Finland Study Trip
Item 4 is a report back to the full committee on the European Commission-funded study trip that Bruce Crawford, Phil Gallie, Dennis Canavan and I took part in on Monday and Tuesday last week.
The clerk will draft a report on the outcomes of the trip, but I thought that it would be good to give the members who went on the trip the opportunity to speak about our experiences and discuss the visit with the rest of the committee. Some of you may have read Douglas Fraser's piece in The Herald yesterday—he was on the trip with us.
I thank the Commission and particularly Neil Mitchison, the Commission's representative in Scotland, for the organised way in which the study trip was carried out.
I found it an interesting and informative visit and I would like to give some of my general impressions.
Finland is an interesting country in that it manages to combine a high level of social investment in, for example, education and health with a strong emphasis on business development and, particularly, the use of information and communication technology in business development.
I also found the attitudes that were expressed—and, if there is such a thing, the national attitude—interesting. For example, there seems to be an attitude of trust to teachers. I do not think that teachers get paid any more in Finland than they do here, but they have greater status. Not just the pupils but the parents look up to and trust the teachers. Finland does not even have a national inspection system, yet the educational system seems to be doing well. Within it, there also seems to be a healthy attitude to technical and vocational training, which is not seen as second rate or inferior but is on a par with a more academic education. The economy benefits as a result.
There also seems to be a healthy attitude towards physical activity. Some years ago, the Finns had a problem similar to the current Scottish problem of obesity, lack of activity, bad diet and alcohol abuse. They would not claim to have solved all the problems—some still exist—but they are making huge efforts and there have been huge improvements, particularly in getting children to be more physically active and to eat more nutritious meals at school.
There seems to be a national plan to tackle many of those problems. Finland is able to implement that plan despite the fact that the delivery of many things is in the hands of 300 to 400 municipalities. That is a huge number of local authorities for a country with a population about the same size as ours. I would love to have met some of the people who are involved in the municipalities. That was perhaps a notable omission. I would like to know how the municipalities deliver services, given that there is a huge number of them.
Finland places great emphasis on future planning. We met a parliamentary committee that specialises in that, and we also heard about the work of the Finland futures research centre. Great emphasis is placed on forward strategic thinking that leads to forward strategic planning. Instead of waiting to see what hits them, the Finns look ahead and try to predict the problems and challenges that will face them in the years to come. Their forward thinking helps them with the national planning on the matters that I mentioned earlier.
I, too, thank the European Commission for setting up what was a very useful trip, although it was a bit packed. By the end of it, a bit of overload was going on. There was probably too much information in the short time that was available. Nevertheless, the trip was worth while.
I am fascinated by Finland's geography and history, which have led to the Finns being a self-reliant, self-sacrificing and innovative people. That is the impression that I was left with of the people of Finland. After we met members of the Finnish Committee for the Future, which Dennis Canavan mentioned, we had a useful session with the directors of the Confederation of Finnish Industries. They described how the national consensus builds in co-operation between themselves and the trade unions; how the trade unions are involved in their society and the decision-making process before they negotiate; and the way in which they dealt with the Finnish presidency of the EU and its outcomes. Some 130 important European meetings were held in Finland during the six months of the presidency.
For me, the most fascinating aspect is Finland's policies on innovation. We visited TEKES, which is the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. The Finns push forward with risk taking and research and try to ensure that their economy is at the leading edge. They always recognise that they have the huge influence and impact of Nokia, but they are doing as much as they can to try to diversify their economy away from that base. They have to do that, but I guess that it will be some time before they are not reliant on Nokia. That brings me back to their geography and history and their self-reliance. In particular, they explained the turnaround in their economy since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. They managed to reposition Finland as one of the most successful countries in the world, at least in terms of gross domestic product. Switzerland and Finland are at the top of all the graphs on GDP and economic growth.
In addition to having discussions with the Government agencies, we met the marketing company Otaniemi Marketing, which told us about its incubator project for small companies that are involved in ICT. I had not heard of that before. Under one roof, the company provides support, training and help with business plans to innovative small companies that want to get on. That was fascinating.
We have masses to learn from the way in which business is done in Finland, although we have still to get to the bottom of whether the Finns are genuinely staying within the European Union's rules—it went quiet when we asked about that.
Dennis Canavan covered some of the issues relating to education. I was fascinated by the fact that there is no inspectorate in Finland and that it is left to local officials and monitoring to ensure that educational standards are attained. The figures that we were given for educational attainment and for outputs for literacy and so on indicated that Finland is ahead of Scotland in that area. I do not know whether that is the result of Finland not having an inspectorate, but the issue deserves examination. Perhaps we are overburdening people with ticking boxes, instead of allowing them to get on with the job. I am not saying that we should throw away the inspectorate tomorrow, but there are points from which Scotland can learn.
Equally, Finland has some fundamental structural problems that it must tackle and that will be significant in the future. Those problems relate not just to the health of the nation but to the economy and how Finland will deal with globalisation. However, the way in which the Finns are connected with the rest of the world will give them at least a chance of success. That comes back to the fact that they are a self-reliant, self-sacrificing and innovative people. I think that they will get through the challenges that they will face in the future.
Dennis Canavan and Bruce Crawford have covered many of the points that I wanted to make, so I will add just one or two.
One reason why we went to Finland was to look at the research situation there. We saw that the level of spending on research in Finland is high, and that a high proportion of that investment comes from private industry. As the committee suspected when discussing the issue, Nokia provides a substantial amount of the research.
