 Hello, and welcome to the 35th meeting of the Economic Energy & Fair Work Committee of 2018, someone in person to turn off electrical devices that may interfere with the sound system. Item 1 is the decision by the committee to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private. Are we agreed on that? Yes. Thank you. Now, we turn now to our business support inquiry. We have two witnesses, first of all, with us Hugh Lightbody, Gwyrddion yn bwysigol chi'n gwybod diwrdd i Gwyrddionol a'r Unig Côslai i'r dda i andynau Ffawlor i'r ddau cywybod diwrddion i Gwyrddion i Ministeriaidikatul neu Agilidegau Gwyrddion i Gwyrddiannau. Fy fawr i chi'n gweithio i gyd y byddio'r dda i gweithio i'r ddau cymorth. Felly, mae'n gwirionedd y rhaglwn i gael o'r ddflwynt, gyda nhw i gyd yng ngllwyio i Gwybodaeth i Gwyrddion. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Firstly, apologies. I'm suffering from the tail end of a cold, so a little bit crechly. It's now over 10 years since the previous enterprise review resulted in the transfer of the management and delivery of the business gateway service from Scottish Enterprise to local government. In that time, the service has been extended across the whole of Scotland and has supported over 99,000 people to start a business. As a consequence, it has supported the creation of over 100,000 jobs. However, business gateway is not just there to support start-ups, it also supports existing business and especially those with the ambition and the potential to grow. The service is intended to provide support to all businesses whatever stage they are at and is the mainstream support service. That support includes online content, workshops and adviser time. Depending on criteria, growth support and last year a loan business gateway supported over 3,000 growth clients. The business gateway service is a vital part of the wider business support system and works closely with other partners to ensure customers get the right support. The most important aspect of the service for us is that customer and we consistently achieve high levels of customer satisfaction at all stages of business from those just starting to those trading for over three years. It was good to see that the findings of the independent survey that was commissioned by the committee echo our own research regarding customer satisfaction. I was interested to hear about the FSB survey, which was highlighted in a previous evidence session, which also closely mirrored our own survey results. Over the years, the demands on the service have changed. The evaluation in 2011 resulted in the call for a more flexible and discretionary approach at the local level that local government has responded to. More recently, there has been a greater focus from the Government on inclusive growth, fair work and underrepresented groups that the service is engaged in discussions on. Following the latest enterprise and skills review, local government and business gateway has continued to work in partnership and collaboration with enterprise agencies to address the findings of the review and to look at ways that the business support system can be improved, made simpler and deliver what the customer wants. While the service is at the heart of that system, it is important to recognise that it and the other elements cannot be looked at in isolation but must be considered together. We are working with our partners to try and find ways to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. Thank you very much. I might start with a question about the effectiveness of business gateway. You mentioned the fact that it has been under local authority supervision for the past 10 years. How effective has it been in terms of its original intention to be a first stop access for businesses of all sizes and all public support available both locally and nationally? Has it achieved the original intention or met that, exceeded it or not quite met it, and if so, in what areas? Our view would be that the service is very effective. We would measure that or consider that through the fact that there is a very high volume of people using the service. It is meant to be the mainstream service, it is meant to be the universal service and available to all businesses, as I said, at all stages. Last year, we helped over 53,000 unique customers, which is, as I said, a very high volume. The original intent was to have a one-stop shop, this idea of a one-stop shop. If you go back to the transition arrangements when the cabinet secretary gave from Scottish Enterprise to local government the business gateway service to manage, the intention had been that the enterprise agencies would focus more on the kind of high growth areas. Over the past 10 years, we have seen that the marketplace has changed and customer demands have changed and opportunities have changed. There are an awful lot more services, even from the private sector, operating in the marketplace. Our colleagues in the enterprise agencies have developed new universal products and services that we are helping to deliver to the marketplace. I would say that we are still the mainstream service, absolutely. We would point to that as being the entry point to all public sector business support. Whether it is achieved in the way that was perhaps first envisaged as being the place to go the one-stop shop, I am less sure about it, because there can be new discussions arising from the enterprise review. There is no wrong door, and that makes sense, because wherever the customer touches the service, it should be helpful to get to somebody who can help them. You say that there are 53,000 businesses last year, and you say that that is a high volume. How do you define a high volume? What is that measured against? The number of businesses in Scotland or the number of new businesses, what do you mean when you say a high volume? It is 53,000 unique customers. Some of those will be people rather than businesses as such, because we are helping people to start businesses. What we are seeing is that that volume of people using our website is increasing year on year. The number of people who are unique customers who are accessing the service is increasing year on year. We are measuring it against past performance and what is happening year on year with the service. If I am correct, one of our witnesses who gave evidence to the committee, Professor McEwen from Elevator, said that the business gateway shortfall is that it does not do a whole lot to create an entrepreneurial environment to encourage people to get to the start line. It is a responsive and reactive service when someone wants business advice, they can have it. First of all, we do agree with that. Second, is that a good or a bad thing? If it is not such a good thing, what can be done for business gateway to become a more proactive service? I think that there has been in the past perhaps more attention or more ability from the business gateway service to support that development, that culture of enterprise, and we are very much part of that. However, as I say, there are more organisations now involved in that, who we work with in partnership. Young Enterprise Scotland is a very good example of, at very early stages of someone's development, that idea of entrepreneurship is embedded within them. Also, through local government, through the education service, the curriculum for excellence, there is more work going through that in terms of that kind of change of attitude, that culture of enterprise. We are certainly part of it and we are certainly helping it. Perhaps not as much as we once did, but directly ourselves, but we are very much working in partnership with others to make that happen. Some of the evidence that this committee has been presented with has highlighted concerns and variations of the business support offered across local authority areas. I was just wondering if you could give us an idea of how business gateways national unit has worked to try and overcome those challenges. The national unit, working with local government, what we have done, particularly working with our operational network, who is principally responsible for the day-to-day delivery of the service, is that we have produced a national service specification and a set of programme rules. That is what the local areas operate to. That provides that consistent framework that they deliver on at the local level. Also, the national unit and the operational network are meeting monthly to look at performance, to look at what is happening, to consider common issues, to consider challenges that we might all share and what we might want to do with them, to update each other on opportunities and to discuss the various different things that perhaps have come up over the past month in terms of approaches from other organisations, from other partners, about what they might want us to do. In terms of our advisers, all our advisers have to meet a specific consistent standard and a qualification that has been prepared to do that, which is Premier Advisor. That was developed by the Small Firms Economic Development Initiative and ratified by the Scottish Qualifications Authority. That is how we do that. Can I ask the national service specification how you monitor that? Is it always met? Is it always being met? Are all areas meeting it? Yes, absolutely. We review, through, as I say, the operational network, how our local areas are performing against that. If there are any issues, which might show up through perhaps the quality assurance or whatever, we are discussing that with them and then helping them to try to resolve that issue. That also gets raised and discussed at the business gateway board. So there is nowhere at the moment that you are aware of where those specifications, those targets are being missed? In terms of complying with the national framework and the programme rules, we are absolutely sure that they are doing that. There may be occasions when an area is missing a target for a particular reason, and we discuss that with them. We work with them to try to resolve that. We have heard from a number of different areas. We have visited Highland with colleagues and also Shetland, and there are obviously business gateway groups across the country. How do you ensure not only that there is consistency of service but also consistency of relationship with other key stakeholders such as Highlands and Islands Enterprise or Scottish Enterprise or with the new South of Scotland board? If we take Highlands and Islands Enterprise as a very good example, the geography of the delivery of the services is such that, in many areas, our local business gateway advisers are co-located with Highlands and Islands Enterprise colleagues, so there is quite a good synergy and quite a good join-up between them. Do you think that that is a real advantage? I think that they find it a real advantage. As I say, there is an opportunity to discuss and talk and say that I have come across this company. Can you maybe do something with that and maybe help that out? That works quite well. In areas such as Shetland and Orkney, where they do that, they have told us or certainly Shetland and said that they think that that is an advantage. In areas such as Highland, they do not do that, so why do you think that they do not do that? Is there a chance that they would be better co-located? I think that co-location is something that is happening in various different parts, but the other part of your question, or to answer that bit, is that there is still strong partnership working, whether they are co-located or not, between the local areas and the local agency, whether it is SE or High. There are also relationships with Skills Development Scotland and local relationships with business representatives of organisations such as the Federation of Small Businesses. There is a lot of interaction at the local level with a lot of different players. Does business gateway have a particular position on co-location? We do not have a particular position on it. Can I just ask very quickly last thing? You mentioned on-going support, and certainly one of the examples, one of the business gateway that we discussed with, they talked about an organisation might come to business gateway, they may have very initial brief conversations or they might get a bit of initial help, but then there is not the ability to provide on-going support because of things like budgets resources. In those cases, how do you ensure that there is some sort of consistency across the country and what could be done more to provide better on-going support proactively rather than waiting for businesses to come perhaps back to business gateway? I do not think that there would be a situation where we would not be helping someone because of a budget. We are there to help businesses and they will get some adviser time. The issue is what is that they are trying to do? What is the growth potential there? With limited resources and resources are an issue, what we need to do is try and focus on where we are getting the best opportunity, which is why there are some criteria in terms of what additional growth support a business might get. It would not be as a result of that there is not enough money to work with them. It would be a question of are they hitting the buttons that they need to hit in order to get that additional support? I think that the point is that if an organisation as a business came to business gateway, had an additional conversations, it might have helped in the first cases. That business did not then come back to business gateway for support. There is not the resource perhaps within business gateway to proactively go out and go back to them and say, how can we monitor you? Is there anything else that we can do to help? I take your point. We share a CRM system with Scottish Enterprise. A new system came in about three years ago, which gives us some additional advantages as we develop it. One of those things that we are hopefully going to be able to do with that and what we are calling it is our contact strategy. It is absolutely that ability to then follow up with a business or a person that is contacted to say, okay, what else can we help you with? What can we do so that the aftercare can a bit? So there is an opportunity, we think, within the systems to do more of that. Does that mean that Highlands and Islands Enterprise do not share a CRM system at the same relationship? Does that cause issues for you? It does not cause issues. The local areas have access to the CRM system obviously to work with clients and that relationship with high is such that there is the discussion about what clients could we help, what could we do. So you do not think that there are advantages of sharing a system with? I think that there