Economy and Fair Work Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Official Report 654KB pdf

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National Strategy for Economic Transformation

Our next item of business is an evidence session on Scotland’s national strategy for economic transformation. We previously took evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy in March 2022, when the “Delivering Economic Prosperity” report was published. In October 2022, the Scottish Government published the delivery plans.

I ask members and witnesses to be as concise as possible. A number of issues have previously been discussed in the budget sessions, so targeted questions would be helpful.

This is our first session since the delivery plans were published. The strategy is a long-term one, so this is an opportunity for the committee to start to set out ways in which we will look to scrutinise its development.

It is fair to say that there were mixed reports when the strategy was published in March. Tom Hunter said that it was “a wish list”, and Roz Foyer made some critical comments about missed opportunities. I hope that the publication of the delivery plans will have provided people with more engagement and given them some confidence in the way forward.

However, I have some questions. How is the strategy different from previous strategies? Since the Parliament was created, we have had a number of economic strategies. Nevertheless, productivity in Scotland is still lower than it is among our European counterparts, and economic growth is not as high as we would like it to be. What is different about this 10-year strategy that will lead to a step change in Scotland’s economy?

What the national strategy is designed to do, and its objective, is consistent with previous ventures: it seeks to give a clear distillation of the Government’s agenda. We are looking to a variety of organisations that contribute to the economic direction of Scotland to ensure that we can realise those ambitions.

The strategy focuses on a range of major themes, including entrepreneurship, market opportunities, the regional dimension of economic policy, skills, the creation of a fairer and more equal society, and—crucially—the concept of delivery and ensuring that we turn our aspirations into practical reality.

The key focus of the strategy that is perhaps different is that it comes at a moment when our economy has to make a substantial change in its profile and focus on moving towards net zero. In a sense, looking back on the strategies over the past 10 or 20 years, we see that there was not the same imperative to change the focus of the economy. The current document and the delivery plans assist in giving a clear idea of how the Government intends to do that, and how we intend to engage organisations in that endeavour.

Last week, we had the chief entrepreneurial adviser to the Scottish Government, Mark Logan, in front of us. I raised the issue of his rather large salary—£200,000 a year for working two days a week—and he mounted what I would describe as the L’Oréal defence: “Because I’m worth it.”

How would you assess whether or not he is worth it? What sort of progress are you looking for from Mr Logan? How will his role be measured and assessed?

First, I would say that I think that we are very lucky to have the skills and capability of Mark Logan available to the Government. He is a formidable private sector player who has delivered significant economic opportunities and gains as a consequence of his judgments and decision making, and—to be honest—we are very lucky to have those skills and attributes at our disposal.

In addition, the nature of Mark Logan’s expertise, both at the technology level and in his way of operating, involves skills that will be particularly relevant for the transition that the Scottish economy has to make in the future. Mark Logan has colossal technology expertise, but he has also delivered very successful projects and propositions. The challenge of adapting to net zero that our economy faces, which I just outlined in my response to the convener, involves a significant amount of transition in the economy, so having Mark Logan’s skills to help us in that endeavour is important.

We need to see the fruits of that activity, and we will do that through monitoring the performance of the Scottish economy and the measures that we take forward to ensure that we realise the ambitions that are set out in the national strategy.

With respect, that does not quite answer the question. What is it specifically that you are looking for from the role? Has Mr Logan been set any targets, for example?

We want to benefit from the expertise that Mark Logan can bring to help us in meeting the challenges that I have just set out: first, with regard to ensuring that we realise the technology capabilities and opportunities that are available to us, and secondly, in assisting us by advising on how we make the transition to net zero through the encouragement and enhancement of greater entrepreneurial activity within the Scottish economy.

Let me put it this way: if this committee is looking at that particular role, what kinds of things should we be looking to Mr Logan to deliver?

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You should be looking to Mr Logan to deliver progress on the shift to greater technology opportunities and to contribute towards encouragement and expansion of entrepreneurial activity within the Scottish economy. Some of that is relevant to the points that we discussed earlier with regard to the Ana Stewart review and in response to other questions.

Aside from the £200,000 that I mentioned, which is paid to a company, has Mr Logan been given any other resources to fulfil the role?

He has some limited staff support to assist him in the work and arrange his practical interaction and engagement within Government and with the tech and entrepreneurial communities in Scotland.

