I should say up front that we are working closely with colleagues in the Government on both the setting up of the Scottish national investment bank and how the transition will work. It is very much a team approach, involving not only the Government and SE but other partners.
We are looking at what it will take to develop that pipeline, and we are already putting some things in place. One example is the work that we are doing in manufacturing. On behalf of the Government, Scottish Enterprise has been leading the work around the manufacturing action plan that the First Minister launched a number of years ago, and the national manufacturing institute will be coming on stream.
We are also in the process of setting up the advanced manufacturing challenge fund, which will help to provide regional facilities and capability so that businesses can take advantage of new manufacturing techniques. As businesses get ready, that will drive demand, either for capital investment or for taking people on, to where the finance will come from. There are things that will be in place that we will invest in, and then we will work with those businesses to drive demand towards the bank and help them to get ready.
The financial readiness scheme that we already operate will stay with Scottish Enterprise. Fifty per cent of the business that comes through that comes from the work that we do with companies, and 50 per cent comes through other routes, such as business gateway and our website.
We want to ensure that our financial readiness work is even more fit for purpose by using online services and providing it in places where businesses are, in regions and cities. In doing that, we will work closely with south of Scotland enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise.
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We are committed to the demand work, which is about how we work with our current businesses and how we switch on other businesses and ensure that the support is there to help them to get ready. We do not know yet whether that might take more resource; we are working through that. We are also looking at how we ensure that our sales force—the staff who work with partners and businesses—has a commercial mindset about what a good deal looks like so that, as that is driven towards the Scottish national investment bank to do the transaction, we know what the deal looks like.
Therefore, we are doing a number of things; I have other examples, but I do not want to take up too much of the committee’s time.