how we would set the parameters and then how we would police them. We want businesses to be able to recruit the best people. What we can do is try to tell them that, by extending your recruitment practices or changing some of your employment practices, you can open up to a much wider range of very well-skilled people who can help your business to grow and succeed. Would there ever be a case where a company was so intransigent that you would refuse to continue supporting them? I am not aware that we have ever come across that position to be fair. The area that I then wanted to move on to was more to do with business start-ups. We have talked about the gender pay gap in new companies, but it is more the issue that women do not appear to be setting up as many companies or businesses as men. If I understood Ms Cadenhead, you said that the economy is losing out £7 billion or so. Why are women not setting up more businesses? In the employment sector, we have had evidence from some people that women or men may be a bit more self-confident and go for promotion, so would that be the same in new businesses that men are just more self-confident and start out more businesses? Given that it is about start-ups and new enterprises, if women started up businesses at the same rate as men, it would be £7.6 billion contribution to the economy, so it really is quite significant. We have already covered a couple of areas about sustainability. Women just do things a little bit slower. A lot of people talk about women in business being risk averse. That is not the right phrase to use. Women have advanced risk awareness. What they do is assess a lot of things in a lot more detail before they move ahead and start up. There are probably two key factors that hold women back in starting up and growing their businesses. First of all, access to capital. Women start up their businesses, on average, with 30 per cent less capital than a man does. However, research indicates that if they started up their businesses with the same amount of capital, their businesses would do as well, if not better, and be more profitable and sustainable because they go for the longer term picture. Access to capital is really important. If you look at the community in Scotland, the business angel capital and venture capital and bank funding are predominantly driven by men. The investment decisions are made by men, they are assessed by men and it is predominantly driven by men. With the best will in the world, men will tend to look at things in the way that they think that businesses should grow as in fast quickly. Access to capital is a really, really important thing, and what we need to be developing are more initiatives about patient capital, long-term patient capital, not looking for the quick wins, the quick bucks in the headlines. That is key. The other thing that is really important for women-led businesses to encourage them is about mentoring and the stage at when they start up their businesses. Most of our support in Scotland is now directed to start up businesses, starting up businesses, then growing and then scaling. However, what you actually need is pre-start support. Before pre-start support, you need pre-pre-start support. That is the gradual building of the confidence in a very wide-ranging way to give people the information that they are looking for. At that point in time, women need to build up their networks and their social capital because they want to be able to talk to other people rather than taking a consultant in. For example, men value consultancy in terms of starting up their businesses. Women place a lot more value on mentoring. A lot of the systems in Scotland are directed towards paying for paid consultancy for people who are starting up in business, but the vast majority of mentoring for people is expected to be done free. There is a real disconnect between what men and women want in business. Access to capital, we need to look at patient capital, we need to look at the pre-pre-start stage before they get into other parts of the system. We need to greatly increase paid mentoring and unpaid mentoring for women and put more of an emphasis on that. Women need to feel as though they are less pre-judged in terms of their businesses. Again, they do not like to be spoken to as lifestyle businesses. The final thing, which is important as to why women are not starting up businesses at the same rate as men, is the use of language. We need to be a lot more careful in the terms of gender-appropriate language. For example, a lot of the language that you see is about aggressive, fast, high-paced and real aggressive scale-up. Are you an ambitious entrepreneur looking for capital to grow your business rapidly? That will appeal to a certain type of female entrepreneur and in general male entrepreneurs. If you had a language saying, for example, are you looking for patient capital to grow your business sustainably over the next five to ten years, that is where you will get women coming forward and saying, we want to grow and we want to build our business. There is a lot to be done about gender appropriate language and gender appropriate support for women to start up their businesses. You made that women are thinking about it a bit more sensibly than men. Is part of the problem that men are just starting up too many businesses and they are going in gung-ho without thinking about it? I will honest it, and I will say yes. Can I switch on to S.E and H.I.E? Some of the answer that we got was that the business angels and venture funds and things are run by men and they are looking for quick returns, and that is not fitting businesses that are led by women. Are Scottish Enterprise and H.I.E different in that respect that when you look at investments, you are not run by men and you are more willing to wait for a longer return? Within Highlands and Islands Enterprise, we support a wide range of businesses. We have a segmented portfolio of high growth down to development, which are maybe in the earlier stages. I think that it is looking at each individual business and seeing what they need and when they need it over the lifetime of that business. Not all the businesses in our portfolio are growing at the same rate or are indeed the same size. In some of our more remote and peripheral areas, we are working with pretty small businesses that make a big impact in local communities. The way that we work with them and the type of support that we give them could be quite different to businesses that are in a more centrally highly populated area. There is a range of support available and it is really who needs what, when and the actual support is being given what, 50-50 by men and women or does that not matter? In terms of our staff, more than half of our account managers are female. We have more female account managers than male. In terms of some of our programmes, if women who are participating on the programme want a female mentor, they can ask for that and they will be given it. However, it is a choice. You will find that some do not want, but some, if they do, they will get that. The point of view of the decisions that we will make will be based on our understanding of the company specifically and to consider what would be the right thing for that company at the stage of growth that they are at that helps them unlock that next stage for them, rather than being anything that is a kind of black and white decision that you would make its fame, which is based around the relationship that we have with companies when we are working with them about how we might support them. I think that there are a couple of really good examples around women-led businesses that have been supported through SIB, the Scottish Investment Bank. I cannot tell you what the names of the companies are off the top of my head, but I am sure that there is one that produces cycle wear for women who has been supported by SIB. I guess what the Scottish Investment Bank does in that space, as you would expect from an economic development agency, is to act where the market fails to act. We would look at all businesses and whether or not they have the potential to grow and therefore have an effect on Scotland's economy. I am not sure what the breakdown is for our account managed staff, but a lot of what we do is not around the account managed space. I know that we have talked a lot about account management this morning, but that is probably only just over 2,000 companies that we work with in that space, but we would work with about 12,000 companies over the course of any given year. The vast majority of the work that we do is not in and around the account management space, and quite a lot of the specialist staff that we have—whether they are sustainability specialists, ICT specialists or workplace innovation specialists—will be fairly equal. I just want to come back and make another point about managing expectations about return on investment and time to exit, because I have talked about patient capital and taking longer. The whole system seems to be driven towards scale up aggressively really, really quickly, but in actual reality there is a big mismatch in terms of expectations. The latest information that I have in terms of average return on investment for a technology company is about 3 to 3.5 return on investment. It is not the 10, 15, 20 or 100 times turn on investment that people are looking at. Again, on average it is about 10 years before a company achieves exit in the high-tech growth sector. When you say that the system is very aggressive, are you including both the private sector and the Scottish Enterprise in the HIE, or are you distinguishing there? I will say the system in Scotland, and I will include both private and public sectors, because there is a clear drive towards the high-scale, fast growth. It really detracts from the number of smaller businesses that want to grow moderately and sustainably, so I will include the system there. Return on investment is about 3 to 3.5 and exit is about 10 years. Actually, it takes a long time to be able to get there, but the expectations of some investors and, indeed, the early-stage companies are going to get there in 3 to 5 years, and that just does not happen. Question from Gil Paterson. I have not covered more or less what I wanted to say, but could I maybe go back to a question that Emma Murray raised? You are explaining to us that you are doing some work with regards to STEM subjects within school, but what you did not