 Rhaidlifeith! Rhaidlifeith ynglyn, rhaid? Mae gêm i ddod! Rhaid i ddod yn y 9 meir yn 2015 ar y Cymru Energicaen i Gwelwyrfaith Llywodraeth, rhaid i gysaith cyfnodau yn dd borderfeyddau, rhaid i ddod yn ei gaeligau, ac rhaid i gaeligu'n gwneud eu bod ai oedd yn gwneud i gaeligau eich gweithbeth, neu i gaeligau'n gwneud i hyd yn byg diolch yn lluniau, aeth yn graf o'r ddvodau eich cyfrifidd nomr yn llawr yn ddod oedd. On the agenda, we are continuing our inquiry into internationalising Scottish business and we have two panels with us this morning. I would like to welcome our first panel from Scottish Development International and UK Trade and Investment and introduced starting on my left Jane Martin, who is the managing director of customer operations at Scottish Enterprise, Neil Francis, director of international operations at SDI and Guy Warrington, director of English regions, UK trade and investment. Welcome to you all. We have gone up to about 90 minutes for this session. We have a bit of ground to cover and I would remind members, as I always do, that they can keep their questions short and to the point and answers that are as short and to the point as possible would be helpful in getting through the topics in the time available to us. It might be helpful if people asking questions rather could direct their questions at a particular individual initially and then, if you want to come in in response to a question addressed to somebody else, if you just catch my eye I will bring you in as best I can and as time allows. I wonder if I could just start off in relation to picking up some of the evidence that we have heard and maybe ask this initially to you, Mr Francis, from SDI. Some of the evidence that we have heard is around the dual role that SDI has involved in attracting inward investment to Scotland, where our track record, of course, has been very good. You have another role that is about promoting Scottish exports and internationalisation, which released the focus of this inquiry. I wonder if you can say a little bit about how you deal with these two roles, which at times must involve some degree of conflict, and how you split the resources of SDI in terms of the budget, in terms of staff time between these two distinct but complementary roles. Okay, thank you very much Chairman. I think at the heart of it is Scotland's international competitiveness. That's what's going to drive our future prosperity and growth as an economy and both attracting additional inward investment and supporting our existing company based to internationalise our very critical components of driving our international competitiveness. The reason they are linked closely is because many of our largest exporters are also inward investors, so many of the companies we attract here from an inward investment point of view. Come to Scotland not simply to access our domestic market, which is very small, but to use it as a launchpad for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. So that's the important thing. The way we kind of balance our efforts between the two is really about understanding where our priorities are and understanding where we truly can be internationally competitive. So as many of the committee will know, we tend to take a sectoral approach, so we plan our activity sector by sector, whether that be food and drink, financial and business services, tourism etc. And what we know from that is that the balance of opportunity from inward and trade is different sector by sector. So for example, if you think of the financial and business services, principally our opportunity is on the inward side there, so our balance of our resources there would be on attracting inward investment. Whereas if you think of food and drink, the balance of our priorities lie in terms of trade supporting our existing companies to grow their international revenues, so again we would balance our resources there. So for each of our sector we understand our priorities by sub-sector, so it's not simply talking about life sciences, it's understanding that within life sciences where we really are competitive on things like medical devices and pharma services and then understanding which of the markets around the globe that we really need to target. So again, if you look at the life science example, pharma services, we know the opportunities are in India, in South Korea and in East and West Coast America and Japan. So we have that picture for each of our sectors and when you put it together then it allows us to understand where we should be placing our resources. That answers your question. Yes, specifically in terms of the budget split, have you any sense of how much of your budget would go on inward investment as opposed to export potential? So I don't have that exactly with me, we can provide that to the committee at a later date. So inward investment is really about how we go around targeting and how we then attract the investor to come to Scotland. Part of that proposition sometimes involves providing the investor with a financial incentive package, not always but sometimes it does. Now that doesn't, that comes from our RSA budget, so that's held elsewhere, so we draw on that as a need spaces. We don't pre-allocate that at the beginning of the year, whereas our trade investment tends to be more allocated at the beginning of the year and in the current financial year an estimate of what we're spending on our trade effort, excluding the cost of our staff resources, is circa £11 million, but we will confirm the precise numbers to you in due course. I wouldn't want to. Okay, okay, and you have a million out of a total budget of how much? Sorry, I don't have that figure in my head. Oh, guys, no, that wouldn't be the correct number. Sorry, I apologise, I don't have that. You don't have that figure, that's the only one, but we can follow that up. Okay, thanks. Can I just move on to a slightly broader point and maybe bring in Mr Warrington to get your initial comments on this. We've had a lot in the inquiries we've gone through about how UK and SDI work together and the feedback we've had is that generally it's a good working relationship and those of us who went to Saudi Arabia saw on the ground how the local teams work together, but we've still heard concerns that there are some gaps, that the UKTI programmes are less visible in Scotland and there might be in other parts of the UK. There is an issue perhaps about the complementarity of the programmes offered by UKTI and SDI. Maybe you can start off, Mr Warrington, and I'll bring in SDI. What is your sense of how UKTI works together with SDI and what might be done to try and improve that? Well, I mean, I think we have an excellent working relationship with SDI, as indeed we have with the other two Governments, the Welsh Government and the Government of Northern Ireland. People who talk about the lack of visibility of UKTI in Scotland, I think that might just be an issue of how things are branded at the point of delivery, because we do not sell our products actively as UKTI in Scotland. We rely on SDI to sell our product range, so to speak, and to sell what is the real thing that we bring to the table, which is our overseas network, as part of what they deliver. I imagine that it is quite conceivable that people will actually enjoy UKTI services and certainly use the services of our overseas network and not see that as being a UKTI service. They would see it maybe as a British Government service, maybe as an SDI service, or my background is in the front office, so they might think that they are just getting assistance from the embassy and not see any UKTI branding there. I think that there is a danger of conflating whether you are aware that something is a UKTI product, with whether that UKTI offer is available to all Scottish companies, which it is. Okay, that is helpful. Mr Francis, I don't know who you can choose between who you would rather answer the questions entirely up to you. I would agree with that. Scottish development international is the lead agency for trade and investment in Scotland. It is a partnership in its own right between Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the Scottish Government. One of the things that we have been doing over the past couple of years, actually since the last Enterprise Committee inquiry in 2010, is really trying to ramp up the presence of SDI as a brand to be that one-stop shop, if you like, to be that kind of prime agency where you can access all kinds of trade and investment support. So, if I may just add a couple of points there, Chairman, I think Guy is absolutely right. The important thing is that the customers, the companies in Scotland are getting the full range of support available to help them to maximise the impact of their internationalising efforts. So, for example, last year SDI supported 2,708 companies in Scotland with 5,300 interventions. UKTI supported 1,400 companies in Scotland with 3,000 interventions and we supported over 600 companies together. So, I think that is quite a lot of evidence, as Guy suggested, that the issue of our companies getting the right kind of support across the full range of products and services we can offer, then I think the answer is yes. Our approach is not to duplicate. We try our hardest not to duplicate products that are currently available through UKTI. It's about complementary territory. The other thing I would say on the general relationship, Guy is absolutely right, it's a very constructive and positive relationship. We have a six-monthly CEO summit that is between the CEO of SDI, Welsh Government, Invest in Northern Ireland, London and Partners and UKTI. They are working much better now to set the strategic agenda, identify strategic issues that need to be tackled and then supporting the CEO group. There is the partnership forum that meets quarterly, comprising of the same organisations to do the heavy lifting of looking at those issues and coming up with solutions to ensure that we deliver better services to our customers. You talked about improvements. Obviously, on the back of the Wilson review last year, the Scottish Government and the UK Government have agreed a joint approach. We have a joint working group in place involving all the parties, Scotland office, Scottish Government, UKTI, SDI, FCO. We are going to come together to develop a joint action plan to make some improvements to take into account of some of the things that came out of the Wilson review. We should have that out in the next few weeks. I am going to bring in Dennis Robertson who wants to follow up some of these points. Thank you, convener, and maybe just to pick up the point that you have just raised with regard to the Wilson review. I understand that there is a lot of dialogue going on and a lot of meetings going on, and there is a lot of complementary unity that is going on. In regard to the working group, who is leading it? Who is leading the working group? Who is actually taking it forward? Who chairs it? Do you know who chairs it? When I went to the first meeting of it, it didn't have a chair, we were just there. You are genuinely a collective endeavour, conducted. I can hear what you are saying, a collective endeavour. We are looking at someone taking a lead here. This is really important in terms of how we move forward, taking some of the recommendations from the Wilson review. Surely, someone is taking the lead. I can certainly find out who is chairing the group for you. I am sorry, I am not aware, but when it comes to Scotland, Scottish Development International, SDI, is taking the lead. It is down to us to make sure that we work with the UK Government, with UKTI, with other partners across Scotland to make sure that it makes sense for Scottish businesses to join things up. My responsibility, as a newly appointed post as managing director of customer operations, is to lead on the whole service alignment piece from a Scottish Enterprise perspective. It is a key part of my new role to help to make that happen, with Neil and some of my colleagues in SDI and people across Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise around other areas of business support. The important thing is to join it up from a growth perspective. Exporting is really important, but there are also aspects such as innovation, funding and all those things. The more that we can join it up from an end user, i.e. a businesses perspective, the better. The whole body of work that I am leading, if you like, from a Scottish Enterprise perspective in terms of trying to get that alignment agenda much further up the agenda. With regard to the Wilson review itself, with some of the recommendations within the Wilson review, which ones do you think are the ones that we should be moving forward with in terms of priorities? I think that our attitude has been that we need to, as I say, I think that the most important thing that has come out of it, in a practical sense so far, is the formation of this group where we can sit down and discuss with each other what are the areas that we can take forward collectively and how we can improve our co-operation on trade work. That is the most practical outcome of the review so far. My concern is that we have a group of people having a conversation and dialogue, but there seems to be rudderless in terms of the lead at the moment, because we haven't identified who is leading it and you have already had a meeting. With regard to one of the recommendations was the concept of a single portal, because there seems to be, for a lot of the companies out there, a lack of direction or a maze of pathways to try and gain information. Do you support the idea of the single portal guy? Well, this is a universal issue and it doesn't just apply to Scotland. We've had a review in the UK to set up what came out as the business growth service. I think that you do need to have