are advantages of sharing the system and that is part of the kind of drive to take that project forward because we see Scottish Enterprise ourselves, Skills Development Scotland, who are all now sharing that system, see the advantage of that 360 degree view of the client and the advantage that that could bring. It is quite a technological challenge to get Highlands and Islands Enterprise in alongside that and we need to look at how best we make that happen, but there is an advantage, I think, in being able to share the information, whether it is the same system or we are joining two things together. That is a technical solution. Andy Wightman Thank you very much, convener. You mentioned just there in response that the Business Gateway has strong partnership working. Lanarkshire Enterprise Services Ltd told us that the Business Gateway service has failed to engage effectively with other stakeholders in Scotland and there is currently no mechanism to share development ideas or address criticisms with other bodies. The chambers of commerce believe that the partnership work has been inconsistent due to the informal nature of some of those relationships and they believe that it should be more formalised. What is your response to that? There is a difference between a partner and a stakeholder. We work very closely with our partners who are organisations such as Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Skills Development Scotland and delivery partners. People are working together to deliver a service to the customer. On the stakeholder side, which is organisations such as the Federation of Small Businesses and Scottish Chambers, you mentioned there, as the service has matured—we have been doing this for 10 years now—as the service has matured, as the relationship has matured, particularly as that relationship has matured at the local level, we do not see an advantage in a formal relationship at a national level, because those relationships are happening at the local level. On the other side of the coin, in the past two and a half years, we have been involved with those stakeholders in the enterprise review. If those stakeholders believe that there is a need for some kind of formal relationship, they are absolutely fine, but we need to look at that in the round. It is not just business gateway, but a relationship that has to be with the system as a whole. As I said, the relationships are there at the local level. The relationships are there at the national level. For example, back in January, we sponsored the Federation of Small Businesses annual awards lunch, so the relationships are there. Could you say something about the governance of business gateway? Your board has recently changed. There have been quite a few changes over the past 10 years. Where are you with that at the moment? Up until April of this year, the kind of overarching governance within COSLA—the ability to go governance within COSLA—was through the environment and economy board, but the environment and economy board has a very wide remit. It was felt that a more focused approach was needed for the business gateway service, given the amount of interest in the service from various quarters. In April, what we have got is a business gateway board, which is drawn from members from all over Scotland—political balance, geographic balance and, as best we can, a gender balance. That has been working for what? Since April. You mentioned the enterprise review there. Pamela Stevenson of the Scottish Local Authorities Economic Development officers talked about our lack of involvement. The enterprise review was very disappointing. COSLA themselves said that there is duplication, confusion and clutter in the business support system, adding that the Scotland can do banner potentially adds to the clutter. I think that some of the concern about partnership working and engagement with the stakeholders is also reflected in the fact that the whole business gateway system has been left out of the most strategic review that government has been carrying out and is currently implementing. You said that you are concerned about that. What are the kind of improvements in the overall business support ecosystem across Scotland that you would like to see to make sure that everyone who is engaged with it is all pulling in broadly in the same direction? It is probably worth saying that, although we do not feel that we have been excluded from the review process, because we had political representation in the ministerial review group, colleagues from business community and national unit, colleagues from Slade, were involved in the various workstreams in phase 1, and we were involved in workstreams in phase 2. We have certainly been involved, but the focus has been very much on the enterprise agencies. That continues to be the message that is coming out. The focus was on getting the enterprise agencies to collaborate and align, and there has been less of a focus on looking at the system as a whole. That, we feel, is perhaps being a missed opportunity in the development of where we have got to. However, I think that there is certainly a recognition from our partners that we are working with, Scottish Enterprise and the Highlands Enterprise and SDS in particular, that we have an opportunity to think through, as I said earlier, how we simplify the system, how we make it better, what can we do collectively to work through the opportunities? One of the things being the single digital access point that has been talked about and which we are working on developing a first version of for March next year. You talked about the focus of the strategic review. You were engaged in phase 1 of that, but it did not concern itself with business gateway as such. You talked about the importance of aligning the two enterprise agencies, the Scottish Funding Council and the School of Development Scotland. Is there not a similar argument to be made that it would be good to align business gateway and all the business gateway services as well? I think that most people, just from the name, business gateway assume that that is the one-stop shop to all business support services in Scotland. From a personal point of view, I think that I would quite like that to be the case. One of the things that came out of the phase 1 review was the concept of cluttering—perception of cluttering confusion in the marketplace. It certainly seems to me that a simple way of resolving that would be to simply have one door and direct people to that one door, which then triaged the customer's inquiry and pointed it to the right support. We are very much aligned—I cannot overemphasise this enough—that we have worked very closely in partnership with the enterprise agencies already, and we have done for 10 years, particularly on that growth support activity. There is a strong degree of alignment and collaboration already. Could it be better? Yes, I believe that it could, but what we are looking at at the moment is, because of the enterprise review, how do we look at this whole system now and make it better? We are working together to look at how we make that better for the customer. When you say that you are working to look at how you can make it better, what does that refer to? There is a piece of work that Scottish Enterprise has commissioned and is leading on, which is bringing in a consultant to look around all the partners, talk to all the partners and get a sense of what is possible here, what is ideal, what could we do, how do we join that up in better and more effective ways to get a service to the customer? That is just joining up business gateway services. No, that is looking at everything. That is looking at business gateway commission that work, or Scottish Enterprise. Scottish Enterprise has commissioned that work. Okay. When is that going to be? We are looking to deliver March next year. Okay, thanks. Jamie Fowler, I am conscious that you are responsible for a particular remit customer service and partnership manager, but I am also conscious that you are not being asked specific questions. I just wondered on that last point about customer service that the chief officer has spoken about. Do you have any points to make about that? Well, thanks for the opportunity to speak. I am here really in a role to support Hugh in his contributions, but I certainly agree with what he has said so far. We are working very close in collaboration with the key partners, like the enterprise agencies. We have structures in place where we have regular meetings with colleagues from the enterprise agencies so that there is alignment and a strategic level, a managerial level, so that we are aware of new products and services that they are bringing out. We are able to educate managers who are entirely able to pass that back to make the advisers aware so that we are then feeding that back to the clients and we have got that level of awareness. I think that the role of our national unit is really about supporting our local authorities to make sure that they are doing the best job they possibly can. So is that something new in terms of what is being done educating? Is there anything any other aspect to it and is that completely new? What is being done now to change things for the better? No, I think that that is a role that we have always had. The role of the national unit is to support local areas and to make sure that there are systems in place that we can have discussions and share best practice. We have monthly meetings of our operational network, which is managers from across the network. We have a separate bi-monthly meeting with the Highlands and Islands managers, where we bring in Highlands and Islands representatives into that meeting. We have structures in place that make sure that we have close collaboration amongst the key partners. That is the enterprise and skills review. We recognise that there is a very diverse landscape in terms of partners that are delivering support products there. We now have about 170 partners that I keep tabs on that are delivering either several services into businesses in Scotland or single product or single project services. You spoke earlier on about the national service specification that is agreed by local business gateways. Can you tell us what information that contains? It is rather a large document. I would be happy to send you a copy of it if you would like to have a look through it. Essentially, what that is covering is things like brand guidelines, for example. As we talked about earlier, the standard of the advisers, the qualifications that they are required, the expectations in terms of the service on start-ups, the expectations on service for growth businesses. It is basically the manual of how to deliver the business gateway service. Is expectations the same as targets? Is this document publicly available for each of the local business gateways? Is it an annual report that comes out for me? No. It is a framework document. It is the manual of how to deliver the business gateway service. It is not the same as the targets. The targets are set by the local areas on what they believe they can deliver with the resources that they have and with the opportunities and the challenges in the local area. However, this is the manual of how to do it. I was able to find the business gateway annual review, which does not say very much, but is there any annual report that comes out for any individual area? There is not an annual report that comes out for any individual area, but the local delivery is scrutinised by committees and local councils. If that discussion is in the public domain, it would be publicly available. There was concern from evidence-referred from FSB, for instance, that no data is published about what is happening in individual gateways. There has to be transparency. The data should be reported as part of a continuous improvement exercise. Is there any particular reason why targets are not published and why outcomes are not published for individual areas? It is a national programme. It happens to be delivered locally, but it is a national programme. We report nationally on what the overall national performance has been. We do not produce the regional performance in that way because we are talking about a national programme. What has it achieved overall? That is what we report on. We did a visit to Dublin. I think that they have a similar setup. They have had recent changes. All of their staff for the local enterprise office are employed by the local council, but they produce an annual report and they have a tie-in with the local enterprise agency where they agree targets. For instance, I have a 60-page report on Donagall local enterprise office. It contains a profile of the county, the opportunities for that county, and how the local enterprise office would support achieving those targets. It has 40 targets and it gives a review of the previous year. Why can that happen for each of the business gatesways in Scotland? The Irish model is that all public sector? It is finite somewhere, yes. We have a number of areas where it is a private contractor. Potentially, there are commercial confidentiality issues in there. That is a minimal. The vast majority, 26 of the business gateways, are in-house. There are still four potentially commercially confidential contracts. From the beginning, right from the get-go 10 years ago, the decision that was taken was that we would do this as a national programme reporting it at a national level, in the same way that the Scottish Entprisment ran the programme reported at a national level. We have just continued to do that and we think that that absolutely makes sense. So what we need to change in order for us to get a report on each of the individual business gateways, the contract in total or what? We have provided to the committee the data across a regional level for the last 10 years, as required by the committees. You have got that and you can see that. Our issue, to some extent, has been over the years that there is quite a variation in economic geographies around Scotland. There is potentially a risk in there that people start doing a league table round about this and saying, well, why isn't that area doing better in that area? We end up embroiled in discussion and debate round about all of that. At the local level, it is scrutinised by local councils, by politicians at the local level. There is local oversight, local management of the delivery, but it is a national programme. We are reporting it at a national level. None of the organisations that could help to support business gateway are aware of those targets and those outcomes. Not at the local level? No, that is what I am talking about. How do they know how they can support a business gateway to achieve its targets