I have one final question. Last week, I asked Mr Logan about his involvement with the company that I just mentioned, TravelNest. He is still listed as a director of that company, although he told us that he had pulled back.

Maybe he has pulled back, but it struck me that, not just for him but for anyone in a similar role with Government, whether they are paid or not, we should have clarity on their business interests, either as directors or regarding whether they hold shares in particular companies. Would you agree with that?

I very much agree with that. I saw the comments that Mark Logan put on record about his involvement in the company, so I assume that to be correct. There should be transparency on these points. The directors of any public bodies such as Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and South of Scotland Enterprise will have publicly declarable registers of interest. That should all be done transparently.

However, to make a slightly different point, I do not view it as inappropriate for people in those roles to be involved in wider activity, because if they were not, they would not bring as much experience and expertise to the work. It is almost a catch-22 situation. The way to manage that is to have transparent declarations of such things.

That is something that would have to be set up, I think.

I will take that point away. I accept the point that Mr Simpson is making, and I think that there should be transparency over these questions. If there are any issues that need to be addressed there, I will address them.

A chief business adviser role has been created, and an appointment has been made, in the past week. How does that role work together with the chief entrepreneurial adviser?

Ellis Watson is providing specific advice to the First Minister to enable the Government’s engagement with the business community. It is a slightly different type of role from the one that Mark Logan is undertaking; it is essentially about ensuring that the Government is able to hear and engage with the wider business community, communicating directly with the First Minister by using the skills of Ellis Watson.

It is also the role of ministers to do that with the First Minister.

And we do it.

We had an inspiring and refreshing session with the chief entrepreneurial adviser last week; he is very formidable indeed. To what extent will his remit allow him to engage with other Government departments and with public bodies?

He raised the specific issue of intellectual property ownership in universities and how that might preclude the development of entrepreneurship. For example, the Scottish Funding Council might want to reward and stimulate start-ups from universities, and there might be a bit of a conflict in that regard. What range and role does the chief entrepreneur have with public bodies and Government departments?

There are two distinct questions in the points that Fiona Hyslop raises. First, on the range of the chief entrepreneur, I want to ensure that he has the widest possible scope within Government to try to help us improve the technological transformation of Government and ensure that our ways of working are as efficient as they possibly can be. I talk to Mark Logan regularly and benefit from his thinking. I am doing a lot of work on public sector reform, which will be essential in the realisation of the budget, so there will be ever more involvement. I want to see that happen within the broadest possible range.

On the second question, on intellectual property, I think that our universities are slightly more relaxed about such questions than they used to be. That does not mean to say that the position is perfect. Obviously intellectual property is a formidable asset in some circumstances, and some start-ups that have emerged from universities have generated enormous economic benefit because they have involved such good developments.

Mark Logan’s work is partly about trying to encourage more of that, and more university research and business dialogue. We might look at universities now, and some of the arrangements that they have in place. Just a few weeks ago, I was visiting the Mazumdar-Shaw advanced research centre at the University of Glasgow. The centre is a fabulous investment, resulting from a significant financial donation by Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and her late husband John Shaw. In partnership with the University of Glasgow, it is developing an exciting research collaborative environment. Other universities will have such facilities—for example, the University of Edinburgh has the Bayes centre, which is modelled on a similar concept.

Those meeting points—if I can call them that—are a great forum for the development of research propositions. I think that we can be optimistic that those propositions will generate significant and productive benefits for the Scottish economy.

Universities are independent institutions, of course, but I suppose that it depends on what the Scottish Funding Council, as funders, might do. Are we open to thinking about things where we come across them? That is a challenge that we have repeatedly had.

There is also a question here—I appeal to our universities’ sense of community in this regard—about the role of universities in recognising that some of that intellectual property might have a wider societal benefit, and a wider commercial benefit for the Scottish economy. I encourage our universities to be open to that proposition.

There is obviously, as Ms Hyslop correctly said, interaction with the Scottish Funding Council and the allocation of research resources. The more we work collaboratively on this endeavour, the more we will be able to see the benefits of all of that, and Mark Logan is in place to assist us in doing that to the greatest extent possible.

I move on to the climate emergency skills action plan. You have been generous with your time, so short answers will suffice. Is the refreshed plan on course to be published in 2023, as per the NSET delivery plans? How will the refresh interact with the on-going review of Scotland’s skills landscape, which is being led by James Withers?

