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The second part of the minister's evidence is for the committee's inquiry into the Scottish Executive's fresh talent initiative. Before I invite the minister to make his opening remarks, I should say that one of our clerks has contributed to the fresh talent of Scotland. Nick Hawthorne's wife gave birth to a boy, Max, about 10 days ago, and we wish them well. That is one more to add to the population numbers, Mr McCabe, if we are going to scrutinise those today.
I join you in welcoming the addition to the Scottish population, but I remind you that we all have a part to play.
Well Mr McCabe, if you are trying to curry favour with that remark, you will not get very far. I should say that Max has been born into a superb Hearts-supporting household, which will add to the season ticket sales of that great club, which is doing fantastically well at the moment. I had better stop indulging myself.
That child is destined to be disappointed. [Laughter.]
Perhaps we will wait until the end of the season before making that judgment. I think we should move on.
I thank the committee for the opportunity to explain fresh talent from the Executive's perspective. I know that the committee has been conducting an inquiry and this is a welcome opportunity for the Executive to make its contribution to that.
You mentioned discussions with the Home Office. Over the summer, there was media comment about relations with higher education institutions south of the border which, according to a newspaper report, were considering taking legal action over what was considered to be the advantage given to Scottish higher education institutions by the fresh talent initiative. Can you shed any light on whether there has been any discussion of that, or should we all have disregarded that news report?
I do not think that we should disregard it. The issue was raised on behalf of English universities. Indeed, some work has been done on behalf of an English member of Parliament with regard to a private member's bill—or at least there was an inquiry about the comment from the universities. We have stressed that fresh talent is very much a response to the demographic challenges that we face in Scotland. There are specific reasons for the initiative and we will continue to press them.
So the Government is entirely comfortable with the legal foundations of fresh talent. If legal action were pursued by the universities, there is no prospect that it would have any chance of success.
We do not consider for one moment that we are pursuing the initiative in any way that leaves us vulnerable to legal challenge, although it is not for me to comment on any challenge, because it is impossible to predict. However, we are absolutely confident that the legal basis on which we are progressing the scheme is sound.
When considering migration policies, we find that people tend to be attracted to cities, although in evidence we have found that some of the skills shortages are in more rural areas. Have you given any thought to how we can address that problem and encourage people to come not just to Edinburgh and Glasgow?
Especially recently, over the spring and summer, I have come into contact with a large number of students who are studying in this country. Sometimes it would benefit us to see ourselves as others see us. Universally, students who study here have an extremely positive impression of Scotland. They have a very high regard for this country and are strongly considering the possibilities that may exist for them here at the end of their studies. I often find that they are far from focused only on cities. When one hears about their experiences of Scotland and the places that they have visited, it is clear that they see a wide range of attractions in this country. One young student from Jordan asked me in all seriousness why we are so concerned about rain here in Scotland—he thought that it was wonderful that we get rain. That reminds us that our perception of our country can be very different from that of those who visit us and look at Scotland from the perspective of their experience.
Professor Joan Stringer told the committee:
I certainly hope that we are ahead of the game. It is only right that we have reacted in the way in which we have, because we face particular challenges. Any Government is obliged to assess the challenges that it faces and to construct responses to them, and that is what we have done.
You spoke about Scottish graduates. We have high retention of graduates—one of the highest figures in the whole United Kingdom. Can we continue to work on that issue? Is it a central part of the policy? In the area that I represent, people are concerned about how we can ensure that local graduates have jobs.
You are right to say that Scotland has a particularly high graduate retention rate, which is very pleasing. One way of ensuring that that is not only maintained but improved is to produce the economic opportunities that allow graduates to further their careers here in Scotland. The more that we produce a competitive, growing economy, the more exciting opportunities there will be for young people to use the talents that they have gained here in Scotland, rather than elsewhere.
In my view, languages play a big role. It is important that we continue to work in schools and universities on language development, because that is one area in which we are a little behind some of our competitors in Europe.