a portal where people can access the entirety of business support by going to one place. In the UK, that is what we have in the form of the growth, in England what we have in the form of growth hubs. I also think that there should be a no-wrong-door policy, i.e., you shouldn't have to force people to go to that place to get everything they need. So there needs to be a place where people can get everything they need, but you also need to accept that people will go in through other doors and then they should be taken to the same place, i.e., they should be taken to the same process where they're analysed and a diagnostic takes place of what their needs are, and they are fed out to the people who can help them. Sorry not to give you a straight answer to that, but it's a slightly... I'm not sure that I expected one. The end of the day is about customer choice, but as the customer is looking for some degree of direction in terms of how they move forward with the potential of growth, they're looking at how or who to go to, and whether it's a signposting or not. At the moment, it's very confusing for them. What's your opinion on this, Neil? I think that I agree with Guy and your comment there in terms of it's about growth. Internationalisation is one of the key drivers of growth, but it's not the only driver. We know that leadership and innovation are also important, so I think it's about understanding around the ease of access not only to international support, but to support to enable the whole issues that lead to growth to be addressed. I think I also agree with Guy that there should be no wrongdo. I think it's really important that no matter which way people come in, that they get the services and the guidance that's required, so that would be my feeling. Knowledge, or do you agree with the concept of having this single portal to enable the information to be gathered in one point so that people can access it and then make choice? Yes, I absolutely agree. I think that I can bring the committee's attention to a couple of pieces of work that's under way in Scotland. First of all, we have a business portal programme in Scotland. The URL is business.scotland.gov.uk, and that is essentially meant to be a portal where businesses can go in and access a range of support that's available across the public sector. Ourselfs, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Business Gateway, local authorities, Skills Development Scotland have all been involved in that piece of work. It's under development, it's already live and we will continue to improve on that. It's about to be integrated into the Scottish Government's MyGovScot portal, which is a one-stop shop for all services, either citizens or businesses, so there's work under way there. As part of our working group, we have also done some work around this no-wrong door idea. If you go to business.scotland, you should get access to all the information that's available across multiple sites, including the UK site, which we link into gov.uk. Equally, if you go to Business Gateway, who don't necessarily offer direct exporting support, they will direct you to the SCI website and the Scottish Enterprise website, so we've been doing both at the same time. It's not absolutely perfect, and it is a journey that we're on. The principle is absolutely correct, but it's something that we're very actively working on across the public sector. I understand that. Is Scottish Enterprise taking the lead in this, and do you manage that website to ensure that the information is correct and continued to be updated? Scottish Enterprise was in the lead for this. The responsibility has transferred over to the online services division of the Scottish Government in order to merge the business and the citizen side of things, and that happened just under a year ago. In terms of the working group, do you assume from the fact that you're working together that your strategies in terms of product services are aligned? If I look at UKTI in terms of the London UK Government has an emphasis, for example, on defence sales, which we don't have. What is the strategy that comes out of the working group that references products and services? I think that it's probably a bit early to be saying what the outcomes are of a group that's only met wants to discuss what it might discuss. If you didn't know what you wanted to do. Why did you set it up if you didn't know what you wanted to do? I think that what we wanted to do is identify—I mean, the remit of the group is to identify areas where we can co-operate and work together more closely. We haven't discussed the alignment of sectors or anything like that yet on so far. That actually is quite strong working at a sectoral level. You might want to say a bit more about that. I think from my perspective you've got two slightly different components of your question check. One is about where should we place our priorities. Clearly, we have a sectoral approach in Scotland. Increasingly, at the UK level, there is also an industrial-sectoral approach. But clearly in some areas, our strengths in Scotland are slightly different to the strengths elsewhere in the UK. I think that's fine. I think it's right that we should focus on Scotland's strengths and Scotland's priorities. That's the first part. The second part of your question was then the products and services and interventions to support companies to exploit those strengths in terms of international markets. I think in the main, those are applicable across all sectors. I think it's slightly different. In terms of our product portfolios, I think that we are fairly strongly aligned and there's very little duplication. Just if I may follow up on that then, because at a previous committee meeting we heard that those that represent, and this may apply UKTI and SDI abroad, have to be experts on life sciences on the Monday, energy on the Tuesday and so on. In terms of coverage, what expertise is available from the UKTI, for example, or do you have the same problem, that we don't really have high levels of expertise out internationally, perhaps understandably, that could entertain the interests from a particular sector in China, in India or what have you? My background, as I said, is that I have run overseas posts in trade sections. The degree to which we can provide sectoral expertise does depend to a large extent on the size of the embassy concerned. The two examples that you provided China and India when my last posting was the UAE, we did have the critical mass to be able to cover all the sectors that were important to those markets. We can do that in posts where we have the critical mass to do it. We organise ourselves on a sectoral basis overseas. We organise ourselves on a sectoral basis in our headquarters and in the English regions that I run. We also organise ourselves so that there are sectoral expertise available on all sectors in all regions. However, what you say is true, if you go to a small post and it has a two-man trade section, then those people do have to be jacks of all trades and bring in the expertise from other parts of the organisation. Could I just add something? I think it's an excellent question, and as Guy said, it is a challenge, especially in areas where we have few people. So there's two things that's really important for us. One is to continue to focus on our priorities, so be very clear what are the priority sectors in what markets, so that we have an opportunity to build an expertise to support those particular sectors. The second thing is how we work across our agencies infield in markets, so that whilst we might not have that expertise, if UKTI has it then we can make best use of that. The other thing is one of the things that we have been doing is listening to our industrial base. So if you think of food and drink and the work that Scotland Food and Drink has been doing in establishing a very clear international export plan focused on 15 priority markets, then what we have been doing collaboratively, working with Scottish Government, the industry themselves is in seven of those priority markets, we are putting in a dedicated food and drink specialist, someone who will absolutely have that knowledge. So that's rolling out at the moment, we've already got specialists in China, Canada, one is just being hide in France, so they'll get rolled out to seven of those markets. So that'll be really interesting for us to see the additional impact that will make in the next few years on the performance of the food and drink industries exporting. I want to pursue one or two questions around other partnerships that you have with other agencies, so I wonder if we can start with the relationship with SCDI and we heard from them early in our inquiry that they had previously been partners with SCDI in delivery of the market visit programme and that was one that UKDI delegated the responsibility to herself. I wonder what your reflections might be on the fact that at the last occasion they chose not to bid for that tender and felt it wasn't a tender that they could actively engage with. Yes, we were quite disappointed that SCDI chose not to proceed with that tender opportunity, they had previously obviously secured that contract to deliver trade missions on behalf of SCDI. The main change that we made at that point in time, really on the back of this feedback about clarity, was that we wanted all missions to be branded under the SCDI banner, but that was open for SCDI and others to tender within that basis. The tender was awarded to the BES group and, since it was awarded, we have delivered, I think, nine cross-sectoral missions to different markets. 120 odd companies have been on those missions, so we were disappointed because SCDI were a very important partner for us. We have already sought out some discussions with SCDI about the future and meeting Ross McEwen in early April. The part of my team that is responsible for cross-sector missions and running overseas exhibitions is looking at working with SCDI and the Scottish Chambers to create a bit of a community of practice, if you like, in Scotland, so that I get in place a much stronger partnership where we meet once a quarter, share forward plans and engage in a much more strategic dialogue, rather than procurement supplier type of relationships, engage in a much more strategic dialogue about the future and how we can complement each other. I guess that one of the common things that we have heard when Guy Warrington replied to the first question about UKTI's visibility, his answer was, well, actually a lot of this is branded as SCDI, and therefore it is not visible. I think that what you have described is that SCDI chose not to pursue that tender, perhaps because you said that it has to be branded as SCDI even if you are delivering it. Is there a common thread there? Clearly, there is a view from much of the evidence that exporters need to know who they are dealing with and they want it simple, but is it overbranding by SCDI what other people can do or are doing? Does that muddy the water in any way? I am not aware of any evidence or feedback that that has muddied the waters. I am hoping that it is quite the contrary. Equally, if aspects of the market are wanting to do some of these things that would be something that we would welcome because it means that the public sector does not fund it and absolutely open enough for having a dialogue about how we might want to make that work in future. Lewis, can I just add a couple of comments more widely about our partnership? We have a fantastic scale of ambition for Scotland in terms of our international competitiveness. For us to deliver that ambition, we need organisations across the private sector, across the whole gamet of the public sector, all to contribute to that. The way we see that you will end up with the whole being greater than some of the parts is for each organisation to play to their strengths, to focus on their specific role that they can play and where they can add the value. That is something that we are very passionate about and something that we need to carry on working with all of the partners to mobilise as much momentum, resources and effort that we can muster around improving Scotland's international competitiveness. At a UK level, there is some interesting work going on with the British Chambers of Commerce and the role of the chamber's network in that space. We are quite fortunate that we have Nora Senior, who is the chair of the Scottish Chambers of Commerce and British Chambers. I have already engaged with Nora about what are the lessons that we can learn in Scotland around that. I do not have the answers yet, but what are the lessons that we can learn? Is there anything there that we can apply in order to create more impact if you like? We will continue that dialogue. Coming back to the relationship with the UKTI for a moment, we heard from Brian Wilson the other week that there are examples of places where SDI and UKTI collocate and that that is a very successful model in some cases. There are other examples where they are in the same city or in the same country and they are not collocated. I wonder if we could have the benefit of your reflections on the different experiences of collocation and, otherwise, does it make a significant difference? If so, is it something that you would want as a standard? It is not for me to say whether it should be a standard. SDI will decide how they allocate their resources, but I cannot say that when I was in Dubai we were collocated. To go back to the question about people having to be jacks of all trades or have a specialism, it was very clear to me that the small SDI team benefited massively from sitting right next door. It was not just the collocation and the sense of being in the same embassy building. They were in the same part of the building. If they did not know the answer to