locally if it does not have access to what those targets are? Do they need access to those targets? There is a relationship at the local level between—if we are talking about FSB, for example—there is a relationship at the local level between the local business gateway. Do they need to know the targets? I would say that, given the amount of confusion that everybody has stated that is out there, I would think that it would be better aligned if everybody knew what the targets and outcomes should be. As I say, it is a matter for local government. This is something that local government has been handed by the government to deliver. Local government runs through committees of politicians at the local level. To move on to another topic of targets itself, how ambitious are the targets, given that they have not moved in 10 years? Given that resources have not moved in 10 years either, and local government finance funding has gone down in that same 10-year period, the fact that we have been able to keep the targets as they were is a very strong performance, a very strong success. In terms of the strong performance, I can only refer to Edinburgh because that is the area that I represent. Start-up target for Edinburgh and the Lothians over 10 years fell from 2200 to 1800. Local growth target fell from 495 to 380. Growth pipeline target fell from 200 to 95. And account management target fell from 50 to 16. Does that strike you as being strong and ambitious? I think that we have to reflect on the economy over the last 10 years. Edinburgh is booming. In terms of a number of sectors, whether it is tourism, whether it is life sciences, whether it is fintech, whether it is the university sector, Edinburgh is booming. Surely there should be more ambitious targets to help to support that growth in the economy. That is something that we would have to look at with the individual area if you wanted to raise that with them. Andy Wightman On that, it seems to be central to our deliberations. This is a national programme, but it is delivered locally. That is fine. There is a lot of that. In your response to Edinburgh's targets, you say that you would need to look at that. That implies that it is entirely up to Edinburgh, North Lanarkshire and Aberdeenshire and what it does in terms of setting targets. How can it really be a national programme if there is that degree of autonomy? One level is a good thing, but it can hardly be called a national programme if there is that degree of autonomy. We inherited from Scottish Enterprise that a target, taking startups as an example, of a range between 9,000 and 10,000 startups per year. That is therefore nationally the range that we are trying to deliver on. What we are doing when the local areas are absolutely setting the targets is that it is locally delivered, local responsibility and local oversight—political oversight—of the service, because that is how councils work. What we do when we are looking at that is to make sure that it is at least coming in, certainly in startups, and coming in within the range that we are looking at, and then that might require a conversation. At the end of the day, we are not dictating to local areas what to do or what not to do. That is up to them. I understand that. The information comes in and you assess it and see where you are at. It is a national programme—you have said that a number of times. There are areas of Scotland that are better placed to grow businesses than others at any particular point in time. Does that not imply that there should be some in this national programme, some level of direction about where more support should be provided, because there is more potential in certain areas at certain times, in certain sectors? What has also happened in the 10 years, as we said, is that a number of other organisations now operate on a number of other initiatives that are happening, which we work with, partner with and get involved with. We are not the only show in town, as I suppose is what I am saying there, from where we perhaps were 10 years ago. That has an impact on what you can deliver. Resources clearly have an impact on what you can deliver. The other challenge that we have—in the point that you are making about taking growth pipeline, for example—we have a pipeline that we work in partnership with Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise to deliver. The issue there is that that is not our resources, that is the Enterprise Agency's resources. They are a gatekeeper into that process. Sometimes our aspirations as local government for who we might want to support does not perhaps meet the policy of the Enterprise Agency. The growth pipeline goes up and down a wee bit in terms of what we can achieve. That is about relationship and working with them and trying to make it better. John Mason. Thanks, convener. Gordon Macdonald and Andy Wightman have asked some of the area that I am interested in. Does the Scottish Government have any input as to the 9,000 or 10,000 start-up target? Has the Government said that it should be increased or has the Government not said anything about that? How does the Government get involved in any of that? We have regular meetings and discussions with colleagues in the Enterprise division within the Government and talking about policies about what is going on, what we might work together to do and, when I say work together, we are talking about the whole system. The Government does not say that it wants X, Y or Z in that, because at the end of the day, as I said, the service has been passed to local government to deliver, so that oversight, that scrutiny, is coming at the local level from local politicians. However, we work closely with our colleagues in the Government. We are working closely with them and partners in terms of the whole system review that we have talked about coming out of the Enterprise review of saying, how do we make this whole thing better? What should we be doing? One of the things coming out from the Enterprise review seems to be that we are looking for more start-ups, more scale-ups, more growth, more businesses. How do we all work together to actually make that happen? What does the system need to look like and what does the system need to do and who needs to be doing what to achieve all those outcomes, the increased outcomes that we are saying that we are looking for? We are not there to get with that. I suppose that one of my questions is whether we actually have a system or 28 systems. For example, we visited Aberdeen and they are saying that they have got 1,150 start-ups, or at least that is their target, which I think they have met in the past couple of years. Whereas Glasgow has fallen, which is where I am from, to 500, now, is the Government or can this committee say, therefore, that Aberdeen City and Shire are doing better than Glasgow because of that? I take the point that you have already made that we do not want to be doing league tables and things, but how does the Government know or how do I know what this committee knows? Is Aberdeen performing well compared to Glasgow or are we not really too bothered about that? There are a couple of things in there. Excuse me, but, as I said in my opening remarks, in the evaluation that we did in 2011, there was a lot of feedback from organisations such as the Federation of Small Businesses seeking greater flexibility at the local level. As I said, that is something that local government has responded to because local circumstances and local opportunities will be different from area to area. Taking the Glasgow one as an example there, yes, the start-up target has gone down, but that is because Glasgow has looked at the situation in its area. It has recognised that there are a number of other organisations now involved in that space. It has recognised that the problem that it has is more about the survivability of businesses and the succession and transfer of those businesses. Someone who is running a wee business in Gifnock decides to retire, shuts the shop and they are gone. Instead of looking or even thinking about how they might transfer that, that was something that Glasgow was quite concerned about. It has put resource more into that survivability succession activity than into the start-up. That is why they have reduced that start-up target. Local areas are responding to local circumstances and local opportunities. I think that Gifnock, for better or worse, is no longer in Glasgow. What is the cause of the role in that? Are you just a recording body and so Aberdeen tells you what they are doing and Glasgow tells you what they are doing and you can record it? Do you ever challenge them and say to Glasgow that you should be learning from Aberdeen or that Ayrshire should be doing better or anything like that? First of all, in terms of the national unit, it is probably worth just saying a wee bit about that. Absolutely. Our role is to support those local authorities who deliver and lead local authorities. Principally, that support is about marketing the service, but it is also about the performance recording and reporting and the quality assurance work. That is what we are doing for the local areas. Do we challenge them? Absolutely. As I said earlier, we are talking with them about what is going on. We are talking to the operational network and working with the operational network every month looking at performance and at what is going on. There is challenge. Within the governance of the organisation, we have the operational network, which is very much operationally focused on what is going on, and we have the business gateway board. The business gateway board has taken an interest in what is happening across the piece. Is it different people who are doing the supporting and the challenging? Is that what you are saying? No, no. It is the same people. I mean my team. Is that not attention that you are trying to encourage and support on the one hand, but you might be challenging on the other hand? Does that work okay? It works fine. We have very good relationships with all the local areas who are delivering the service. I wonder whether I could take you on to something that is widely accepted. I think that women, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities and people from disadvantaged areas are all important in terms of business start-ups if we want to encourage economic growth. I am curious to know what business gateway is doing specifically in those areas to encourage those start-ups. As a service, we have run across a number of areas a women in business programme in the past 10 years. That has been a fundamental part of quite a lot of what has been done. The enterprise review has put a particular focus on women in enterprise and the business gateway national unit and colleagues within the operational network are working together with other colleagues through the women in enterprise action group to look at what those issues are. From our perspective, we are not really seeing a particular issue on the start-up side of that. There was a conversation at one of the meetings a few months ago where both entrepreneurial spark and ourselves were saying that we are not really seeing the problem here on the start-up side. If we look at last year, 47 per cent of business gateway start-ups were women-led businesses. We seem to agree around the table that the issue of support in that is further down. It is in the early stages of growth or in the growth side of things. We are working together to look at how we address that and what we can do to resolve that particular issue. One of the concepts is a national women's centre that has been discussed. There is quite a lot of focus and attention at the moment on that particular issue. That has been driven by coming out of the enterprise review. We have recently been approached by a piece of work that has been done by the Hunter Centre. It is looking at the issues for black and minority ethnic entrepreneurs. There is a meeting in Glasgow next January in which we are involved in and other colleagues are involved in to discuss what the potential there is. Previous evidence session, Graham Smith from Glasgow made the point that one of its advisers is dedicated to that particular area. We have an adviser in Edinburgh who is working with the Polish community to help start-ups. In Bute, our local business gateway office has worked very closely with Syrian refugees to support them in starting businesses because so many of them had had businesses in Syria and wanted to start businesses in Scotland. We are working with colleagues in COSLA's migration, population and diversity unit at the moment. We are also working with Government colleagues who have approached us because we are looking at the particular issues for gypsy travellers, for example. We are also working with colleagues in the Government who are looking at the issue of disabled entrepreneurs. There is dialogue and discussion to be had on that to see what else we can do. To be fair, those discussions come back every now and again. We talk to the local areas. They are working with all sorts of different groups. There is no barrier to support from the service and many of them work with a whole range of different people. In other areas, we have advisers who are particularly focused on social enterprises, for example. There is a lot of activity already happening within the network on a whole range of different groups. It seems to be a bit ad hoc in listening carefully to what you were saying, some of it quite recent. I am interested to know, in terms of bedding that down in a more consistent way, is it in your national service specification? Is there anything in there about gender, ethnic minorities, disability and disadvantaged areas? Is it there? Is it in the training for your premier advisers? You have mentioned one product, which is the Women in Business programme. What other products are there? Do you measure all of that at a local level as well as at a national level? That is quite a lot of questions here. If you want to bed something in as important, those are the things that you need to do. Is it specified in the national specification specifically? As we said before, it is a framework to allow areas to deliver the service that is most appropriate in their local area. For some areas, where there is an existing partner, particularly in the Highland area, we have a very strong partnership working with the Highland Women Business organisation. We would not want to duplicate something that is already being delivered by another body. We have done that work at a local level because we have those relationships there. That is the area where we identify the need when it arises. Do you respect that one area of Scotland? Women are in all parts of Scotland, as