Local Economic Forums
The next item is a review of local economic forums. I remind everyone that the first major report produced by the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee more than two years ago was on local economic development. The key recommendation arising from the committee report was that local economic forums should be established. We agreed to review progress on the establishment and work being undertaken by the local economic forums at the beginning of 2002. This morning we are taking our first set of evidence as part of that review.
We are joined by three distinguished gentlemen who, as well as representing their own organisations, are members of the ministerial working group on local economic forums. I welcome John Downie from the Federation of Small Businesses, Iain McMillan from the Confederation of British Industry Scotland and Bob Leitch from the Scottish Chambers of Commerce.
I invite each witness to make a five-minute introductory statement after which I will open the meeting to questions from the committee. I will start on the left with John Downie and move to the right.
John Downie (Federation of Small Businesses):
When the results of the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee's inquiry into the enterprise network were announced in May 2000, the FSB agreed with the main conclusions—that economic development and business support services in Scotland were plagued by confusion, duplication and inefficiency—but we had serious doubts about whether local economic forums would be an effective tool in cutting out the confusion and duplication in the enterprise network.
There were a number of reasons for our view, which were well documented at the time. The most fundamental was that the many public sector agencies that would be participating in the LEFs did not accept the findings of the committee's inquiry and did not believe that there was a problem. Despite the doubts, we made and fulfilled a commitment to participate in the process, to ensure that there was input from the small business sector. However, we had problems with certain LEFs where small business representation was not exactly a priority.
The experience of our members on the forums has varied, particularly in relation to the operation of the forums and the attitude of the public sector and its willingness to engage in serious discussion and open dialogue with the private sector. That has been a major problem.
It is also apparent that, despite the representation of the Federation of Small Businesses and chambers of commerce on individual LEFs, the representation of business was swamped by that of the public sector. There was not enough continuing input from the private sector. We believe that that issue had an undoubted impact on the genuine business influence on the LEF action plan. That is very apparent.
In our assessment of the action plan, there were a number of common issues, including the quality of the mapping, customer service standards, business gateway versus small business gateway, an extension to the year one deadline, and the year two task list. I do not want to comment on those individual issues and the performance of individual LEFs at the moment. That will come during questioning.
We believe that the overall performance of the LEFs highlights a dilemma for the Scottish Executive. A clearly designated universal brief, guideline or task list—whatever you want to call it—from the Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning exists, but it is apparent from the action plans that in many cases it has been ignored and not been taken seriously by local economic forums.
The question that needs to be addressed, perhaps by the committee, is what pressure the Scottish Executive needs to apply to ensure that the action plans are implemented and the job is done. Overall, it is clear that many of the action plans are long in talk but short in commitment.
We believe that it is apparent from the action plans that the better-performing LEFs recognise the opportunity whereas the poor performers simply saw it as a commitment to maintain the status quo. They did not want to do anything at all.
We have been asking ourselves whether the LEFs have met our expectations. They probably have, but we had low expectations from the start.
The Executive needs to take some hard decisions. Based on the mapping exercises and on rationalistion issues, we do not believe that we can depend on individual LEFs to take the hard decisions on cutting the confusion of duplication and on rationalisation. We need an outside review of the mapping and an outside judgment on what agencies should be involved in economic development and business support services. We cannot leave that decision to individual LEFs because we do not believe that they will make those hard choices.
Iain McMillan (Confederation of British Industry Scotland):
Thank you for inviting me to give evidence. I also thank the convener for breaking new ground—it is the first time he has ever described me as a distinguished gentleman.
To build on John Downie's point, CBI Scotland welcomes the committee's continued interest in the local economic forums. We believe that the search for a more accessible, coherent and effective system of local business support is important for business and for Scotland.
We are not involved in the LEFs; our commitment is with the ministerial task force that oversees them. Our chairman, Jack Perry, serves on the task force for Scottish Enterprise.
In our original evidence to the committee, we advocated a rationalisation of business support and much clarification on the boundaries between the various economic development support players. Although we did not call for the formation of the LEFs, we recognise that that has provided the potential to make progress. However, we share the reservations that John Downie expressed.
It is clearly too early to assess whether the LEFs will be successful. Evidence on that will accumulate over time. If our members do not become more satisfied with the coherence, accessibility and quality of business support, that will be a signal for the committee to have another look at the model in the future. We certainly believe that the process that has been followed by the Executive and the LEFs, and the forming of the ministerial task force to give strong central oversight, is the right way to go.
