Chamber and committees

Yes. Can you walk us through how that is working?

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. Arguably, my questions follow on from those of Kevin Stewart. I want to explore and to get a general understanding of—for my benefit and, I suspect, for that of businesses and some members of the public—how the triage process is working for the Grangemouth cluster post the closure of the refinery and the Scottish Government’s announcement about the provision of £25 million. We will also discuss the £200 million from the United Kingdom Government.

The reason I ask is that I have fairly regular meetings with a range of businesses that approach me. Sometimes they do so as a courtesy to indicate that they are interested, but sometimes they express to me that they are uncertain as to what the right criteria are. I would like to obtain an understanding of how that process is working. In your response, could you also explain your thinking on how you are developing an ecosystem and an infrastructure that will be sustainable for the future? That is a big question.

In some respects, you have made a similar point to the one that I would make. I totally understand what you have outlined—that is exactly what I had envisaged—but the fact that we cannot share such information is a challenge, because it means that companies that have made an application are uncertain. Even though they might present with a viable proposition that has the potential to get through the checkpoint by offering sustainability and delivering jobs at pace, which is obviously a consideration, a common theme that I hear is that although they might think that their proposition is a great idea, they are uncertain. I explain to them, “There’s a lot going on in the background—it’s a constant juggling act.”

Do you have issues with capacity, given the volume of interest? Is that part of the reason for the uncertainty that exists, as well as your having to be coy because of commercial sensitivity? How is your capacity?

Thank you.

To ask the Scottish Government on what basis it will assess the contribution of Scotland’s performing arts organisations in advance of the next budget. (S6O-04937)

I completely agree that the calibre of our national performing companies is excellent. However, I am aware that part of the remit of our Finance and Public Administration Committee is to assess fiscal sustainability, and that measure must surely be applied to our national performing arts organisations. I would even go as far as to consider the gross value added contribution of each of them, because I was struck by the positive evidence from Alistair Mackie of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in last week’s Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee. If the cabinet secretary agrees with that, would he see a role for the Finance and Public Administration Committee in focusing on fiscal sustainability?

I thank Pam Gosal for bringing the debate to the chamber. I apologise to members, as I have to leave earlier than the conclusion of the debate.

I have to say that it fills me with despair to be speaking again in a debate to fight for women’s rights. I have never sought to be a victim, and I have always been wary of using traumatic events in my life to draw attention to myself, yet I feel the lack of action from the Scottish Government deeply personally.

Since I had to stand up and speak about this issue having barely just been elected in 2021, and then had to vote against the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill due to the casual introduction of self-identification without any consideration of safeguarding, I have met many women with a similar story to my own.

My early-years trauma has left me with a compelling need to feel safe, not just to be safe. I have a visceral fear of the physicality of men when encountering them in unexpected places—places where I thought that I could feel safe. That visceral fear, when it kicks in, leads straight to a trauma response, which includes acute anxiety, inflammation, tingling across my face and mouth, extreme tiredness and so on. That is how I live my life.

Therefore, having to continually stress the need for protected safe places and for dignity, safety and privacy is constantly re-triggering. Having to continually press the Scottish Government to do the right thing is constantly re-triggering. Yet, given the fact that 89 per cent of those reporting serious sexual assaults in Scotland are women, I am not alone—I am actually fairly typical.

In the chamber, there are women similar to me—both MSPs and members of the public watching the debate—whose direct life experience of being in the sex class of female has subjected them, as it has subjected me, to such experiences.

I have been so wary of ever mentioning myself, merely noting that I must speak for those who cannot be heard. However, I press myself to continue to do so, as the Scottish Government has failed to engage with women who have been raped or sexually assaulted. It failed to do so when the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee was looking at the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill; it failed to speak with For Women Scotland; and it is not listening still.

Scottish women simply want their legal rights back. They do not want to take rights away from anyone else, and they want their Government to do the right thing.

I am tired of being stuck in a groundhog day loop in which the Scottish Government states that it

“accepts the result of the Supreme Court judgement”

and insists that it will definitely do something at some point—what that something is, and the timeframe, are never defined—and when it is asked again, it repeats the lines, and so on.

Decision theory tells us that not making a decision is a decision in and of itself. Rather than face the consequences of acting on the Supreme Court judgment, the Scottish Government has gamed that it would rather live with the consequences of not acting on it, and those consequences are the continued denial of women’s rights. What does that say to me? What does it say to 51 per cent of the Scottish population?

Public money is really tight, yet there always appears to be money to contest women’s rights. I find it incredible that the Scottish Government is going to go head to head with For Women Scotland all over again, despite the Supreme Court judgment. That is surely the very definition of madness.

It seems ironic that, today, we saw the passage of the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, which really recognises the impact of trauma on women. I hope that sensible heads start to prevail and that the Scottish Government understands why safety, dignity and privacy are vital to women like me.

I know that it was a massive question, but I personally am not hearing a great deal about the strategic thinking on the challenges and enablers of AI, for example, from Government, even in the face of the considerable uncertainty and complexity. I feel as though it is a juggernaut that is travelling very fast towards us and that we are tinkering round the edges.

We need to get ahead of the game in developing excellence in service provision, even with basic things such as getting small and medium-sized enterprises to actively develop agents to do some of the grunt work. It is about attitude and realising that we have only one choice, which is to seize the opportunity, because the alternative guarantees failure.

Hi, everybody. I have been listening to the session with interest. As the convener set out at the start, one of our key focuses is fiscal sustainability, but we have not really reflected on that thus far. We have touched on the UK balance sheet, which is pretty dismal—it drives everything and ultimately flows through into what we see in Scotland.

We have almost got a counterintuitive challenge here. First, we have touched on the availability of labour, which we know would be a key way of addressing some of those challenges, when we have political drivers against immigration. Secondly, I was surprised that Scottish Enterprise’s submission did not mention artificial intelligence, because it has so many links to skills and productivity, which we have touched on. Finally, I have a gentle challenge to Universities Scotland: you ended up in a position of overreliance on overseas students, but, from a business perspective, any business would be doing the risk analysis of having so many eggs in one basket—of a critical type of customer, if you like.

Are we ready and up for this challenge, given its counterintuitive nature and a backdrop of decreasing and constrained public sector funding against a demand from everybody for more money, often for a good reason, such as wanting to invest? Do we have the audacity of thinking and the leadership that we need? Do we properly understand the almost counterintuitive nature of fiscal sustainability? I appreciate that this is a pretty big question. We have had a nice chat so far. However, will that nice chat really start to shift the dial? That is my question. Elaine, you are nodding—

I want to briefly make explicit a point that has been implicit in some of the discussions about access to finance. We have heard valid commentary about SMEs: personal guarantees are hugely prohibitive, as is carrying coronavirus business interruption loan scheme loans, bounce back loans and so on. In relation to the college sector being able to access funds under the current structure and Lesley Jackson’s comment about FTs and SNIB, it might be worthwhile for us to put down a marker that access to finance in different sectors is deeply constrained when linked to the economic multipliers that have been mentioned, particularly around housing. We should think about that in a slightly different way.