are disabled people and ethnic minorities. If you are a national programme, what direction are you setting from the centre to have all of this happen? The thing that we have to remember is that it is a universal service that is absolutely open to anyone. The things that we are talking about here, as I mentioned, are things that are quite recent in terms of an interest from the Government on inclusive growth and so on, fair work and the underrepresented groups. We are responding to that as that comes forward, but it is worth making the point that, if you look at digital, for example, the Scottish Digital Strategy five years ago, we needed to raise awareness of the opportunity of digital. We had a role in that with S.E. and High. We worked together and created the digital boost programme and it has been resourced by the Government. If we want to do more across a whole range of other groups, we have to think about how that will be resourced. That is a challenge. Can I interrupt? All those groups exist currently in every part of Scotland. If they are part of your core business because you are this universal service, surely you should be resourcing that as part of that core business, not as an add-on? It is resourced. As I said, there is no barrier to people accessing that. There seems to be particular challenges for some of those groups in terms of growth on the women and enterprise side of things. We are working together with partners to look at that and see how we address that. What is the challenge? Is it in your primary adviser training? The primary adviser training is to cover what you need to do for women and what you need to do differently for ethnic minorities for disabled people. Does it cover any of that? Across all the modules, it is embedded throughout the modules. It is not a specific module within the qualification that has put it that way. It is part of it. I would be interested in seeing how it is embedded across each and every module. Finally, do you measure that? How many you quoted statistics for the number of women's start-ups? Do you measure ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, start-ups and disadvantaged areas? Where people are prepared to give us the information, we measure it. Yes, because sometimes they choose not to tell us in the equal opportunities that they are monitoring for. Do you ask them all of that? We are asking them, yes. They do not necessarily tell us. Do you produce data for that? We do not produce data for it, no. I just think that you measure what matters to you as an organisation, so if you cannot produce data, it does not matter. That is the impression that you give, thank you convener. From various submissions that the committee has received, it would appear that around £15 million is spent on core business gateway services across Scotland every year. Surprisingly, the business gateway national unit was not able to provide committee with any spend or budget information. Does the national unit or any other organisation monitor levels of spend on business gateway at a national level? I do not remember being asked that information. The figure is about £16 million, about £14 million of actual delivery and about £2 million for the national unit. Our apologies if we have missed that in terms of being asked for it. We are looking at the spend, we monitor the budget, what is the total spend going to be at a national level, because we are obviously interested in what that is and what is happening with it. In monitoring it, what does that mean? Working out what it is. We are not, as I say, a local delivery. We have no influence about what the local area is doing. That is up to them. Do you measure budget against the spend? Are they staying within their budget or not? Is the money being spent effectively? That is a local matter. That is absolutely a local matter. So why do you monitor the spend of the budget? To get an idea of how much is being spent on the service. For what purpose? So that we know where we are, really. But you do not, really, because the local organisations are apparently autonomous. They are autonomous. They are autonomous councils. Monitoring the spend and budget tells you where you are. What does that mean? We find it helpful to know. I am struggling to see what use it is having a figure that does not really go anywhere. Do you have anything? Other than perhaps to be able to answer your question earlier about how much the total spend was, which is kind of having that picture. You ever had hoped to be able to drill a bit deeper into the spend? I cannot help you there, I am afraid. Do you think that business gateway funding should be ring fenced? If the causals position is that we are not happy about ring fencing, not comfortable with ring fencing, so no. Why is that? Because it removes the ability of a local area to determine how it will spend its budget. So this money that is budgeted really is not ring fenced. Council can chop it or increase it or do whatever they want. Okay. So leading from that, are the resources provided by the Scottish Government to deliver business gateway sufficient? It depends, I guess, on what we have been asked to do. As I said earlier, there are a lot of different things going on, a lot of different demands on the service. We are part of that wider discussion about how we make this service better. It would be nice to have more money, absolutely, always to do these things. If it is not ring fencing, it could be spent in anything. Yes. So even if the Scottish Government provided more money, it would not necessarily go to business gateway, even if it was intended for that purpose, not without ring fencing, which you do not want, so that the local government can decide how they want to spend their budget. A challenge. It sounds a bit of a mess really. That is how the system has been set up. It does not seem very satisfactory, I have to say, but thank you. Mr Leibodd, I want to pick up in some of your earlier remarks to some of my colleagues. When discussing the business gateway external stakeholders group that no longer exists, you said that there was no advantage of formal relationships at that national level as it all happens at a local level. And yet you have said that there is no annual report at that national level. Some of the evidence that this committee heard from Liz Cameron from the Scottish Chamber of Commerce acknowledged that COSLA, as a membership body, had a very important role, of course, in terms of monitoring and evaluation, but she posed the question about how independent that monitoring or evaluation can be. Susan Love from the Federation Small Business said that the most troubling thing for her was governance. It was quite simply not good enough. Is it not a case that, without formal relationships at a national level, you are simply marking your own homework? I think that I said that we did not see a need for formal arrangements given the local arrangements, not necessarily that there was any advantage or disadvantage in it. As I have said, the service has matured over the last 10 years, the relationships have matured, and the connections are there both at the national level and at the local level with those organisations. In terms of the governance, the monitoring and the evaluation, monitoring absolutely, as I said, happens through the scrutiny of committees at local councils and at the national level of the business gate that we board. Evaluation-wise, we have done one evaluation in 2011, which was independently carried out. What we are looking at at the moment, and we are having discussions with a new analytical unit that is part of the strategic board, is that, given that it is quite difficult to unpick the impact that we have had versus what our colleagues and the enterprise agencies have had, given that we are working so closely together, we are having a discussion at the moment with the analytical unit in terms of the evaluation of the impact assessment work that they do, can we work together with them to get a sense of what the impact is across the system? You have made reference to independent evaluation that is now seven years old, but you also made a fair point in terms of your contribution around the skills review that there is a need for a whole systems approach, but is it not the case that you are not practising what you preach in terms of business gateway at a national level by not working more formally and continuously with national stakeholders, particularly in terms of contribution from stakeholders for that external scrutiny? I have argued quite often in the committee this morning that this is a service that was given to local government. The scrutiny is for local government politicians. It is not for, I would suggest, external stakeholders to be scrutinising in the way that you are meaning there a service that is very much local governments. It is part of Civic Scotland, and we are all subject to external scrutiny, both formally and informally. Mr Lightbody, you have spoken a lot about local accountability and local oversight. I, for one, would never demure from the importance or the central value of that, but without publicly available performance information as Mr MacDonald highlighted earlier, or, indeed, a measurement framework at a local level to identify how services are reaching those that are hardest to reach in terms of some of the groups that are identified by Ms Bailey. Is this not just another example of you putting your hands over your jotters? Not exactly sure. I understand the terminology there. It's a national programme. You are hiding your work. We produce a review every year of what the national performance of the service is. I had, but it's local. Where is the transparency around local accountability and local oversight in the context of a national service? The transparency is at the local level with the local council. I've said that earlier. In addition, you have also previously heard from our colleague panelist, Dean Mason, on behalf of Slade Produces an annual set of indicators, which the business gateway performance feeds into the local benchmarking framework through the improvement service as well. I don't have any more questions, Dean Lockhart. Thank you, convener. A couple of follow-up questions on targets and measuring performance. According to the latest figures for last year, the level invested by business gateway across Scotland was £12.6 million, and that's the lowest since business gateway was established. Were there any particular reasons why we've seen a decline in investment across Scotland as a whole? I'm not sure where you got that number from. As I said earlier, there's about £14 million in total that's spent by the local areas, and that's both on start-up and growth activity. What we've certainly seen, due to pressures on local government finance, is that the core money that local authority has through its block grant to deliver has, in some areas, had to reduce, had to take savings on that. However, what they have done is have augmented that by getting European money into the programme, particularly to support growth activity. The spend is, broadly speaking, the same as it has been for the past 10 years, albeit augmented by European money. How about the number of companies that are assisted by business gateway? That's also, according to the latest numbers, showing a decline. I think that 10 years ago, it was over 10,000 companies that were assisted. The latest numbers show about 8,700. Last year, it was 9,129. I think that there are different numbers here, which I think are part of the issue. We're saying that there doesn't seem to be a definitive performance target or transparency in terms of targets. There's definitive performance in the annual review that the national unit produces. That is the definitive performance. In terms of particularly start-up performance, it does vary from year to year, depending on other issues. How strong is the economy in Scotland? What's the job market doing? Do people have an appetite for starting a business? If you look back across the performance of the start-up activity, we got this service to manage in 2008, just at the point where the whole financial crisis kicked in. The programme was very much focused on growth, and, understandably, there wasn't a lot of growth happening at the time. What we did see was, a couple of years after that started, quite a spike in the number of people starting a business. We helped more than 11,000 people to years running. And anecdotally, there seems to be a lag between a recession and people wanting to start their own business. So it's cyclical—it does move up and down. Final question. The topic of policy alignment was business gateway or COSLA consulted by the Scottish Government in respect of its new economic action plan announced earlier this year? There wasn't a huge amount of consultation on it, no. Just a very quick question point of clarification. I think you said to one of my colleagues that the national unit COSLA has no influence on what local business gateways are doing. Is that correct? Absolutely. Looking at the COSLA website, it says that the business gateway national unit under operations support with the consistent delivery and day-to-day management of the services across Scotland and support the shared resources. How does that chime me what you just told us? Because what we are doing is supporting those local areas in what they are doing. They are managing the service at a local level. What the national unit is there to do is support them in doing that. As I said, principally marketing the service, the performance reporting, the quality assurance and systems. So the system support, which is the CRM system, for example. So we are supporting them in how they are doing what they are doing, managing and delivering the service at a local level. The bullet point says local engagement, marketing, operations, performance, monitoring, quality assurance. But specifically within operations it says day-to-day management. We are helping them, we are supporting them with their day-to-day management. In what way do you help? As I said, through the marketing, quality assurance and so on. That is a separate bullet point. That is part of what we are doing in terms of the day-to-day management support of what they are doing. We are supporting managers and essentially delivering the service. If they have questions around how the service is to be delivered through the national service specification, through the programme rules, can we support a client in this particular area? That type of question come up and that is where we can provide guidance to the local areas on. Okay, thank you. All right, well, thank you very much. You may wish to write into the committee to clarify or add to