The term “inclusive growth” was introduced to Scotland relatively recently, and it is fair to say that there is no common definition across the different parts of the system. Everyone has been looking at Scotland’s unique contribution, and what that means. The Scottish Government is developing an inclusive growth framework, and we are interested in seeing how it will align with the national performance framework.
Scottish Enterprise views inclusive growth as something that encapsulates both economic and social value. It is not about creating growth and then making it inclusive, but about delivering growth in ways that are inclusive of various people, communities and geographies. We work with different companies and sectors, and with different geographies—or, if you like, places; different communities are more comfortable with different words. Our work with companies very much focuses on the workforce and the workplace, and in our conversations with them, we think about their growth plans, and we talk to them about progressive workplace practices and how inclusive their business model is, given the growth opportunities in that regard.
We also talk to companies about investing in youth policies. That could mean employing young people, but it could equally be about their talking to schools, engaging with equalities and mentoring young people. We are beginning to monitor and track some aspects of inclusive growth; I will come back to that but, as I have said, our conversations with companies are very much about the workforce and the workplace in the context of fair work.
At a sector level, we have been working with industry leadership groups to help them build and embed in their strategy different ways of looking at inclusive growth, and to ensure that that aspect is stretched. Our work on productivity planning with the construction, food and drink and tourism sectors was initiated very much by industry, for industry. Those sectors, particularly the lower-productivity ones, were starting to ask how they were going to tackle some of the big issues around making growth much more inclusive in various communities. We are engaging on an individual level with regional and place agendas through local authorities and community planning partnerships, and we look at community benefit clauses as part of our work on big projects.
One example is the Edinburgh BioQuarter, which is not far from the Parliament. We have thought about how it is going to engage with the community on all sorts of levels, including through schools and graduate routes and with the on-site community. We are very much engaged in the regional economic partnership work. Ayrshire provides a good example of that, and another example is the city deal work and how we ensure the people in different parts of the community are able to engage with it. That is the way in which we look at it, and we embed that approach in what we do.
We do not have a single measure for inclusive growth, not least because we have tried to ensure that we can track what we currently have. In our business plan for this year, we will introduce a number of tracking measures for inclusive growth to give us a baseline that we can learn from and use for tracking. I can follow up on that and share that information with you, but it will help us understand the right kind of measures that we need, because having the wrong measures can set the wrong behaviour. The right measures will help us track our performance on inclusive growth as we move forward.