something, there were 20 other people sitting outside who they could access. I think that whilst the embassy buildings will always be open to SDI to use, it is obviously much more of a instinctive reaction to use them if you are actually in the embassy in the first place. If you want to sweat the assets, so to speak, and make the most of the UKTI overseas presence, the easiest and best way to do that is to collocate, but it is not for UKTI to insist upon that or to say that it should happen. Where it does happen, it works well. I have never been in a post where it was not the case, so I would not want to comment on that. I think my reflections would be along similar lines to Guy. I think there are a lot of advantages of collocation. However, I think the more important thing is how we work collectively in particular markets. In some markets we are not collocated, but we are working together very, very joined up. In other markets there is room for improvement. Ultimately there is complete agreement from the leadership of UKTI and the leadership of SDI that we have to work collaboratively and joined up in all our markets, but ultimately to an extent it comes down to individuals on the ground. The other reflection I have is there are lots of advantages in terms of being part of the FCO platform in particular markets and the advantages that bring. However, there are some constraints with that, so security is very, very important. Sometimes when we are wanting to develop opportunities for businesses to have quick, easy touchdown space and so on and so forth, sometimes there are constraints around that operating within certain environments. That is something that we take into consideration on occasions. If I could just add one thing, maybe more for the future, there are obviously other types of collocation. I was really interested to see in the programme for government this idea of one Scotland partnerships. How do we coalesce in a specific overseas market, from the perspective of SDIs, Scottish Government, universities, Creative Scotland, Visit Scotland? There is an opportunity again, depending on the market, for us to really think about how else might we join up in order to create bigger impact, create more of a presence, more of a buzz around what is going on in Scotland, again depending on the opportunities around that market and the objectives of what we are trying to achieve. Again, there are early days, but there is another opportunity around collocation that we might want to consider for Scotland for the future. That is clear. I guess that my question then would be that there are two different things that might, in some circumstances, pull you in two different directions. How will SDIs sponsors make that decision, make the judgment in each market what is the appropriate way to proceed? In other words, do you go for a larger, more diverse Scotland presence, or do you go for a collocation around trade with UKTI? You cannot do both, or at least in some cases you might, but in other cases you will not be able to. It is obviously very early days, but my view would be that we would take that decision based on the opportunity, so it depends on the market and the opportunity. Okay, Gordon MacDonald, it is just a couple of points in relation to what you said about having good relationships and joint working and working collaboratively, etc. There was a report that came out recently by the European Union entitled supporting the internationalisation of SMEs. It says that, in terms of exporting, there is considerable scope for improving the performance of UK SMEs. The report says that, at 21 per cent, a small and medium-sized enterprise in UK exporter, as compared with the average of 25 per cent among 27 countries in the EU. Then it goes on to highlight the lack of support, or the lack of the take-up of support of financial and non-financial nature compared to other EU countries. Who is ultimately responsible for trade support in the UK? Why is it not as effective as other EU countries? For the UK—I have to be careful—I do not want to get into the constitutional minefield here. Trade is a devolved matter, and we have devolved the interface of the ITA, what we call the ITA International Trade Advisor, aspects of that. Therefore, this is a shared enterprise. The product range that we have is a national one, so we deliver it nationally. The Ioverseys Network is a national one. Ultimately, responsibility, if it lies anywhere, lies with UKTI for the underperformance of the UKTI as a whole in terms of exports. It is a mixed picture in terms of exports, and it is not strictly true to say that there is a problem with the take-up of services by UK firms. It is worth pointing out that, over the past three years, UKTI has increased the amount of firms that it interacts with. I do not know how old that survey was from around 25,000 companies to 50,000 companies. Our reach is growing. In the mid-sized sector, we have gone from 1,000 to 3,000 mid-sized businesses. 97 per cent of our customers are either SMEs or mid-sized businesses, and we have doubled the size of our reach in that sector. There is quite a good tail-to-tail of the Government's engagement with export. The amount of resources that the Government has put into export promotion and into business support assistance has grown quite significantly. We are not seeing quite yet the sort of numbers that we would like to see in export growth to get us to our real target, which is to double exports in the UK from £500 billion to £1 trillion, because that would require growth rates of around 10 to 12 per cent. We are seeing some growth, and we have to put that growth into context of a recent economic situation, where a lot of our main export markets, in particular in Europe, have suffered some serious difficulties, and take into account the fact that a lot of what you do when you are providing business support, when you are trying to convince companies to start exporting, the impact that you feel in terms of actual exports is not immediate. This is a long-term play. We need to get the next generation of exporters exporting. We need to get 100,000 new companies exporting in the UK. These are quite stretching targets, but our levels of aspiration are high and the resources that we are putting into it are high, and the amounts of companies that we are dealing with are growing. I agree with Guy's analysis. Members will be familiar with the Scottish Government's target to increase the value of our exports by 50 per cent by 2017, and the recently published Global Connections Survey 2013 shows roughly just a tad under 28 million. We are on the right trajectory to hit that 50 per cent, but obviously there is no room for complacency. If you think of exporting about helping our existing exporters to generate more from their international activities by supporting them to go to different markets and supporting them to take products for the first time to market, and we have talked a bit about that. The other element which is relevant to your question is we need to increase the total number of companies exporting and especially companies exporting for the first time. As Guy said, that is a hard road to go down. It takes determination, it takes commitment and it takes resources. What we do know is through our smart exporter programme that ran from 2010 to 2014, we have supported 4,700 companies to get started on that journey. Clearly we need to continue to build momentum around that, and we have taken the learning from smart exporter and we have got a new programme that's just been launched to just put more momentum into that whole new exporter's piece, so we are very committed to doing that. Just a little thing about the stats because statistics are wonderful things, aren't they? If you look at the performance country by country, what you will notice is that the UK's performance is in line with the other large countries of the EU, i.e. the France and the Germany's. I think I'm right, you'll correct me if I'm wrong. Some of the best performing countries are the smaller countries and part of that I think is if you look at how many international borders a country has and how close they are, so the smaller the country with the more borders the easier it is to kind of trade internationally because if you look at the UK data Northern Ireland has 30% of their SMEs exporting and the main reason for that is you're within 90 minutes of an international border, so I'm not saying we shouldn't redouble our efforts to increase the number of new exporters but I would say the geography is something to do with the statistics. To develop that theme, I wonder if you could explain to us how SDI services and Scottish Enterprise and HIE account management work together? Sorry, John, could you repeat the question? If you could explain how SDI and Scottish Enterprise account management systems work together, how do you work with account management companies? Great question. So we work in the same way with SE's account management approach and Hanson Islands Enterprise account management approach and in summary what we are are the international specialists to those organisations account managers so as you'll be familiar the account manager's focus is on engaging strategically with the company identifying the challenges that they have to their growth whether that be innovation, whether it be organisation development, whether it be international or leadership and then the account manager's job is to draw in the specialists from around the organisation and in our case the international trade advisers from SDI to then work with the company in the context of that overall framework on the international X component. So that's how we would work. Quite a lot of the exporters are not account managed and this is an issue that I've raised before in committee in the south of Scotland in particular De Fries and Galloway. The percentage of total SE growth exporters is just 1.8 per cent which is the lowest in Scotland. Can you tell me what you're doing to address that? I'm happy to answer that because one of the other things that I'm responsible for from a senior perspective is how we work across the south of Scotland. I've already met senior people within both De Fries and Galloway Council and Borders Council and one of the challenges that you quoted is in line with the number of growth companies in that area. One of the underlying things here is about how we change the business base across the south of Scotland. What we are going to be working with both local authorities on is essentially looking at first of all a piece of analysis to genuinely understand the barriers in the company base, not just in terms of turnover and that kind of thing, and how we start shifting that in terms of ambition, in terms of again numbers of exporters, international mindset and that kind of thing. I suspect that we've not done the analysis. I suspect that it's going to be a long-term game, a bit like what Neil was talking about earlier, but what we're doing just now is aligning, putting the partnerships in place to have the right conversations, really get underneath the skin of what's happening in that area and then look collectively about what's our response. Can I just add something, Joan Beesart? I think it's a really, really great question. So, if you look at our account management portfolio as a whole, around 65% are exporters across the piece, and as you pointed out, in terms of De Fries and Galloway, it's sitting around 50-51%. So, we've got more of a job to do with the account management portfolio as a whole, but we've got more of a job to do with in De Fries and Galloway, with the growth companies that are there, and to support them to get, to be internationally trading. And we are absolutely committed to that, and we just have to redouble the efforts we have with working with our growth companies to take them through the stages of an international journey. And what we do know is that journey falls into three bits, awareness and ambition, and then you've got capability and capacity, and then exploitation and entry. And for many of our companies, the main barrier is around ambition and awareness. And that's hard to change someone's awareness. You can do relatively okay, but to transform someone's ambition is quite hard work, and that's an area we need to focus on. The other thing I would say is beyond the growth companies, we've talked about the need to support more exporters in general, and we've been looking at new approaches. And one of the approaches is around collaborative solutions. And we've been piloting, again, a collaborative solution approach in the food and drink industry. And that's all about identifying a clear market opportunity, and then bringing together a group of companies who can then attack that market opportunity, that they might not have the scale or the way we've all to do individually, but as a collective, they can then attack that opportunity and use aggregators to aggregate the offering to do the market. And you might have seen some press commentary yesterday about the new craft beers association getting, I think it's member 15. And that has come out of that approach now. We've got a whole new trade association around a niche product working together to get into new markets. And just a passing on, I heard last night in terms of when they calculate the inflation figures, new things that are in your basket of items, and craft beers now suddenly appeared in people's baskets of items. So, new approaches that were really relevant to the rural community is something we are targeting as well. There's also a couple of specific actions under way, as well as the work to understand the underlying business space and the reasons behind it. We've obviously worked with Dumfries and Galloway Council on the export week in terms of being able to raise awareness within the area. In