evidence that you have given today. That is always open to witnesses. I think that, in principle, you also indicated that you would be willing to respond to further questions from the committee if we send them to you in writing. So I think that likely the committee will be writing for further information clarification. Thank you very much for coming in today and we will allow a few minutes for our current witnesses to leave and to change witnesses. Thank you. Welcome back to our continued business support inquiry session this morning. We are now joined by Derek Mackay, cabinet secretary for finance, economy and fair work. James Muldoon is the head of entrepreneurship and enterprise support policy and Richard Rollerson, deputy director of innovation, industries and investment for the Scottish Government. Welcome to all three of you this morning. We will move straight into questions, so I will start by asking the minister about one of the key actions of phase 2 of the enterprise and skills review, which is to, in the quote, develop a more coherent, collaborative and streamlined system of business support with a single digital access point. A couple of questions about this. First of all, why was business gateway not included in the review minister? It was before my time as economy secretary, but the purpose of the review was to bring together all the national agencies, so that's the enterprise agencies, the skills agency, the funding council and so on, so it's to bring that cohesion and alignment with essentially the national enterprise and skills agencies. I understand that there was engagement certainly with business gateway, but no, they are not on the enterprise and skills strategic board, the new strategic board, and they would have been involved, but yes, it was more about calibration of the national agencies. I appreciate that you were not involved in the decision as the minister at the time, but with hindsight, is it where perhaps not your own? Do you think that it would have been better to include business gateway in, or is that something that you would not agree with? It may be even more helpful. I recognise the inquiry that you're undertaking here, and I think that it's quite a timely inquiry as to how business gateway is involved going forward. Do I think that business gateway should have a review right now in enterprise skills and central momentum coherence alignment co-ordination? There is a role. The strategic board is probably larger than you would want to have for an ordinary board, but I do see a role for business gateway. I think that what you've had a flavour of this morning, I saw some of the evidence, is that they see the role as very much local, but if the point is to have a more cohesive approach on a business for it to be truly aligned, then I would take the view that there should be more involvement. As far as business gateway being the single access point, do you think that that's the way it ought to be? I wouldn't say that business gateway was a single access point, because some businesses will go to business gateway or entrepreneurs will go to gateway, they might go to Scotland can do, they might go to Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Scottish Enterprise, but the point is that we should have a single port or a single point of entry, and that's absolutely what we're working towards and certainly trying to give that co-ordination. It has to have the necessary and relevant signposts in it as well, but the essence of your question should that business gateway element be part of that national coherence? Yes, I think it should, but no, I wouldn't leave it with business gateway, no? I mean, one of the criticisms is that some of the more recent initiatives have added to the cluttered landscape, so the response that businesses go through or approach different organisations rather than going to a single point of contact by business gateway or any other is partly a result of the fact that there's this cluttered landscape and that's why they go to these different organisations. I think that people will still choose different organisations to go to, but I think that having a single point of entry is really important now. For me, the calibration work that we're doing for the enterprise and skills used bringing together, as I say, the enterprise agencies. I would prefer if everything was in the one place, absolutely, but your question was should that be business gateway and I'm saying no, the enterprise agencies have been clearly tasked to take this forward and that's exactly what we're doing. If business gateway want to be an even closer partner to that, great, I would totally welcome that, so that we have that coherence across the 32 local authorities, but we're getting on with bringing together the different levels to it. I think that it's right to say that it should be able to sign post, coordinate and inform people as to where every potential source of support and funding might happen to be. If I could just turn on briefly to a slightly different topic, the enterprise and skills review made recommendations and I'm just wondering if you could update us in progress on that and likely implications for business support delivery in Scotland. In terms of that single portal, the plan is, and we all love IT projects, but April next year, it should be ready for April next year. It's been covered in the economic action plan and I believe the programme for government and the assurances have been given, although it's complex, but we should have that portal ready by next spring. Do you think that that will be sufficient to overcome the difficulties that business have at the minute in knowing when to or how to access support? I think that it will be a substantial step forward, because if we have that point of entry, then I want it to be absolutely comprehensive. There are a range of different supports out there, whether it's advice, signposting or financial products. Of course, the financial products can change as well. I'm quite keen that we are agile and fleet-foot, so that we can have bespoke and tailored packages for economic interventions when they're required. Yes, I think that it will respond to the criticism that people didn't know where to go, at least if we have a very high profile place to go, then that can unlock the range of support that's there. I'll now come to questions from Andy Wightman. Thank you very much, convener. We had a session just a moment ago with Cuslaw. I think that at the heart of this inquiry that we're undertaking is the tension between local service, which, as the minister knows, I'm a great fan of, but also national priorities in terms of business support. Mr Light's body was talking about a national programme. We would usually go to local government finance statistics to find out how much money is being spent, but there is no specific line within the financial returns, and so Spice have helpedfully managed to pull out some figures to show that there's about £15 million being spent on the business gateway programme of which £12.5 million is part of the core local government settlement. In your draft budget this year, you have £1.7 million of Scottish Government funding outwith the core settlement that's added to that in table 6.15. Who do you think should be accountable for the spending on business gateway services? Local government? So, who's accountable for the £1.7 million that you provide outwith the local government settlement? That would go to local government for essentially them to spend. But essentially you're accountable for that, given that you're allocating that specifically as a discrete pot of money from outwith the local government settlement. Oh, there's substantial amounts of money that's allocated to local government for a function and local government's then responsible for their overall budgets. Of course, if members are familiar with how the current arrangements for business gateway came about, it was round about the signing of the concordat. There was a lot of dering ffencing, of course. There was the removing of administrative and monitoring arrangements. You may argue that that's good or that's bad, but local economic development was clearly a local government function. Business gateway undertake this work and they are responsible to their local authorities. We don't have a national monitoring regime for business gateway, but that was part of the deal, so that's the way it is. Sure. That was part of the deal, but the £1.7 million that you provide, what's that for in table 6.15? I don't have that table, I don't have the budget table in front of me right now, so I can come back to you with the detail on that if you like. Yes, that would be useful. Of course, that would just be one element of support to local government for general economic development, but I'm happy to give more detail on that. Yes, it specifically says business gateway, so that's why I've drawn attention to it. It's a fact that the business gateway wasn't part of the enterprise review, and you said that you'd welcome if business gateway wants to be more aligned with developments going forward, and I'm sure that they'll take that on board. However, do you not feel, given that, according to COSLA, this is a national programme, there should be some consideration at a strategic level about how it fits into the business support ecosystem across Scotland? I mean, I see some value in what Mr Wightman is saying there, so let me be clear again, it's been described as a national programme. Arguably, it's a national policy, it's a national principle, we want to support local economic development, but business gateway is delivered locally as you've described. Of course, many parts of the public sector function are delivered as well, but in response to the enterprise and skills review, the challenge was to ensure that all the national agencies were coming together to give cohesion, alignment, purpose and focus around sustainable economic growth, and I was bringing together skills and enterprise in the funding council, and that's exactly what it's been doing. Of course, it's got the strategic board to help bring that together. In my engagements as economy secretary, I have been asking businesses generally what they think about the support environment, some companies seek and entrepreneurs seek no support whatsoever, some will go to Scottish Enterprise, some will go to business gateway, it depends on the nature of the organisation and the nature of support that they want. But again, going back to the strategic board and the whole purpose around that, it was to give greater alignment and cohesion to the national organisations. I think that there was a sense that each of the 32 local authorities, however they procure or deliver business gateway in that local economic development function, some are more closely aligned with their planning departments, some are not. I think that there was probably a sense of let's get on with the national mission here, because frankly the national organisations weren't co-ordinated enough, didn't have that cohesion, we were told through the review, so bring together the national organisations because that had to be done. Maybe there was a sense with the 32 variations around business gateway that we shouldn't hold up that national mission and continue to allow the 32 local authorities to do what they want to do around local economic development. I'm not saying that's the wrong decision, but I happen to believe that there can be greater involvement from business gateway if you're going to have a holistic approach to business support in every part of the country. I think that something that's changed as well from my point of view is at the sense from particularly the enterprise agency, Scottish Enterprise, the sense that pursuing the high growth or high value projects was well worthwhile. I actually want to see Scottish Enterprise continue to take a stronger role around local economic growth as well, sense of place, and I know that's something I share with the chief executive too. I do think that there's a bit of changing of balance here right now with the enterprise agencies. South of Scotland, of course, will be a margin as well. That'll be about sense of place. Highlands and islands do that with sense of community purpose as well. I suppose what I'm describing is, whilst addressing the national mission, connecting it to the locals important. I do see a role for business gateway, but what you witnessed this morning is how closely guarded local authorities will be to their local economic development and business gateway function. I'm not criticising that, but I'm just saying that we have been asked to deliver national cohesion, alignment and purpose, and that's what we're doing. That means more consistency. That means more alignment. What you've heard this morning is a sense that local authorities are quite like that variability. That's fine if that's what Parliament chooses, if that's what local authorities chooses, and that's what businesses say that they want. However, what I'm describing is the national cohesion that I'm trying to bring as a cabinet secretary for the economy, so I hope that that helps the position that we're in at the moment. That's very helpful. Thank you very much, convener. There are two different areas that I would like to touch on, cabinet secretary, if that's okay. The first one being European funding. I think that, as we're out and about, we've been to a number of different places, Lanarkshire, Highland, Aberdeen, among others. We have heard of the importance that, certainly business gateway, but just the wider business support feels that the ERDF funding and other European funding is, and they're a bit worried about what might happen at Brexit. Can you say anything about how that is going to work out? Not really. We still have a Westminster Government operating this week, convener. No, I mean, in all seriousness, I have repeatedly tried to get clarity from the UK Government about post-Brexit monies, whether it's on economic development, structure funds, farming or anything else. It's very hard to get any clarity right now. It also depends which minister you speak to. The minister in finance, of course, in the UK Government, I speak to most of the chief secretary to the treasury and I've specifically raised a range, as you expect, of the finance sector. We have a range of funding streams and we have absolutely no certainty beyond Brexit. Other than that, the UK Government said that it will honour some commitments where there's been funding streams committed, but we have nothing in terms of the arrangements post-Brexit. I'm afraid that I can't give the committee any more than the clarity that I have had from treasury so far, which is pretty vague. Of