Chamber and committees

I know that that is a recurring issue. When you said that I might guess where you were going with your question, I thought that it would be one of those two areas, but you managed to combine both areas in one question—I was right in that regard.

I understand your long-standing frustration with data. I will ask Aidan Grisewood if there is anything further to add on that.

We just published our third NSET report, which is the third annual report. By and large, what we analyse from a Government perspective is whether we have delivered what we have said we will deliver. What is not in that report—at least to the extent that I know you would like—is analysis of whether what we have delivered is having a positive impact across different metrics. There is a point there; we should probably do that later down the line, because pathways are still being rolled out.

We have really good granular data on particular areas of focus—Techscaler is the most obvious example. With the more recent initiatives that have been established, we have taken a data-first approach, hence having very granular data for Techscaler. I am happy to send the committee the more granular data that never makes it on to websites, because that might be an area of interest. You are absolutely right to say that Techscaler shows up, as it were, all the other initiatives that have not been established with a data-first approach. The data for those is still lacking.

If it is of interest to the committee, we could follow up in writing with a list of all the areas where I am confident that we are collating data that reveals gender figures; that is, areas where there is the level of granularity that will allow us to see where there are areas that still need some work. We could do that, if that would be useful. However, it might not be—Michelle Thomson is looking quizzical.

I do not disagree at all. It is not an area that we have been neglecting in between committee appearances, but it has lots of challenges to it. That is not an excuse, but we will come back to the committee in writing as comprehensively as we can about where we have disaggregated gender data.

I know that, next week, we will have sovereign wealth funds and pension funds, and national representation, worth billions.

I would quite like to have £1 billion.

The thing with productivity is that we cannot deliver productivity only through public spend. One of the challenges that Scotland has had for so long is incentivising business investment in productivity—

My view is that it has been a challenging decade for many businesses and for the economy. Ultimately, that points to the need for a diversified economy in Scotland. We always see it in the income tax figures but, compared to the rest of the UK, Scotland’s industry is made up of some big beasts, such as financial enterprise and energy.

That means that, when either of those sectors is affected, there is a disproportionate impact on the Scottish economy, whereas England, for example, is less dependent on its big beasts and is more diversified. The past 10 years have been particularly challenging for the two industries that I mentioned. Economic headwinds have a disproportionate impact on Scotland because of our reliance on some of the big industries.

Yes.

There are three things. Businesses are always more likely to invest when their costs are lower. If businesses are spending more on national insurance contributions, to take one example, they are less inclined to reinvest their profits. The first thing, therefore, is to support businesses by giving them a bit of breathing space to reinvest in productivity, which is a business choice. There is also something around demonstrating the benefit to the business of reinvesting in productivity. Some of the headwinds that we are experiencing, particularly those affecting labour shortages, are already driving businesses to reinvest, because they have to reinvest in technology if they cannot recruit. That is point number 1.

Point number 2 is about supporting businesses to transition to the new world in which we operate. There was a huge focus on that in 2018, 2019 and 2020, focusing on things such as digital boost through Business Gateway, with its adoption of technology. Covid drove that exponentially higher, in that businesses had to adapt anyway. We are now facing new challenges around AI—and I have already talked about what Richard Lochhead is doing around supporting businesses with AI.

Thirdly, there is the question of what businesses can do internally, among their sectors. We already support a number of initiatives. For example, in the advanced manufacturing sector, we have the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland, or NMIS, the job of which is to support innovation in manufacturing across all businesses that operate in that sector. A couple of weeks ago, I launched the deep tech supercluster, which is all about getting businesses to embrace technology. We are doing a six-month pilot with different sectors that need to embrace a more technological approach.

Those are three examples of what can be done and is being done, but it cannot be public-sector led alone.

We will have to demonstrate how every part of the Government is in accordance with the climate change plan. That is the approach that we will take, and the economy directorate is not immune from being part of that process.