addition, we're doing some work around continuous professional development with business gateway staff in the area and others. Again, to make sure that those staff members that are engaging with businesses are aware of the opportunities and the support that's available and are aware of the right questions to ask in order to stimulate that demand for more services. I welcome all that. It's been raised before that in the Highlands area the turnover for a company that would qualify for account management is lower than if it's in the Scottish Enterprise area. Obviously, there's rural parts of southern Scotland, which are very similar to the Highlands, but they have a higher barrier to reach because they're part of the Scottish Enterprise area. What are you doing to address that? Again, on the back of that feedback and our conversations with Dumfries and Galloway, we've agreed to look at that threshold to see—first of all, we need to understand is that going to make a difference? Is the demand there in order to see the growth, but we're absolutely open to looking at that with the local authorities. So you would perhaps assess companies in a different way, assess their potential? Correct. We want to assess companies on the basis of potential and opportunity for growth as opposed to thresholds and a bit of a blunt instrument. To be clear, that's what we've been doing. Sometimes when we put the information out about thresholds and things like that, it sends the wrong message. We're much more interested in growth opportunities and how we can assist them, or how we can make sure that others are assisting them if it means that we're just a sign poster. Thank you very much. Kate, thank you. I'm going to bring back in to Brody who's got a supplementary, I think, on this question. Well, I had. In fact, my questions were slightly pre-empted. I'm the European reporter on this committee. One of the things that we found in the visit to Europe was each member state, which we're not yet, has a small business envoy. Can you tell me, guy, what your small business envoy does? No. Let me talk about Europe then. On the basis of what may happen in two years' time, what contingency plans have been put in place regarding servicing the European marketplace? Sorry, could you say that again? On the basis that we have a referendum on Europe in two years' time, and in the event, maybe you're unlikely, we don't know, that the UK pulls out of Europe, what contingency plans has the UKTI put in place and communicated with its partners in the working group, or even before the working group, what contingency plans are in place to, should we come out of Europe? I'm not aware of any contingency plans of that sort. Okay. I'll come back on that question. All right. Yeah, thanks. Okay. Do you want a moment? Oh, sorry, Lewis, but I'll come in there. Small question for Jane Martin in following up her answers to John McCallbyn. When you say that you're looking again at ways to assist, presumably that's not only in the South Scotland, presumably that would apply more broadly across the Scottish Enterprise area, would that be correct? Yes, but it's really on a case-by-case basis, as opposed to a blanket piece of it. What we're trying to get across is that what I think is more important is that we look at the growth opportunities and how we may be able to assist that growth, and that should be pan Scotland, absolutely. John Lennon, thank you very much. I'm interested in—you spoke earlier about a joint action plan. I think I might be getting a couple of coming together of groups mixed up with each other. The one where we don't have a chair and we're all sort of talking about what the issues are, can you clarify what the purpose of that group is and who's on it? And secondly, the joint action plan group, what is that? Just to confirm it in my head what these two different groups are. The first joint working group is a working group that's been established on the back of the Wilson review, and it's been agreed by the Scottish Government and the UK Government that that would go ahead. Scotland office—I'm not sure who it is in the UK Government as represented, I'm not on the group—the UKTI and we have a member of strategy staff from SDI that's there to look at the outcomes of the Wilson review and any actions that we need to take collectively in order to improve joint working. That group only met once. The joint working group that I was referring to earlier is something that we're setting up across the south of Scotland with Dumfries and Galloway Council and Borders Council to look at the business base there and how we collectively might support better growth across the business base in the region. So the group that's producing the joint action plan has only met once, but you're saying that the joint action plan will come out shortly? That was my understanding that it would be out in the spring. From one meeting, was there going to be a joint action plan agreed, signed off? I think that it might be helpful for us to go away and give us some written evidence on the back of the work that's given. We're not individually represented on it, neither of us are part of that group, to actually go back to our organisation and give you a written evidence about where the working group's at, what areas they're looking at and the timescales for the publication of the action plan. The question that I was going to ask was, I think that it's an issue about collaboration at the level that you're operating at, but also between the UK Government and the Scottish Government, in a sense that perhaps that devolution has ended up with two organisations competing with each other rather than working together. I wonder if there are any comments you would have on how what collaboration there is between the Scotland Office and the Scottish Government to make sure that that doesn't happen, that there's not a competition but that there's a co-operation? I don't know that that's one for me to answer, however it's not been my experience. Last week, for example, we had a session on global sporting opportunities and UKTI came up because it's not markets that we're in, so I actually don't get a sense that that has been a blocker at all. Just to add to that, following devolution back in 1999, there was a memorandum of understanding between the UK Government and the devolved administrations and I think that is managed through the, someone will correct me if I get the terminology wrong, the joint ministerial committees that meet on a regular basis, so I think that's the mechanism to ensure that those matters of mutual interest are joined up. A slightly different point, which is that the Scotland Office and the Scottish Government presumably have a joint interest in companies in Scotland increasing export capacity. To what extent do they work together? Perhaps it's useful that he could give us some evidence on that, but it might be afterwards. Secondly, I wondered if you talked about food and drink and so on. There was an interesting extent to which this is driven by business with the public sector coming in behind it, or to what extent it is driven by the fact that the public sector organisation is there and bringing people together. So, where there is collaboration, for example in food and drink, is this because individual companies have come together collectively and sort of made themselves the presence felt by the public agencies, or are there examples of the public organisations encouraging that co-operation at an industrial level? I think both. In terms of the food and drink, you have the industry leadership group, which is Scotland food and drink, and they are very much driving that strategic agenda of what needs to be done to support, develop and grow the industry in Scotland. Now, for all the key sectors, there are industry leadership groups, and I think our role is twofold. As you said, one is to support and encourage the coming together of the group, and then also to respond as appropriate to the recommendations made by those industry leadership groups. I think that food and drink in particular is a great example of how important the industry leadership is there and how that can actually then really drive impact. I think that you are hearing from James Wethers, but what they are doing around the ambition, they have already reached their export targets, they have stretched it further. There is a real sense of ownership, if you like, and I think that that has made a big difference in the food and drink. Finally, I am interested in the role of colleges and universities. We all know that their individual initiatives are very often at a very local level between universities and colleges and international communication, perhaps bringing the students over or being based in other countries. What links are there or have been created between those initiatives that college and university level with local businesses? How could you support colleges and universities to do more of that? For example, if there are going to be visitors to a college or university here, to what extent would local businesses be informed? Is there a process for that and more general? Is there a way in which people would be able to plug in to advice and support if that was happening? We treat universities and colleges as a sector when it comes to support. I do not know Neil if you want to talk about what we are doing there. I think that is an excellent question because we see that as a really important and emerging role for our universities and colleges. How the universities and colleges can support, as we talked earlier about having everyone who can contribute to supporting our international competitors, how the universities and colleges can support businesses to internationalise. We have strong international communities of students. I think the cross-party group on China has talked a lot about how we can use the 9,000 Chinese students in Scotland to support companies who are thinking of going to China for the first time. I think we need to look also of where in the world that our universities have relationships and campuses and how they can be used in a kind of pioneer sense to build business relationships that our companies can capitalise on. We have always got the issue of the alumni that scattered around the world. There is a lot I think our universities are doing to support our businesses, but there is even more collectively we can do to maximise the impact that they can make. That sounds aspirational rather than practical. Practically now, if I am sitting in a college in Glasgow, how am I supported if there is going to be international students or a project in another part of the world? How am I supported by any of you to make sure that local businesses are part of that? I suppose that saying that would be a good thing. What practically is happening now, organisationally, to support those initiatives? Does somebody know where to go to get either help advice or do the kind of things that you are talking about? There are two practical things that are going on just now. First, you are right that it is at a local level. For example, through the work that we have been doing in Renfisher, as an example, around exporting work there and raising awareness, we have helped to facilitate work with the university there for their international marketing students to go in and work with local businesses around potential market opportunities, because small businesses do not have the time or the staff to do that amount of research. We have helped to facilitate that kind of link. It works very practically and at a local level. In terms of sharing plans and universities and colleges tapping into that, we have a source that is open to anyone in the public sector to join. That is where we share up-to-date information about Scotland's key sectors and the opportunities. In addition, we also share all our forward plans of what is happening in the marketplace. Any trade missions that are going out, any exhibitions that we are attending, that kind of thing. That is open for all public sector partners to sign up to join. It is an online tool and it is an information sharing one. It would be very difficult for us to offer a business-to-business support service for all colleges across Scotland from an international perspective. Having said that, we treat colleges and universities as businesses from that perspective. If they have a very clear strategy and a development plan and a growth plan that we can help with, then we would do that, but it would probably be on a reactive basis when they are coming to us. There is not even a document where somebody is one thinking of doing X, this is good practice, this is in the public domain and I just work my way through it. If I happen to notice that the source exists or if the tool exists, I might get advice, but there is not something from your perspective that recognises the potential for this in terms of increasing international export business for exports for local businesses. What we would do with that Renfisher example would be to write that up as a case study, talk about it more so that people are aware of it. I am not aware of it all written down in a document. I am not expecting big long documents, but I am wondering if it is a good practice, if it is a good idea. I have already heard how good an idea is and there are always people who could be really useful. It does not feel as if there is any rig around it. You are at the mercy, then, of individual colleges or universities with individual members of staff who think that it might be a good idea to go and ask any advice about how that is done, but it is not a strategy by the organisation's representative to improve exports for business. I suppose that one of the other vehicles that we have in terms of raising awareness on that is that, at a director level, we sit on all the community planning partnerships. That