course, we'll be determined by the negotiations and arrangements that come out once we understand what that will be, but I'm afraid that I can't offer any more right now. Of course, there has been, as you would expect, lobbying around the kind of schemes that business and others would like to see around some of the funding streams going forward. Of course, we've taken interest in previous funding schemes, like structure funds and so on, so I'm afraid that I can't bring any more certainty right now to the committee just because of the precarious position with the negotiations of the UK Government and the EU and then what they've been able to tell me. Would the Scottish Government, we would really totally dependant on the UK, be that shared prosperity fund or whatever, for any funding that would then feed through to business gateway in place of European funding? The two things that I've asked for is no detriment to our finances. We have benefitted over the last period in the EU of the five-year pay, about £5 billion overall in financial support. I've made a case for no detriment to our finances and secondly, that we should have autonomy as to how to spend that. If it's a prosperity fund or anything else, a shared prosperity fund, we speak to some UK Government ministers, they haven't even heard of it, so it is very interesting that it is so vague. There is no clarity, there are no arrangements in place whatsoever, but we should have no detriment to our finances and then the ability to design the structures that we think are right for our economy, but we have had no detail. The other area is really to go back to where we've already been discussing and I think it is becoming the major focus for this morning, between how much we do centrally and how much is done locally. I'm not sure that I've got an answer to that, but one specific issue is the fact that this idea of business startups has been around 10,000 now for quite some time and we're seeing a very varied picture locally. Some are going ahead of what they used to do, some are falling behind what they used to do. How important is that figure of 10,000 startups? Should it be changing? Does it really reflect Scotland's entrepreneurial ability or is it a figure that we should be relaxed about? Just as Mr Mason has touched upon the figure and then asking about national and local issues, is it right for me to set the target for business gateway? That was a nod and then a shrug, Mr Mason, so I'm not sure what to pick from that. If committee forms a view, of course, I'll take a close interest in that. Although the number has been static, that's true. There has been economic challenges, but the Government, of course, would want to see a healthy growth rate of businesses, want to see more of an entrepreneurial culture. Of course, we do a more survival rate for businesses as well. I think what we would all seek reassurance for is as much support as possible with going in to allow people who want to build and develop businesses so to do and have that necessary support. The Government and our agencies and business gateway should provide as much advice, financial support, contacts, networks, whatever it happens to be so to do. The economic action plan that I published as members are well aware fairly recently. Mr Lockhart and others had asked me about new targets. I'm not proposing new targets. I want new actions. I want new support. I want to recalibrate our efforts, but I'm not necessarily wedded to new or different targets for their own sake. It's recognised that it's been quite a challenging financial environment. If it was challenging before, then it sure is challenging now with the uncertainty that businesses face. I'm not sure if I should give a view on whether the self-imposed business gateway target is the right one, but we should absolutely create the right conditions to build as many businesses and make them as successful as possible. There are other areas that I would put far more focus on such as exports, for example, or women in enterprise, for example, because there is, of course, interesting research around gender and business support as well. There are things that I certainly haven't been interested in, but I'm not necessarily meddling with their targets. I think that other colleagues will come on to that, like the gender side, but if I could just have maybe one more point on that. As far as the target is concerned, if you saw some of the previous session, for example, I was trying to compare Aberdeen, City and Shire with Glasgow, but the answer that I got was that while Aberdeen, City and Shire are emphasising start-ups, not exclusively that, but that is a big part of what they're doing, whereas Glasgow seems to be saying more that it's about survival, which you've just mentioned yourself, and supporting existing businesses. There's clearly quite a different emphasis between those areas. Are you kind of relaxed about that, then, that that should in fact be the case? That's actually quite a good thing, that there be these different emphasis. I suppose that I need to make clear to the committee, and it's not just about business gateway. I think that all local authorities should be looking at all of their functions in relation to economic growth right now. We need to grow our economy, we need to grow our businesses and we need to give more support. That's not just a bit of cohesion and alignment, it's about the fact that if we don't generate that economic growth, we will all deal with the consequences of lower receipts than that economic growth. Unemployment is at record low, GDP although subdued has been outperforming the rest of the UK, but the point is that we all need to stimulate and support the economy at this point in time. It is right that local authorities get to determine what the right interventions are locally to support that economy. There's a range of wider measures as well, whether it's city deals, innovation or other partnerships. Local authorities, I suspect, will understand the balance between startups sustaining what they've got and other sectoral support, but we absolutely need to do both right now. If local authorities are looking at all their powers—their leadership role, the regulatory function role—it's not just business gateway that leads to business success in a local area. I had to make that point, because business support is wider than just that gateway into some support that will be provided by a council. Are there other businesses in a local area that will go to the planning department and never go near business gateway, for example? We should bear that in mind. The whole economic function of a local authority is wider than just this support route, but local authorities can judge what works for them. I wonder if I could take it slightly further. I wouldn't regard it as meddling in targets, perhaps more of a shared agenda for exactly the reason that you described about the importance of economic growth. We are a small country and we can get together and make things happen. I wonder whether we shouldn't be looking at an agreed role for business gateway as part of that overall support for business jigsaw. Do you see that as the way forward in the future? I think that it is a very helpful suggestion from Jackie Baillie. I just wish that I had thought of it first, but I think that there is certainly something in it that we have described this morning. I am actually taking a very close interest in the committee's work, because I think that this is a very necessary piece of work to look at how business gateway has been performing and how we can make sure that it is part of the national more cohesive, more aligned, more purposeful approach that I am trying to deliver. I think that there is room for dialogue here. I think that I would want local government to feel not threatened by that though, that they should feel that we are partners, as Jackie Baillie has described in that economic growth. Some have argued to me that they felt that the enterprise agency sometime focused on the bigger projects. That has brought value, jobs and success for direct investment and other elements. However, I know that there is an appetite within the enterprise agencies to look further at that smaller scale entrepreneurship and sense of place. I do sense that shift in direction. I think that that is to be welcomed, because that fits with my view on economic development. Essentially, all economic development is local, is it not? It all happens somewhere, all has a sense of place. If local government is not threatened by that, I think that we could have that discussion. I think that there could be such an arrangement going forward. I would welcome that. That is very helpful. I do not know if you heard some of the earlier exchanges, but for example, I think that everybody would accept the importance of business start-ups amongst women, amongst ethnic minorities, people with disabilities and indeed people from disadvantaged areas, too, in contributing to overall economic growth. However, I have to tell you that it is not in the national service specification. I am not clear that it is in the premier adviser training, and it is certainly not measured in a way that feeds into creating different products and policy change. Given the sensitivities, what can you do to encourage that wider understanding of a shared framework at least of measurement and of what is important going forward, given the amount of money that you put into it? I am happy to share what we have and what we are doing with business gateway. If we have that national or that discussion about their role and what is going on nationally, I would certainly make it a big theme for business gateway, because there are clear economic benefits from that wider and diverse participation in business creation, business support and job creation. I happen to think that the most meaningful social policy is a job. If we create quality purposeful jobs, it is transformational for those involved. It is good for the economy, it is good for society, and it is clear that we do not always understand or know the reasons for financial support or for companies supported. How many are run and led by men? Why is it disproportionate to the population? Is it more male entrepreneurs? I do not see why that would be the case. I think that we should look at more of the data, then we should look at the actions. I have been very interested in the work from women in enterprise specifically. There are actions that we can take. Let us ask ourselves why it is that not necessarily everyone from an ethnic minority to a background or with a disability is not coming forward for support, and then if they do, how can we help them to flourish? The only way to get to a level playing field is if sometimes there is additional support or sometimes it is the system. You have not designed something in a fashion that attracts and encourages and then gives folk the ability to be able to benefit from it. I think that we need to look at all of that and then take the necessary actions. Women in enterprise specifically have a model around dedicated women's centres for business, and I am quite attracted to that. I am going to look at that further, but I have mentioned those scenes in my economic action plan. I am happy to share that with business gateway. If the sense was that they did not think that it was appropriate, there would be many benefits from doing that. There are many opportunities going forward as well, so I will take a close interest in us and happily work with business gateway if they want to be part of that journey. We have already touched on the fact that there are varying delivery models across Scotland, broadly in-house, contracted out and blended or hybrid. Given the inconsistencies in the quality and performance across Scotland, is there reform needed of the delivery model? I suppose that it will be controversial for me to say in terms of business gateway that it is one person's inconsistencies and another person's local diversity or variability. I do not think that the model is necessarily the issue, so whether it is in-house, contracted or blended or hybrid, as Mr Beattie has said, I do not think that it is the model that is necessarily the issue. When I have been engaging with businesses, I have said how do you find business gateway? We are inquired, probed, how have the enterprise agencies been sworn and so forth, and it might depend on the person who is working on the case or it might depend on the area or other business prospects. I do not think that there is a particular model that the Government would favour, so I do not think that that necessarily determines success or not. However, there is an issue about—I have looked at the evidence around business gateway—it has been described as patchy. It has been described as quite variable, so I do not think that it is the model of delivery that is necessarily the issue. I am interested in the committee's views on that. You have seen far more evidence, but I do not have any preferred model. One of the big concerns is how do we ensure some sort of standardised measure or level of service provision when there are so many inconsistencies—I keep using that one—of the delivery model? I understand that, but that is the dichotomy of when we have agreed that something should be local and then say, but give us more consistency, give us more of a national approach, give us a standardised approach, but it must be local. Well, somebody will have to make up their mind, I would argue, but I think that good practice should absolutely be shared. If there is going to be engagement from business gateway, what are the national elements that they would like to operate locally or what are the consistent local elements that can be standardised nationally? I am interested in that, convener, but I have no preferential view on what the model should be. Other than to say this, it appears to me that some of the best support for a new and emerging business, especially where maybe planning is required, that some of the best local authorities in terms of the economic development function are those that can connect their regulatory function with their business support function, rather than have, say, a business get support from one place, moving forward, getting support from business gateway and then find what they want to do isn't permissible or won't get planning permission or regulatory support at the other side. I think that there is something about even bringing together the function within a local authority. I think that it's quite good that sometimes the local authority planning function can be aligned to the business support function. If you are asking me about a model that seems to work best, it is one that has alignment within