Business in the Parliament Conference 2006
We thought that it would be useful to go round the table and get some feedback on this year's business in the Parliament conference while it is fresh in everyone's minds. It was the third business in the Parliament conference and delegates attended from more than 200 businesses. Over the piece, 40 to 50 MSPs attended, and at least half of the Cabinet attended at some point on the Thursday evening or the Friday. That is probably the best turnout—of both businesses and politicians—that we have had.
The feedback that I received from members of the business community was that, almost universally, they would have liked more time in the break-out groups and fewer speakers on the Friday morning. Also, they suggested that it would have been better to have one theme rather than trying to cover so many things. We organise the conference jointly with the Scottish Executive, so we need to talk to it about the feedback.
My view is that, next year, it would be worth while to have a theme, such as the effect of climate change on business in Scotland—that is a big subject and we could make it the key theme of the conference. Given the economic implications of the Stern report, businesses will be concerned about the matter. I am not saying that that should be the theme, but with a theme like that we could easily get six break-out groups and lots of feedback on renewable energy and so on. We have had three conferences that covered a wide range of issues and I think that, in future, we should cover fewer issues but in more depth. I have to say that the feedback that I received from the businesses that attended was that this year's conference was the best so far, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.
Before I open the subject for debate, I want to put on record—and have done so in writing as well—my congratulations to all the Parliament staff involved, ably led as usual by Stephen Imrie and Douglas Thornton. By all Parliament staff, I mean all the clerking teams, the official report, security and the broadcasting unit. As they usually do, they all went out of their way to make a success of the event, as did the Executive staff. Congratulations all round on the first-class staffing support and to the participants. Tom Farmer and the four speakers on Friday morning were all very good indeed.
I will now go round the table to see what people thought. There is also a formal feedback system—we will ask for feedback from all the participants, including MSPs, and a detailed report will be sent out to them, which will include what happened in each of the groups.
The event was very good. I concur that there were too many speakers in the morning. That session was especially long and there was little for the small business sector. We could perhaps have done with only two of the four speakers.
The break-out groups worked well, but again the feedback was that there was not enough time. If we were looking for a theme next year, we could perhaps gear some of the break-out groups towards the different business sectors in Scotland and allow each area to be explored in more detail.
All in all, it was a worthwhile event, and my constituent certainly enjoyed it.
I jotted down four brief points based on both my observations and those of people who attended and whom I spoke to either on the day or subsequently.
First, on the structure, we deliberately reorganised the Friday session to end at lunch time to encourage more MSPs to attend. I still thought the MSP attendance on Friday was disappointing. I do not know how many were there, but I would have guessed that, out of 129, there cannot have been more than 20 on the Friday. I know that that is a lot to us, but the people from the business community, whose representation was wide, thought that it was pretty poor. Stephen Imrie is no doubt updating you on the exact figure, convener.
There were 35 MSPs.
Perhaps they were keeping quiet—it did not look like that many.
Secondly, I agree with what Karen Gillon said about the structure. To sit through six speeches in the first hour—although some were of high quality—was too much, as people were shuffling and getting a bit cheesed off. A bit more engagement would have been better early on Friday.
Thirdly, I thought that the event lacked a spark, certainly compared with last year. Last year, whether you agreed with what Janette Anderson and Iain Graham had to say or not, you had to admit that they gave the event a buzz, something for people to talk about during the coffee break, and something for Nicol Stephen to respond to. This year that spark did not seem to be there. There was no burning issue that everyone was talking about, which last year was procurement. I am not sure how that can be generated, but thought needs to be given to creating a focus.
That ties into my fourth point, which was that there was not a single focus to the conference. It all seemed rather disparate. That was not necessarily intentional, but last year's event ended up with a strong focus on procurement and people from the business community whom I spoke to were pleased with that. They talked about procurement spontaneously, Nicol Stephen listened to them and set up the McClelland report, and they saw some progress in the intervening 12 months. That worked well, and part of the problem this year was that no single issue caught the imagination. I tend to agree that, if we are to hold the event again, we need to find a focus.
We should consult business on that. I remember talking about the agenda in a meeting some months ago and saying that we should ask the business community about the issues that it wanted to talk about. I am not sure to what extent that was done and how that was fed into the agenda, but trying to find a central theme is important.
Finally, I echo the convener's remarks: the way in which the event was managed was excellent, the catering was excellent and people were well looked after. Everyone had a very good impression of the building and of the Parliament's and Executive's administrative staff, who made the event work. People were very content with that.
I ask Stephen Imrie to respond briefly to the factual points that you raised.
Members can rest assured that all five main business organisations and the Scottish Trades Union Congress were fully consulted on both the theme and the format of the conference, and consequently some elements of the draft programme were changed. If the committee and ministers decide to hold a similar conference next year, my intention will be to arrange meetings with those organisations within the next few weeks both to get formal feedback from them on this year's event and to ask for their ideas for the theme and format of any subsequent event. Although the event is organised by the Executive and the Parliament, the people who shape and run the event are informed by a third strand comprising the business organisations and the STUC.
