Chamber and committees

I will bring in Aidan Grisewood on this.

I note that it is sometimes a question of presentation. Where we have very disparate programmes, it is a question of trying to bring them together in one place. For example, we have quite good granular data on gender in and around employability schemes, and we also have some on Techscaler. However, those are simply sitting as individual pots, rather than being brought together.

Aidan, do you have any thoughts?

I will make one point that Stephen Kerr will know already: it is an industry-led investment summit. I am delighted about that, because it means that the summit involves the City of London and Scottish Financial Enterprise maximising their networks with the support of both Governments.

You asked what we want to get out of that. There are a couple of things. You will know that, in my approach to investment, I have been trying to improve on three areas. One of them is a targeted and more strategic approach to investors. We are really good at speaking to the people whom we know about; we are not as good at speaking to the people whom we do not know. At next week’s investment summit, we anticipate a lot of investors who have not so far been active in Scotland and who are interested in getting in. This week alone, I have engaged with some of those investors who are looking to Scotland for the first time. On the first pillar—the investor relationship part—I hope that more strategic targeted engagement with those whom we do not yet know will be one of the results.

The second part is showcasing Scotland. There is a lot of familiarity with areas of Scotland that are open for investment; it is pretty well known that we are making the energy transition and that we have big industries such as whisky and salmon. However, what about our life sciences industry? We are going to showcase that. What about what we are trying to do in and around attracting private investment for housing? We can showcase that. We can showcase, to those who know us and those who do not, new areas of interest. That is not the endgame—that is just revealing what is available.

The third pillar is the area that I am most interested in: how do we build on the relationships that are established next week and follow up on those? My approach is that, although we have the initial conversation with a potential investor, it is not the politician who does the deal. We then bring in the experts in Government, often with the private sector, to sit down with those investors and ask what they need. Do they need some sort of public-private structured arrangement? Are there a lot of hurdles in their way that they need help from us to knock down? Do they need contacts? The follow-up is the most critical element.

What would I like to get out of that? I would like us to be able to identify—probably not next week, but in six months to a year—significant millions that have been pledged as investment in Scotland as a result of those early conversations.

I always orient my thinking around the billions, I am afraid—

In terms of my overall portfolio?

It is probably a little bit less, if you are talking about revenue funding, unless somebody has the figures to hand.

If you look at the figures for the first half of this year—

Absolutely.

Prior to Covid, we had the digital boost scheme, which I think has come up at the committee previously. It consisted of low-level or entry-level support for digitalisation.

We have now moved to consider how far we can support businesses and the public sector—there being a big question around productivity in the public sector, too; in other words, it is a big contributor to productivity—through artificial intelligence, for instance. For some businesses, adopting or working with AI will be second nature, whereas it will be extremely foreign for other businesses. Richard Lochhead is leading the AI Scotland programme to support businesses.

You are absolutely right—I think that there is a lot more agreement here than otherwise—but that begs the question about the how.

For definition purposes, I see the NSET in terms of its six pillars, and I see those six pillars as being for the entire economy directorate. We could use our economic strategy as a proxy for the NSET.

This is what I communicate to all our enterprise agencies and anyone who has the responsibility for delivering our economic strategy: we have to focus on the Government’s priorities as stated in the NSET. Some of those have the climate approach inherent in their stated aim. It might be more difficult to see how skilled work is specifically a climate objective, but it is still critical to us getting to our net zero objectives.

Those objectives are going to have to fit within the carbon budget and the financial budget. We have set out our economic strategy, and that is what I expect all parts of the public sector to be delivering. They will all have to fit into a financial budget and carbon budget.

The financial budget is a challenge every year. We always want to do more than we can do, and that can also be applied to the carbon budgets. Every year, there will always be more that we want to do than we can do, but we have to fit into the carbon budget.

We are at the early stages of the financial budget process. I have a long list of things that I would like to see, but I doubt that I will be able to get every single one of them into the full cost. We try to deliver as much of it as possible. That means that we have to prioritise, and we can prioritise only within our stated aims.

The process is quite clear. Both budgeting processes run in parallel, and I know what we need to achieve within our six stated aims, and those budget processes need to deliver on those aims within the envelope that we will have, but the envelope is not unlimited.