There are three areas of concern. When the decision on the creation of the LEFs was taken, we argued that they should be business led and should have a majority of business people on them. That has not happened—the LEFs have a preponderance of public sector members. We have no complaint against the public sector per se; our argument is that the consumer of any product should always set the agenda and the fact that the producers tend to be in the majority on the LEFs puts that in jeopardy.
We accept that public sector reform can be slow, but it is more than 18 months since the committee's report recommended the formation of the LEFs. Although a good deal has been achieved thus far, real improvement on the ground still appears to be some way off.
The Scottish Executive is right to be concerned that only one LEF has made proposals for cost savings that could be redirected. That concern is justified, although the prime purpose of the reforms was to improve coherence and accessibility to the business support system. We would expect cost savings to arise, but we do not believe that they should be the main determinant of the success of the reforms.
Bob Leitch (Scottish Chambers of Commerce):
I was a little surprised that you said that I am on the right, convener. I want to make clear to the committee that that is not a political statement—it refers to where I happen to have sat down.
We take that as read.
The Scottish Chambers of Commerce has been part of the system since it started. We are represented on 11 of the 13 forums and were involved in encouraging private involvement in the other two.
I agree with my colleagues that it is still early days—the implementation plans have just been laid down and we have not had the opportunity to assess how they might work and what benefits they might yield. Bearing that in mind, in our view the review has been less than fundamental. It did not address the relative powers that are exercised by the enterprise network and by local authorities, or the overlap and duplication in the delivery of those powers. Does the Scottish Executive need to have environmental or financial powers? Do local authorities need to be involved in economic development? We are not saying one thing or the other—simply that, to date, those issues have not been answered by the review.
A lot of sensible work has been done on examining activity overlap, which has been beneficial. Although that will involve some resource savings as the implementation plans fall into place, it is—as the director of the Scottish Chamber of Commerce described it—perhaps moving around the deckchairs rather than addressing the major issues of delivery.
I must agree with my colleagues that in some forums there has seemed to be a difference in parity between the public and the private sectors. That has affected the way in which the implementation plans have been drawn up and it will probably affect how they are delivered. The consumer is the most important person. The representation of consumers in the forums is perhaps not as strong as it might have been. That is not true of my forum, in Ayrshire, where there is a 6:6 balance between the private and public sectors. That has benefited the outputs.
There have been some indications that there was a preconceived blueprint of what the outcome might be. It was suggested that if any forum appeared to suggest a minimum of overlap in its report, that would be cast down as not the kind of thing that should be found. The thing that we were to look for was overlap; if we did not find it, it was thought that we had not reported effectively or efficiently on what was happening.
The draft proposals on the business gateway, which were issued last week, have been done quickly, with little consultation and with little time to consider any input. A response was sought extremely quickly after the issue of the draft paper. We are not saying that what is proposed is good or bad. We are simply saying that, in the time scale that is being allocated to consider the proposal, it is unlikely that any valid input will be got from the business sector.
We fear that, at the end of the day, if the forums are to continue, there is a danger that they might simply become another level of bureaucracy. We would be concerned about that. It is important that, if they are to continue, they are guided towards specific subjects, such as education and training. They must certainly be given a valid role that adds value rather than another level of bureaucracy to an already massively bureaucratic system.
Thank you. I should make it clear that our current discussions relate to the LEFs in the Scottish Enterprise area. I emphasise, for the record, that we will hold a separate review of the LEFs in the Highlands and Islands, which have a number of differences.
I am one of only three remaining original members of the committee who were involved in the committee inquiry into the provision of business development services at local level—Elaine Thomson and Marilyn Livingstone are the other two.
I must say that, when I look at the report of the task force and the measure of progress to date, I am staggered to find that, since May 2000, which was the denouement of everything the committee had been considering and the conclusion of massive evidence taking, matters have not simply proceeded at snail's pace, but the snail seems to have been clogged up with constipation. I want to hear from the three of you what the dose of laxative is to be.
John Downie said that he thinks some of that work now has to be lifted out and given to external agencies. I think that the phrase
"an outside review of the mapping"
was used. Is that a view that the other two witnesses share, or have you any other suggestions for trying to breathe some life into that area? The rate of progress is absolutely unacceptable, and is incredible given the volume of evidence that was taken more than two years ago. I am not blaming the three of you as individuals—far from it—but I and other external onlookers are aghast at how little has been achieved in real terms since the committee relinquished property of the review.
