Chamber and committees

That would be very helpful.

I am mindful of SNIB’s evidence to the committee that, because of year-end, there is a hard date. It cited a specific example of when it was trying to close a deal before year-end. If you could bear with me for a minute while I find the text in my notes. SNIB said:

“Last year, we got to 31 March and we did not know whether were going to be able to complete a £50 million deal according to the rules.”

I encourage the cabinet secretary, or whoever the most appropriate person is, to find out the latest status on that, because 31 March and, therefore, the potential to close other deals, is not that far away.

SNIB added:

“We got it done, and we did not compromise our underwriting in doing so”.—[Official Report, Economy and Fair Work Committee, 25 September 2024; c 28],

However, it commented that the need to get a deal done while fitting in with the rules could be played against it.

That is heartening and very good news, indeed.

I will be asking about that.

You make some important points about a culture shift, with which I completely agree. There is a business support element, even before people get to the point of going for funding.

A report published by Women’s Enterprise Scotland at the tail end of last year said that business support that is on offer still does not take a gendered lens. In other words—this is an issue that we have seen with banks—the operational nature of women-led businesses, which are often referred to as kitchen table businesses, is not understood. In that context, what consideration have you—or the Government—given to how enterprise agencies, or any public sector support, can take a truly gendered lens to women-led businesses?

You opened your remarks by referring to the committee’s letter and, in particular, the disaggregation of data. I have no wish to create a massive data factory, because I appreciate that that would expend a huge amount of time. My interest in the issue started with a simple question that I put to a business organisation when I asked for assurances that it routinely disaggregated all its data sets by gender. I received a long, fulsome answer that said absolutely nothing and could be summarised as, “No.” I then started to think about all the other data sets—you mentioned private equity, cabinet secretary.

Will you give the committee a flavour of how actively you are progressing work so that, when asked, any body that is in receipt of public funds—as well as the Government—can give assurances that they are routinely disaggregating their data sets by gender?

Yes, sorry—I, too, was triggered by the attraction of getting into geek mode.

I would be interested in the cabinet secretary’s reflections on this issue. She started to explore the concept of turnover as vanity and net profit as sanity. It strikes me as interesting that the majority of employees in both hospitality and retail businesses are women. Therefore, in looking at what data is gathered and used to make assessments, we also need to consider the role of women, because the majority of those employees are women. In that respect, and in the light of my earlier comment about turnover being vanity, looking at net profit and salaries, given that the employees are mostly women, would also yield some data.

My other reflection on what the cabinet secretary is suggesting is that, although consent is imperative, it will probably be very problematic, because a different pathway will be cleaved for businesses that are, in effect, paying their women employees less than they would if they were men.

I will move on from that issue, although other members might want to come in with supplementaries on that. I want to raise a question about the Scottish National Investment Bank and accounting rules, which has come up in committee a couple of times.

I understand that UK Government accounting rules prevent SNIB and similar agencies from reinvesting profits. I am keen to see that change, which goes back to your fundamental point about trying to create wealth in the economy.

Cabinet secretary, will you give us an update on any discussions that you have had on that with the UK Government? It has been suggested that the introduction of a national wealth fund would perhaps cause it to look again at the rules, although I must admit that I find it dispiriting that the UK Government would only look at changing them because of something that it has instigated rather than because of something that we have tried to progress in Scotland.

It will not be a surprise that I want to continue the discussion about women-led businesses. We touched on the issue earlier and the cabinet secretary commented about £4 million being made available and so on, but I want to get a general sense of the activity that is under way to support women-led businesses. It would be useful to have the latest status on the pathways fund, which we have talked about, before I ask my other questions.

I know that that is a long-held interest of yours, cabinet secretary—in fact, you instigated the work with Ana Stewart. I will be frank. To what extent do you think that that effort is enough, even including the ambition for next year?

In the manifesto that we signed up to at the start of this parliamentary term, there was a promise of a women’s business centre and a £50 million contribution to the cost of it. Clearly, we are some way from the actuality of that ambition.

I make the point because I think that you have been very clear that public sector pounds spent must grow or add value to the wider economy. It is abundantly clear that fewer women-led businesses reach the critical five-year mark. Critically, this is about their contribution to the economy. Do you think that that effort is enough, cabinet secretary? If not, what approaches will you deploy to increase the funding for next year, even above that £4 million?

Of course I accept that, but I have tried to explain that we cannot give up at the first hurdle and simply say that we will just reduce it, because, frankly, that does not encapsulate boldness and ambition. We are setting not only the Government’s agenda but the country’s agenda. That is why I would happily keep us aligned with the UN SDGs and be ambitious. I hope that that answers the member’s question.

I want to make a few comments about the importance of democracy. We are looking with increased concern at proxy actors in our geopolitics and, closer to home, at attempts to influence our politics by unelected billionaires. In its submission, the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Scotland highlighted that the proposed national outcomes and the wider NPF do not include any references to the values of democracy and participation beyond the value of acting in an open and transparent way. It described that as a “major omission”.

Arguably, even a few months ago, we could not have imagined that we might need to make space, perhaps following the statement of purpose, to include wording along the lines of “At all times, we shall act to protect the values of democracy, such as free speech and the right of assembly, and ensure that our laws and justice system provide robust guarantees for a democratic society”, but perhaps that is where we are.

I also point out that, based on his recent research with Carnegie UK, Dr Max French noted in his submission to the joint committee consultation that

“We could not find a single case where the National Outcomes and Indicators were actively used (not just passively referenced/aligned to) in the design, appraisal or evaluation of a Scottish Government national policy or strategy.”

I would therefore like to ask the Government two questions. First, how is the NPF used to inform discussions in Cabinet and elsewhere in Government? Secondly, how will the Government ensure that the NPF is always taken into account in policy decisions? It is only through the use of the NPF in informing decision making that its potential value might be realised, otherwise there is no point to it.

If the NPF is to enable effective policy decisions, it must be underpinned by effective data collection—I think that the cabinet secretary already knows that that is an interest of mine. An issue for the Scottish Government is that it neither holds nor controls all the data that it needs for proper policy development. Indeed, we need look only to our recent discussions about the two-child cap to see that.

The committee report also highlights concerns about the lack of disaggregated data from the equality impact assessment to enable a more gendered NPF and to interrogate the complexities of an intersectional approach. I am not proposing some new massive data-gathering industry, but I think that a move to utilising more open Government data would provide the basis for rapid acceleration of improvements, particularly when linked with artificial intelligence and technology. That is vital.

I note that the proposals for an updated NPF has “Equality and Human Rights” as one of its national outcomes. That seems to me to be inviting potential conflict, given that equality is a collective, society-wide outcome and could be set against individual-based human rights. As Professor Rowan Cruft observed in his time for reflection, human rights matter because they mean that

“the individual must not be sacrificed for the sake of society.”—[Official Report, 17 September 2024; c 1.]

That is another area that it would be beneficial to bear in mind.