say is that it is successful and that it has an impact with the children. It is probably just a bit early to say that some of the work that we are doing is with primary school-aged children. You are looking at another five or six years before you see what businesses they end up going into, whether they create their own or whether they go into further or higher education to support that particular sector. What we need to do a bit more of, though, is developing more awareness with businesses of the opportunities that that presents as well and to get some of our businesses more involved in the education sector so that they can create that interest and that ambition and aspiration in those particular areas, because those are, without a doubt, the higher paying job areas within our country at the moment. There are some other issues that I was thoughtful about when others were speaking earlier on about. A lot of the work that local authorities do around economic development is probably at the earlier stage. It is a bit more upstream and some of it will be with start-ups and some of it will undoubtedly be with social enterprises, which do have a different business model. Thinking back to what Lynne was saying about whether it is aggressive or not, a social enterprise business model tends not to be so aggressive at all and does have a longer period to grow. Certainly, that is what we see. However, when I was talking about working at the earlier stage, what I have already said about schools and how we grow with some of our markets in Scotland, the big areas of growth for us will be in the care sector, both in terms of children's care and older people's care. Those are areas that local authorities are working with local businesses on, both to support that within their business and how they employ women particularly, but also how we grow those business sectors into being more sustainable businesses and what opportunities that that gives to women to create their own businesses in those fields because it is a growing sector. The committee has been discussing this at Lent and there seems to be key times where difficulties occur in women's right to the start of life at school. It is not what I think, but that is what the evidence shows. We are looking at the possibility of the pipe not being filled up from the very start so that the work that you are doing to assist that. However, there is another aspect to it. I have already said that I have a daughter of 16 who is studying for her hires and that what I am hearing is parental influence in the decision of her onward journey. Is that a responsibility for the school to in effect perhaps educate the parents or is that something that is a difficult one to address? I think that it is the difficult one to address. I am not saying that we shouldn't actually be doing something about it. I think that there are things that we can do about it. I will go back to my earlier comments today about how you do things by consensus as opposed to necessarily putting conditions around what you do. We do a lot of work in early years around removing traditional gender stereotypes from how young people and children think about what their opportunities and prospects are. We continue with a lot of that through our schools. We won't do it all the time. Education in Scotland is a big part of our business. I couldn't guarantee that we would do that very well all of the time, but there are serious steps being taken now to change how we deal with those traditional stereotypes. A lot of that is happening through interest in some of the key subjects but also bringing businesses more into schools so that both women and men get the opportunity to see what the opportunities are. I will follow up on something that Elma had said about how you connect businesses to schools much better. It made me think about my own recent experience. I have just recently joined the West region developing the Young Workforce Board. I have only attended one meeting, but it is part of my induction into that. I was really struck by what they have done in the area that covers West region, where they have done a whole load of things for young women to go into very traditional male sectors. I think that it was Rolls-Royce that they did a couple of days activity around there that was very focused. Large numbers of young women in school have been exposed to lots of different careers that they could follow and career paths that they could take in a kind of engineering discipline that, generally speaking, people would still perceive to be very traditional and male dominated. The committee might be interested as part of your deliberations to look at what some of the developing the Young Workforce Boards have been doing. They are relatively new. They are only a couple of years and some are still just being established. I was really struck by what the West region board had done around young women into getting more traditional male dominated industries. I do not know if any other panel members have a comment on that. I will move on to another area. The other thing is that we know that the Government has a 50-50 target set for a gender diversity to kick in in 2020. I wonder if you thought that two questions in relation to that do you think that we will meet the target and do you think that the legislation is stringent enough to ensure that we do? I have not looked at the legislation, so I do not know whether it is stringent enough. My position would be that I would hope that, given that 2020 is not that far away, we would meet the target. I know that we are working with partners such as Highlands and Islands Enterprise changing the chemistry to try to raise awareness in companies again about why diversity is an important thing for you to be thinking about in your business and a diverse board being really beneficial. There is lots of evidence internationally about the return on investment in straightforward cash terms that businesses see by having a more diverse board. I can see that there are some companies that have seen internationally who really embrace the idea of having sites and locations here in Scotland. They are very open to sharing what their experience has been internationally and how we might apply that here in Scotland. I should have said public boards actually, but I think that the idea is public and that it encourages the private sector to come in the basis of that. As Linda says, we have done work ourselves as public bodies to increase female representation on our boards. In Lightland, we would very much hope that the 50-50 by 2020 is achievable. We are, I think, about 45 at the moment. In terms of the private sector, I think that one of the things that we can do with partners and we have done is holding events like the one that we held in February with the private sector, just to demonstrate to women what is involved in becoming a board member, both either public or private sector, and how they can contribute to that. I think that that is something that we would very much be interested in continuing to do. I think that public boards, 50-50 by 2020, will probably be achieved. I think that it will take significantly longer before anything like that is achieved in the private sector, even from large companies down to smaller companies. I think that it will take a generational change, a generational time period before we achieve 50-50 in the private sector. Perhaps following in on that point, do the panel feel that the procurement process can be used to ensure fairness of treatment and pay? One of the things that we have done, all of our tender documentation, very clearly says that we would encourage people to pay the living wage. If they are going to bid for work with us, we expect them to promote that in their supply chain. Again, it is in that space of encouraging that we do not measure it. It is not one of the criteria that we would score on when we are looking at tender documentation, but what we have seen since we have introduced that is that more people who bid for work from Scottish Enterprise are coming well prepared to have that conversation about what we are doing to address the living wage and fair work practices. That is how that will play through in our supply chain. Procurement is an area that we could probably look and do a bit more in. We promote living wage diversity in our tender documentation. The scoring can be quite difficult, although you have to remain within the guidelines, but we do wherever we can promote that. Following on from that point, I want to look at things from a practical point of view because a lot of people think that politicians or parliamentary committees or advisers and people at a high level are not being sort of connected into the real world as it were. I am just wondering for example in the care sector it is predominantly female workers that work there. If one is looking at applying to procurement rules about employment, equality, fair pay and so forth, there are different scenarios that play out on a practical level where we have heard about construction work and the fact that huge numbers of construction workers tend to be male. If you are talking about either public bodies or private bodies looking at employing from different sectors or engaging companies from different sectors, from a practical point of view, how will it be possible for them to engage with that? Or indeed, if they are looking at using companies that are SMEs where you often have, in very small companies, huge gender imbalance is one way or another, which may just be from the very nature of small companies, not necessarily an intentional thing or something that affects pay levels depending on the company. How are companies or public bodies to go about approaching that? I do not think that there is a quick fix there because, as we have touched upon already, there is also an issue about having the pool of people that are sufficiently skilled and available for work to be recruited. We have talked particularly about construction, for example. In order for people to employ more females in the construction industry, there need to be more females with the necessary skills and qualifications to be employed. It is going to have to be a two-way approach, to be honest. We can encourage businesses to look at their recruitment policies to try to ensure that they are not unintentionally excluding women from applying for posts by their working patterns or what they are expecting in terms of business travel, whatever