The climate skills action plan will be published as scheduled. If there are any issues or implications that emerge from the James Withers review, we will take those into account in the aftermath of the action plan’s publication. I recognise the necessity of our proceeding with the publication of that document.

It is widely recognised that the increase in renewables, particularly in onshore wind power, has cut emissions but has not delivered the huge potential economic benefits that were envisaged, especially for jobs. The Scottish Trades Union Congress made that point in its response to the publication of the strategy.

When you were Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth, we were promised that there would be 130,000 jobs in renewables per year by 2020. The Government does not record the numbers of such jobs, but a recent report by the Fraser of Allander Institute estimated that the actual number is only 27,000 per year. Does the Government currently have a target for jobs in renewables, which the strategy might help to deliver?

We do not have a target in that respect, but the focus of our agenda is to maximise the economic opportunities for Scotland from the renewables revolution that is going to take place. Significant opportunities will arise from the ScotWind process and we hope that others will come out of carbon capture and hydrogen, all of which will enable us to realise significant economic opportunities that will link directly to the work that we must do on the just transition to recognise the need for that, particularly in the oil and gas sector in the north-east of Scotland.

How do we measure that? At the moment, most of the onshore wind turbines that we see carpeted across our landscape are not built here in Scotland. How can we assess whether we are reaching that potential? The number of jobs in renewables will increase because of the work that is taking place, but how do we assess whether that is delivering the scale of the potential that is clearly out there?

We will see it from the significant amount of data that is available on the labour market, quite a lot of which I have gone through this morning. We will see, at a sectoral level, the numbers of jobs and the gross value added that will come from particular employment. That will clearly flow into the productive capacity of the Scottish economy. Data sets are available that will enable us to see all that information and to make a judgment about how much has been realised in Scotland. It will also be clear from the implications for supply chains the extent to which we are seeing such projects turning into economic reality on the ground.

I am going to ask some more questions about women entrepreneurs. When NSET was published, we saw the introduction of a number of worthwhile initiatives. Given the thrust of that approach, who would not buy into it? However, I want to explore in a bit more detail how you will ensure that, as we move into specific projects, female entrepreneurs will be at the heart of the strategy, so that when you develop your key performance indicators or whichever success measures you will have, they will be specific.

For example, in the context of the development to begin under project 1, the delivery plans state that there will be commitments to

“Increase the number of talented early stage company founders”

and

“Increase the number and diversity of entrepreneurs”.

I am not asking you to answer this question now, but I would want to know the levels to and from which you expect female entrepreneurs in early-stage start-ups to move. Will you be able to state that, and do you plan to do so as you put in the detailed development?

Secondly, are you able to commit to making the targets bold, audacious, ambitious and, frankly, frightening in terms of moving the dial for female entrepreneurs and their contributions?

My answer to the last part of Michelle Thomson’s question is yes. We should have bold ambitions here. We are not realising the potential of the Scottish economy and Scottish society because we have such a difference in the levels of participation in entrepreneurship between women and men. We have to confront that issue. That is why we commissioned Ana Stewart to undertake an independent review of that question. From that will flow the specific interventions that we will have to undertake to address the ambitions that Michelle Thomson puts to me. I want to ensure that the steps that we take in response to Ana Stewart’s review are commensurate with realising those ambitions.

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That is good to hear. You can be fully confident that I will be asking how, specifically, those steps are bold, audacious and ambitious.

I am sure that you will. I recognise the significance of the question and ministers should come back to the committee to explain in greater detail where we are heading as a consequence of that activity.

Going back to my earlier point about data, I note that, as individual projects are planned, I will want to see specific data on the percentage or numerical increase in female entrepreneurs in each category. There are various projects. I will be asking to see that data so that I can make my own assessment of how bold and ambitious we are.

We should be able to disaggregate the data to enable all that analysis to be undertaken.

Thank you.

I have a couple of short questions. We want to attract people to set up businesses in Scotland and we want to attract entrepreneurship. What analysis or advice have you had concerning the potential impact of the fact that an individual who sets up a business in Scotland is likely to pay a higher rate of income tax than they would pay in other parts of the United Kingdom?

That issue is considered by the Scottish Fiscal Commission when it looks at the tax propositions that we put forward. From that, we can deduce the impact that our measures will have on behaviour. That advice is available from the Fiscal Commission. It informs the expectations of revenue to be raised that are included in the budget proposition.