I have one further question. Did 35 MSPs actually attend the event on Friday or is that the figure for the number of MSPs who were expected to turn up?
On the Friday, I counted 35 MSPs in the chamber and in the gallery when I did a rough head count to inform the Presiding Officer.
I think that not all of them participated in the working groups. Perhaps that is why people gained the impression that a lower number of MSPs were present.
I agree with everything that Murdo Fraser said, which is a cause of some concern to me—
And to me.
Fair enough.
I will race through the six points that I noted down. First, on MSP attendance, we should be prepared to acknowledge that attendance was good and we should feed that back. I appreciate that other guests at such events might expect most of the 129 MSPs to be present, but we know that MSPs have many calls on their time and are in demand in their constituencies on Fridays. It was good that 35 MSPs attended. As I recall, we also had a good spread of MSPs from across the parties. That was a positive.
It was also good that half of the Cabinet attended on the Thursday night.
All of that signifies that the event is being taken seriously and has become firmly established, which is very positive.
On the length of the event, I think that the lunch-time finish was right. That was much better than ending up with a creeping death in the afternoon,
The balance between the plenary sessions and workshops was definitely out of sync, but the problem was not just the length of the plenary sessions compared with that of the workshop sessions but the lack of—Murdo Fraser used the word "spark" but I will use a different term—focus and challenge. I certainly picked that up from speaking to people who had attended both last year's event and this year's event, although I appreciate that such impressions can depend on the individual. I am surprised that the feedback that the convener picked up was that this year's conference was the best so far. Those to whom I spoke who had attended both events said that, although they still valued and benefited from this year's event, they had not found it as rewarding or as productive as the previous year's conference.
During the lunch-time chatter, some people said explicitly that they were strongly aware that many people had just played safe because of the media coverage of last year's event. That raises some issues. I hope that future events include within their design—as I think happened last year—an element of asking speakers to be challenging. I do not know to what extent last year's success was due to accident or design but people certainly got that sense. We need to be willing to have an element of being challenged, not for the sake of it but because we want to provoke a higher level of engagement and the action that flows from that.
Finally, I feel that the discussion groups needed not just more time but better processes for getting more focused outcomes and, in turn, a more structured process of follow-through and feedback. Techniques and methods could be applied to make that happen.
Without question, the conference is now an established event. The important thing is to ensure that it continues to be dynamic and to move and develop. It must not become too cosy and complacent, with people just going through the motions. There is a danger of that, but I hope that it will not happen.
I do not have much to add to what has been said. I was there on the Friday because there were some people from my region there and I talked to them during the breaks, although I was not in the actual sessions. The feedback that I got from two or three other MSPs who were there, rather than from the businesspeople, was that there were too many speeches and they were too long. They would have preferred a small number of keynote speeches that set the agenda and allowed the event to move on from there. That chimes with what some of the businesspeople told other members.
I agree that the spark that we got from last year's utterly unscripted intervention by Janette Anderson was missing. I will come back to the important theme that came out of my workshop and the one that my guests attended.
The attendance was good from ministers, MSPs and parliamentary staff. I recognised a lot of people around the building mingling with our guests. We need to consider the balance of time because there is not enough networking time—that is, time when our guests are not in plenary sessions or break-out groups and they have the opportunity to meet people from other businesses.
The speeches and the balance of the plenary sessions have already been covered.
I received the guest list on the day before the event. It would be useful for members to have it before that—even if on the basis that the list is only a draft—so that they can see who is coming and decide who they particularly want to talk to.
For me, the most important theme that came out of the event was skills. Perhaps it did not have the same spark as last year's theme of procurement because it has been flagged up in other places. For example, I heard Murdo Fraser talking about it on the radio this morning. However, we heard in particular about the need to accelerate the work on science, engineering and technical skills.
I cannot remember the name of the speaker who talked about the ability to sell and to market—the lady in the black jacket with the cat brooch.
Where was she from?
I will go and check. Anyway, I have heard her speaking on the subject before and she is right. For every graduate, we allegedly need seven other people to back them up. Our ability to market ourselves and to sell was flagged up as a barrier by many businesses, including people who have started their own business. It is perhaps unfortunate that that point resonates with many other things that have come out about skills shortages in the past few weeks, so that it was not the big hit that it might have been, but it was certainly an important theme of the conference.
The event was good and I congratulate all those who worked to organise it. However, the format seemed quite similar to those of the previous two conferences and there is a sense that the event needs to evolve and to have a greater focus.
I agree with the comments that were made about the balance between speeches and group work. The delegates from the business community want to feel more involved in the event. We must be careful about what feedback the delegates get. A couple of people said, "What are we getting out of this?" For some people, there is still some persuasion to be done on the event. I agree with Murdo Fraser's suggestion. If we are thinking about having a focused theme for the conference, it should come from the business community rather than from the Parliament because it is important to get buy-in from the businesspeople.