Renfisher example that I talked about came through the work that we were doing around the community planning partnerships, looking at the local economy and the local economic and the opportunities around that. We have all the directors involved in that come together regularly and we share best practice and what is going on in our different patches, if you like, and then share that as appropriate. I think that that would probably be the best vehicle for sharing and putting it on the agenda. I sit in East Renfisher, for example. I have been having conversations with the local authorities and other partners there about what does international mean to an area such as East Renfisher? How can we shift things? What might we put in place? A lot of my colleagues are doing that across the community planning partnerships. I think that it would probably work best at that local level and looking at how we can collaborate and put things in place around specific opportunities. One last very brief point on that. We have had some discussion about the role, at city region level, of driving increased exports for business. You are saying that if you are sitting in a community partnership, you might raise it, but it is not something that is routinely done to make sure that there is that connection with city regions who might drive this kind of change. There is not a process that you are involved in. It is a matter for, if you think of saying it in one community partnership or somebody's help to say it somewhere else, it is not the job of the person who is sitting in a community partnership to pursue that. One of the things that we want to do in part of our role in community planning partnerships is to stimulate more of a conversation around economic growth. Being a Scottish Enterprise Location Director, part of your role is to look at how you can work in partnerships to stimulate the conversations, the actions on the ground, that kind of thing, and be flexible and fleet to foot in terms of what we might want to put in place. If every location director should be raising that as part of the conversations that he is having in community planning partnerships, I have not done an analysis, but it is part of our mandate and part of what we are asked to do. Thank you. Just before I bring in Patrick Harvie, I want to go back to a point that John Lamont raised at the moment to go about working with the Scotland office. When we heard an evidence from the SCDI about their trade missions, they said that sometimes these would be led by Scottish Government ministers and sometimes by Scotland office ministers. Now that the SCDI is taking the lead on trade missions, are you still involving Scotland office ministers in these? I am not aware of any Scotland office ministers leading a trade mission in the recent past. What I would say a general point is that for us, across our partnership, we would be more than content for any of our partners to lead a trade mission. That would be our general feeling on the subject. Nobody is being territorial about this, saying that we do not want you because you are a Scotland office minister? Certainly from our perspective, we would not. The same would be, you would have seen it in Saudi Arabia in terms of UKTI and SCI joint missions. We really want to ensure that whoever is leading the mission is best placed to capitalise on the opportunity and support the businesses to do that. Looking at the SC website last week, I saw that there were no multi-sector trade missions in the forward event plan. I wonder if you can clarify why that is, and also if you can clarify for me, or BS, who are now handling and working for you. Are they headquartered in Scotland? I think you are absolutely right. We do not have a forward calendar of cross-sector missions. I think our experience in the recent past with cross-sector missions has been that sometimes they are hard to recruit for, and sometimes that the expectations of all the companies on it have not been fully met. We have been reflecting on that, and we are in the process of refocusing how we use our cross-sector missions. We think there are two areas in which they can work very well going forward. One is focusing to support first-time exporters, and these would generally be focused on near markets for first-time exporters. The second area is focusing on markets that have very different business environments, so that there is something common the companies all need to deal with, and that would be the business environment. We are focusing on fast-growing markets, and they would be the markets of China, India and the Middle East. That is how we are going to proceed going forward. In terms of where BS is headquartered, I am sorry, Chick. I do not know. I do not think the headquartered in Scotland. I do not have the details of it, but I do not think the headquartered. I do not think the headquartered, which is why I asked the question. I wonder if the explanation that Neil has just given in terms of why this has happened is because we have changed the whole arrangement. I am sure that you are driving the strategy, but I am sure that the BES has an input to that. Far from it, I suggest that there is a financial motive behind that. I am sure that we can clarify that. Very briefly, thank you, convener, and my apologies to Mr Harvey for keeping him waiting. I am struggling with a little. What incentive is there for, for instance, the chambers to use the STI and UKTI in taking forward their trade missions? From their perspective, why not just do it on their own? If they look at the sectoral area, why would they come to STI? What incentive would there be? The incentive previously for STI is that we were funding it. But we knew that through STI. It was a procurement arrangement. To be honest, if the Scottish Chambers, the Chambers Network, STI wanted to deliver their own missions, we would be delighted. They did tell us when they came that they do their own missions. When we asked them what involvement there was with STI, I think that the answer was done. Previously, you are right. STI, yes, there was that arrangement, but now there is not. What I would be hoping, if they are delivering their own missions, is that this collaborative group, if you like, the pre-accompany going into market and afterwards, there is an opportunity, so an incentive for them would be to ensure that their members get access to other levels of support at the appropriate time for them and, again, for us to work much more together on the outcome for that business. I am a bit concerned that you are using terms like hopeful. The most important thing for me is how we best support our companies to access the international opportunities that they have identified. I think our approach is to work with UKTI to look at where they are taking missions and exhibitions, not to duplicate, but to support our companies to access their trade missions and similarly for any other organisation. What we want to do—I would not say hope to do—is to have that single calendar of trade missions for Scotland, for Scottish-based companies. It is really important that we have trade missions that are strong, that have the right companies, that can make the right connections in market, make an impact, not who is running them. I apologise to the committee and the witnesses for being a few minutes late at the start of the meeting. A great deal of what you have talked about is increasing the number of Scottish businesses that are exporting, expanding that as a contribution to growth and so on. One of the things that green politicians bang on about endlessly and bore our colleagues to tears with is the importance of the character of economic activity rather than the amount of it and the growth of it. I wonder if I could raise some questions about the issues which a newly internationalising business in Scotland may encounter for the first time and how your organisations engage with them. Obviously, there will be issues around legal compliance with a different jurisdiction, but beyond legality there is a wider ethical context. Mr Francis mentioned China, India and the Middle East. Those are all areas where there would be serious concerns around issues such as human rights and labour standards in the supply chain, issues around discrimination, including legal discrimination, which would leave an employee who was sent to one of those areas to explore the newly emerging business opportunities there, facing levels of discrimination that are not just uncomfortable but positively unsafe. That would obviously be an environmental aspect to those concerns around the need to, as SCDI wrote in one of its documents, to remember the burden on the planet's resources peaking and the pressure on the global commons from emissions to water scarcity. In discussing that with SCDI at a previous meeting, I was reminded how easy it is to write those things down and how difficult it is to follow through with that in practice. Could you tell me what practical steps your organisations take to proactively engage and to encourage businesses to engage in a very conscious level with those ethical dimensions that they will be encountering as they begin to internationalise? One of the things that we do is, in advance of taking companies to market, we have sessions before they go, as well as in market, where the FCO, for example, has got a lot of good advice in terms of human rights and legalities and that kind of thing. We share that. We also have our people in market that work with the companies both before and during. You will have seen some of that, the members that were in Saudi Arabia. In addition to that, what else do we do? I think it's a really important thing. I think what we need to do is continue to build that level of expertise with our own staff so that they can properly advise the companies. Part of our approach for those three markets that you mentioned is to have market desks based in Scotland. Clearly, they will have a deeper knowledge of the business environment and some of the issues that you alluded to. It's important that we build that expertise in our own staff so that they can have the conversations with businesses. I think the UK's position, as you will know, is all about implementing fully the UN guiding principles on business and human rights and that's something we would proactively support. Beyond that, I think in all of the support we give to companies across what international or other, we expect people to have the kind of reflect the kind of ethical and moral position that we are developing as a country in relation to those issues as well. Can you give me an example of a form of economic activity that you would not be keen to support if, for example, it didn't meet our domestic environmental standards but did meet somebody else's lower standards? I'm not hugely surprised. I reflect again on the experience with SCDI where words on paper can sound strong but action doesn't always follow through. What we tend to do across all the business support activities that we do is that we aim to comply with both government policy and legality. We tend not to take moral and ethical standards and things from that broader perspective. We would take legal and political policy and a legal stance in terms of what we would invest in. Is it reasonable for an organisation that is on behalf of all of us, on behalf of us as a society, engaging with those issues simply not to take an ethical stand? We would take an ethical stance where it was government policy to do so. That's kind of rare as well, isn't it? It would make it quite difficult for us to take decisions because what one person would think of as being a good opportunity someone else might disagree. You're absolutely correct that it comes very, very difficult to embed that across all our investment decisions. Has anything to add on that? A lot of people travel overseas and do trade work without ever having any contact with the British Government whatsoever and that's just a fact of life and that will happen. If you participate in a UKTI trade mission or you get a briefing at the British Embassy on trade matters, there are certain things that we will discuss with you. We will always discuss with you the issues around bribery and corruption and we will always discuss with you, as has been mentioned, the issues around human rights. What about something where perhaps less difficult to deal with, where an organisation or company which is having to send some of its employees to a new market that it's starting to get involved in, where those employees might not be safe on grounds of their religion, on grounds of their sexuality, on grounds of gender or disability? What kind of support do you give to those companies to address those questions? When that becomes a consular issue, it slightly falls into a different part of the organisation. I speak unofficially on behalf of the Foreign Office and the consular service because I'm here to speak UKTI, but we do advise companies on those sorts of issues as well. It would be the Foreign Office doing that as a consular issue rather than UKTI doing it as a trade issue. You wouldn't have any approach to encouraging a company to consider those issues ahead of time. You would simply expect a consular service to engage with individual cases if they arose. What do you mean ahead of time? If someone was thinking of investing in a country and they were thinking of bringing large amounts of people out, we would discuss with them the issues around that in terms of the full range of consular issues, which may be around gender or sexual orientation, because there are countries where that's a real issue. It's also around personal safety security and the whole range of issues. It's not an automatic thing. It would be if we had interface with that company, but we would discuss it. We would always seek FCO advice if we were going to be taking a mission, for example, out to a country where there may be risks of security. In fact, we would tend not to do it, but we would always seek advice from FCO in advance of going out to market. Thank you. I'm conscious of the time that I've got three members who don't want to come in, so we'll try and get through them if we can. We'll start with Richard Lyle. Good morning. Scottish Development International, STI, is a joint venture that includes Scottish Government and Scottish Enterprise, Ireland, Ireland, Ireland's business gateway, talent Scotland, daddy, daddy, dat. Actually, Mr Francis, your budget is £35.1 million up from £26.6 million in 2010-11. You've done a lot of good work over 2,700 companies access to international markets. 