We shall hear from Iain McMillan and Bob Leitch, and then from John Downie.
I mentioned our concern about the rate of progress in that area. I have not spoken with John Downie in any detail about his proposal. Annabel Goldie referred to a laxative. If the bowels have started to move, albeit it is late, a laxative may not be required at this point. It is certainly important for the committee, if it sees fit, to send a clear signal to the Scottish Executive and its agencies that greater progress is expected.
In general, I agree with that view, but we must remember that in bringing together the local economic forums we have brought together a lot of partners and parties that were never brought together before. In any marriage, it takes some time for things to settle down and for trust to be established. That is the stage that we are probably at now. I know that things have not moved as fast as you or we would have liked, but considerable progress has been made. We should now concentrate on developing that and not worry too much about how long it took us to get here.
I agree with Bob Leitch: the involvement of the public sector agencies and of the private sector in talking and working together is some progress. The problem is that, apart from the Glasgow local economic forum, there seems to be universal reluctance to carry out effective mapping of the overlap between the partnerships, business support services and economic development services.
We are at the stage at which each LEF has produced mapping. The Borders LEF has been mentioned. It put together its action plan before it carried out the mapping. That is to put the cart before the horse.
We believe that although there has been a lot of scrutiny of the mapping, the local public sector agencies that have been working together in partnership for a number of years are reluctant to make hard choices. They have been reluctant to say, "We will do this; you will not do that," or, "We will take this away from X and give it to Y."
By external review, we mean that perhaps the ministerial task force needs to come in and work with the LEFs. The Scottish Executive's central support unit could help the LEFs make those harder choices. More momentum needs to be given to the implementation of the plans.
Do Mr McMillan and Mr Leitch agree with that proposal?
Any involvement from the centre in local economic forums is certainly a possibility, but it should, I think, be a last resort. However, I would not rule it out. As I said previously, given the voluntary nature of how the various actors work together in each area, perhaps they should be given a little more time if things have started to move.
But what is a little more time, Mr McMillan? We are now talking of a time scale that is in excess of two years. The assessment of forum action plans that will follow on from the committee report raises more question marks than substantive ways forward. Are people just going to talk for the next two years?
No. Miss Goldie mentioned how long ago the committee started its work on local economic forums, but I am not sure when the Scottish Executive fired the starting pistol to get the forums moving. From the forums' point of view, the starting point would be when the Executive began its work, not when the committee started to form a view.
That is a fair point. The intention that the report should be implemented as far as possible could come only from the Scottish Executive, as there was no other instrument by which the implementation could be effected.
In the overall scheme of things, given the backdrop of Scotland's current economic growth, our alarmingly poorer business start-up rate and the need for local economic forums to be up and running efficiently, it is disappointing that things still seem to be behind closed doors and clogged up.
That is absolutely right. That is why I said in answer to the first question that if the committee sees fit to do so, it should send a signal to the Executive, which Annabel Goldie mentioned as being the prime engine in this area. At least in the first instance, the route should be through the Executive.
I too would be a bit hesitant about what John Downie's plans are at this stage.
Iain McMillan made the good point that although the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee started on the subject earlier, the actual process started only about a year ago. Given the bodies that have been thrown together—people who have been put together into the one room for the first time in their lives—reasonable progress has been made, although it is not as great as we would have wanted.
As Iain McMillan said, it is time for the committee to underline that although progress has been made, we need to get on further and get the implementation plans in place. If within a reasonable period of time—if I remember rightly, the implementation plans should be completed by about October of this year—the plans do not work and are not seen to add value, we should certainly take another route.
A number of the LEFs asked for a six-month extension to the deadline by which the action plans should be submitted to the Executive. They asked that the year one deadline of 1 April 2002 be extended to 1 October 2002. By doing that, they are really extending the year one task list into year two, so instead of being a two-year process, the LEFs will take two and a half years. We will probably have an extension of year two.
Frankly, from the business community perspective, the fact that the LEFs want an extension just now shows their lack of seriousness about the implementation plan. We believe that if you give the LEFs an inch, they will take a mile and the task list will slide even further. The crux of the matter is that harder choices need to be made. As Iain McMillan said, the Executive, through the ministerial task force and the central support unit, needs to propose a harder implementation process to get the LEFs to implement their action plans.