that may be. However, we also need to encourage to make sure that we have female participation in those areas and in those sectors to form part of that labour pool. Looking at another aspect of that, I was at a meeting with men in childcare who received funding from the Scottish Government. What we were told was that there was not a problem with men being employed in childcare. There is just a lack of men going forward or interested in that area of work. It may not be just about barriers to men going into childcare or women going into construction work, but a lack of interest. Is that not something that has to be considered when applying standards or requirements to companies? Absolutely, it would be something that has to be considered. Some of those issues are quite cultural. We have touched a bit on occupational segregation. A lot of that is cultural and traditional, and changing that will not happen overnight. It takes a wide range of interventions from a wide range of partners to achieve that. I am afraid that that is probably not really answering your question, but it is a very, very complex issue that has a wide range of aspects that need to be tackled. I wonder if I could just follow up on that with Lynn Cadenhead. Again, I am trying to look at things from a practical point of view. You talked about the addition to the Scottish economy in terms of billions if there were as many female-led enterprises as male-led enterprises, but I am just wanting to test that because people will be saying that if I need one pair of shoes, I am not going to buy two pairs of shoes just because there are another six shops. I am just wondering about the figures that are bandied about simply adding a huge amount to the economy by bringing in another set of enterprises, whether they are male or female-led. Do you break that down a bit for us? I mean, this is backed up by a number of research reports, including the latest one from Barclays Bank in terms of the contribution to the economy, which would be very, very significant. I am not quite sure what you are driving at in terms of how to break that down, but the one comment that I do want to make on that is around childcare associated with that, because one of the key barriers that stops the women going forward to start up their businesses is the lack of childcare. If I give you an example of a recent business creation course that we did for the wives and partners of armed forces personnel, nearly 30 women are completely economically inactive, totally economically inactive, because of the very nature of their life and their work and their partners, we took them through a 10-week business course. At the end of the 10-week business course, we had 15 women who had started up in businesses, who had actually started up in business and started trading. The fundamental reason—there were two reasons, but the fundamental reason that they were able to do that was that they were able to come along to the course because we provided them with childcare. The vast majority of our grant that we received for that went on childcare to be able to help them, and then they bonded as a group. I am not saying that those businesses are—each and every one of them is going to grow to a massive business, but many of those businesses are trading and they are trading well, and they might be contributing 5,000, 10,000, 20,000—some will grow—but they are contributing to their local family and their local community, and that is very significant. They have also gained a considerable amount of confidence and experience, because they might not start up a business, but the number of women who went through that course decided that they did not want to start up a business, but now they actually felt ready to go out and try to get a job for themselves. There are lots of other things that need to be taken into consideration. Yes. My question is more about the market. If there is not a market, you cannot simply add £13 billion to the economy. You might alter the business structures and who runs the businesses and so on, but that does not mean that one automatically adds £10 billion to the economy if there is no market for services or goods. We have shown with the simple example that I have shown you already that those businesses are up and operating and are generating income and adding to their local community. You would have to look at all the research and statistics throughout, but I stick by the facts from the Barclays report recently, in terms of whether that contributes to the economy. We can go away and have a look at that in a bit more detail for you, if you like. Is it the right thing to simply look at one measurement that is money, going back to your point about the desire to create sustainable businesses that might not be immediately profitable, but long-term might assist in having a stable economy? Are those monetary targets, goals or measurements the only thing that we should be looking at? No. It is really important to look at a number of different measurables. This has been a significant amount of work that has been done on the ministerial review group of the Enterprise and Skills Agency. We have been talking about, rather than just looking at money and profitability, its productivity, its gender balance in business, there is a whole load of other statistics that need to be looked at and things that need to be measured in terms of inclusive growth for the economy. That work is under way at the moment. I want to follow up with Emma Murray on a question about city deal and how the performance is measured and whether your views are on the best way that that should be approached. Thank you, convener. I am afraid that I cannot talk about the Glasgow city deal specifically, but generally, if I talk about growth deals, which here has a growth deal that is under development at the moment, one of the aspects that we are looking at seriously is how we measure inclusive growth. When you talk about measures, I think that one of the measures that should be very important to us is the level of female participation across Scotland. It is not just about the numbers of businesses that they set up and what the trajectory or the profit making arrangements are of those businesses but the extent to which women are engaged productively and in a very healthy way across our workforce in Scotland overall. I think that there are some measures around that that we should be given some further consideration to, not least. That is one of the aspects of inclusive growth. The growth deal that we are working on is to tackle chronic poverty in the area. We have clear evidence that shows that, where more women are in work, there will be less incidences of child poverty. For an area such as North Ayrshire, where we have very high levels of child poverty, that is a key area that we want to address, and one of our clear measures to address that will be through getting more women into good employment. Is there a relationship between child poverty and whether it is increasing or decreasing in Scotland and the subject that we are looking at in terms of the gender pay gap? That is an interesting question. In our area, there is a clear relationship between the poor levels of female participation and the high levels of child poverty. We are quite clear that, by addressing or increasing female participation in the workforce, that will have as an impact a reduction in child poverty. Whether or not that is the case across Scotland, I do not have that information. I want to come in on the specific point about measurement. Our business plan for this year, for the 17-18 years, Scottish Enterprise is introducing a new measure that will be published, which is a measure of a fair number of companies introducing fair and progressive workplace practices. I am racking my brains at the moment to remember how we calculate that, and I cannot remember what the four criteria are, apart from the one about the number of social enterprises. However, the business plan will be due to get published once we have come through all the pre-election periods. From that point of view, is it always about the money and the numbers, and the answer is no. We are looking at how we might measure things differently from an economic development point of view, so there will be a new measure in our business plan for this current year when that gets published. Is that something that can be shared with the committee or does that have to wait until it is done? No, unfortunately. I will try to remember how we calculate what the measure is other than social enterprise. I know that there are four things from one of them, social enterprise, but I cannot remember what the other three are. Now I have a question from Ash Denham. No, I think that we have covered that one off already. Andy Wightman Thank you, convener. A couple of questions. The first one is for Carol Buxton. You say in your evidence that there are high levels of occupational segregation in the Highlands and Islands that are more pronounced, and that is a contributor to the gender pay gap, to the higher gender pay gap across the region. Could you elaborate a little bit more on that and why that is and what your response is to it? We carried out some research recently. Occupational segregation tends to be more pronounced in the Highlands and Islands than it is in other places. Although the sectors where it is most prevalent are probably similar to the rest of Scotland, we are talking about more representation by men in some, as we said, engineering construction and much higher representation of women in the caring professions, social services and the public sector. One of the explanations is that we have a high level of public sector employment in the Highlands and Islands, so that does have an impact where women are more represented there. They tend to have vertical and horizontal segregation, not only across the sectors but within organisations, women employed at lower grades sometimes, and that can be reflected in the public sector too. Even at the Highlands and Islands level, it differs from area to area. For example, Murray and Shetland have relatively high levels of segregation. That could be because of the types of industries that are particularly prevalent there. In Shetland, there is a lot of fishing, a lot of oil and gas related work. You can see reasons there. The research has told us in the main that we really need to dig down deeper into some of the causes of that segregation and deal