There will be a wide variety of considerations for any individual who is choosing a location in which to live and work, and they will be based on a variety of factors. As I set out to Parliament, the social contract that is available to people in Scotland offers a very different proposition, regardless of income. Many different questions about the quality of life and quality of location will be relevant to the decisions that people make.

Have you taken any advice, or has there been any input, from the chief entrepreneur on that subject?

I have not discussed that issue with the chief entrepreneur, but I am very happy to do so.

I have a final question. When did the NSET delivery board, which was established in May 2020, last meet?

I cannot quite think what the date was, but it would have been in the autumn.

It was in December.

When will the minutes of that meeting be available, or are they available already? There does not seem to be anything about them on the Scottish Government website.

The minutes are published on the website. The next meeting will be before the end of this month.

Will the minutes be available before the next meeting takes place?

Yes. There is a web page for the delivery board.

I could not see anything about the minutes on there.

I will check that.

Thank you.

I want to ask about support for business start-ups, and particularly the new network of Techscaler hubs that has been set up via CodeBase. I realise that the announcement was made only in July, with the launch being in November, but what will be the measure of success for those hubs? How will we know whether that venture has been successful?

There will—in response to Michelle Thomson’s questions, I suspect—be data sets that emerge about the number of ventures that have been supported, the progress that has been made on employment levels and gross value added, the impact of technology ventures that have emerged and the journey that ventures take.

The Techscaler programme’s aspiration is not only to encourage early-start development, but to build on that to ensure that companies can make the journey from start-ups to scale-ups. The data will enable us to explore the venture’s effectiveness and success. Given the formidable track record of CodeBase here in the city of Edinburgh, I am confident that it has the attributes to enable us to realise our aspirations from the programme.

The seven Techscalers are mostly in cities, although there is none in Perth or our new city of Dunfermline. If they prove to be the success that we hope for, will they be rolled out in other areas, including rural Scotland?

I remain open to such questions. The design of the model, with its significant dependence on technology capabilities, means that location should not be in any way a barrier to people benefiting from the resources of the Techscalers.

An important question arises about the ability of other bodies and institutions to support the direction of travel. Our universities and colleges, which have an extensive network of premises throughout the country, should be able to play a part in working with the Techscalers and ensuring that their attributes can be used more broadly around the country.

Can the model of hubs be used in non-tech sectors?

Yes—without a doubt. However, the Techscaler programme recognises the specific opportunity for and necessity of making progress on tech activity, to realise the benefits for the Scottish economy.

I am interested in exploring a couple of issues. You have spoken before about what the economy is for. In various documents, you have said clearly that the economy is there to serve people and planet effectively, now and into the future.

The wellbeing economy is at the heart of the strategy. One challenge is that the economic strategy links into many elements of governmental work. I am interested in knowing how we could improve alignment across all the different strategies. What are the challenges for policy coherence? We could argue that things that we do in one area might run counter to or jeopardise ambitions in other areas of governmental work.

I hope that that is not the case, because Government policy should be aligned. As Deputy First Minister, I am responsible for delivery of the Government’s programme, so a lot of my time is spent on ensuring that we have policy alignment, that we have no incompatibilities in our policy programme and that we work to ensure that a cohesive thread runs through all of Government policy. I recognise that that is important in the delivery of the Government’s work.

I would argue that the thread that runs through the national strategy for economic transformation, the programme for government in September, the budget in December, the wider direction of Government policy and the child poverty delivery plan that was published last year shows that there is policy alignment. It is also reflected in the energy strategy that Michael Matheson published last week.

The question of alignment is critical. If there are areas around it that concern members, I will listen carefully to them to ensure that we keep that thread running through all policy.

I want to go a bit further on that before I move on. You talked earlier about house building, and there will obviously be negative impacts from construction, be they environmental impacts or others, although they can be mitigated and balanced out with other mechanisms. I suppose that it is your assertion that we have the right balancing mechanisms and that they are effective. However, what on-going monitoring is being done to make sure that those issues are covered so that we can ensure not only that there is policy coherence, but that we have the correct assessment of that coherence?

In setting out the budget, I concentrated on three themes: the elimination of child poverty, sustainable public services and the economic transition to net zero. That gives the best distillation of the policy framework in which we are operating, where there is an absolute necessity to make the journey to achieving net zero.