29% increased in the year before, your figures and cash terms have went up 32%. Are you giving value for money? That's my first question. What's your view in regards to the Wilson Review when he said that we should have export Scotland rather than a collective across all the other companies I've just mentioned? Are we delivering value for money? I think we are. I think our evidence space is strong on the performance and the value for money aspects of it. I think you need to take into account when you look at value for money on the scale of the challenge you're trying to address. I think we have mentioned earlier today the long-term nature of improving the total number of exporters, not simply from Scotland but from the UK and how this does require persistence, passion and determination. I think we are very strongly focused on that, but it will take resources, so we need to devote the appropriate level of resources to that. I think as Janice has mentioned several times today, if other partners are in a position to deliver things, if the market failure has corrected and the private sector will step in and do it without any further support from the public sector, then that's a very positive outcome from our perspective. I hope that answers your first question. I'll come back again to export Scotland, but you're saying resources. SDI has nearly 30 officers, 260 staff. UKTI has 160 officers with 1,200 at the end of the day. I believe that you are working together. I don't believe that there's a bit of the big brother mentality, and I'm certainly not going to reflect that, but is there not a case for more? I had the experience of being on a trade mission paid for by the Taiwanese Government to Taiwan and met one of your excellent operatives, Regi Wu, over there. Basically, with the greatest respect, he was suggesting that there wasn't enough of him around trying to capture. You've got a lot of people doing a lot of good work, but should we have more people located within some of the UKTI offices or the embassies and not just concentrate on a great market in China, India and America, there's other opportunities out there, are we capturing those other opportunities? I think two answers to your question. We've got 29 offices in 18 countries, and we select our offices based on that analysis I mentioned earlier of understanding our sector priorities with the market opportunities. So what we do is with the resources we have, we put them in the areas that we think we can get the best return for our companies. Clearly, there are opportunities in lots of other markets for our companies, and that's where we rely on and do get the support for our companies that's required from our UKTI network in the 150 odd countries or 150 offices that they have internationally. Your question about do we have the right level of Scottish resources internationally, then that's an open question you could always do with more. Our job principally is to ensure we get the best value, the best return for the resources we do have. What do you think about Brian Molson's comment that we should have an export Scotland brand? I think I come back to the points that have already been made. It's all about trying to say, so what are you trying to overcome? If the issue is access to services, I think we've had a lot of discussion around that, and whilst we can always do a better job with our partners, I think there's strong evidence to say customers are getting access to the right services from the right organisation at the right time. In terms of whether he means it's an internal brand or an external brand, I'm not sure. I think we are clear that Scotland has to have a very clear international narrative about what Scotland stands for, and I think that narrative based around the premium nature, the provenance of the things, the integrity, all of that is working well in the marketplace, but I'm not sure if that answered your question. My view on this is that we've worked very hard over the past few years to try to build up the SDI brand in Scotland as being that vehicle, if you like. If there was the opportunity to accelerate alignment, to make it much easier that all of us chambers and everybody delivered under Export Scotland as a brand, then I would be very open to that. I guess it's what's going to be, Neil said, what's actually going to be the most effective. I don't think that a single organisation Export Scotland would be the approach, because I think that we actually meet the partnerships, we need everybody working together and collaborating in order to achieve the impacts that we want to see and the very stretching ambitions that we've got. And lastly, if you allow me, convener, you were asked earlier about people getting together and they'll be in the tournament. Mr Francis, who's your immediate boss? Ann McColl, chief executive of Scottish Development International. We are at the end of our time, but I promised Gordon MacDonald I would let him back in, so I let Gordon in. My apologies to Lewis and Chick, I just don't think we have time on it. I just want to ask the questions that I had agreed at the beginning to do with a smart exporter programme, but I've cut them down to a couple. My first is that you very helpfully at the beginning highlighted the number of companies that have had some form of support either from SDI or UKTI or both. I think that from memory it was just under about 5,000 companies, but what was the target that you wanted of the number of companies that you wanted to support when the smart exporter programme was launched and how many companies have actually went on to be active exporters out of that number that you supported? So two things there. Our targets don't tend to relate to specific programmes, but in terms of what we call that strategic target, in Scotland's trade and investment strategy that was launched in 2010 I think, there was a target of 8,000 to 10,000 companies. Now we've got one more year of the strategy left, it finishes in a year's time, and we are just at this moment in time when we close out the performance at the end of March, we'll be just over the 8,000, so we're in the target range with one year to go. Your question then about what have we seen in terms of companies moving along, you remember I described that journey, the phases that the companies have to go to, how many of them have got to becoming exporters? We don't have that information right now, we will track that through and understand that, and I think the smart exporter programme was funded jointly with the European Social Fund, so its focus was on skills and building capacity and capability and it wasn't focused specifically on achieving new exporters. One of the learning points we've taken as I said in launching our new programme is our focus is very much on achieving new exporters, so that's one of the big changes we've made. My last question is going to be on the new programme you've just launched and you've explained some of the difference there, but what will be the measure of success on that new programme? It's new exporters, how many companies have we taken from being, there's some technical things so we are calling it new or passive, so companies that currently have zero international sales or less than 15% of their total revenues from international sales, that's our target is to increase that number. By how much? I will confirm in writing in due course, I think it is by 400 a year, but I might be completely wrong, so can I please confirm that, convener? Okay, okay, my apologies to the other two members who want to come back in, but we're going to have to cut it now, we've a lot of other business to get through this morning, can I thank you all for coming along this morning, it's been a very useful session to us and we're grateful to you for your time, we'll now have a short suspension until I have a change of mind. Okay, if we can reconvene, I'd like to welcome James Withers, chief executive of Scotland Food and Drug, thank you for joining us this morning. I think you've heard most of the evidence that we had from the previous session. I think that one of the things that the committee would be interested to get from your perspective as the leader of a trade industry that's very focused on exporting is what your take is on this question of the relationship between UKTI and SDI, which we heard a lot about in the previous panel. Clearly there is an ambition to have collaborative working, given what we've heard, there's a lot being done to try and make sure that there's a seamless offer to Scottish companies, but what's your perspective on how this works in practice? I think it's probably a mixed bag to be honest, so I think about the collaboration that is here and then the collaboration that is out in the field in overseas markets, and out in overseas markets I've seen it work really well in terms of we were in India a year and a half ago, and the UKTI team and the SDI team and the Delhi Embassy work effectively as one team, and that works really well. I think here to be honest, if you were asking the companies and companies that are members of ours, they would say that it's better. You mean better than the war? Yes, so it's definitely an upward trajectory. I think that the principle of having SDI as being the lead delivery vehicle for trade and investment in Scotland is the right one, but we're not there yet, so you'll see UKTI delivered events happening in Scotland. Interestingly, I got an email this morning to encourage Scottish companies to take part in a webinar about how they can use the British brand to increase their attraction international markets, which is not quite where we are in terms of what the Scottish approach is. So there's still bits of friction there. We had a trade mission back in 2012. SDI and Scotland Drink joined trade mission and then UKTI decided to organise one at the same time, going to the same market, asking the same companies. Now that was three years ago, I don't think that would happen there, and the reason I don't think that would happen now is because there's a lot more joined up discussion around the operating plans. It didn't used to be an issue if you went back five years ago, because to be honest, I don't think that UKTI was interested in food and drink. It wasn't a big priority for them. It's now become a bigger priority for them. So they jumped into the area, which meant that there was an initial duplication, but as a greater understanding has developed, I think that that's lessening. It's not a perfect story yet, but it's lessening. I think that the answer is that, in terms of delivery of activity, SDI should be the face of that activity, working in partnership with industry organisations here, rather than UKTI. We were discussing earlier the whole question of trade missions. What is your sense or your member's sense in terms of the offer that's available from trade missions? We heard from SDI that they clearly organise particular trade missions and tend to be sectorally focused. We heard in previous evidence sessions that SDI who had previously organised them under summer age with the UKTI are no longer doing that. Scottish Chambers of Commerce told us that they themselves organised trade missions completely independently of SDI or other organisations. Was your experience of trade missions? Trade missions are absolutely critical. They make a huge impact. The value of having companies getting out of Scotland and seeing the market is difficult to put a price on. We've seen two big benefits. One, an increase in exports from them, but two, more importantly, a new culture of collaboration developed between the companies that go on them together. For food and drink, that's really important. There are lots of folk that do trade missions, such as SDI and others. We work the likes of Santa and there, and they do their own trade missions. They have private sector banks and trade missions. We've tried to focus on SDI as the partner that we use, but the ways of working have changed. What we've tried to do as an industry leadership body is to say based on research and work that the markets are interested in, we've now got a single strategy to what those markets are and what we want to do, and the next phase, which is just getting finalised at the moment, is having a single annual operating plan. There is a very clear plan each year of set trade missions, which shows when we'll bring inward missions of buyers into Scotland, which is proving more valuable than just companies going out. That becomes the focus of it. Have I got an impression of what you said? Would there still be, in your view, too much duplication in terms of what's on offer? To be honest, a lot of that duplication, I wouldn't point the finger of the public sector as an industry, and the private sector is pretty disorganised around this as well. You have banks, law firms and accountancy bodies all trying to do trade missions as well. We've taken the approach that, if there's another private sector organisation to trade mission, they can give us a detail, but we're going to work through a very clear set with SDI. I've not seen that sort of China-Japan