with them very specifically in small areas. There is not a kind of blanket solution, and at a quite small area level, there are things that could be done to try to change that picture over time. Okay, and notice the research that is done by Ecosgen? Ecosgen, yes. You presumably are able to share that with us. It should be available on our website, but I can certainly get that for you to the committee. Sure, Grant, that's super. My question for all the panellists is what kind of steps do you think the Scottish Government and indeed us as legislators should consider in order to reduce the gender pay gap if indeed there is anything that we can do in the immediate future? The Scottish Government has obviously got a fair business pledge, the fair work convention, etc. Is there any scope within those work programmes to do the kind of things that could begin to reduce the gender pay gap? I think that there are various things that we've touched on. Elma and Lynne both mentioned childcare. Again, we've been doing a pilot up in Shetland, and childcare can be a particular problem in more rural areas, sparsely populated areas, and I think that there are things that we can do about that, which are maybe not immediately obvious in how we affect the gender pay gap, but things like childcare, transport, availability of different types of employment opportunity all can make a difference, particularly to enabling sectors of the population to engage in full-time employment rather than part-time, which can have an impact on the gender pay gap. I was just going to add on that one. I think that there are a number of things that we've introduced in the last few years here in Scotland that I guess are setting us all on the right path around that. For me, some of it would be about how you take that much more holistic view, so we would be thinking about that from an economic development point of view, but absolutely, as Carol said, if childcare services don't exist that can support people to move into the labour market, it doesn't matter what any of us do from an economic development point of view. If nobody can look after your kids, you're not going to be able to be economically active. That's been a challenge in Scotland for decades now. When I first worked in economic development many years ago, one of the key things that we did in the area that I worked in was to provide free childcare for people coming out of unemployment to move into work, because the biggest barrier that they had was that they did not have family support to look after their children. A more holistic approach around factors that you might not necessarily think about as part of a collective, because we tend to look at those things in silos, and we're very issues driven. If we take an approach that's much more about understanding if we do something in childcare, what are the implications not just around childcare, education, the best start in the early years for young people, but also what are the implications from the point of view of people's ability to be economically active and to contribute? Thank you, convener. I guess what we're all saying in one way or another is that it's not just about one or two things. There's a whole range of different things that we should be doing all at the same time to try and create the right environment for this to change and to change in a sustainable way. I'm not going to repeat some of the things that the other panel members have mentioned around childcare, but I will say that I think that there are some issues that we can do around recruitment, particularly around the language that we use when we take forward recruitment, so that we are much more encouraging and much more diverse away in our recruitment approaches. I think that there's a lot more that we can do with businesses around promoting things like interest and STEM. Local authorities are probably not too bad at this, where their employment practices allow for caring responsibilities by employees to be shared whether it's men or women that undertake those caring responsibilities. To give you an example, we have parental leave in local authorities, so it's either parent that can take the leave to look after a child or there might be caring leave for an older person in the family to help support them as well. Promoting that with businesses as well would be another good step. One of the things that we've done recently as part of our employability programmes is that we've had a programme that has focused specifically on lone parents to encourage lone parents to come into work. There was hardly a person in the room that didn't have at least three children, and many of them had four or five children. They all received a qualification from college as part of the programme, so by the time I met them all when they were coming in to work in the council to start their six-month employment experience, by that time they all had a qualification that they'd got from the local college. They were about to start six months experience, so they were going to finish that in a position that none of them had ever been in before, where they had a qualification and a legitimate and valid work experience as well. They were so excited about doing that, so it feels to me that there's probably quite a lot of those kind of things that we can do, and if I'm one authority doing that with 24 people, I think that that's something that could be done at scale. I think finally and briefly, if we might, from Lynn Cadenhead. I won't reiterate other comments about childcare statistics very quickly. I think the importance of relevant and real role models at all stages of the journey for people, and those appearing regularly in the appropriate media is essential, but more importantly pulling the threads together of what everybody else has spoken about. If we want to look for quick winds and make sustained generational change, one of the key ways that we could think about doing that is by considering women as a sector. Women as a sector is a key strategic objective for the Government, and that brings everything together in terms of the backbone, because there's lots of great work going on there by so many different people, but all seem to be sort of in different pockets and it needs to be linked together in this holistic approach. The women as a sector could be transformational. All right, thank you to our panel members. I'll suspend the session now, and we'll have a brief interlude of about 10 minutes until we move to our next session with the minister. Thank you. Welcome back to this session of the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work Committee. May I welcome Jamie Hepburn, Minister for Employability and Training, and also Lorraine Lee, who is the Senior Policy Executive of the Fair Work Directorate of the Scottish Government, and Emma Congrive, who is an economic adviser in the Housing and Social Justice Directorate of the Scottish Government. Welcome to all three of you. I understand Mr Hepburn a very brief opening statement of a couple of minutes or so. I'll probably, I'll endeavour to take less than a couple of minutes, convener. Suffice to say, I'm very glad that the committee is looking at this particular issue as a priority area for us as an administration as well. I'm glad to be able to be with you today, although I did notice you tweeted earlier today that I'm being a bit of a guinea pig. Your live tweeting this session is the first time you've done it before and we've to let you know what you think afterwards, so I'll be sure to let you know what I think about the efficacy of such an approach as well, but I'm very happy to answer any questions that the committee might have. Well, we'll look forward to your written submission after the session on live tweeting. Could we start, first of all, with a question from Bill Bowman? Thank you, convener. Good morning. As you may know, we have a sort of standard question that we've asked all the panels at the beginning of each session about the statistics available and whether they're happy with what they have or whether they may like something else. If you don't mind, I'll ask you the same question and we'll get your thoughts on that. The question is, is the minister confident that we have a defined set of agreed statistics on female economic activity in Scotland and on the pay gap? In terms of how we define it in relation to the national performance framework, clearly we've set out the measure that we utilised. In terms of there being some form of international agreed standard, I'm not aware of there being such. I think that different jurisdictions use different measurements. Clearly for the national performance framework, we use a median measure that's drawn down from the Office of National Statistics. It's the measure that's used elsewhere in the UK, so it offers comparability. In that sense, the OECD also uses a median measurement, albeit a slightly different one. We utilise it for the national performance framework and the UNS. It applies. There are advantages to that as a measure in terms of giving a better indication of what typical pay might be, but equally I recognise that there are some limitations, too, in terms of not assessing part-time pay. We know that there are a disproportionate large number of women in part-time employment, so some would argue that we should be utilising that as part of the measurement. I'm also aware that some would suggest that we use the mean measurement as well. There are different perspectives in this. I know that that's been part of the evidence that you've been gathering. I would reflect that there is no one standard definition, and as part of your inquiry, if there are recommendations made, we'll of course reflect on that. I can tell the committee convener that we continually look at what's in our national performance framework. We're looking to give consideration of additional information about a range of other measurements so that there's transparency in relation to that. We don't intend at this stage to change the single definition that we use. I would also further observe that the purpose of the national performance framework is to indicate progress against the specific measurement that we utilise, the way in which we measure that against any of the indicators that we include as whether performance is improving, performance is stable or worseening. That would be the case no matter what particular measure that we utilised. Thank you for that. You mentioned the use of the