Chamber and committees

No—that sounds like the number of views. It does not matter.

In the previous year’s annual report, 18,767 views translated to 3,786 unique users. Maybe you could come back to us with that figure, but it is not important.

Before I bring in our deputy convener, Murdo Fraser has a supplementary question.

I will come on to those points about engagement. From your response, it sounds as though you are measuring your influence on other parts of the public sector as an outcome, but are not measuring benefits to consumers. I think that most people would describe the former as an output rather than an outcome. In your opening statement, you described your objective as creating benefits to consumers in Scotland, but nothing in your answer really describes such benefits, unless I am missing something.

Do you understand that, in terms of presentation, that is an issue for us? If we hear the chair of a board providing answers of a detailed operational nature, at least it is incumbent on us to ask whether there is an appropriate separation. This is not the first time that I have made that observation.

Okay, so you have increased that proportion of your budget.

It strikes me that an awful lot of your answers have relied upon the work that you fund those organisations to do, as well as your investigations. However, you are still spending a substantial amount of money internally. Critically, of the money that is spent internally, only the money for two full-time equivalent posts is being spent on those investigations. Do you think that that balance of expenditure reflects the focus on outcomes that, overall, this committee is asking you to demonstrate?

To cut through the subtext, people around this committee table can go to lots of places to get analysis and narration of public policy. However, when we see public money being spent, we want to see action and outcomes. That is our frustration. Particularly given that you stated that one of your top risks is stability, we wanted a clear demonstration of that.

Finally, Mr Wilson, it has been striking through this session that you have been the one providing a lot of the answers. When you have done that, you have used the word “we” an awful lot, in particular regarding quite detailed operational matters such as how the investigations and the research has been conducted and the effect that it has had. It is an important principle of governance that the chair and the board are independent of the body itself, so that they can provide oversight. That is particularly important, given that the public are trusting you to oversee the judicious use of public funds and taxpayers’ money.

Given your closeness and proximity to the body, do you believe that you have sufficient independence from the day-to-day operations in your role as chair of the board?

We are pleased to be joined by Kate Forbes, the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Gaelic, alongside Scottish Government officials Colin Cook, who is the director of economic development, and Aidan Grisewood, who is the director of jobs and wellbeing economy.

We will launch straight into questions after I open with an observation.

Over recent weeks, we have been taking evidence from enterprise agencies and the Scottish National Investment Bank. It has struck me that they are all clearly doing lots of good work in relation to attempting to take direct action and promote economic outcomes, but I question how well co-ordinated that activity is, because they all seem to be reporting on different metrics and in different ways.

If we compare ourselves internationally, 1,300 people work for Scottish Enterprise alone, which compares to the around 700 people who work for Business Finland. Enterprise Singapore employs around 2,000 people, which is slightly less than the total number of people who work across Singapore’s enterprise agencies.

Could we do a better job of joining up such activity? Do we get a good bang for our buck from our enterprise agencies?

The skills gap that Gordon MacDonald and I have identified during the preceding set of questions is our ability to lip-read.

I hand over to Gordon MacDonald.

Given the centrality of productivity, it strikes me that, for the sake of a day, the report’s publication date could be looked at.

I recognise that the numbers cover a 20-year period, but you might have seen the article in the Financial Times in June that focused on London’s productivity over the past four years. I will fully declare that it is based on Office for National Statistics data and, unfortunately, its regional breakdowns take some time to come through, so it only covers 2019 to 2023. The article focused on the fact that London’s productivity decreased in that period, but it also very clearly showed that Scotland’s labour productivity growth was fourth from bottom, at 0.25 per cent, narrowly ahead of Wales, the West Midlands and London but behind the north-west, which led the pack with almost 2.5 per cent growth.

The point is that, yes, you can look at a longer period, but more recently, the regional comparisons appear to show some issues with Scotland’s productivity. First, do you recognise that? Secondly, to come back to the point about context, should we look more closely at Scotland’s productivity growth compared to that of other regions and nations of the UK?