trade mission example that I mentioned with UKTI and SDI at the same time, in the same place, looking for the same companies. I've not seen that repeated in the past two years, and I don't think that it would happen now. 81 per cent of your funding comes from your members from the private sector, and you've got 90 per cent coming from Scottish Enterprise. If there was a shortfall from your members in the private sector, would Scottish Enterprise meet that shortfall? That's an interesting question. I suppose that it might be worth reflecting on the journey that we've been on. We were pump primed by Scottish Enterprise, hands under Enterprise and Scottish Government, so that ratio of 80.20 was completely the other way round. Back in 2007, we were set up. The public sector is a leap of faith into the industry leadership model. We said that we're going to support that, but if you're worth your salt and you're delivering an industry that you're paying for you, we've been on a journey of increasing private sector income. We've gone from a position of being very much 80 per cent public sector funded to 80 per cent private sector funded. Why is that important to us? Because it's important that we're an industry-led body by having companies that pay a voluntary membership to us that keeps us real in terms of what we're doing. If we're not delivering for the industry, they'll not pay us support and we won't continue. If there was a shortfall now, I'm not sure they would and I'm not sure they should. I would say that we're about to move into a new public sector funding partnership with Scottish Enterprise, hands under Enterprise and Scottish Government, which will be an increase of funding for our industry co-ordination and leadership work and the same side we're going to try to build our private sector income at the same time. In terms of the, I mean, obviously, whisky accounts for quite a large, you know, a huge percentage of the export market, about 80 per cent, I think. In terms of the SMEs within your membership, how influential are they within your moving forward in terms of your planning, that sort of strategic planning? Critical. I heard the other evidence session and there was questions about account management and that kind of process. That tends to, whilst hearing the point about it, it's not based on just turnover and growth perspective. The reality is that there's 200, roughly 200 account managed food and drink companies and most of them are of the larger scale. We see ourselves very much as needing to engage with the SME end. Now, 80 per cent of food and drink companies operating in Scotland employ less than 10 people. So that's, you know, even before the S of SME, you know, really early stage. So for us, engaging at that end is going to be critical, giving them a voice in what the structure looks like and increasingly the answer to the scale question because we need scale for exports, but it's not scale achieved by big companies following up small or even smaller companies merging into one, it's this collaboration approach. So how can we take 18 small food and drink producers in our guile and hands on hands and have them working collectively to share shipping containers and share business development managers overseas? That collaboration piece will be key. So the SME bit is really the bread and butter of the industry. The sort of micro companies, in some respects, are going, you know, smaller than small. Some of them have the potential to go into the export market, too. How do you nurture that at the moment? I suppose that if we went back three or four years, it was about ambition. So it was about for smaller companies thinking beyond just their local market, which I suppose was their bread and butter, and we'll remain the foundation of their business for a while. That battle to get smaller companies to be ambitious has been won, I would say, and won with enough— The evidence, they said, it's really difficult to get that ambition that's hard work. They were suggesting that it's not. My perspective is that it's won with enough companies in food and drink that can now be worked with. I think that if we won it with another 500, we've got almost a body that's too big to work with just now. Maybe to give you an example, Aaron is probably using an example quite a lot. You have 11 or 12 producers form-tasted Aaron there, and they're now selling cheese and the Burjell Arab in Dubai and elsewhere. I think that Neil referred to a collaborative export pilot at the SDI of Lead taking 18, 19 companies through a UK consolidator. So if you look, there are 12 companies just flying back from Boston just now, from the Seafood show, and there'll be another 15 going to Hong Kong in May. Most of them are SMEs—they're small craft brewers, they're rapeseed oil producers. For us, in terms of Scotland, we're very clear that if you want mass volume production at a low cost, don't come to us, but if you want artisan quality and a good strong brand that's built around provenance, that's what we can do. So for us, it's almost a small, beautiful piece in terms of the brand. In the previous evidence session, there was a little bit of exploring of the issue of cross-sectoral work, and we heard very clearly from SDI their focus on single sector work. Within the work that you promote on trade missions and elsewhere, do you tend to work across the food and drink area or do you sub-sector in terms of your focus? In other words, salmon and whisky and the other things that are exported clearly have different markets but also sometimes the same ones? Yeah, they do. So the export strategy we've now got in place, which I would stress, is not a whisky strategy. They've sort of been there, done that, and we're working with them in a different way. It's about non-whisky drinks and food. And the driving principle has been about where is the cross-sectoral opportunity. So the 15 markets that we've identified and then the top seven, which is where new specialists are being put on the ground with funding from industry and SDI and Scottish Government ministers, that's about the cross-sectoral opportunity. Now, we spent a while doing that, the guts of a year, identifying what those markets should be, but it was around where the ambition and the opportunity for red meat crossed over with bakery, with salmon and seafood. So it's very much a cross-sectoral push. So in Boston at the reception on Monday night, it's a seafood show, but at the reception they'll do, they'll have craft beer and have other products there. And our way of working is that if my counterpart is the head of seafood Scotland when he's at an event, he's also now wearing a red meat hat and a bakery hat, so to speak. So it's very much cross-sectoral. I think the next phase for us will be thinking cross-sectoral beyond food and drink. So where do our ambitions cut across tourism, textiles, life sciences and elsewhere? That'll be the next phase, I think. And in the sense that was my next question, was if that's how you work and it makes sense to have different products and different companies working together within a strategic approach, is there a point at which the SDI's insistence on a sectoral approach could get in the way? In other words, and if it does, would you then look to a Chamber of Commerce or some other partner to promote across a range of products? The sectoral approach we've been really insistent on actually, so we've tried to pull industry together so we can decide on what are the absolute key priorities and be clear on that as opposed to, I suppose, asking for 100 different things. But we've demanded a really strong sectoral approach, so SDI probably historically has been an organisation of generalists. GP's are fine, but sometimes you need consultants, and we've been really keen to have food and drink specialists that know the food and drink sector. Why do we want to do that? Because we've seen the Irish in the New Zealand, the Scandinavians do it for years and we know it works. So in some ways we've demanded a greater specialism and credit to SDI, they've responded to that. But I think that the next phase will be looking at where this cross-sectoral bit comes in. We know that the same markets that we're trying to sell food and drink products to are the same markets that Visit Scotland and the Scottish Children's Alliance are trying to attract visitors from, and they are also the same markets that we've got overseas students coming from. Whether it's Team Scotland won, Scotland won whatever the phrase is, this idea of better cross-sectoral work, and I think it will be, is what the next phase of our journey looks like. And very briefly, and I appreciate it's the next phase, but what might that look like? Given your support for a sectoral approach, how do you get beyond that at the point that you're ready to go? There's probably two parts of that, I think it's operationally. So if we're at, with SDI, if we're at Guild Food, the big food and drink show in Dubai, and Visit Scotland are thinking about a promotion in the Middle East to encourage visitors in the Mall of the Emirates, well we do that at the same time. But I think it might start looking like physical presences as well, so in Shanghai, for example, there's New Zealand House, they have their consular and embassy, as I would understand it, but they then have effectively a business embassy, and that place is a showcase for their tourism, their food and drink, their further education sector. And I know SDI and Scottish Enterprise are looking at that, I'd like to think that if we're really careful at which markets we chose, we could think about a physical presence as well, which could be a hub for businesses to use in markets but also be a showcase and a place we bring buyers into as well. Last year, the Scottish whisky industry saw its value and volume of exports fall. How is the rest of the food and drink sector doing? Is it achieving its targets and does it require any additional support in order to achieve its targets? The drink sector was down about £300 million on the latest 2014 figures that came out three weeks ago. Food was up 3.5 per cent, which was about the UK level on average. The whisky's view is that it's a blip along the road and my sense is that it's right on that, but food is still on upward trajectory. However, we're talking about obviously a lower base, so, as Dennis mentioned, if you look at the £5.1 billion in food and drink that we'll export or we exported last year, 78 per cent of that is whisky. Food has gone from £700 million to £1.1 billion, so up 52-53 per cent. Our ambition is to have that doubled over a decade, so we want to hit £1.4 billion in food exports. However, we felt that, to answer your question, we needed more support. That was the principle of putting this new strategy in place. We also felt that industry should probably have some skin in the game, so, rather than just saying, we want to do this and the Government pay for it, please, a number of industry bodies, five of us, have put around about £400,000 onto the table, match-funded by SDI, with Government ministers putting in the gap funding to fund these new specialists, and that's what we felt was the support that's required. At the moment, no more beyond that, because that's just getting going. The new specialists, four of them are recruited, there's another four that should be in place in the next few months. I'm comfortable that that's what we need at the moment. Actually, the priority just now is to make sure that those specials on the ground are run off their feet. In other words, there are enough companies in Scotland demanding their services and going out to market. In terms of SDI and UKTI, what works well in terms of the support that you get from them and what needs improvement? I'll comment on SDI. UKTI is a much more mysterious beast to me. We have very little contact with UKTI, and that's probably as much because we don't seek it as much as them seeking us out. We work through SDI. What support works well, I think that these specialists could have a transformational impact, is my view. What works well in those markets is hiring and local knowledge. We've got plenty of people that understand Scotland and the food and drink industry in SDI. We need the Post in Hong Kong, the Post in Shanghai or Singapore to be someone who brings in that local market knowledge that understands that distributed framework. We need more of that, and we've been weak on that historically. The US would probably be a good example where we've been weaker in terms of our relationships in that market, but I think that that will strengthen now with new specialists and a restructure of the SDI team there. What works well here is understanding where companies are on the customer journey and being flexible about that. It's no longer a measurement of the size of a company as to whether they should be account managed or whether they should be in smart export or not. We need to move more flexible about that. I think that the other thing that's going to have to be changed is that the enterprise agencies, as I think they recognise, will have to learn how to manage collaborations of groups of companies. It's easy to account manage a company. It's a bit more complex to account manage a collaboration of companies. We're going to have to learn how to do that in Scotland, given the SME base. I heard discussion earlier of the one door, any door, one stop shop type idea. We've tried to do that in food and drink. There's a single phone number, a single email address for any food and drink company who's interested in exports, but there's always more work to do to make sure that they get to the right answer. My final question is just basically, you said the importance of understanding local markets and having that local knowledge. What engagement have you had with the global scot network and how successful