mean, and part-time, certainly, issues that have come up. One of the other issues, I think, was more information on sectoral statistics so that we can see across the various parts of the economy why or what the figures might be there. Did you say that you were not thinking of looking to take account of some of those comments at the moment? No, not yet. I've not mentioned anything about the issue of intersectionality or specific sectors. What I can say is that some of that information is available, and we do publish that on our website. The committee hasn't had the attention of particular areas of the website that we published, and it hasn't been brought to the attention of the committee. Of course, we can provide that with the committee. What I will agree and reflect on is that this is specific to the gender pay gap. It is an issue across a range of markers about the labour market. I think that I reflected that in my appearance before the committee when I came to speak about the labour market strategy some time ago. Now, convener, there are a variety of gaps in terms of the information that we gather. One of the things that we are doing through our labour market strategy is that we are considering what particular areas we should focus on. That is the first element, and then we look at how we could draw down such information. That will be an important area for us. If the committee has recommendations to make around the gender pay gap for the labour market strategy group, then that group will reflect on it. Now, a question from Gordon MacDonald. Thanks, convener. I want to ask you about the pay gap report and legislation. What impact do you think that it will have on the gender pay gap, given that it only relates to companies or organisations with more than 250 employees and that of Scotland's 350,000 private enterprises, 348,000 of them have less than 50 employees? Well, indeed, that is an important observation to make. Mr MacDonald, in fairness, although the number of companies is small, we would reflect on that of the proportion of companies who will now have to publish such information, it does account for something like 45 per cent of the workforce, although I would reflect that that is still a minority. That is not a policy we have set, that is the UK Government's policy. We can, of course, raise these matters with the UK Government, indeed the committee, if it is so minded to. We can raise it directly with the UK Government. What we can do, of course, is lead by our own example in terms of those public sector agencies that we have responsibility for. We have reduced the threshold to those organisations with 20 employees or more that have to report such information. We will, through our entire process of engagement in the fair work out agenda, all be willing to discuss those matters with companies that are in the private sector and the third sector where we do not have policy responsibility for. We cannot set that target. There has always been a statutory target set by the UK Government. We can work with them to see if they are prepared to go further and provide more information where they do not fall into that category. I suppose that what we can do is lead by our own example and we have done that in terms of our reporting threshold. You mentioned that there is not necessarily enough data. What can the Scottish Government do in working with the UK Government to provide more data in this area in relation to the pay gap, given that most companies only have to report at UK level? That is undoubtedly correct. That is also correct with information. We utilise what we then have to draw down and drill into what the Scottish specific figures are. Sometimes that is more difficult depending on the particular data source because that could be a very small example and could become rather less meaningful in terms of providing any useful data. For example, that could be the starting position. That is something that we discuss with the UK Government. If there are methods by which we can gather data, we can reflect on that. I suppose that it goes back to the fundamental point that I made about the labour market strategic group. Those are issues that we are considering right now. The starting premise is what information should we gather without any incominement to considering what we should be looking at. We then need to draw on to practicalities about how we would go about that and whether it would be possible to gather such data. If there is further work that we would need to engage in. The subject of procurement levers and using them possibly to influence greater gender equality has come up a number of times in some of the panels that we have had so far. Particularly Peter Rieke gave evidence to the committee last month and he suggested that there might be a number of ways that this could be accomplished. He said that we might be able perhaps to exclude certain parties from tendering for specific reasons or that under the fair work practices regulations we could possibly add in a question about the gender pay gap and then score those responses and then use that scoring during the tendering process. Is this something that the Government is looking at? Is it something that we could look at and do you think that it would be feasible? We can look at anything that is suggested in terms of the whole agenda of procurement. I am aware that that was something that we discussed on a general basis when I was at the committee before. I think that we have done quite a lot of work in terms of the procurement Scotland regulations that we played in 2015 to ensure that a range of fair work practice can be a criteria upon which any body procuring, a service or a contract can utilise as part of their assessment process. The gender pay gap is not specifically cited but there are areas around promoting equality opportunity, developing a workforce that reflects the population of Scotland in terms of a range of characteristics, including gender. Of itself, that could be part of the work that they undertake. However, if there is something else that we can look at and we think that it is something that we can take forward, then we will certainly reflect on it. It might be a good way to get that in there. It could be put in. Employers would have to reflect on that. During the procurement process, it could be taken to account. Do you think that it would present any particular problems for SMEs tendering? Smaller companies might have particular challenges around having women at senior levels? I do not think that the evidence that has been presented to you and the evidence that I have would suggest that it is not just an issue for small and medium enterprises in terms of having women at a senior leadership role. In terms of whether it would produce any significant burden on a small or medium enterprise by comparison to any of the things that would be required of them as they tender for a public contract, as long as they cannot say definitively and instinctively, I cannot say the reason why it would, but clearly where we would seek to add anything or alter the regulations. If that was something that we were reminded to do, we would need to consult that and see what any consequences of changing them might be. John Mason Thank you, convener. Earlier on this morning, we had Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise in as part of the panel. We did ask them about how much they were pushing on this kind of issue of the gender pay gap when they are looking at supporting and giving grants and the various things that they do. I think that I got the impression that they were a bit wary of pushing it too hard, because they want businesses to come in here, foreign businesses to come to Scotland, and they did not want to put up another barrier, and they felt that maybe by pushing the gender pay gap too hard that might put up a barrier. I just wonder if you have any thoughts on that. I will reflect on two things. The first issue is the work that is being undertaken by both enterprise agencies internally in terms of their own practice. I am aware that there has been a range of work internally both within Scottish Enterprise and Highlands Enterprise to look at their own pay and grading policy, which has led to internal improvements. There is also some work under way in terms of how the agencies interact with employers to support the attraction of new businesses. Both organisations are members of Closet of the Gap, which is a partnership that we fund. They have assisted with the design of business-think quality diagnostics online tool kits. There is work under way. I have not half-watched some of your evidence session before Mr Mason, but I have not seen its entirety. My expectation would be that both Scottish Enterprise and Highlands Enterprise, all those involved in this area, would take such a responsibility seriously. I am not suggesting that they are not taking it seriously, but it is the approach that they want to be supportive and encouraging—that is the wording that they were using—rather than taking a firmer line. It is that area that we are in as to how firm a line should they take. If a business is not doing an awful lot to promote gender equality and cutting the pay gap, should the level of support to that business be reduced? I think that the level of support to that business to get them to do better in terms of closing the gender pay gap should be increased. Clearly, we want to attract investment here. If there is a particular issue around a particular enterprise that needs to do better in terms of closing the gender pay gap, I do not know that that should prohibit them from getting financial support from the particular enterprise agency that would be relevant, but my clear expectation would be that Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, and the South of Scotland Enterprise Agency, which we have committed to establishing as part of the skills and enterprise review, would take that responsibility very seriously. They have a critical role to play in working with employers to close the gender pay gap. One of the limitations that we have is that we do not have responsibility for employment law. Again, that goes back to a lot of the work that we engage in in terms of the business pledge, the fair work framework. It is about working with employers to try to explain to them why it is in their own enlightened self-interest to be involved in that area. I think that there is a range of evidence that would