One of the things that you were suggesting, John, was that the underlying mapping process has not been undertaken as fully as you had hoped. Do the other witnesses support that view? The mapping exercise is the basis on which much of the forward action is to be based. If it is flawed, that will cause difficulties.
I agree that if the mapping process were flawed, it would cause difficulties. I do not have a great deal of knowledge of the mapping exercise, but it may be the case that some local economic forums are making heavy weather of it. I return to the point that I made earlier: the Scottish Executive has to look carefully at the rate of progress and decide what, under the circumstances, is reasonable. It must then demand greater progress or allow a delay.
That is more true in some areas than it is in others. In some instances, the public sector was not keen to reveal all its processes and how they were used. My understanding is that the mapping process is complete. An examination would need to be made to see whether the maps are comparable and equal for all areas and what information they contain. That is where the truth lies about the effectiveness and efficiency of the mapping process.
That remark supports the point that John Downie made: that some kind of independent review or audit of the mapping process is needed to validate the consistency of the process.
A comprehensive mapping exercise was undertaken in Glasgow. That was in place before the local economic forums started. Because tourism was on the year two task list, a number of the LEFs, particularly in the Highlands and Islands, left it off their mapping exercises. They did not involve the business support services that are delivered by some of the area tourist boards. Bob Leitch rightly said that the process was flawed, as some public sector agencies did not want to be open and transparent about what services they delivered. The mapping process raises serious issues.
The committee is interested in the way forward. Annabel Goldie referred to that. It is important. A number of the reports contain positive things and that is evident in some of the things that have been agreed for the task force. Should we be picking up on some of the good points about joint delivery of economic services, as has been proposed by the Aberdeen LEF amongst others? Should we develop single business gateways and say firmly to all LEFs, "This is the direction in which we want you to go"?
Bob Leitch made the point that it is the decisions about who does what that are important. Should local authorities be involved in business support services? Our view is that they should not. They should be involved in economic development in the widest sense of the definition in terms of infrastructure and planning.
People still say, "You do that bit and we will deliver this part of the service." The agencies have to be clear about which one is delivering what service. There should be no duplication. We are still hearing people say that they can work together to deliver services, when what we want is clarity. It should be decided which agencies deliver which service. They do not always have to work in partnership. We can be clear who does what at the economic forum level—that is what partnership is. The delivery agencies will then be clear about their remit.
I agree. There was also a proposal somewhere—perhaps by one of the review groups—about Audit Scotland's involvement. Audit Scotland could have a helpful role at Scottish Executive and local economic forum level in clarifying and testing objectives, processes and outcomes with key players. Alongside that, there is an unassailable case for best practice to be understood and transposed to some of the other local economic forums.
There must be a blueprint, but there is a case for allowing LEFs to arrange their business in a way that takes account of local circumstances. Sometimes, there will be a tension between what is right locally and adherence to the grand agenda, but that is not too problematic. There should be scope for both.
We agree that we must get on with things. There must be some form of branding—that is important—but I hope that that will not remove flexibility from the system. There is no point in having the same delivery in Glasgow as in Banffshire, for example. Different local circumstances have different needs. We must—I hope that we always will—accept that. We must consider branding and how that can be delivered to the public with least confusion. Frankly, the consumer does not care who delivers as long as they deliver. We can act on such issues fairly quickly.
I have a final question.
You should make the question short—four other members are waiting.
Scottish Enterprise's environmental remit came up in the background papers. Will someone throw light on that and on what issues are coming up?
I am not terribly sure.
I do not think that the witnesses have given the issue a lot of thought.
No.
Issues such as a lack of open dialogue between the public and private sectors, the private sector's being swamped in respect of representation and the public sector's not being open and transparent have been discussed. I accept that evidence will always be general, but it would be extraordinarily helpful—with respect to your request to us to send a signal to the Executive—if you could substantiate in detail what you have said and tell us about particular areas and particular local economic forums. Can you do so now or in written evidence later?
We would be more than happy to submit written evidence. We prepared for the two ministerial task forces a briefing that we submitted to the Executive. It included our basic views on each of the local economic forum action plans. The committee is considering the Borders LEF plan, so I will touch on that. Perhaps Bob Leitch and Iain McMillan can speak about other economic forums.
