Chamber and committees

Thank you.

I would like to ask about two specific consumer issues that are covered either in the work that you have done or potentially in your future work programme.

The first is the question of migration to digital land lines. I noticed that there is an impact assessment review of the work that you have done previously. To contextualise this, it is a huge issue in rural areas, including areas that I represent in Mid Scotland and Fife. I had a horrific case, just a few weeks ago, during storm Amy. An elderly lady fell in her house during a power cut caused by the storm. She did not have phone contact with the outside world, because she lives in an area with no mobile phone connectivity. She was, fortunately, called on by a neighbour, but the neighbour could not make contact with the Ambulance Service and had to drive her car 2 miles down the road to get a mobile signal. She then had to go back and wait completely in the dark, with no contact with the outside world, for the ambulance to turn up some hours later. That shows that the migration is a serious issue.

I am interested in understanding the impact of the work that you did in this area and the practical improvements that there have been, because issues are still arising.

Okay. Thank you.

Good morning. I want to follow up on Gordon MacDonald’s line of questioning about your public reach. My colleague was just getting to highlighting the concern, which many of us share, that Consumer Scotland’s profile with the wider public is not great.

I have been looking at the numbers on your social media reach. On X, Consumer Scotland is followed by 408 people. Your post from yesterday, on consumer protections in the used car market, has had 43 views since it went up. To put that into context, another consumer organisation with which people might be familiar is Which? UK, which has 123,600 followers on X. I know that X is not the beginning and end of the world, but that difference in numbers suggests that you are not really reaching people in the way that other consumer organisations are able to.

My sense is that more work clearly needs to be done. I know that Openreach has a service that will provide people with battery back-up for digital land lines, so that, even in the event of a power cut, they can still use them. However, I am not sure that awareness of that service is particularly high. Certainly, in the case that I referred to, the lady did not have that service, so we need much more proactivity on that.

That was helpful. Let me ask you about another issue. Your forward work programme talks about work on the issue of postal services, in relation to which a lot of change is coming down the track. David, you mentioned earlier the work that you are doing or have done around online markets, and in recent years we have seen an explosion in the number of home delivery companies. I do not know whether your work on postal services also covers home delivery companies or whether that is a separate piece of work that you have done or might be looking at doing.

I could cite lots of cases that have come to me because delivery is not happening, delivery has been made to the wrong address or delivery companies are claiming they have delivered but they have not. Evri seems to be a particularly poor exemplar in that respect. In fact, The Courier ran a story about it two weeks ago, with some examples from across Tayside of Evri just not performing.

Going back to the more general theme that I started on, which has been a bit of a theme in this committee, you say that you have done work on that and you are encouraging better practice. I guess that committee members are trying to get to the value of your organisation. What are you actually doing that will make a difference for consumers?

There are three things that I would like to ask about, all of which arise from evidence that the committee has taken in the past couple of weeks.

I will start by asking about support for businesses in the defence sector. As you know, defence is a key strength of the Scottish economy; it is one in which we have seen a lot of good news recently in terms of winning international orders; and it is an area in which the opportunity for growth is substantial because of the international situation and the fact that, across the western world, countries are increasing defence expenditure. In an area in which we have expertise, knowledge and experience, we can do much better.

The Scottish Government has dropped the previous policy about not funding munitions—I will not ask you about that, because it is past history. A new policy is in place in relation to not supporting companies that might have a connection with exports to Israel. I asked Scottish Enterprise about that when it came to the committee on 17 September. Its answers were not particularly clear about where that policy sits. In response to my questions, Adrian Gillespie said:

“We are working through the implications of the changes that have been made recently ... We need to work through which companies are affected by that.”—[Official Report, Economy and Fair Work Committee, 17 September 2025; c 7.]

Can you be clear about what exactly the Scottish Government policy is and what the practical impact of that is in terms of support from public bodies such as Scottish Enterprise and Skills Development Scotland?

That is very helpful. Let me ask you to illustrate that with an example, if you can. You will be very familiar with Leonardo in Edinburgh, which is a very large defence contractor that supplies radar systems, including to Lockheed Martin. In the past, it has been criticised because some of the Lockheed Martin planes end up in Israel. Does your policy mean that a company such as Leonardo could not be supported through the public bodies that you referred to?

Thank you.

I have a second question, which arises from some of the evidence that we took last week from the Scottish National Investment Bank. I asked about a specific investment that it has made in Gresham House, which is the largest commercial forester in the United Kingdom. I believe that it is now Scotland’s second-largest landowner, so it is a very substantial enterprise. It has assets under management that are worth £8.7 billion, and its ambition is to grow that figure to £200 billion by 2030. The Scottish National Investment Bank has given it £50 million of public money to assist with the purchase of Todrig and Whitslade, which is an estate in the Borders. Why do we need to spend taxpayers’ money supporting such a large organisation to purchase land?

That is absolutely correct. Those amendments were ruled out of scope. That bill might have been an opportunity to do something about this issue. I believe that five councils have now looked at the levy and decided not to proceed or to pause. I understand that, when Argyll and Bute Council met last week, one of the reasons that it decided to pause was the confusion. It did not want to take a decision until it knew where this would end up. In that case, would it be sensible to have a moratorium on any further decisions, given that we do not know what the options might be?