Enterprise and Culture Committee, 13 Feb 2007

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Official Report 189KB pdf

---

Business in the Parliament Conference

I had a private—formal, informal, round-table—meeting with Nicol Stephen, his officials, Stephen Imrie and Nick Hawthorne to talk about the business in the Parliament conference. Normally we would have tried to hold it next September or October. For obvious reasons, none of us thought that that would be a convenient date, because it would not give us time to organise it properly, arrange speakers and all the rest of it.

It would be logistically difficult.

Yes. We therefore suggested that it would be more appropriate to hold it just before or after the February recess next year.

The second major issue was that the Executive was keen—and I thought that it would be appropriate—to make the main theme the business challenges of climate change. Given the Stern report and all the other work that is going on, it is clear that that is on everybody's agenda. Is everybody reasonably happy for us to proceed on that basis?

Could we not make the theme the business challenges and opportunities of climate change?

Did we not include opportunities? That is not a problem.

The debate around climate change always seems to be negative.

We made that point. There are downsides and upsides to climate change. For some businesses in Scotland—for tourism, for example—there could be upsides. Everybody is happy with that.

Do we agree to give the clerks and Executive officials the power to proceed along those lines? If they are to identify speakers and others who want to participate, they will need to get to work on that—it will keep them busy while we are campaigning.

The theme is fine. I have a suggestion about the timing, which came to me from CBI Scotland—that august body with which your party enjoys such excellent relationships, convener. I note the idea to hold the conference in February 2008. In the past, it has always been held on a Thursday and Friday. The clerk knows about this issue. In the past, we have also debated attendance by MSPs—and, in particular, ministers—on the Friday. Whatever the reality, there has been a perception that the event has not been as well supported by the Parliament as people in business might have liked. The suggestion was that, rather than hold it on a Thursday and Friday, we should hold it on a Tuesday and Wednesday. Clearly, that would involve displacement of committee business, but, hey, if we can give up our Parliament complex for Microsoft, why can we not give up part of it and our committee work for an event that we are promoting to encourage relationships with the business community? I simply throw that suggestion into the mix.

I pass that suggestion on to Stephen Imrie—the issue has been discussed. The attendance among MSPs and ministers has been very good. In fact, nearly the whole Cabinet was at the previous event at some point. I thought that attendance by MSPs and ministers was very high—particularly when we stopped the event at 2 o'clock on the Friday. We are talking about 40 out of 129 MSPs. I do not think that we will do better than that. I do not think that that proportion of members would attend such an event at Westminster.

The suggestion was made to me and Executive officials during our discussions with CBI Scotland. Since the conference last November, we have met all the main business organisations and the Scottish Trades Union Congress to get feedback on the event and on plans for the 2008 conference. I would not be able to make the decision personally, but if the committee was keen to hold the conference on a Tuesday and Wednesday, we would certainly need the support of the other committees to rearrange their business, because they would not be able to meet on the Tuesday or Wednesday morning. The current programme means that the conference runs until about 1.30 or 2 o'clock on the second day. If that was a Wednesday, it might be necessary to delay the start of plenary business, unless the chamber could be de-rigged quickly.

Again, it is not for me to make a decision one way or the other. If the committee is keen on the idea of holding the conference on a Tuesday and Wednesday, I am happy to take some soundings from other committee conveners, and the business managers of course, because there would be implications for the planning of plenary business.

I will bring in other members in a moment, but I point out that we issue feedback forms after each conference and the responses show that the businesspeople prefer the Thursday and Friday option by a country mile. We have not broken that down by membership of the CBI or Federation of Small Businesses, but—

Many ordinary businesses are not a member of either.

The businesspeople prefer the Thursday and Friday.

That is the point that I was going to make.

They always say that midweek is the worst option.

I disagree with the Tuesday-Wednesday idea. It would be putting it too strongly to say that it is a dangerous road to go down, but I do not think that we should shift parliamentary business all over the place to allow other things to come in. I am happy to be flexible, to maximise the amount of people who come to the Parliament and to have conferences here so that people can engage with it, but it is not a good idea in principle to move parliamentary business.

If the conference was held on a Tuesday and Wednesday, it would not only cause difficulty with the plenary session on the Wednesday afternoon but wipe out all committee meetings that week. We could not have committees on the Wednesday afternoon or Thursday because chamber work would be going on. Many committees have to meet every week—that is certainly true of the more technical committees such as the Subordinate Legislation Committee. The disruption that a conference on a Tuesday and Wednesday would cause is not acceptable.

Murdo, it is fair to say that there is not a consensus in favour of holding the conference on a Tuesday and Wednesday. In fact, there is decidedly a majority against the idea.

I want to check that the more qualitative discussion that we had during our debrief on the previous conference has been captured. This paper focuses on the structure and timing of the conference, whereas a big part of our wash-up conversation was about its tone. We discussed shaping the workshop sessions to allow more interaction and engagement between MSPs and businesses. A lot of that deeper-level stuff was around the facilitation of the conference, the briefs that are given to speakers and so on. I am perfectly happy to be told, "That is not the purpose of the paper at this stage of the planning", but I seek reassurance that those things will be addressed. We can get the shape and timetable of the conference right, but if we do not address those dimensions, the event will be much less meaningful and worth while for all concerned.

Someone who is organising a wedding has to make sure that they have the minister and the venue first, then they can organise all the details. The paper is basically about the minister and the venue.

I wish it was like organising a wedding. That would be fine.

I reassure members that the note is a summary of the convener's meeting with the Deputy First Minister, which majored on the theme of the conference, the basic format and the possible dates. I assure members that we have not forgotten the committees' detailed discussions on how the conference runs, how we create a spark and a bit of debate and controversy at the outset to get it moving, and how we structure the workshops to maximise interaction. I will do my best to make sure that the next conference picks up on those discussions as far as possible.

As there are no other points, is everyone happy with that?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you. I look forward to seeing you—

Whenever the next meeting is.

It is the 20th, I think.

It is Wednesday 21 February.

That is the special meeting to discuss the SSI.

Aye. It will take us about 15 minutes at the most, I hope.

Do not count on it.

Meeting closed at 15:24.