Question reference: S6W-23239
- Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 27 November 2023
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Current status: Answered by Neil Gray on 8 December 2023
Question
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the Scottish National Party manifesto commitment to invest £50 million to create a Women's Business Centre, how much has been invested to date; what that investment has been spent on; what the defined (a) objectives were and (b) measurables are; how many women have been assisted "to develop their pioneering business idea"; where any such women and their businesses are located; whether it has achieved the aim of having more women in business, and, if so, how that has been measured.
Answer
The idea for a Women’s Business Centre was among a suite of options considered in the review led by Ana Stewart culminating in the publication of Pathways for a New Approach to Women in Entrepreneurship. The Pathways report was published in February 2023 following extensive consultation and contained a wide range of recommendations on provision of advice and support, access to finance and investment as well as entrepreneurial education and use of disaggregated data. As that report did not recommend the establishment of a Women’s Business Centre we will now work to progress the recommendations from Pathways instead. In June 2023 the Scottish Government accepted the Pathways report in full and began work to implement its key recommendations. The first phase of that work established the Pathways Pre-Start Fund to support more women, and other under-represented groups, into business ownership and to realise their entrepreneurial potential. The 20 projects receiving funding have been published at Pathways Pre-Start Fund: funded programmes - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)