Like Fife LEF, Borders LEF seemed to think that it was the model for local economic forums. We think that that brought complacency. Borders LEF believed that it did not have to do anything because its previous local economic forum worked so well. It believed that it was the model for the new system.
As I said, the action plan that Borders LEF completed was put together before it carried out a mapping exercise. It refused to admit that there were problems in its area. However, through business opinion and focus groups that it held with businesses, it realised belatedly that there were problems. That is why its plan is so weak. Our representative on the forum asked for sight of the mapping exercise, which we believe is flawed. It took an hour of argument with the chief executive of the local enterprise company to get him to hand that mapping exercise over. However, I absolve him of any responsibility for that because he has been reasonably proactive on the issue and was upholding the view of the forum and the forum chairman.
Business opinion is critical of business support services in the Borders. There is no relationship between the forum and the business community. The Borders had a new ways plan, but there was no relationship between that and the business community. There has been no partnership assessment despite our repeated requests for one. Those are the key points from our representative in the Borders.
Other witnesses could follow that up. It would be important to have some of the detail behind the statements. If witnesses wish to provide that in written evidence, that would be helpful.
I have a question for Bob Leitch. You talked about precise remits for local economic forums and mentioned that the focus should perhaps be on education and training. Will you enlarge on that view? Are you suggesting that, if that were the focus, a lot of other stuff would be moved out of the way and the forums would concentrate on one or two things and get them right?
That is the bottom line. Unless the forums become specifically directed they will simply become another tier of bureaucracy. We have always said that skills are important; indeed, the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee and the Executive have said that skills are the future of Scotland. It would be worthwhile to give the forums a specific task that can be seen to add value. The alternative is that they simply become another body in local economic development that is trying to pull together the various objectives. The business review has specified the direction in which we should go—that should now be implemented. After that, let us do something that will add further value elsewhere.
I am relatively wet behind the ears on this inquiry, so my question is more fundamental. It strikes me as ironic that we have set up a relatively bureaucratic and overlapping system in order to reduce bureaucracy and overlapping. If you were starting again from scratch, would you bother? I wonder what lessons that teaches us for the lifelong learning inquiry, in which we seek to do broadly the same thing. We run the risk of making the same mistakes again.
Do Scottish stakeholders, business stakeholders, economic stakeholders and—most important—public sector stakeholders ever reform themselves when they are put in a room and asked to reach a conclusion? Will this model ever work, or will we be here in a year's time with the same frustrations being expressed by Annabel Goldie? You are not exactly setting gladiators against one another and asking them to battle to the death to make the hard choices to which John Downie refers. You are asking them to say, "If we put down our weapons we can both come out of this stadium alive." Would you bother to start from here? If not, will the external advice to which John Downie referred in his evidence work? A ministerial task force should look beyond the bounds of the public sector. What is the solution?
There are several solutions. We have talked about a Scottish framework for economic development and business support services, and local flexibility for delivery. That framework needs to be set in place. The minister set out guidelines and task lists for the local economic forums that we believe have been ignored in certain cases. Andrew Wilson made the point about how seriously the public sector takes the matter. Many LEFs had meetings every two weeks. There were sub-groups and a lot of work was involved. Borders LEF had one meeting in June, but did not have another until August. That shows how seriously the Borders took the process of involvement with the business community.
Bob Leitch and Iain McMillan have both made the point that we need more private sector involvement. We acknowledge that there must be partnership, but the mapping exercise and scrutiny of the mapping are followed by hard choices. We believe that the cosy relationship that exists between local public sector agencies that do not want to upset each other will be a disincentive to making those hard choices. That is where the Executive or the Parliament must come in. They must help to bridge that gap and make the choices. The fact is that we might come up with better action plans if we had greater private sector involvement and if we listened to consumers' views from the start.
Andrew Wilson's question is good. I said earlier that the LEF result is not the model that CBI Scotland would have chosen, mainly because of the points that underlie Andrew Wilson's question. However, we are where we are and the train has left the station. I do not say that we should roll the film back and start again; the forums will have some use. For example, careers Scotland will kick in on 1 April, which should strengthen careers and education-business partnerships at a local level. It is fair to say that the forums will provide an opportunity for more engagement and better coherence in understanding of labour market trends and careers advice, education and training issues.