My question relates to two aspects of the policy that were set out by the First Minister when he announced it. There is no disagreement about them, but I want to ask about their implementation. First, although fresh talent seems to have been very much focused on encouraging people to come to Scotland, the primary issue is to retain indigenous Scots in Scotland. The second issue is perhaps more problematic. The Parliament and the Executive are committed to an international development strategy. If we take the example of Malawi, how do we ensure that some of the incentives that we give students to remain do not retain in Scotland graduates who have the skills that we would like them to return to their home nations to deploy, such as skills in medicine or water engineering, which would benefit their home countries? How do we ensure that we do not have two conflicting policies?
The first point relates to the answer that I gave Irene Oldfather about ensuring that our economy and opportunities are attractive enough to retain our young people in Scotland. As we all know, more of our population is graduating than ever before. If we want to hold on to that population, we must have a diverse range of economic opportunities that excites them and encourages them to stay in Scotland.
I am reassured by that answer. It is probably early days, because the regulations that allow the two-year extension came into effect only in June, but does the fresh talent unit plan monitoring to carry through the substance of that statement and approach?
That suggestion is worth while and we would be more than happy to take it on board—I think that we have already done that. You are right to say that it is early days. As is only right, the monitoring processes are being developed, because we want to find the most appropriate way of monitoring and the most appropriate measurements. We all know what people can do with statistics. We need information about what is happening and its benefit to the Scottish economy. The suggestion is worth while and I think that such monitoring is in the early stages of development, but we will ensure that it is progressed.
Before I ask my own question, I will pick up on a response to Jim Wallace. You spoke about attracting back what we might call the Scottish diaspora. Have those involved in the fresh talent initiative examined the experience of the Republic of Ireland, which seems to have been very successful in attracting people to return?
We take account of relevant experience wherever in the world it comes from. It makes sense to consider experience as close to home as possible and then to look further out from there. We will take due cognisance of the experience in Ireland. That relates to my earlier point. Ireland is succeeding because it has created an economy that is attractive to people and because economic opportunities exist. We need to create such a vibrant economy in Scotland. We are well placed to do that and are in the process of doing so in several fields, not least life sciences, in which our research is held in regard around the world.
I want to deal now with the relocation advisory service. How many applications has it received? Is there any upwards or downwards trend, or is it steady?
The number of applications has been growing steadily, although we have peaks after we do promotions. For example, we did a lot of work on a particular promotion in Poland, which led to a significant surge in inquiries—300 overnight. We have directly assisted just under 6,000 customers with specific inquiries on, for example, immigration. We also track movement to the "Live" and "Work" pages on our website. We have had well over 100,000 visits in relation to various aspects of living and working in Scotland, including finding job opportunities.
You referred to Poland in particular. Have you targeted other countries?
Yes, we have done a fair bit internationally. For example, we did promotions earlier in the year in India, China and Singapore, which were very much on the back of promoting the fresh talent initiative to potential students. Again, those led to a high level of interest from those markets. For example, we had about 500 inquiries overnight from India following a feature article in the Hindustan Times.
I have a couple of questions. One is on Jim Wallace's comments on developing countries. Does the Executive have a commitment not to recruit in countries such as Malawi? I have seen at first hand the potential impact of removing a large part of the workforce there. The Executive's international development fund would not go far if we were simultaneously removing key staff from health and education in Malawi. Secondly, on the fresh talent initiative, are there selection criteria? Are we seeking to fill a skills gap? Who decides who comes in and who does not, and on what basis?
On the first point, there is no Executive policy not to recruit particular students. If people from the more challenged areas of the world seek an opportunity to come here to learn and gain an education, we want to encourage that. Such people could make a contribution in their own country at a later time, so it would be counterproductive for us to say that we do not want to encourage students to come here as part of the fresh talent initiative.
We must engage with the business sector on future skills requirements. Futureskills Scotland's most recent projection is based on employers' feedback on their long-term requirements, and the report said that employers do not predict that there will be skills shortages in the future.
My question about recruitment did not relate to students, but to general recruitment for vacancies in the public sector. There is a growing concern in the countries of the African sub-continent that countries such as the UK and Germany are drawing in a large number of their staff and are causing a skills shortage in their health and education services. That is where my concerns lie on that issue.
We most certainly do not proactively recruit in those challenging countries, and we have no intention of doing so.