I do not often thank the European Commission, but I have written to Neil Mitchison to make the point that the trip was very worth while—it was certainly an eye-opener. After our deliberations, I was left with the impression that the term high-tech Finland registered not just in the activities of the companies but in the minds of the people—the Finns see themselves as a high-tech nation that is right at the forefront and is pressing ahead. That is tremendous in a nation such as the Finns, especially when we consider that no one else in the world speaks their language but they have become world leaders, to an extent, in high technology.
My next point is controversial, and I promise Bruce Crawford that I am not making it as a political point. The emphasis that the Finns put on energy and the fact that they have decided, irrespective of the controversy surrounding the issue, to press ahead with a nuclear energy programme says a lot about them and about the situation in Europe with respect to security of energy supply. One report that we picked up from the Committee for the Future outlined three scenarios for Russia in 2017. I have looked at the report, and two of the options are quite scary. We must hope like hell that the third scenario turns out to be right and that Russia moves towards the European Union—members may be surprised to hear me say that—and adopts the EU approach towards co-operation with its neighbours. I like to think that the report will be valuable in the future.
Reference has been made in the Parliament to the Committee for the Future. Initially I was impressed by the committee but, when we talked to the planners at the Prime Minister's office, they seemed to have forgotten about it in their deliberations. Although the committee is a good idea, I would like to explore further whether it is as valuable as it seemed to be on first impression.
At Otaniemi Marketing, we talked about the incubator companies. One must be impressed by the huge number of small companies there, but the UK ambassador pointed out to us that once the incubator companies had got through the Otaniemi experience, they were left to sink or swim. She seemed to think that it might be advantageous for us to have a quiet look at that and to consider attracting some of those companies over to Scotland to develop at the stage after incubation. That would be valuable; it would not be doing down our neighbours in Finland because they very much welcome the idea of Finnish people with expertise going abroad to spread the word on Finland and continuing their relationships with Finland at the same time as helping other countries to meet their targets on economic development and progression.
I will not say much because most of the issues have been covered. My overriding impression was that there was a lot that we could learn but that we should not be so naive as to think that we could just transplant the Finnish model in Scotland, because there are quite a few fundamental differences between the two countries.
In his article—which I hope everyone will read—Douglas Fraser concentrated on the level of trust that exists in Finland, which goes further than the trust that exists between teachers, pupils and parents, for example. There is a degree of trust between the population and the Government, which I found astounding. If the Finnish Government says that something should be done, it is not questioned in any significant way. In general, the population believe that if the Government and the Parliament have said that a particular measure should be taken, that must be the best way forward. There is much in the country's fairly recent history that suggests why that might be the case. I found that to be an important factor in Finland's ability to move forward in certain regards.
An example of that is Finland's knowledge economy which, as Phil Gallie said, is about more than just business—it embraces the population as a whole. People do all sorts of things online, including direct interaction with the Government. We know that if such a proposal were made here, people would not trust what the information that they were asked to provide would be used for.
Like Phil Gallie, I was impressed by the Finnish Committee for the Future at the outset, but then I began to wonder whether it was as relevant as we first thought. Later on, I picked up that when we asked questions about it, there was sometimes no understanding of why we felt it necessary to ask such questions because of course things would be that way. Perhaps that goes back to the issue of trust that I mentioned.
That led me to think about our futures forum, which has roots in the Finnish model, and whether it is possible for such a forum to make an impact on futures thinking if it is not mainstreamed in such a way that it is insisted that the findings are considered consensually. Our futures forum is not like that—its considerations take place outside the Parliament. When its reports come to parliamentarians and decision makers, we tend to look at them and think that their recommendations sound quite good, but then we put them aside because there is no impetus to push matters forward.
An important aspect of that committee is its emphasis on the long term rather than the short term.
In my opinion, long-term thinking is something that we lack in politics in our country.
My final point about what I learned is worth putting on the record because I would like a future Education Committee to consider it. I was astounded to learn that in the Finnish education system, the attainment of looked-after children is higher than that of children who live with their families and go to school. I would love to understand how that astounding feat has been achieved and to try to emulate it.
I look forward to the report's publication, because it will contain a lot of information. As a result, I suggest that it be sent not only to committee members but to relevant subject committees and the futures forum for future consideration.
Will ex-members get a copy?
Phil, I would never dream of not asking you to comment on the report before it is published. I ask Jim Johnston to make a note of that.
I thank members for a very interesting update on their visit. I was sorry that I was not able to join you, but I had accepted a speaking engagement in Ayrshire some months earlier and, under the circumstances, it would have been inappropriate for me to have withdrawn from it.
I have found all this very interesting, and I hope that we will be able to continue the work at some level, especially on the issue of looked-after children, which the convener touched on. Given that expenditure per schoolchild is higher in Scotland than it is in Finland, it would be interesting to find out how the Finnish have managed to reach such levels of attainment.
I have also been amazed at how the Finns have turned round the public health agenda. Indeed, in the very early days of the Parliament, the Health and Community Care Committee took a lot of evidence on the Finnish experience. I like to think that that work has contributed to and informed some of what has gone on in Scotland. I hope that we are beginning to make some inroads in that respect.
From my limited knowledge, I believe that the Finns coped incredibly well when their economy more or less collapsed after the break-up of the Soviet Union. However, they are still struggling with high unemployment levels. Of course, we can always learn from sharing and discussing such experiences and I welcome any moves in that direction. Although some of the members on that trip will soon not be with us, I am sure that the committee will still be able to learn more things in future.
On that sombre note, are members content with the course of action that has been outlined?
Members indicated agreement.