the local authority itself. Given that those models are all autonomous in terms of the area that they work in, that the local authority determines the funding and so on for them, there is no ring fencing, is there a way—I am groping a bit here—how to get the local authority, perhaps, rather than the business gateway, to get the local authority to provide some sort of publicly available measurement of the success of the area that is under their control? Well, there certainly should. It has been a wee while since I have looked at the indicators around community planning, but what replaced all the national bureaucracy and monitoring around 2007, when business gateway became the local government function, was it was to be community plan partnerships, there was to be a single outcome agreement, and that single outcome agreement described what the partners in a local authority area, because that's wider than just local authorities, would be doing, set out the outcomes and then the indicators by which they would be judged. So I would hope that 32 local authorities would look at the indicators and look at the outcomes in relation to economic development and how well business gateway is performing. Of course, I am not the only member in MSP, a parliamentarian, around this committee at the moment who has come from local government who would know that local government committees, local government leadership are perfectly entitled to hold to account the managers and the performance and the services that they procure and publish that data, whether it's through the annual council report or whether it's through the community plan partnership report, single outcome agreements, as it used to be, or those indicators should be published. So this information should be available and councils are also audited as well in terms of the audit function. So that ability should all be there. If local elected members are not taking any interest in business gateway or the local economic development function, that would be quite concerning if that was the case. Gordon MacDonald. Thank you very much, convener. Just to continue this conversation, the 2017 annual review for business gateway gives no performance reports on a regional basis for the estimate of jobs created, supported, spend information, etc. We heard in evidence from FSB that no data is published about what is happening in individual gateways, and SCDI said that there has to be transparency. The data should be reported as part of a continuous improvement exercise. You have already stated that there is no national monitoring for business gateway, but should there be and should we not have some kind of annual report on each of the individual business gateways and how they are performing? It is fair to say that, in a number of local government functions, there will be a degree of national monitoring and national performance. It is the nature of the deal in 2007, when it was business gateway, a local economic development function. The local authorities would be held to account for what they did around business gateway. Of course, there have been reviews. Having heard some of the evidence this morning, I think that it would be in business gateway's interests to look at their monitoring and their performance reporting. It would be in their interests to perform an exercise that would show the progress that they think they are making. However, I am not saying that that is Scottish Government compelling them to do it. The question is whether there is a case for it. I think that, arguably, there is a case for it, but really that would be for the local authorities and business gateway to determine. After all, if there is a national unit, then maybe the national unit could co-ordinate it. However, I say again that I am not asking that as Cabinet Secretary as Scottish Government for a new performance set of arrangements. If the committee chooses to make such a recommendation, so be it. However, do I see a case for having reporting of those figures? I think that it would help the national picture, would it not? I certainly agree, but I mean that COSLA told us this morning that they have no influence on what local business gateways are doing. The concerning thing for me was the information that was provided by COSLA to this committee about what 19 of the business gateways are doing. Bearing in mind that you have already said that we need to grow our economy and we all need to stimulate that economy. On start-ups, we have seen growth in the targets in 12 out of 19. Local growth, 14 out of 19 has been growth. However, when we come to the growth pipeline, 17 out of 19 business gateways have saw their targets reduced and 15 out of 19 business gateways have saw their account management target being reduced. Given what you have said about stimulating the economy, somebody has to put pressure on the business gateway to improve their performance. I accept that it is not just business gateway that supports the start-up on new businesses, but the trend seems to be going the wrong way when it comes to the growth pipeline and account management. Again, if Mr Macdonald would reflect on the fact that it is really important that I, as the cabinet secretary, in this arrangement on a matter that is about local accountability should not be trying to hold them to account for what essentially is a local accountability matter. However, I would say that on a number of occasions I have raised with who I meet in local government, which is either the presidential team or the resources spokesperson, group leaders, as and when appropriate. How important economic development is right now for the reasons that we have discussed earlier. I have impressed on the importance of economic growth, the importance of development, the importance of supporting the companies, working in partnership between the public, the private and the third sector. I have certainly made it a priority of one of my first meetings in the role of the economy secretary. I raised the economic growth with local government, and that is partnership. We have been doing it around city deals. There is a range of areas in which we talk about economic development, but do I forensically challenge them on business gateway? No, I do not. They would see that as a challenge to their autonomy in that regard, but we would certainly challenge each other on the economy. As to the comment that has now been mentioned a couple of times about the national unit has no influence over the local business gateways, I would imagine that there is leadership, there is co-ordination, and there is a sense of national delivery. Surely there is a desire for this to be a success in 32 local authority areas. There might not be formal instructive mechanisms, but the 32 local authorities want business gateway to work. I imagine that there is influence between COSLA and the individual local authorities. I would like to think that business gateway and local authority leaders in that regard will be very interested in the committee's findings and in the evidence that is being presented. I am certainly interested in it. I want a more aligned, coherent, purposeful set of arrangements to support our business environment so that it can grow and prosper. I am sure that business gateway will look at the evidence that you have produced, and I suspect that there is a bit more influence there than has been suggested. On the final point about a more coherent joint-up process for business support, when we were over at Enterprise Ireland, the situation in recent years is that all staff of the local enterprise office are employed by the local authority, but they have to have a local development plan agreed with Enterprise Ireland with those over 40 targets that they have got to achieve over a three-year period. I am just wondering if that would be a view and whether that would be a helpful step if business gateway had to produce a development plan three years hence, whatever it happened to be, targets had to be agreed with either high or Scottish Enterprise or the new south of Scotland agency when it comes around? One of the areas that we are taking forward at the moment is regional economic partnerships. They have been largely borne from the growth deals that we have because there are resources there and you essentially have those economic interventions that you are making, but that is at scale. We have also got new economic tools on a regional and local basis as well. I do not think that we want layers of plans upon plans or necessarily new targets for their own sake. I think that there is potentially an issue in how targets are apportioned even within that 10,000 figure. I do not necessarily want extra layers of bureaucracy when we are trying to strip the bureaucracy out, but I think that there is room for closer alignment between what the plan is for place on economic development on planning. Of course, there will be local plans or whether there are growth deals with those arrangements in place as well. I think that there is an opportunity around closer alignment in all of that. I have found that spontaneous and organic nature of business cannot necessarily have planned where the new business might have been coming from or where the growth opportunity was. We need to be quite agile in terms of business support, but could they be more closely aligned? Yes, potentially. The local economic development function should be seen as important as the planning function in terms of appropriate support right development in the right places. As for new targets, again, I think that that is more for the committee to explore than for government to try and impose or suggest that there should be further targets upon local government. I keep returning to the fact that what we moved away from—I know that this is a very specific inquiry report, but remember what we wound up in 2007—was a myriad of complex monitoring and targets. In the spirit of the historic Concordat—we have not heard that for a while—we should just remember that there needs to be a degree of local autonomy, not necessarily new bureaucracy, but on economic development there is a bit of a call to action right now in trying to stimulate local economies. If there are suggestions as to how we do it better, I am certainly interested in that. I will be getting on with the enterprise agencies, the funding councils, Skills Development Scotland, the growth deals and all the other interventions that we are tasked to be getting on with as a consequence of the enterprise and skills review. I think that there is an argument for business gateway to look at what is going on and be part of it. Cabinet Secretary, a question on the budget for business gateway. The annual budget is around £15 million a year to support start-ups across Scotland. Given that is just the equivalent of around 3 per cent of the budget for the enterprise agencies, do you think that that is an appropriate level of investment for business start-ups across the country, albeit given that it is taken into account that there are other interventions, but that is the primary gateway for business start-ups? I think that Mr Lockhart answered his own question here. It is the other intervention, so if you look at the other funding lines that are changing or increasing, whether it is city, that is growth deals, because it is no longer just city deals, but the growth deals, for example, is massive intervention, so there are businesses benefiting from that right now, as well as universities, innovation centres and so on and so forth. That tends to be more sporadic, Cabinet Secretary, right? That is not a more— Growth deals? No, no, the intervention with respect to start-ups through those other initiatives, that tends to be more a talk, whereas business gateway is the platform, the central platform for business start-ups. I am just making the point that you made yourself that there is much wider support for businesses and the business growth, the growth opportunities, the areas in which we know we can stimulate the economy, such as around innovation, as partly coming through all of those other funding streams. Innovation is a particularly important one, even the UK Government's funding streams around industrial strategy funds and so on. What I am describing is that we are now involved in a whole host of funding streams to try and support business growth start-up, innovation, entrepreneurial culture. If that number was just static and nothing else was going on, I think that we would be concerned, but because so many other things are going on, I think that there is much more support for the business community. Again, it is not for me to say to local government other than that they get to determine how much they spend on that at a local level. I really should not express a view, but do I think that the economy requires more support, financial support, assistance to stimulate and support businesses right now? Yes, and I am putting it in from my point of view as finance and economy secretary. Mr Lockhart has seen the economic action plan. There are things that we have committed to and we want to get on with, but I really should not be expressing a view about how local government chooses to spend every part of their budget. I suppose that that is a question for them. Do they think that that is adequate? Do they think that that is providing enough support? Bear in mind, as I understand it, that business gateway in itself is more advisory in support than financial products, where the Scottish Government, through our enterprise agencies, particularly holds a lot of the other financial products. I want to make sure that business gateway is fully equipped to direct businesses and entrepreneurs to where the financial support might be. That is a good point about alignment between business gateway and all the other business support mechanisms that are out there. Again, only business gateway can answer for that, if they think that they have all the support that they require from the Scottish Government and our agencies, but it is for them to justify if they think that they are spending enough. The business start-up rate and survival rate in Scotland is among the lowest in the UK, despite many of those interventions and a higher pro-rata spend on enterprise in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK. Have you had time in your new role as a economy secretary to look at the underlying reasons why the business start-up rate and the survival rate in Scotland is not performing as well as it should be? I have certainly engaged with business and that is what has led to the economic action plan. Do we want to do more? Yes, we do. I think that that is why we are doing more around entrepreneurial support. We are looking at the financial packages