I invite the minister to say something about the risk that foreign people who come to work here might tend to gravitate towards less-well-paid occupations. There is some evidence of that happening already in various sectors, as I am sure the minister is aware. I have a problem with that at one particular location in my constituency, where a large number of people from eastern Europe are working at a mushroom farm. There are all sorts of concerns about how long they are being expected to work and how much they are being paid. Clearly, the situation is unfair on the individuals concerned, but it also has an impact on local people, who find their wages being driven down and might find themselves displaced. What, proactively, can be done to protect people coming to Scotland to ensure that they know their rights when it comes to the national minimum wage, working times, trade union membership and so on to avoid the creation of an immigrant underclass?
As you would expect me to say, that is exactly the situation that we want to avoid.
I am afraid that, in some areas, we are already there.
The Scottish Executive and the United Kingdom Government are taking a range of actions to try to ensure that information and protection are available to workers, irrespective of their nationality. That is the important thing. We should not necessarily single out people who come to this country to work; we should establish and bring to people's attention a set of minimum conditions to protect people as much as we can. The kind of treatment, services and support that should be available to people who come to this country to work should not be one bit different from those that we would expect to apply to someone who has stayed in the Borders area all their life. If that is not the case, we would want to examine the situation, through the various agencies concerned.
It is difficult to generalise. For example, in the energy sector, which is truly global, people from all parts of the globe work up in Aberdeen at many levels, including in offshore roles and in various managerial positions. We find that in many other professions, too.
I recognise the fact that there are opportunities for achievers, who will be able to make the most of the situation. That is fine; however, in any system there will be a risk of people being exploited. People with language difficulties or who come from a different culture and who have had bad experiences with officialdom in general elsewhere may be wide open to exploitation. I am just putting it to the minister that there is some concern about that just now.
I would not disagree with that. The United Kingdom Government, which has responsibility for employment rights, is doing its best to ensure that that is the case. For instance, in the near future there will be a new licensing arrangement covering gangmasters, which will try to limit some of the unacceptable practices in which those people have been involved in the past. The United Kingdom Government is aware of the issue of employment rights, and it is an area that will require vigilance as people come from the new accession states. The number of such people in Scotland is increasing; we are getting at least our proportionate share of those individuals, so the area undoubtedly requires vigilance.
What is the focus of the fresh talent initiative? What does it aim to achieve?
The initiative is trying to address the demographic challenges that we face and ensure that we have the appropriate skills mix to meet the economic challenges that future generations will face. It is hoped that greater diversity of individuals from different cultures living and working in Scotland will add to our cultural diversity and help people to open their minds and understand other cultures. It is about creating a more open Scotland that is better equipped to meet the challenges of the future. Given the demographic challenges that we face, if we do not engage in such activity, we may find that we will be poorly judged by future generations because of the situation that will emerge in 20, 25 or 30 years.
How will we know that the fresh talent initiative has been successful, and when will we know that?
Fresh talent is a long-term initiative. We are talking about population projections, which are not altered on a weekly basis, but we will know that it has made a contribution. However, fresh talent will only contribute; it is not the sole answer to the difficulties that we will face in the Scottish economy. Equally, there are challenges in getting as many labour-market returners as we can and opening up economic opportunity to people who have been excluded from it for a long time. We want to end the situation in which two, three or four generations in a household have never worked.
Am I correct in saying that the objectives for making economically active the people who are currently economically inactive—or, to use shorthand, labour market returners—are pursued by Government initiatives other than fresh talent?
The Scottish Executive and the United Kingdom Government make a contribution.
I do not dispute that, but that is not what I asked. I want to confirm that there are separate economic programmes. Obviously, the aim of the Government is to complement the work of the fresh talent initiative. I am trying to get at when and how we will know that the fresh talent initiative has achieved its objectives. When and how will we know that the public money that has been spent on the fresh talent initiative has been justifiable or worthwhile public expenditure?
We already know that it is justifiable public expenditure. People who graduate in Scotland are choosing to stay here and to consider whether they will spend part, or indeed all, of their working lives here. The more that happens, the more we will know that our activities have been worth while. We already know that fresh talent is a worthwhile initiative; the more people stay, the more inquiries we receive and the more people take an interest in this country, the better we can justify the expenditure.