We assess our performance regularly, and we have been on the receiving end of a particularly challenging recent assessment from the Climate Change Committee about the effectiveness of our current arrangements. The plans that the Government is making are designed to advance that agenda to the greatest possible extent.

I acknowledge and accept the challenge that Maggie Chapman puts to me, but it is best reflected in how we take forward the wider policy agenda to which I have referred.

My final question is about community wellbeing and social enterprises. Alternative economic models are crucial to the resilient, sustainable and prosperous economy that you have spoken about. What are you doing to explore giving social enterprises an enhanced role in our economy, given the local and regional benefits that they might have over and above other enterprise models?

The first thing that I want to say is that I very much associate myself with the aspiration that Maggie Chapman puts to me in relation to the importance of encouraging a vibrant social enterprise sector. It represents a significant opportunity to contribute to the Scottish economy and create meaningful opportunities.

Scotland has a long track record of social enterprise activity. The global co-operative movement was founded in Scotland, and I had the privilege, as did Fiona Hyslop, of working for mutual life assurance societies that deployed the formidable mutual principles of common ownership within our society. Frankly, I wish that we had more mutual societies just now—we would be better served by them. Social enterprises are the 21st century equivalent of mutual societies. That track record is important.

We need to be mindful of three things. The first is the community wealth building agenda, which Tom Arthur is in charge of. North Ayrshire Council has undertaken some outstanding work in that regard, and we are now trying to apply that more widely.

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Secondly, there is procurement. The public sector procures a significant amount from the business sector in Scotland. Procuring a lot of our social care from social enterprises would be a good step forward. I appreciate that companies are not always able to participate in the procurement system. Some of the gateways and access points to procurement can be an impediment to social enterprises, so we are trying to tackle those.

The third thing is that our business development network must support the development of social enterprises, because they are businesses. They are not a charitable sector away in the corner; they are businesses. To their credit, our business organisations—South of Scotland Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Scottish Enterprise—provide business advice to social enterprises, which I very much welcome.

I am sure that you are not suggesting that charitable enterprises should be “away in the corner”. I think that many of them would argue with that.

Perhaps my turn of phrase was not well chosen. My point is that social enterprises should be on the radar of our enterprise agencies and should not be thought of as being someone else’s responsibility.

Thank you.

I am grateful for the opportunity to set out my thinking more clearly.

Colin Beattie has some questions.

In the light of the pressures on public sector pay and the on-going threat of industrial action, how do you assess the success, so far, of prioritising wage increases over spending on employability services?

I think that the experience speaks for itself. Industrial action is enormously disruptive to the operation of our economy and society, so minimising industrial action by resolving industrial disputes is a very high priority for me. We regret the fact that we have had some industrial relations difficulties and that some disputes have led to strike action. We try to minimise that. We are going to extraordinary lengths to be available and accessible to trade unions in order to resolve issues. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and I will engage on such matters again in the course of this week.

The difficulties created by the lack of expansion of employability programmes are, for me, not as great as the disruption that could have come from industrial action, had we not resolved the issues that we have resolved.

I will move to a slightly different subject. The Scottish Government has indicated that progress towards a wellbeing economy is a core principle that guides the NSET and other Government strategies. How aligned are those strategies? Can you identify areas of improvement that might need to be addressed in the future?

We aim to secure alignment through the relationship that all our strategies have with realisation of the ambitions in the national performance framework. That framework, which has been the subject of extensive consultation and dialogue with Parliament and stakeholders, is designed to provide a sense of direction and a set of objectives for us to reach and to realise in all of our activity. To return to the answers that I gave to Maggie Chapman, I would like to think that we are aligned to support those objectives.

We must be open to being challenged on that. I spend a lot of my time trying to ensure that we have alignment, but if colleagues believe that we have not got that right, the Government should be open to responding to that.

A classic example relates to some of the dilemmas that we have had to wrestle with in relation to the energy strategy, the use of resources and the generation of economic opportunities. We have tried to reconcile those to the best of our ability in the energy policy framework. That is a good example of how we have tried to do what you describe.

An obvious question to ask is how we evidence that there is alignment. How do we know? We might have it in policy and in all the documents and so on, but how do we evidence that it has been achieved?

We will see it in the data that informs the material in the national performance framework. Provided that the framework is delivering the right strategic perspective across the whole economy and the whole of society, and that we have that correct—again, I stress that it is being consulted on by the Government and that Parliament has been extensively engaged in that endeavour—we should see that in the data that emerges during the process.