I also agree with Karen Gillon's point that it would be useful to have sectoral groups. There are so many people with different experiences in the groups and, because the groups are big, people might feel that they cannot get as involved as they would like. Perhaps it was because the groups were so big that people did not feel that MSPs were there. I certainly did not want to contribute in my group, because I realised that that would take away the chance for one of the businesses to contribute. About half the people did not have the chance to speak, so Susan Deacon's point about looking at how the groups work is pertinent. There should be either smaller groups within a larger theme or smaller groups overall. I do not know exactly how that could happen, but there needs to be more chance for everyone to contribute.
The final point is on the structure of the day. The businesses that I nominated came from the north-east and would happily have stayed longer than half a day, although I take Susan Deacon's point that we do not want a creeping death in the afternoon. The issue could perhaps have been resolved with a better balance between group work and speeches in the morning session.
My overall point would be to look to business. A focus or theme is a good idea and we should see what we can do to maximise the potential for delegates to have their say. We also need to ensure that we feed the outcomes back to them, as that is key in retaining their commitment to an annual event.
I will try to be brief. I thought that the conference was extremely well organised. Everything ran so smoothly, which is a credit to the Parliament and the team. My guest was very impressed and thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience.
From the workshop that I was in, I agree with much of what Richard Baker was saying. I do not know why—I had better watch what I say—but there was not sufficient opportunity to join in. At one point, I asked a question that I hoped would get a good response from the businesspeople but, whether it was because of reticence on the part of the individuals present or something else, it fell rather flat. Somehow or other, we need really good chairs who are able to bring in comments from most people. The whole point of the groups is to engage.
Nobody has mentioned the Thursday night interview with Sir Tom Farmer. I was disappointed by the nature of the questioning, as it did not give Sir Tom enough opportunities to explain how he got where he is and to give advice to other businesses on how they can grow. I felt that there was too much emphasis on one particular line of questioning and that it was a lost opportunity. It was interesting, but I think that we could have got more out of it.
I was particularly interested by the comment from someone at the beginning of the questioning, who challenged the parliamentarians on whether the results of the conference would land in the waste-paper bin. That is extremely important: is the conference more than a talking shop or networking opportunity? Is there a defined outcome? We need to ensure that everyone agrees on its purpose.
I have to admit that I thought that that individual was being pretty unfair. To be fair to ministers and other politicians, they took up procurement and other issues from last year. There is still much more to be done, but the one thing that cannot be said is that politicians did not listen last year. Everyone, with the exception of one individual, recognised that.
I am just saying that there was obviously a misunderstanding about the conference's purpose.
To a large extent, I endorse what Shiona Baird just said about the first night. I do not know who designed the questions, and I do not want to cast any blame around, but they could have been more interesting. I do not know whether we gave Ms Smith the questions, but the interview was possibly something of a missed opportunity. It was almost along the lines of saying, "Spend a few moments telling us how great you are." I am being slightly facetious, but it could have been more informative.
What has been said about the break-out sessions is right. My group on infrastructure was too big and some instructions for those in the chair would have been helpful, covering basic points such as getting people to introduce themselves when they said something, which did not happen. I had Jamie McGrigor asking me, "Who's that?" and I did not know.
The danger is in the follow-up. There was a follow-up event on procurement. We need to ensure that in one or two months we feed something back to those who attended this year to prevent the feeling that it was a one-off event.
Those are just a few points, and I will rest my comments there.
That feedback has been helpful.
As Susan Deacon said, the intention is for the conference to become a regular event in the parliamentary and business calendar, although we must ensure that it does not clash with the Institute of Directors conference next year. There was a problem this year mainly because of ministers' diaries. That brings me to my second point, which is that I hope that the committee agrees that we should suggest to the Executive that we fix a date sooner rather than later.
We all agree that more focus is required for the event and that we should try to draw the main themes from the business community rather than have politicians decide them. We all agree about the organisation of the workshops and the need to redress the balance between them and the plenary session. To some extent, the problem probably came from the decision to stop at half past 1 rather than 4 o'clock, which itself was a response to the feedback from the business community and politicians last year.
Is the committee happy for me to communicate with Nicol Stephen, who is the main minister for the conference, to try to set a date for next year? Like last year, we will involve the committee at all the crucial stages of deciding on the organisation, format and so on.
Jamie Stone asked about feedback, and we have guaranteed everyone who was there feedback on what happened in the groups within a few weeks. Last year, we gave more feedback during the year, particularly on the procurement issue, to let delegates know about the procurement conference that was held, the McClelland report and so on. People got continuous rather than one-off feedback, and we propose to do something similar this year.
There is probably a case for having a one or two-day event on skills. There is a skills community in Scotland, which comprises partly business and partly providers. After last year we had a separate session on procurement and, with all the changes that are taking place, a similar event on skills might be useful. However, that would probably be after rather than before the election.
Bearing in mind all the points that have been raised, which will be fed back to the Executive formally as well, is the committee happy that we progress things and, working on the basis of the recommendations, start to organise for next year?
Members indicated agreement.
With that, I thank the committee. I look forward to seeing everybody next week.
Meeting closed at 15:28.