that we have as well. The enterprise agencies are absolutely focused on that. Again, if you look at some of the comparisons, if we are comparing with London, for example, it is going to be quite different from the nature of business and start-ups in Scotland. There is possibly a culture thing as well. We need to tackle that culture issue around an entrepreneurial approach in our country, starting up your own business to support. Many will fail, but it is still worth supporting because many will flourish and succeed as well. There will be and there is on-going more support around start-ups and sustaining businesses. However, I am particularly keen on scaling up businesses, because there are many who have been successful and they just never go to the next level. We want to support them, raise their aspirations and help to give them the support too. Sometimes that will be about networking knowledge and financial support, and then there is a specific strand of work around exporting as well. I accept as a challenge here. I accept that we want to improve performance, and that is why we are trying to do more around it. I suppose that it does connect back to the question on the business gateway targets, why they have been static. However, although the target may have been static, the economic circumstances and environment in which businesses are operating is anything but static right now. Angela Constance Thank you, convener. Cabinet Secretary, we have heard this morning repeatedly that business gateway is delivered and scrutinised locally. That is an important point. Nonetheless, it is still a national service that the Scottish Government funds. Therefore, I wonder whether you found it acceptable or not that the business gateway external stakeholder group no longer exists. Therefore, there is no formal role for the Scottish Government in current governance structure arrangements, despite there being a formal role for the Government in the early days. Whether that is a good, bad or indifferent thing for our collaborative work and partnership work between the Scottish Government and the local Government in terms of economic growth and development. The Convener, that is a very fair question. My response would connect to what I said to Jackie Baillie in a way that I want to see greater involvement from business gateway in our national efforts. I am quite open to that answer to Angela Constance. If, because it is a local authority that now delivers our business gateway, if it wants to restore that national group, I would welcome that. However, rather than having another body to add to the list of meetings that some of the business representative organisations might have to go to, they would probably welcome if it was simply part of something else that was going on anyway. However, if that gave local authorities again a sense that the Scottish Government was trying to interfere or take over, I would not like that. However, am I open to a national group where they can have that national cohesion? Yes, I am open to that. Do I see a case for it? Yes, and looking at some of the evidence that you are unearthing, I think that business gateway should respond to that. The discussions around the external stakeholder group were not about creating meetings for meetings sake. Those discussions have been located in the importance of governance at a national level, notwithstanding the local accountability. However, you would have heard Cosly say this morning that they felt that there was no advantage of formal relationships at that national level. However, the committee got evidence from the Scottish Chamber of Commerce, Liz Cameron, who said that there is a need for a national group. I would imagine that Ms Cameron would be a busy person, but she said that there is a need for a national group. Yes, Cosly is a membership organisation and has a very important role in monitoring and evaluation, but she questioned whether that in itself would be sufficiently independent. Susan Love from the Federation of Small Business felt that the governance arrangements at that national level were troubling and, frankly, not good enough. I think that that is quite concerning evidence. My offer is more positively recognising that they are all indeed busy people, but there are a range of forums and national meetings that go on. If the business community is saying that there is a requirement to have at least a national sounding board or that level of national engagement, that should be taken seriously. My positive offer is that, if people do not want to create another set of meetings, I have regular meetings with the business community and local government. As I indicated earlier, if there may be more of a role around the strategic board as well, recognising the board is probably already quite large. However, if it is a consequence of the committee's work, it creates an opportunity to engage further with business gateway Cosly or Slade. That is, of course, a Scottish local authority economic development, not the band, since we are approaching Christmas. However, if there is an opportunity to create a national forum, I would certainly happily facilitate that or see how I can integrate it with something that is already happening, not to challenge local government's rights and responsibility or autonomy around that, but to certainly bring the cohesion that Ms Constance is probing at. My final question, convener. Given that the cabinet secretary has spoken a lot this morning about the need for alignment across the agencies at a local and national level in terms of policy and in terms of service provision and interventions, I wonder if he would share his view, his evaluation about how currently well-connected business gateway is to economic strategy, city deals and other national programmes and policies around inclusive growth, and whether there is a need for more support, direction and engagement by the Scottish Government? I think that the word direction would alarm local government if I said direction depending on how it is interpreted. I think that I would like deeper engagement. I really believe that we are making a lot of headway around alignment of our national agencies, and that is to be welcomed because maybe it was not always the case. That is what the enterprise and skills review has said. I think that we are making progress on a strategic board and the action plan and the action through the economic action plan. In essence, would I like business gateway to be closer to all of this? Yes, my evaluation is yes, I would, but I recognise the arrangements of the local accountability. I can only see good come of closer alignment with business gateway as well. I am open to that support evaluation if that is what they want, but I think that they could play a greater role in what we are doing at a national level. Is that an acknowledgement that business gateway is not well enough aligned? To be fair, the premise of the question is what is my evaluation. I have met regularly local authority leaders' business and all the relevant people in the economic environment that you would expect an economy secretary to meet. My engagement with business gateway is not in depth or intense. Of course, to see the reports, I understand the arrangements work well, I am advised that the arrangements work well at a local level between business gateway and the enterprise agencies. Angela Constance has asked me about my personal evaluation of it. I would like to see more engagement with business gateway in the economic mission that we are undertaking right now. That is my honest evaluation, but I like members of the committee to see reports that say that they are getting on, giving support, but equally I have seen the critique from others that they have said that it is variable and that there is no standardised service. There is certainly a question mark there. Thank you very much to the cabinet secretary. That concludes our questions on this aspect of matters. We are going to look shortly at the recognition of professional qualifications, amendment, etc. EU exit regulations 2018. We will suspend briefly to change over some of the witnesses at least. We now turn to item number 3 on the agenda for today, the recognition of professional qualifications, amendment, etc. EU exit regulations 2018. We have with us for this the Derek Mackay cabinet secretary for finance, economy and fair work, and he is joined by Nigel Robinson, senior policy manager, regulation of healthcare professionals and John Patterson, divisional solicitor from the Scottish Government. I will invite the cabinet secretary to make a brief opening statement and then I will open the session up for questions from committee members. I am now for something completely different. I seek the committee's agreement to consent to the UK Government legislating on our behalf on matters that intersect with devolved competence. The regulations in question are being brought forward by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to mitigate against the worst-case scenario of withdrawal from the European Union without a deal. In the absence of the EU directive on the recognition of professional qualifications, the regulations will continue. The statutory powers of competent authorities to assess and recognise the non-UK qualifications of people who wish to practice regulated professions in the UK. This statutory instrument maintains a crucial system of principles for recognition of non-UK qualifications for more than 100 regulated professions. Officials have been working with UK counterparts since February to reach agreement on the draft text, which will be available shortly should the committee be minded to agree to consent. Those regulations will maintain the current arrangements as closely as possible once the EU treaties cease to apply. The primary difference being that the competent authorities, usually regulatory bodies, will no longer be compelled to offer alternative routes to registration to those applicants whose qualifications clearly fall well below minimum UK standards. Although that will not preclude competent authorities from offering such measures where they deem appropriate, it will be for them to decide. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the impact of that change on workforce supply will be minimal, as the administrative burden of assessing non-equivalent qualifications, as well as subsequent appeals, does not reflect a low success rate of such applications. The statutory compulsion for regulators to offer temporary and occasional routes into regulated professions in the UK will also be withdrawn, as it would no longer be appropriate to offer such a facility without an alternative reciprocal agreement in place. The current regulations include the social work and social services workforce, and I should note that those professions have now been consolidated in the Department of Health and Social Care regulations also before the health and sport committee today. In closing, while the UK Government has responded to requests to move back the laying date for this instrument, I do appreciate that I am nonetheless asking the committee to consider that consent notification in considerably less than the agreed 20-day period. Given the complexity of reaching official agreement across the broad scope of those regulations, I would ask for the committee's forbearance in this instance, and we would be happy to answer any questions that you have. John Mason, thank you, convener. That was helpful to your introductory comments, cabinet secretary, because you explained that parts of this are effectively mean no change or it is very technical, but part of it I think you said that there is really a change, because, for example, on the temporary arrangements for people coming in and also if there is quite a divergence between the qualifications that we would expect and that people actually have. My question is, is this definitely a category categorisation? Is that the right one, or is some of it really be, because we are actually changing a few things along the way? We believe that it is a category just because the principles are largely the same with the exception of what I pointed out. We believe that it is a category. Let's do that for enough, thanks. Colin Beattie? I'm just curious as to what the main professions within the devolved competency that this SI will affect. Teachers are the main ones of interest for devolved competencies. Can we get a list? We can provide the committee with a full list, but teachers are the main ones under devolved competence, and as I said, social care is going to the health committee. You've been sitting to see a list. We'll provide that. What consultation has the Scottish Government carried out with representatives of these organisations? So on teachers, the general teaching council and for care services that would have been the equivalent national body of the national care. Any further questions to Andy Wightman? I wonder if you could revisit your claim that there's very little impact on labour supply. What's that based on? Is that just based on the fact that these professions are currently highly regulated and most people in them are produced citizens? Yeah, or there's already essentially the arrangements, I would imagine. I will turn to officials for more of the detail on this, if you like, but we know the issues that will affect labour supply or workforce supply around immigration, and that's quite simply the immigration caps or the immigration rules. That's the issue that affects supply, not the technical issue of whether someone's qualification is going to be recognised or not. That's surely something that's going to be tested before someone makes the decision to move, so the immigration system itself is the reason for changes in the immigration numbers and the caps and so on, but I don't know if officials can add to that. Absolutely, I can just explain your point, cabinet secretary. The non-equivalent applications represent quite a considerable administrative burden on some of the regulators. They are compelled to assess non-equivalent qualifications, regardless of how far below UK minimum standards they fall. They are also compelled to offer a route of appeal. Now, the actual success rate for such applications is extremely low. Certainly, the SSSC, the Scottish Social Services Council, were quite content for their interests that this avenue was removed. Okay, that's helpful. Thanks. Angela Constance That answers my question. Thank you to Mr Robinson and the cabinet secretary, of course. Any further questions from committee members? If not, thank you very much. I'll suspend the meeting and move to private session. Thank you for coming in, cabinet secretary, and our other two witnesses.