Chamber and committees

This is not politicking. If Bob Doris does not want to listen to me, maybe he should listen to one of his own esteemed colleagues:

“This issue has been handled in the most cack handed way possible by the Scottish government and is seriously damaging its credibility.”

Those are not my words, but the words of Alex Neil—a former Scottish National Party minister, who was responsible for planning for the Scottish Government. If he is saying that, perhaps we need to consider whether this has been cack-handed and has damaged the Government’s credibility.

Let us take a moment and take a step back, because we do not need to be planning experts or intimately aware of the ins and outs of planning to wonder whether this is the right thing to do. This is Loch Lomond—a loch so bonnie that they created a song for it, and the place where we decided to create our first national park, in 2002. As to the thought that this is the place to create a theme park, Flamingo Land, with a private zoo operator and theme park operator, where they would create two hotels, 100 lodges and more than 300 parking places, in a national park designed to protect an area’s natural heritage and beauty—come on. We do not need to think about that for too long to realise that there are things to see here, which is why we have heard many contributions setting out the length of time that this has taken and the saga that this has been, and asking how on earth we have got here.

My colleague Jackie Baillie set out in some detail the issues around flooding and road capacity. Believe me, you do not need to be local to know about the issues around the local roads. Many of us will have been stuck in traffic jams and gridlocks around Loch Lomond. The thought that we could install 100 additional lodges and the additional road requirement without batting an eyelid, with a couple of changes to a roundabout, is a nonsense. Then there is the loss of natural habitats and forests. This simply is not credible, and it should not have got this far before it was called into question.

The thought that a reporter—one person—can overturn a decision that was made unanimously by the park authority is also not credible. A number of contributors made that point.

The reception that I hosted last night on behalf of the CBI has been referenced. A key point that I made at that was that, in order to deliver growth, we very much need a shared agenda between businesses and the private sector and Government and politicians. It is in everyone’s interests both in driving the tax revenues that we need and in delivering the public service that, ultimately, businesses depend on. Critical to that is making sure that we have high-growth, innovative countries—sorry. I meant companies, not countries; there has been too much talk of Singapore.

That is why I welcome the debate, and I thank the Government for bringing it, because it is useful to talk about the type of economy that we need and the strategic issues that we want—

Michelle Thomson (Falkirk East) (SNP) rose—

I will allow Mr Fraser to defend his numbers; I was just providing some other context. We should look at the measure that the Deputy First Minister presented, but it is just one measure. All that I am asking for is a more holistic view.

The Scottish technology ecosystem report—STER—was very useful and important, but I ask the Government to question whether we are implementing every element of it as much as we could. There are a number of areas where we could go further, not least of which is ensuring that we embed the right skills in the education system and that we are delivering more computing science teachers.

We have already touched on the interfaces with higher education. There are still issues for innovation in that area, and it is good that the Deputy First Minister addressed that. However, there are still too many barriers, including that many higher education institutions are simply taking too high an equity stake in spin-outs, and those equity stakes are simply getting in the way of companies that are going for series A investment and so on.

We also need to look beyond technology start-ups. It was interesting that, again, we have had a presentation from the Deputy First Minister that has focused on that. It is absolutely right that we focus on technology start-ups, but they are not the only type of start-up. Critically, other areas where we seek to develop high-growth businesses, such as advanced manufacturing, life sciences, and food and drink, are more capital intensive. In those areas, capital equipment and plant are more expensive than they are for technology firms. The barriers between the different stages of the pipeline, as set out in the Scottish technology ecosystem report, are much higher for those sorts of capital-intensive businesses, and we need a renewed focus on how we help them to thrive.

I point out that the contrast that the Deputy First Minister made between small and medium-sized enterprises and high-growth start-ups is interesting. There are two ways of looking at that. There is a lot of value in high-growth technology start-ups, but the other way of looking at those figures is that we have an issue with growth across the broad range of SMEs. As well as looking at high-growth start-ups, we must look at ways in which we can help all small and medium-sized enterprises to grow.

As John Tsoukalas’s report on Scotland’s productivity challenge sets out, 90 per cent of Scottish businesses have seen no growth during the past two decades. We must develop approaches that help all businesses to invest and grow and help all businesses of all sizes to reach their potential. With that, I need to close.

I move amendment S6M-17785.2, to insert at end:

“; believes that Scottish businesses across sectors have not had adequate support from the Scottish Government to break down barriers to innovation, and that support must extend beyond start-up stage to provide advice and investment for scaling up; notes that the proportion of businesses in Scotland that are innovating, that is those introducing or developing a new product, service or process, has fallen from 50% in 2012-14 to just 32% in 2020-22, and calls on the Scottish Government to reform Scotland’s economic agencies to better support entrepreneurs and innovation in sectors across Scotland, including capital intensive sectors like life sciences and advanced manufacturing.”

Your party voted against the money at Westminster.

Already, clearly, I have attracted an intervention from Michelle Thomson.

That was quite a leap. What we need is a coherent industrial strategy. It was a little disappointing earlier to hear the Deputy First Minister dodge the point about defence spending, for example, because, ultimately, we need coherence. The strategic defence review—[Interruption.] No, engineers is just one component. We need a balanced immigration policy. That is what the UK Government has sought to set out in terms of attracting people with the skills that we need. We need balance and coherence, which is what industrial strategy delivers.

I will make a little bit of progress.

In order to have a debate such as this, we need context and realism about where we currently sit. Success stories are welcome, and I share the Deputy First Minister’s congratulations and the celebration of the success that we have had. However, we need to reflect on not just the numbers that Murdo Fraser set out, but those of high-growth businesses. There has been an increase in the proportion of Scottish businesses that are high growth; it is up from 3 per cent to 3.2 per cent. However, when it comes to the number of high-growth businesses, we are 11th among the UK’s nations and regions.

I want to make just a touch of progress.

Likewise, the business innovation rate has fallen from 50 per cent to 32 per cent in recent years. In business-related research and development, Scotland is in the third quartile of regions and nations. As I pointed out in an intervention, the number of our patent applications has again been falling.

We have success stories and we must celebrate them, but there is an awful lot more work to do.

I agree that we should champion success but, to truly succeed, we also need to acknowledge that there are issues. The Deputy First Minister might quote those figures, but we know, too, that the value of Scottish deals at £10 million and above actually fell by 69 per cent in 2022-23. Likewise, we know that other measures, such as the number of patents, have been falling. Does the Deputy First Minister not need to recognise the whole picture, not just the bits that show success? We need to show the weaknesses, too.

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention on that point?