was it? I'd say that's a mixed bag as well. There's a lot of global scots. I think it's 600, 700. We need to be clear what we're asking of them so that they can carry a card carrying a global scot and there's an element of pride in that and it's really important, but we need to be clear what we want from them. From my point of view, I'm interested in the 30 that could really do something for food and drink, as opposed to maybe the other 670 who might not. Those individuals might not be in the food and drink sector, but they might be in a particular market that's important to us. We can probably use that asset maybe more than we have done before. There's good examples of how the Irish models and New Zealand models use that very well, but it's an important part of it and because we have limited resources, STI have limited resources, the industry has limited resources, we need to use the much broader network. The one thing Scotland has is the most amazing expat community. We really need to use that. Richard Lyle Good morning. Have you ever had any of your companies ever complain that STI have not given them the help that they wanted? Yeah. We've got 350 companies and I haven't met a sector that wouldn't have thought that we'd complain about STI or a dude anyone else. So yes, we've had complaints about STI. I think it would be fair to say that the general picture is a huge amount of value attached to that STI resource. The job, I think, from an industry point of view is to help them deliver better. Our approach from an industry point of view is rather than to sit here and say, you should be doing that and that and you're not doing that. This is our complaint and where you're failing. Our view is our responsibility to set the framework ourselves. Our ask is that the public sector aligns behind that. The industry leadership public sector alignment. Our criticisms have been not in our specialism. We're not good enough in the US. We've said our view of how we could do it. We're willing to help fund that if we can and then they've reacted to that. The general picture is good, but yeah, there's all the complaint now. Right, I'm one of your companies. I complain to you how soon can you phone up Neil Francis and say, Neil, I want to have a meeting tomorrow. Joe Bloggs company's phoned me up about daddy, daddy, dad. How soon would you get that? I wouldn't have a single complaint about access. We probably wouldn't meet. We'd just talk about it on the phone and we'd get one of their Glasgow team to speak to the company involved, or I would speak directly to the field officer, one of my colleagues. So you get instant access and you're problem solved if somebody's given you a complaint. Problem addressed. Problem addressed, not maybe problem solved. There's a willingness to do it. I would have no complaints about that at all. We all live in the real world. What do you think about the Brian Mawson's view in regards to setting up an export Scotland brand? Like what used to be a bit before your time, the old board of trade sort of situation? Yeah, and we've looked at the Irish model board beer, which is a single food board there, whereas in Scotland we have a seafood body, a red meat body, a bakery body, and different enterprise agencies in different parts of the country and the trade investment arm as well. I'm personally not a fan of the Irish model because it's a purely public sector solution. It's quango-led, whereas I think what we do in Scotland, or should do in Scotland, is about industry leadership. I think if I'm being really honest, I'm less excited about big structural change than I am about getting the existing structure to work well together. My limited experience of structural changes is that you lose two years with everyone defending the structure that they're in as opposed to actually doing the doing, so I'm much more interested in how you get the existing agencies to work better. I've looked at the export Scotland idea and it's interesting, but I'm not sure it looks like a solution to the problem that we have in Scotland. So it's basically get on with what we're good at. Good afternoon. I think the first thing I'd like to say is that at least we have somebody with success, with clarity as to what we should have, which is an industry-led set of organisations in Scotland. Where does the Government get in the way of what you want to do? It's okay, so where do we hit hurdles? We hit hurdles if the old culture comes back, and by that I mean that the Government decides it's got an idea and bashes on and decides to do something and create something new, without recognising that we're trying to develop this new relationship of industry leadership. So you have a brainstorming session, an enterprise agency on the side, we've got a gap here and particularly let's run off and do it without it understanding what's happening in the round and understanding actually whether industry wants it. But my experience has been, and I would say this right from devolution, is that the level of accessibility and ability to think of the public sector as a partner rather than a body over there that needs to be lobbied has completely transformed. Now it's been on a journey and it's taken a while for us to get there, but Government undoubtedly will get in the way at times, and I have no doubt that the Government will say industry will get in our way as well, but I think that we now have an ability to be quite honest about where that happens and address it. So, you know, there's another example where it happens, but I'm confident that there's now a framework where we can generally address that. Using your example, James, of New Zealand House, for example, and other industry-led organisations like Scottish Tourism Alliance, and I did become a bit concerned when you said that we're going to look at spreading the sectors that we cover. Do you feel that there's a lack of clarity in the role of Scottish Enterprise, HIE, SDI in terms of being a facilitator, part funder and being an operational unit? You talk about selling. Government shouldn't be selling. You guys know the sectors. So, that's what I'm trying to get to. Do you say that they don't understand the role? Is it specified properly? I mean, we've seen what's happened to other organisations like Pinpoint and CDI, but I may use that just as an example of pulling industries together, which frankly works. I mean, expertise has to be centred on a particular sector in industry. It's a really interesting question. I'm not sure exactly what the answer is. Suffice to say that it is important that the enterprise agencies see themselves as enablers, so their job, and to some extent the job in industry leadership bodies, is to create the best possible operating environment. So, not to do the doing but to create the environment for companies to flourish. That means that the company's responsibility is to do the delivery of the selling. I do think, though, that it's important that we don't box ourselves in, or that the enterprise agencies in SDI don't box themselves too much in the view that we don't do commercial activity. So, I'll give you an example of that. In Dubai, we had a company that was, being to the show, a big exhibition at first time, and loads of people were looking to buy the product. We didn't have a distributor. Someone would actually do that connection between the buyer at one end and the company here and bring it in. UKTI were able, partly because of good resource, to give them a list of five distributors that they knew well but had worked with other companies that had a track record. That was dynamite for the company involved. The SDI view at the time there was, we don't get involved in that. You need to go and find distributors. That's a commercial relationship. I think that's where, actually, sometimes a blurring a line could be quite important. When they blur the line, someone will step over it and someone will get in trouble for it, but, you know, actually that risk is worth it. So, my view of these new specialities is about doing a bit more of that. Being able to say to a company new into the market who desperately needs confidence to be able to operate has heard probably 100 scare stories of getting with the wrong partner to be able to do a bit of that work as well. So, sometimes that, although, on the one hand, I'm very clear of you that they set the operating environment and then his company's responsibility to take advantage, but a blurring of that line occasionally could be of merit, I think. Okay, one very brief question. We discussed before the consolidation of products for onward shipment to export. I mean, how successful is your sector doing that? It's getting there. Leave the big guys aside. It's getting better, but there's more to be done. So, we're better at it within the UK. If you're trying to get into the London market, there's now quite good consolidators that will pull product together and get them into a single van, but, you know, part of that is actually, we see as a responsibility of our organisation to put companies in touch with each other. Someone's got a delivery and the van's coming back empty and do a small just list on that. The big step, though, we'll be thinking about that from export. So, this collaborative export pilot, which is a bit of a brave new world, has been saying, if we can get 18 companies together that represent craft beer and jam makers and seafood and various different sectors, none of them are going to fill a shipping container themselves, so we need to bring them together. Using a UK consolidator allows them, actually, to sell the product to the UK, so it's still a UK sale for them, UK currency, UK regs, and then that consolidator uses its greater scale to then do the onward chip when it manages that relationship with the onward buyer. So, that model's just been tried. We've learned some things that, you know, some distributors will work with some sectors and not others. You need to split ambient and frozen, you know, various things like that practically, but that model's going to work really well, I think, but it's early days. Thank you. Okay. I wonder if I can ask a slightly different tack about the year of food and drink Scotland 2015. Now, I know 2015 is the year in food and drink Scotland, but I know that because I'm on this committee and I take an interest in these things. As a spectator, if I were just a member of the public, I wouldn't have a clue. I wouldn't have heard of the year in food and drink Scotland. Well, what exactly are we doing to promote those? So, it's obviously one of the tourism themes years, and that's been the focus of Visit Scotland for this year. This is the second year of food and drink. The first one was either 2009 or 2010, and we were told in the March of that year that it was the year of food and drink. So, we were told in September last year that this was going to be the year of food and drink, so comparatively speaking, we're slightly ahead of the game. I think if you were involved in youth employment or the youth agenda, it would be exciting because you know the year of Scotland's young people's 2018, plenty of times they get planned. Food and drink tends to be in the first part, so it's felt the easiest thing to do. How's it been promoted? Visit Scotland, I don't know if any of you have seen the adverts that have gone and they're working in market and country around it. Because they're working in markets where you're trying to track visitors from, by its nature, that means there's probably work going on in America and elsewhere that we're not going to see here. As an industry, we've decided we need to try and use it a bit better, so we've worked with some of the major retailers around branding in store to help promote Scottish products. It's very much left, unlike, I suppose, 2014, which is about the big flagship events. This is about trying to have food and drink as an underlying theme in everything, from a small B&B to a Wigtam book festival to various different other events. It's probably less visible, but is there a perfect job being done in raising awareness? Probably not. That said, a few years ago, we wouldn't even have thought about carrying off a year of food and drink, so I'm sort of glass half full about it. But I think there's much more to be done to engage the average Joe or Joanna on the street in the agenda. I was interested in how we engage business because I was visiting a food business in Fife a few weeks ago, who are involved in a very customer-focused, high-end retail food business, and they were basically complaining that they would like to adopt some of the branding for the year of food and drink but had no information about it. This would have been an opportunity for them to brand the business, brand the products, and 2015 year of food and drink had received nothing from VisitScotland or anyone else. It's definitely patchy. To give you some example, we decided to try and create some industry themes around it, so for each of the 12 months that's a theme, this is craft brewing in the stilling month. A number of different businesses have got involved in that in a different way. Some brewers are brewing specific year of food and drink beers for this month, for those who know Cranican and Crowdy, the other side of Royal Miles Street. Every Thursday night, they're doing a showcase of producers in store where customers can come in based on that theme. There's some really good stuff happening, but it doesn't surprise me if all of you went to C-10 companies, you might find five that, well, you would probably find eight that had heard of it, but you'd probably find five of them that don't have the materials. OK. Any other points, if not, just falls to me to thank you, James, for coming along this morning bringing a fascinating session and thank you for your input. At this point, we will suspend briefly and go into private session.