What are the performance measures so far?
Lorna Clark or Louise MacDonald will go into the details, but some of the measures that we use to judge the initiative are to ask how many inquiries we have had and how many people choose to stay. We will develop a range of indicators over time so that people can look at them and judge.
We will certainly know in relative terms whether 20 per cent or 15 per cent of people are economically inactive. That would be an indication to me that we were making progress. May we hear some of the statistics about inquiries and the number of people who have decided to locate in Scotland?
We have figures for inquiries to the relocation advisory service. Since we went live in October last year, we have given detailed help to about 6,000 individuals and about 100,000 people have looked at the website, so 6,000 people have had detailed information about moving to Scotland and 100,000 now know more about moving to Scotland than they did.
The database of information about who has come here and what they are doing has not yet been compiled by the Executive.
That is because the fresh talent working in Scotland scheme went live only in June and people are starting to apply for it now; it will take us a while to gather information on it. We have information about people who have come to the relocation advisory service and a current evaluation of that service will produce results around the turn of the year. As I said, a number of different things are going on. We have hard data for some of those strands now and we will develop others as the initiative continues.
The minister said that there were three main points to the initiative's focus: to tackle the demographic challenge; to take action on the skills mix in the economy; and the third was a more general point about cultural diversity and openness in our society. If the point that Louise MacDonald made is borne out, and we do not know what the skills mix problem is, and therefore we do not know the baseline position, how will we know if we have tackled the problem through the fresh talent initiative?
We know that the initiative is a good thing and that it will provide a wider pool of talent if we can attract more people who graduate in Scotland to stay here and contribute to our economy. We know that if those people are applying to stay they are obviously finding the economic opportunities to pursue their skills and talents in Scotland. However, no one ever said that fresh talent would rectify at a stroke the management of information on the skills that the economy requires, on where we need to train and on what will be required five or 10 years down the line. No one has ever claimed that fresh talent would automatically solve that problem. There is a difficulty for this economy, as for most developed economies around the world, in that there is no precise match between the people we train in particular disciplines and the disciplines that our economic development requires.
My point is that we obviously have a demographic problem, which we are trying to tackle by attracting new people. I am trying to get a feel for when we will know whether the fresh talent initiative, on which public money is being spent, has been successful. I am struggling to see definitive benchmarks for when we will know whether the fresh talent initiative has had the impact that the Government expects it to have.
You are not going to get them.
If you are looking for a definitive answer, convener, unfortunately you are not going to get it. It is just not going to happen that way.
Life is not like that, convener.
Life is not as black and white as that, and it never will be. The judgments have to be far more general. We must ask for example, whether we have a successful economy and a diverse economy with a wider range of skills and abilities and whether people are enjoying a better standard of living.
With the greatest respect, minister, we will be able to judge in five years whether we have an economic profile that has a better mix of skills and abilities compared with today. Those are measurable factors. What is the Government's expectation in contributing to that transformation?
I do not understand your question.
You have just said to me that we will be able to judge in future whether we have a better mix of skills and talents in our society. I understand that.
With respect, convener, I did not say that. I said that in future one of the judgments we can make is whether we have a successful and vibrant economy, whether people's living standards are better than those of their forefathers, whether they are more optimistic and whether we live in a country that competes better internationally. All of those are indicators, and a variety of policy initiatives will contribute to them. Fresh talent is one, labour market returners is another. Of course, there are others. However, if you are looking for a definitive line or a date—let us say April 2016—it will not happen.
No. I am simply asking for a set of measures that as parliamentarians we can look at and say, "Well, the fresh talent initiative was worth it," or "It wasn't worth it." I am simply looking for the Government to offer a matrix of indicators that will allow us to make that judgment. It is not an unreasonable request in the context of spending public money.
This is such a cordial meeting that I hate to run the risk of disagreeing with you, but your request may be slightly unreasonable. Life is not as black and white as that, unfortunately. Perhaps in some situations people would like to portray it as black and white, but the reality is that it is far more diverse than you suggest.
We shall leave that to chew over in future.