Chamber and committees

I just wanted to understand that. I will ask about two broad issues. First, how did we get here and, secondly, what can be done? I will delve into the points that Derek Thomson brought up around the Subsidy Control Act 2022 and the art of the possible. On how we got here, we have some numbers in front of us. It basically looks like the business has struggled to recover to pre-pandemic volumes. The pre-pandemic volume of buses was around 1,200 a year, and the business has been unable to recover to that level. Is that the correct assessment, or are there other factors that we should be aware of and be looking at?

On that, I am looking at the head count numbers and the balance between production and selling and administration. Compared with pre-pandemic levels, production head count is lower, but selling and admin are considerably higher. Is there a question here about the focus of the business? Is it focusing more on the administrative side of things as opposed to the production side, or is that a red herring? I apologise if I am asking daft laddie questions.

I will ask a question that I have asked in private. The last thing that you need is politicians describing the situation—you need politicians to do things. There are things for the UK Government to do and there are things for the Scottish Government to do. Are there things that MSPs could be doing individually to support your efforts to try either to win contracts or find solutions? What are the asks that you would make of us as MSPs?

That would be great.

I guess that I am saying that we should update existing guidance or legislation. I am not saying that it should be replaced; I am saying only that it should be updated.

I also wonder whether the bill could update the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, as has already been alluded to. When we talk to community organisations, we sense that there is a feeling that, despite the mechanism in that act, public authorities do not necessarily help them to make their bids, let alone local authorities and other public bodies such as health boards baking into their service design the possibility of the 2015 act—for example, its community asset transfer powers—being used in relation to running parts of their public service delivery.

Could there be an update to the 2015 act to create obligations to facilitate and enable such bids and to consider the provisions of the act and community wealth building as part of public service design and implementation?

I am interested in understanding the scope of your representation on site. What is the breakdown of the areas that the two unions represent?

Derek, you raised points about China and considerations under the Subsidy Control Act 2022. My understanding is that you can take into consideration social value and you can also, as you say, provide direct awards. You can also treat bids from non-treaty countries differently from bids from treaty countries, which China is not. I think that we all know the importance of encouraging people on to public transport and that transport should be seen as being absolutely critical to the economy. Could or should more conditionality have been placed on the grants provided by Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Government? Do you share my understanding of what the 2022 act might allow us to do going forward?

The second suggestion is the one that you alluded to. What we need, in part, is a change in the procurement approach. Is there a possibility that, rather than only changing the narration of what is going on in procurement—which is what the report would do—there could be a change in the structure of the procurement that is undertaken by local authorities and other public bodies? The structure could require them to do some initial work to explain their procurement requirements, either for particular procurement exercises or more generally, and it could require them, in their work on how bids are assessed, to think in particular about social value, as that is a permitted reason for granting and awarding contracts, over and above simple financial value.

I will ask the daft laddie question. We have had LCMs on the bill in front of us a number of times and I think that we are into the realms of some very technical aspects of both legislation and intergovernmental relations. Could you outline what precisely the bill will do and what the Government is concerned that it will not be able to do, with some examples? I understand that metrology is essentially about the regulation particularly of measures and metrics around product standards. Could you explain to me in broad terms, so that we can recap and be clear about what we are talking about, what that is and give some examples of the Scottish Government’s concerns?

I understand that in broad terms, but we are talking about a bill that is about regulating how those products are packaged and the information that is presented to consumers or purchasers, because quite often, those sorts of products will be commercial. In an earlier answer, you stated a concern about divergence on that point from EU requirements, and we can see that we would not want to have fundamentally different packaging with different measures that gets in the way of selling products into those markets. If that is true for European markets, is that not also true for wider UK markets?

Are the points that you raised on the concerns about divergence from the EU not equally applicable to divergence from UK standards? Is that not where the balance that the UK Government and the Scottish Government are seeking to address lies? Is there not a common thread between your concerns about EU divergence and perhaps some of the UK Government’s concerns about internal market divergence?