Do you know of any areas in which more work has to be done?

I highlight one of the big lessons that I have learned during my time in the Government, which relates to what happens if we do not look comprehensively at what every area can contribute to a policy objective. A good example is the child poverty delivery plan. To put it simply, we might think, for example, that we can tackle child poverty by increasing benefit payments. If we took that view, we would not have a particularly effective anti-child poverty strategy, because we would miss out on a range of other interventions that the Government and various organisations could make to support that objective.

When we formulated the child poverty delivery plan, we actively challenged different Government departments about how they were working, how they were interacting with people who were living in poverty and what further support they could put in place to assist those people and enable us to achieve the wider objectives. To me, that represents some of the challenges that exist.

Off the top of my head, I cannot think of an area in which we need to do more in that respect, but if there are issues on the minds of committee members, I would be happy to listen to those.

I have a couple of quick questions—one is perhaps more expansive than the other. The first is on programme 4, which is entitled “Skilled workforce”. In recent years, there have been a number of reports, including the enterprise and skills review, which is supposed to be implemented, and the Audit Scotland report, which was critical of relationships between the Scottish Funding Council and others.

James Withers is now undertaking a review of skills, which is the one issue that those on all our industrial business panels talk about. They say that they do not have the right skills or the right people in the right places. When will people stop telling the committee that? It consistently comes up as one of the key issues for all sectors, from tourism to renewables; those in every sector talk about their frustration at the skills landscape.

I have wrestled with those questions for quite some time in my various areas of responsibility, and I think that the key thing that can help us to resolve them is having quality dialogue between businesses and those who are responsible for the development of skills.

Earlier, I cited an example from Ayrshire of exactly what should happen. A business wants to get off the ground and develop an opportunity. It wants to have skilled personnel but cannot find them, so it goes to a college. The college says, “This is what we’ll do”, and it gets it all under way. That is how we make progress.

In addition, there can be a lot of work and elaboration on the formulation of skills action plans and skills audits. Skills Development Scotland has led a really good piece of work, in different localities, that looks at skills development plans. Such issues are invariably resolved in localities—they have to be, because the level of geographic mobility in the country is relatively limited. We need to ensure that the quality of dialogue between businesses and providers is at the highest level possible.

The committee’s role is to scrutinise the delivery plans and the 10-year strategy. The NSET programme entitled “A New Culture of Delivery” says that an annual progress report will be published. Are you able to say when the first one is due?

I expect the first report to be published during this calendar year. The strategy was set out in May 2022, if my memory serves me right—

It was in March, and the delivery plans were published in August, I think.

The delivery plans were published in October.

We will make a judgment about the report’s publication, but it will be during this calendar year.

The other thing—

I would hope that it would be during this calendar year, as it is an annual report. When you are in a position to give the committee a clear idea of at least which season we are looking at—whether it is summer or autumn—it would be helpful if you could tell us.

Yes.

I have been struck—without wishing to single out Michelle Thomson—by some of the questions that have been put to me on particular areas of interest. If the committee has aspirations for the information that it would like to see or any detail that it would like to have available to it, I will willingly consider how we can most positively respond to that.

Thank you.

Jamie Halcro Johnston has a question. Is it on a point of clarification?

Yes—it relates to my earlier question about the NSET delivery board. I checked the Scottish Government website, because I am always conscious that these things could be my issue rather than anyone else’s, but I could not see any minutes on it or a date for the next meeting. Can we make sure that that is updated?

I also have a question about the investor panel, which I think was meant to meet on 12 December. Did that meeting take place? If so, when will minutes be available for it? When will the panel next meet?

Since I took over interim responsibilities, the NSET board has met on at least two occasions, if my memory serves me right. I know that another meeting is coming up, because I have preparatory discussions for it tomorrow. Mr Halcro Johnston is absolutely correct that minutes should be published. If they are not up there, I apologise for that, and we will rectify the situation as soon as we can.

The investor panel met in December. I am not sure when the next meeting is. Richard Rollinson might be able to help with that.

There will be a couple more meetings of the panel between now and this summer, after which it will make recommendations to the First Minister.

When will the minutes for the December meeting be available?

I will double-check and make sure that they are put up as soon as possible.

Thank you.

That brings us to the end of the evidence session. I thank the Deputy First Minister and his officials for joining us and for the evidence that we have heard.

11:57 Meeting continued in private until 12:08.