Chamber and committees

Green cement is obviously a focus for the sector. It presents a huge investment and technical challenge, but we have had conversations with the sector on how we move forward with it.

We are conscious of the need to ensure that there is clarity on funding streams from Government and from agencies, that we align those and that we minimise any potential for confusion or clutter within that.

There is an action in the national strategy to look at business support and to understand where funds do similar jobs. That is to ensure that we have the right number of funds to deliver what we need and that we do not make the landscape any more cluttered than it needs to be.

However, it is important to recognise that different businesses are looking for different types of support for different challenges. We have focused on different challenges and opportunities in different sectors. To some extent, there will be a number of support mechanisms, but we are absolutely seized of the need to make that as simple as possible. We are doing that from a business perspective, so that businesses can navigate things more easily, and we are doing it from a public sector perspective, to make sure that things are as efficient as possible on delivery.

Dermot Rhatigan and others are working on a specific programme to streamline the funding streams, and I am happy to talk more about that if you would like me to go into more detail.

It very much is, and Alpha Solway did great work during and after the pandemic. We engaged very closely with it to understand the situation of the business. The reality is not that we are buying PPE from somewhere else in Scotland; we are just not buying any PPE. Everybody understands that. We are all sat here not wearing masks, but that would not have been the case six months or a year ago. The demand for PPE is just not there. Obviously, we are not going to use public money to buy a product that has a lifespan, put it on shelves and wait for it to expire when we do not need to do that. Demand is the issue.

The strategic long-term intent is clear, and a big part of the investment that Alpha Solway has made with Scottish public sector support has been in its melt-blowing facility, which allows it to vertically integrate back up the supply chain. That means that its supply chain is more resilient, that it does not need to rely on others for material supply and that the facility, with that significant investment, will be there for the future, so as and when PPE requirements increase again, conversations will take place and orders will start to flow again.

I am very clear that, if any parts of the public sector outside of our scope continue to purchase PPE from outside the Scottish supply chain, I would be interested in having a conversation with them. I have brought that to the attention of the rest of the Scottish public sector in writing, so that we can understand whether that is happening, but we have seen no evidence of that.

Graeme Cook, do you want to comment on any other procurement aspects?

Indeed.

Yes. The total number of economically inactive people is 21.6 per cent, which is 750,000 people or thereabouts.

There are still challenges, and the biggest reason why there are challenges is the immigration policy. Without doubt, that is the single biggest issue in this area—everybody will tell you that; businesses and everyone else.

Finding UK Government ministers to engage with has been a challenge over the past few weeks, as you can appreciate. Much of that communication has not been responded to and, when it has been, our view has been that the UK Government is not doing what it needs to do to address the specifics of those issues. As I said, we continue to take every opportunity to press it on that. Unfortunately, its responses have been less than helpful and, if anything, they have shown that the UK Government is going in the wrong direction, as is reflected in what UK Government ministers have said in recent days and weeks.

There is clarity on the offer around green ports, in terms of land and buildings transaction tax and the UK Government’s commitments on national insurance contributions. That is already clearly identified, and we managed to secure the same offer that was made to English ports.

One of the issues around the margin on that is that much of that was determined on fixed time periods with dates. Clearly, because of the delays, we are looking to see whether some of those dates can be extended, to make sure that we get the full benefit.

Part of the complexity has been the Truss Administration announcements on investment zones, which the new Administration is having a look at, to understand where it wants to go with that proposal. Even under the Truss Administration, there was a lack of clarity on what an investment zone was and what it would deliver. At one point, it looked as if it might even have more benefits than a green port or free port, which was all a bit strange. We are waiting for clarity on what that process looks like and whether it even exists. That is another dimension of complexity and uncertainty on which we are waiting for some clarification from the UK Government.

Obviously, that is a significant issue. As you rightly said, it is a reserved area. As we move forward on the constitutional agenda, that is an area of regulation on which it is important that we are clear about where we would position ourselves following independence, and the opportunity that we would take to use those powers to address such issues. We would have a very different approach. It is important that we take forward that work.

The UK Government will control the free ports in England. We can look at the effects and impacts of that but, as I said earlier, we had clear red lines around the awarding process and the operation of green ports in Scotland. Those red lines included a number of factors relating to net zero, fair work and controls to make sure that the process was such that the risk of the dangers that we are all alive to was minimised.

We remain focused on the issue. As we roll out the green free port programme—which I hope that we will do sooner rather than later—you can rest assured that we will continue our efforts to make sure that there is no degradation of standards across a range of policy areas, including on tax evasion.

Our economic inactivity rate was higher for quite a long time, but it has been on a downward trend and has now gone below the UK rate.