suggest in terms of productivity levels. Indeed, I do not know if the specific evidence has been presented to the committee, but there is also evidence out there that would suggest that even things like your share price would do rather better by tackling the gender pay gap and also ensuring that you have women on your board. We need to go out and speak to companies and employers and say that it is in their own interests to be doing rather better in that regard. Minister, a number of Scottish Enterprise priority sectors, including IT and energy, have very low levels of female participation. On the other hand, there are sectors in the economy such as the legal profession in which there is an increasing feminisation is what one of our witnesses said about, where the preponderance is for females rather than males to go into the legal profession, thereby creating the opposite imbalance, as it were, from what was there 30 years ago. We have also heard evidence from a number of sectors. In the apprenticeships, I think that the difficulty is that it is predominantly male uptake. University, its majority female uptake colleges is roughly 50-50. My question is really what thoughts do you have on addressing what is sometimes referred—I am not sure if the phrase is an accurate one—but as occupational segregation or what I might refer to as imbalances, which seem to come in. This is a question, an issue that is not going away from the evidence that we have heard. What measures do you think could be taken to encourage more of a balance across the board in a variety of professions? Well, certainly, occupational segregation is the terminology that we would use. I do not think that that tells the whole story, because even as a critical part, I should start off by saying that we need to do more and we need to do rather better in ensuring more female participation in what is viewed as traditionally the preserve of men in the labour market. Equally, the flipside of that, I should say, is that we need to do rather better in ensuring a greater participation of men in what is traditionally viewed as the preserve of women in the labour market—the social care sector being, I think, the prime example. That is undoubtedly a critical element of the equation. There is a range of work under way in terms of my colleague Shirley-Anne Somerville who has published the draft STEM strategy. A significant element of that strategy, of course, is to do rather better in terms of encouraging women, girls and the school environment to first of all take up STEM subjects in greater numbers in terms of our modern apprenticeship frameworks. We need to—there is the Equalities Action Plan, which SDS is published and is working towards to ensure that where there is a 75 to 25 per cent gender imbalance in any specific framework that they need to be working to level that out, that work is under way. Incidentally, where you refer to modern apprenticeships being the predominantly male, that is the case. I readily concede that, convener, but there has been a journey in that regard. In 2008, it was around a quarter of all modern apprentices were female in the year, the last year for which we have full information available. I think that the figure was at 41 per cent, so there has been progress. Although I underline that, I readily concede that there needs to be more done within specific frameworks. Certainly, there is more that we need to do to encourage greater participation. However, that cannot tell the entirety of the picture. If you take STEM as an example, for instance, even where women undertake STEM studies at university level, once they graduate, only around 27 per cent of those women who have a relevant qualification actually go into work in the STEM sector. We also need to look at the institutional barriers, the societal barriers and the cultural barriers, which I think I am undoubtedly having referred to the fact that I was listening into your session before you were touching on that in terms of the burden of caring responsibility following predominantly on women with the consequential career breaks and so on that have that wider impact in terms of participation, even where women go on to achieve their relevant qualification. I do not have the information before me, but undoubtedly that is probably true in the legal profession as well, more women might be coming in. At what level are they ending up throughout the entirety of their career? I appreciate the point that you are making about specific sectors and areas and specific measures. I am just wondering if there is a overall approach that we are missing out and have been missing out to try and deal with the fact that we seem to take specific measures in an area that then creates a different imbalance 10 or 20 years later, whether or not there is a more overall picture or approach or forward-looking approach. That is not to take away from specific measures for specific sectors' areas' issues. I am alluding to the convener for having reviewed some of the evidence before you. I think that there has been a suggestion from a number of witnesses about there being one overarching strategy for the gender pay gap. I am not going to sit here and commit to doing that. I think that I want to reflect on the evidence that you have taken. What I can say is that there has been and continues to be a range of activities across a multitude of areas that would impact in that particular area. For example, we fund and are a partner of a flexible working Scotland. I always want to throw family into the equation for some reason, because it is about the impact on families. We fund that partnership. We also provide funding for women enterprise Scotland, working in coalition with the Scottish chambers of commerce to encourage a greater number of female entrepreneurs. We also have provided funding for an indeed, I just announced last week, further funding to encourage more women to return to the workplace after a career break at a level that is proportionate at the convention with where they left before they took that career break. There is a range of activity under way. Whether we need to coalesce that into one overarching strategy, I have an open mind at this stage. If the committee has taken evidence that provides a compelling case, it is incumbent on me to reflect on that. Thank you. A female businesses start-ups match males. There would be another 100,000 businesses in Scotland. Is there enough funding and support for women-owned businesses through the enterprise network? It is hard for me to say whether there is enough funding. There is a range of funding. I think that we provide significant funding to support business start-up, but it is undoubtedly the case that, if you look at entrepreneurial activity and business start-ups, men are about twice as likely to have started up a business as women. We need to get underneath that and find out what drives that. That is why, for example, we fund women enterprise Scotland, working with a range of partners to undertake a range of measures such as peer mentoring, providing link-up with angel investors to attract the relevant finance to that end. In terms of the overall funding that we provide to support enterprise agencies to support business start-up and local government, we provide a lot about trying to attract more women to be part of that equation, Mr Paterson. If we had the evidence that, by giving that additional financial support, would the Government have it in its powers and would it consider that to intervene in that way? Of course, we will consider anything that we think is effective and relevant to any particular area that is a priority for us. I would not close down consideration of any particular recommendation. In terms of how we achieve that, we need to look at any budget that we set in any particular year and find the resource to match that ambition. Again, it comes down to what evidence is provided and what the recommendation might be. To give a supplementary question to Gil Paterson, in the last session—I appreciate that you might not have seen all of it, Mr Hepburn—there was a really interesting line of discussion off the back of some of the questions that John Mason asked Scottish Enterprise about what they look for when they are allocating funding and assistance. There has been quite a lot of anecdotal evidence coming through that they are looking for growth in a certain amount of expectation that a company is going to grow rapidly. That is excluding a lot of female businesses from access in that kind of support, because women businesses tend to be more risk averse, but they also portray themselves in a different way. It is more important on sustainability. That is an issue that really needs to be looked at. Has that been your experience that the enterprise agencies need to look at the gender lens on how they are approaching how they deliver support and how they allocate finance? I certainly know that that has been an element of the work that Women Enterprise Scotland has taken forward in terms of the point that I just made in response to Mr Paterson's question about trying to ensure better link-up with angel investors. That is very much on the basis of the proposition that you have just put to me, Ms Martin, around longer-term return. I suppose that there are two things that I could reflect on. One, there should be no reason that women-led businesses cannot see significant growth in a short period of time, either, just as much as a business led by a man. We need to get underneath why that might be felt to be the case, if it is in fact the case. A lot of this evidence, as you have set out as anecdotal, we need to look at that further. In terms of financial return, my view is that, yes, we should also take a longer-term view and if a business might take a little longer to get there in terms of its growth, there should be no reason for that to be cut off at the knees immediately in terms of what support should be provided. We need to look at whether it is a key growth area for the economy and in terms of the high-skilled jobs that we hope to have here in Scotland in terms of the future and its sustainability as an employer. If that might require slightly slower but more sustainable growth, that does not mean that it should be off the table. That is interesting. The women's enterprise mentioned that there has been an analysis done on the people who are getting support, perhaps where they have maybe overestimated their growth potential at