That said, there is both a bureaucratic element to all of this and the risk that things could be worse. We thought that the decision to set up new bodies was rather odd at a time when everyone was trying to reduce the number of non-departmental public bodies and agencies. However, as I said, we are where we are. If the Scottish Executive exercises—where appropriate—stronger direction over mapping, coherence and time scales, we should give things a chance to work.
As Iain McMillan said, Andrew Wilson's question is a good one. It is important that we assess our current position, what we have achieved and what we can achieve in future. On the positive side, it is excellent that we have reached this point and that we have driven together people who have never been together before. Perhaps there should be some directive to increase private sector involvement in LEFs in which the level of such involvement is not proportionate. However, the private sector must earn its living during normal working hours, which means that forums should meet in the evening or at times when private sector representatives are more able to participate.
As far as the partnership element is concerned, much has been achieved in encouraging people to work together for their mutual benefit. The other side of the coin is that we must regularly examine whether LEFs are adding value. If not, they should be stopped.
Andrew, do you have a short supplementary?
No, I am fully content with the responses.
As one of the original committee members, I have been listening hard to what has been said, and I want to make a couple of points before I ask my question. Previously, the committee unanimously agreed that there should be local flexibility and that local government, Scottish Enterprise and so on should be involved and would still feel that local areas know best what will work for them. As a result, I am very encouraged by Bob Leitch's comment that much good partnership work exists. Obviously, I have experience of the LEF in Fife, because that is where my constituency is. I was involved in the original committee report on this issue, so I have been keeping a close eye on how things are working in that area.
Although it is important to have central guidance—indeed, a framework has already been mentioned—we also need local flexibility. I have heard locally—the committee has heard evidence to this effect—that people feel that there is not enough guidance. Do you think that LEFs will produce enough local flexibility to deal with specific issues?
Could you keep your answers tight, as we are running up against our time limit?
I agree that local flexibility is important, as is branding. We need to strike a balance between branding and local delivery, which is not always easy. As soon as something is branded nationally, there tends to be national dictatorship of how that brand is run. At a local level, we are greatly concerned about that. We are happy with national branding, which is important for getting the overall picture right. However, that branding needs to be delivered locally by local people.
I agree with that. As I said, there is a very strong case for local economic forums to be given guidance, with high-level objectives agreed by the Scottish Executive and the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee. However, there must also be scope for local flexibility. Sometimes there can be tension between those two things, but where there is good will, the system should work.
As a general principle, local delivery works quite well. However, as Marilyn Livingstone said, we need a national framework that is set by the Scottish Executive that provides clear guidelines on the task that must be performed, and we need local discretion to do that. It has always been hard to judge what should be the balance between national guidelines and local discretion. Previously, LECs had much more flexibility than they currently have in relation to national programmes. Assessment and local delivery are key. Scotland has a small economic and business support services community. How much scope is there for local flexibility? I agree that it is necessary, but we need to strike the right balance between putting in place programmes that can develop the Scottish economy and delivering those programmes locally.
You are saying that we need a national framework and audited local flexibility. That is how the committee has always envisaged the system working. We take on board the points that have been made about the need for auditing.
One criticism that I have heard is that the system is continually changing. It is important to ensure that, once a system is in place, there is stability in the delivery of business development and skills. We are seeking to overhaul completely education and training. As Andrew Wilson said, we want to take on board issues that were raised in our previous inquiry into education and training.
We need to achieve stability locally. We must ensure that one or two partners do not impose changes that the local economy does not want or need. I am concerned with getting the system right, with getting it working and with getting stability in the provision of business support services and education and training. In evidence, we have heard that there has been a lot of change. How do you think we can achieve stability? John Downie talked about ensuring that best practice is extended to areas of Scotland in which the system is not working.
Our witnesses may follow up on their answers with additional written information.
The issues that I have raised are very important.
Marilyn Livingstone is absolutely right to say that stability is vital. If something is not working, we must not regard it as broken down or bad, which has always been the attitude taken in the past. We should have a national task group that is able to support and assist people, and to put right what is wrong helpfully, rather than a detrimental one. The answer is to build a framework in which people help one another to get the best results.
I agree with Bob Leitch. As has already been said, the ministerial task force is overseeing the work of the local economic forums. There is scope for reviewing that. As Audit Scotland builds up experience of the performance of local economic forums, it can spread best practice.