the point where they are trying to access support. If there has been an analysis done on whether they are realising that potential or not, is that something that you would be interested in looking at? It is certainly something that we can reflect on. I would imagine that our enterprise agencies will already have that information and can provide such information through the various employers that they have supported and the various employers that they account manage. If we needed to do some more work on that regard, I would be happy to consider any particular recommendation about it. On the subject of analysis, another thing that is coming out when we are speaking to the enterprise agencies is that, rather than saying to companies that they should be closing the gap under any kind of equality issues or societal social justice issues, they should be making the business case. Therefore, there is not more analysis required on what the business case is for closing the gender pay gap and how we might go from it. It becomes back to Bill Bowman's question about having better data. I think that there is information already. Certainly, a range of academic research that shows the business benefits inherent within our labour market strategy. We also recognise the economic benefits, as well as the social benefits, with the economic benefits of a more inclusive labour market. If more is required, there is information available, then we will look at that. However, my view is that it is fairly well understood. Academic circles have the information that we can look at. My view is that that is why we should be working towards a more collaborative and inclusive labour market, a more collaborative and inclusive economy. Good morning, minister. In previous sessions, we have heard from witnesses about the importance of encouraging women to return to work after a career break for whatever reason and the valuable role played by older women in the workplace. Two questions in this area. You mentioned that you made an announcement on the topic last week. Can you talk us through what specific measurements the Government has in place to encourage women to return to work and, in particular, return to the role or an equivalent role that they had before the career break? Secondly, I understand the funding that is available from the Scottish Government in this area. Perhaps £250,000 has changed in the past week or so. Is that enough support to encourage female workers back to work after a career break? I suppose that the point to make here, Mr Larkart, is that this is very much about testing out what might work. That follows on a more limited amount of money that we provided to Equate Scotland to support women to return to the STEM sector. I readily concede that it was a fairly limited project, a fairly limited number. My perspective is that the STEM sector is very important for the Scottish economy, and it is very important to me and the economy to try and ensure that more women participate in that sector. Allowing women who have been in that sector to better return to that sector is of critical importance. However, my perspective is that we cannot just support women to return to that one particular sector, which is why there is this further positive funding available to support women to return to other sectors as well. In terms of its value, it is there to support the same testbed approach to see what might actually work. We need to look at how effective the scheme that we have had running with Equate Scotland has been, and any of the schemes that we take forward as a result of that funding might be. Learn any lessons from that, see if it requires additional funding from the public purse, or is it part of the wider discussion that we have with employers to demonstrate how organisations that have taken part have benefited and to explain to them why they might benefit too. To be fair, we are also aware of—and not on a comprehensive basis—that something else that we are trying to assess is that there are already employers that operate specific return ship programmes themselves. We need to look at that and see how effective they have been to us. There is work under way, there is more to be done, and we need to see what has been effectively and the lessons from that and consider how we might roll it out further. The Scottish Business Pledge includes a pledge for equal pay. I understand the current number of businesses who have signed up is around 349, which is roughly one out of every 1,000 companies or businesses in Scotland. Do you have a plan or a target for an increase in that sign-up rate so that over the next 12 or 24 months you are looking for a higher number of businesses in Scotland to sign up to the business pledge? Of course we are. It is a pledge that is important to us. We want to see as many take part as we can. The point to make is that, by its very nature, it is a voluntary scheme. We cannot compel businesses to take part in it. That requires some work for us to go out and get companies involved as part of that process. Yes, certainly we want to see more take part. Those who sign up have to commit to progress against all the individual strands that comprise part of the business pledge, not all necessarily at the same time. One of the nine strands is around action in terms of the gender pay gap. Ultimately, for those who have signed up, we want to make sure that they are progressing against that measure. In terms of the number of businesses to take part, I read that it is obviously a small subset of the overall number of employers in Scotland. It is a fairly new initiative. We hope for it to grow over time—I believe it will grow over time. What we are planning on doing is assessing how it has worked in practice so far, what culture change has led to. That will take place this year, and we will be able to share the results of that with the committee and other interested parties. You have mentioned a couple of times Scotland's labour market strategy, which you launched in August of last year. That has been in place now for eight months or so. One of the sections in the document included an analysis of the areas that we are looking at, and I will come on to one of those in particular in a minute. However, the final pledge in that area said that you were intent on exploring wider pay-related issues such as pay ratios and transparency and, as you described, the negative impact of executive pay processes on investment growth and productivity. What action have you taken in those areas? We have established the strategic group that has met, although we are still to absolutely bottom out of the membership. I am sure that Mr Leonard would like to know that it is on the basis that I think we need a bit more trade union membership on that group. We have been able to secure that far. By nature, it has been fairly exploratory at this stage, but that would be a critical element of the working group that goes back to the point that I have already made. We can only explore those matters if we look at the relevant data that we have to assess the progress against the areas that you have set out, Mr Leonard. Again, that would be a critical element of the strategic labour market group's work. I did undertake to write to the committee about that group. I have not done so thus far, but I will do so as soon as possible. One of the other areas that is mentioned in that section is something that we have returned to on numerous occasions. That is the living wage. We heard evidence from the fair work convention, for example, that that was a critical instrument in addressing or beginning to address part of the gender pay gap. We heard again evidence this morning from Highlands and Isles Enterprise echoing that view. When I checked last night of the listed accredited living wage employers, there were just 468 from the private sector out of a total of 793. Do you not think that you should be more proactive in promoting living wage accreditation? Do you think that you should have a word with Highlands and Isles Enterprise to encourage them to be more proactive in making the argument for living wage accreditation? I certainly feel that I am pretty proactive in this regard, Mr Leonard. I undertake a range of visits to accredited living wage employers to make sure that they are highlighted across a range of sectors, including the private sector, to highlight that they have done so, to go back to the point that we made about the collaborative inclusive economy very much on the same basis, because when we know that those who are in the workforce are better remunerated, they are better motivated, feel more included and will effortfully give more back to their employer, making it a more productive workplace. I think that it is an important part of our agenda in terms of having set up the accreditation scheme. If you look at the proportion of those accredited across the UK in Scotland, we comprise significantly higher proportion than our population share, which suggests that we should. I know that the Living Wage Foundation is very happy with the work that we are doing here in Scotland. We can also reflect on the fact that, of the four UK nations, we have the highest proportion of workforce paid, at least the living wage. We can also look at the work that we are undertaking as an administration to ensure that the living wage is paid in the adult social care sector, and there has been an announcement about giving ambitions to expand early years, learning childcare. There is a pledge there to ensure that those who are working in the private third sector element of early years childcare are also paid the living wage, clearly those in the public sector through local authorities already are. There is a range of work on their way. I can assure you that having set up and established the accreditation scheme is important for the Scottish Government will continue to promote it. I think that everyone in this Parliament has a role to play in that regard. Everyone who is already signed up as an accredited living wage employer has an important role to play in that regard. I will not name them, but I cannot remember the name of the particular company, which is the most remiss of me, but it is a law firm based in Glasgow that is an accredited living wage employer. I will write to the committee because, to be fair, this company deserves the credit for having undertaken this activity. They arranged a seminar working with their clients to do exactly as I have just