I agree with Bob Leitch and Iain McMillan. Stability is an issue.
I think that seven or eight of the LEFs wanted to change the small business gateway into the business gateway. We need stability. The small business gateway has been in place for less than 18 months, but there is evidence that it is beginning to establish itself. However, we now have proposals to change again. We need to get the matter right and to have stability of delivery over a few years. As Bob Leitch said, we can then flexibly improve that as we go on. Continual change of branding or delivery is confusing businesses more.
It is necessarily a function of general evidence taking sessions that the evidence is general. I did not notice a demurral from Bob Leitch and Iain McMillan when John Downie asserted that business representation on local economic forums was swamped by the public sector. On that point, is that a function of the calling notes for the forums? Are the arrangements impracticable for small and medium enterprises? What is going on and in what ways can we be helpful? What can we do to improve the situation? That is my first point. You can deal briefly with that, as we are mindful of the allocated time for the oral submissions.
Secondly, on rationalisation of business support, it strikes me that pulling back from duplication allows us to concentrate effort and resources elsewhere. That must be a benefit and a goal. We look to your constituents to assist in some of the pathfinding towards rationalisation of business support. The Dunbartonshire LEF, which covers my constituency, seems to be doing well in relation to common marketing and common access. That kind of concrete evidence would be much more useful to committee members if, for instance, we lobby the ministerial task force formally or informally. I invite those kinds of comments.
Keep it tight, please.
The comments do not necessarily have to be oral.
Brian Fitzpatrick asked a very full question. I do not think that I can answer it all orally, but we can add more points in writing.
Bob Leitch pointed out that the balance between the public and private sectors in his economic forum helped the progress of the action plan and will probably help the progress of the implementation. The problem was that the involvement of the private sector—the Scottish Chambers of Commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses—was set out. That situation needs to be considered.
We learned a lesson about business organisations supporting their members on LEFs. I do not know whether Bob Leitch will agree. It is difficult for business people to give up time to support LEFs. We need to be flexible in how we adopt processes, to ensure that we get private sector involvement and input that also allows people to run their business.
I will comment briefly. The ratio of public sector involvement to private sector involvement in LEFs is variable, but there is no question but that the public sector is predominant. That is a matter of public record. I do not think that it will be difficult for the committee to get the figures on that from the Executive.
I reiterate that the position is not public bad, private good. The private sector is the consumer of the services that are provided by the public sector. If greater weight is given to the private sector than is currently given, the needs of the private sector can be articulated consensually to the public sector delivery organisations that are on the forums.
In a nutshell, I agree. I raised that earlier, to a certain extent. We are happy to give written evidence on private and public sector involvement in each of the local economic forums. However, I stress that this is not a public versus private sector event. That is not how we look at the situation. I hope that no one looks at it like that. The forums were set up as they were set up. The forums did not make that decision, but were presented with it. Perhaps the forums' balance needs to be changed to help the development of the various subjects that the forums are considering.
I have a final question on the matter. I have been in the economic development game for what seems like 300 years. For the past 11 or 12 years there has been an interminable debate about the structure of the development delivery mechanism. The next item on the agenda is Scotland's place in the international economy. The message I am picking up, albeit with a slight difference of emphasis on the pace, is that we must try to resolve those issues and reach agreement on the way forward. That will give stability to the system and allow people to get on with the job of delivering the services that they are meant to deliver.
In the private session that we had last year with the Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning, her view was that it is time that we bit the bullet. I think that she has expressed the same view publicly. The theme from this morning's comments seems to be that the time is fast approaching when we must bite the bullet once and for all, otherwise we will continue talking about the matter for the next 10 years. Is that the bottom line of what the witnesses said?
Yes.
I agree. Nothing is intrinsically wrong with the building blocks that are in place. The issue is how they are co-ordinated and the added value from them working together. There will always be questions about who does what, particularly as the situation changes. I met the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation in Los Angeles in November 2001. Its agenda is similar to ours. The tensions and the way in which it works with other organisations are just as challenging.
Thank you. We look forward to supplementary written evidence to back up what the witnesses said this morning.
We have a problem with the heating; it is a bit cold at this end of the room—I know that there have been cuts in Scottish Enterprise's budget. I suggest that we adjourn for two minutes to get a quick cup of coffee.
Meeting adjourned.
On resuming—