said and spell out the benefits to them having become an accredited living wage employer. The more organisations that can do that, whatever sector they may be in, the better. Just a very quick supplementary question, because you mentioned childcare. Again, in the strategy, you talk about an additional 20,000 jobs by 2020 to provide the childcare that we need. What progress have you made in that regard? We are set out the investment that will be required to start to roll that out in relation to the training that will need to be provided. We published that as part of the budget process in December of last year, and we can provide that to the committee. That is the training element. Clearly, there needs to be capital investment as well, and we have set out the investment that we are required to. We can provide that to the committee. Before I ask my actual question, can I go back to something that you might have said earlier on? We have had some difficulty or issues with getting concrete examples as opposed to perhaps academic examples of benefits coming from good gender pay management. I think that you said somewhere that there perhaps are an example of a share price at an increase arising from good gender pay activity. If you were to be able to provide us with anything on that, that would be helpful. Yes, I can. I should say in my own perspective that academic examples are still concrete examples. You were suggesting that academic examples might be anecdotal, but that is not the case. No, I was just meaning that we would go to a company and try to get an example. You can say that this company did something and its bottom line or its staff turnover changed in a particular way. I think that the information that I have and we will provide it relates to the Fortune 500. We can provide that for you. Not that I want to distort market behaviour, of course. If anyone has stocks and shares, they might want to reflect on where they are investing it. You are not a financial adviser, are you? The shares go down as well as up. I am not aware of that. I am also not particularly much of a shareholder, but we can all look at each other's declaration of interest, Mr Bowman. That is why they are declared. Going back to what John Mason was speaking about in terms of the way some of the enterprise agencies deal with the accounts that they manage and how they manage their accounts treatment of gender pay issues. Could you give us a view as to whether the enterprise networks or agencies themselves should be scored on performance against promoting gender diversity with the companies that they are supporting? Could you reiterate that, Mr Bowman, on the last part? The enterprise networks themselves, we hope, are encouraging good gender pay practices. Can we measure or can you measure and score their performance in doing that in some way to see how well they are carrying that out? We could certainly demonstrate their own individual performance going back to a member who asked a particular question in terms of their own individual performance in reducing their own gender pay gap. That would be very straightforward in terms of those that they work with. You are using it as a means of encouraging them from your perspective to… In terms of encouraging the enterprise agencies themselves. Sorry, just to clarify again, you are talking about the employers that they seek to engage with rather than their own performance. I suspect that we need to look at that in terms of the information that they gather. One of the issues around that would be what might be reported going forward in terms of the statutory requirement that has been established by the UK Government. That will only capture some of the information, but certainly we can reflect on that and see how that might be able to be achieved. I want to talk a little bit about the kind of things that you are considering, perhaps not concretely at the moment, but considering to tackle the gender pay gap and reduce it. I think that particularly the two initiatives that you have already, the Scottish Business Pledge and the Fair Work framework, we heard evidence from close the gap that there is no evidence that the Scottish Business Pledge has changed employer practice on equal pay. The gender equality element of the pledge describes achieving a balanced workforce. Close the gap is not aware of the syndicator being used anywhere else in the world in regard as meaningless. As to the Fair Work framework, it says that the focus on women's experience of the labour market and what fair work means for women is minimal and difficult to see how the framework in its current form will enable employers to operationalise fair work for women in Scotland. I wonder whether those comments are fair comments and what else you are considering doing in order to reduce the gender pay gap. I think that the assessment of the commitment within the Business Pledge is meaningless would be unfair in terms of how meaningful we are. I do not think that the commitment is meaningless. I think that they are specifically talking about the measure, the fact that it is about a balanced workforce. That is meaningless in terms of the headline workforce numbers, because it does not do anything to reveal or tackle gender pay gap, as such. No, I suppose that, in and of itself, it might not be felt to, although inherent within that, I think that, if I remember correctly, within the Pledge, it has got to be a meaningful effort to a balanced workforce. It cannot just be saying that 50 per cent of the workforce is female 50 per cent of men. It has got to be across the different levels of the workforce that we do know can have an impact in terms of the gender pay gap. I think that the committee has probably gathered enough evidence to suggest that that would be the case. In terms of measuring its effect, I suppose that it would go back to the point that I have just made, that we are seeking to measure the impact of the business pledge that we are taking forward this year. That will begin to allow us to draw out what the difference it is making on the ground. Again, because it is a voluntary scheme, by the nature of the powers that we have as a partner and as an administration, it is about a system of progression. When you sign up to that pledge, you commit to progressing against all its requirements, not necessarily all simultaneous, they are all at the same time. Again, that change might happen over a longer period of time, but clearly we need to measure that. That is something that we are committed to doing. I have already committed to making that information readily available for the consumption of this committee and others who have an interest in it. In terms of the framework, I am right in saying that you had evidence from one of the co-chairs that refuted that perspective. They feel that they are taking this area seriously. One of the strengths of the framework and the convention itself is that, although it is a body that we established as a critical element of our commitment to fair work, although it is a body that we provide funding for, it is able to set its own agenda, allowing it to challenge us as an administration. Ultimately, that would be for something that the convention would need to reflect on. I have already committed to reflecting on the findings and recommendations of this committee as a result of this inquiry. My expectation would be—and I would be surprised if it did not—that the convention would do likewise. In terms of anything else that the Scottish Government is considering doing in this area, do you have any? In terms of closing gender pay gap overall, we are undertaking a range of activity. Some of it is a longer-term process. Ultimately, we need to recognise that I think that the gender pay gap is symptomatic of cultural and attitudinal issues that assumptions around what we expect of women and men in not just the workplace but in society, which then has an impact on how they feature in the labour market. That is a process that starts on very early in a person's life. Through the work that we want to take through early years' activity, through the development young workforce arrangements, through our commitment to doing rather better in terms of gender equality in our modern apprenticeship frameworks, through the Scottish Founding Council's gender action plan, those are approaches that we want to take to break down some of those structural barriers that arise out of the assumptions that we are probably ingrained in all of us, everyone around this table, probably, even though we are all determined to tackle gender pay gap. We will be susceptible to some of those assumptions because they are so ingrained in our society. We need to try and wind somewhere back and over the longer term. I believe that that can make a difference. On the immediate term, I have already laid out some of the work that we are undertaking in terms of returnerships, encouraging more women to be involved in entrepreneurial activity and some of the practical measures that we are taking in terms of promoting the living wage. We know that those who benefit by payment of the living wage will be more women than men benefitting because more women have to be in low-paid work at this time. That is clearly a longer-term challenge for us. There are things that we are taking in the here and now, and there are also things that we are undertaking to try and deal with this over the longer term. You mentioned earlier that the committee had heard some evidence about the potential value of a national strategy to tackle a gender pay gap. I think that you said that you had an open mind on that. You may not wish to add anything to those previous comments just now, but it seems clear from what you have said that there are a number of areas of Government policy, not just of Scottish level but of UK level, that need to be joined up in order to tackle this in the long term. My perspective is that the work that we are undertaking is not necessarily that disjointed. However, if there is a view from this committee inquiry that is more to be done in terms of better joining up, then clearly it is incumbent me to reflect on that. I would agree with it or disagree with it, so I am not going to commit to the here and now approach, but I am very open minded to considering it. Thank you very much, minister, for coming in today. I will suspend this session to move to private session. We will reconvene for private session at 10 past 12. Thank you very much.