Chamber and committees

What kind of questions have you asked?

I think that that is an entirely reasonable proposition, but I will take it away and consider it in detail.

We have a continuing commitment to the women’s business centre. However, for completeness, the Government believes that we should look at how we will take that forward in the light of Ana Stewart’s review.

One of the points that I put on the record when I set out the budget statement to Parliament was that, given the financial challenges that we face, there might well be some policy commitments that take us longer to deliver than we would have wanted, simply due to the financial pressures, including higher inflation, with which we are wrestling.

I expect the bank to invest in companies that will deliver economic and employment benefits to Scotland, and that investments will generate financial returns for the bank, so that we see a return on our investment that can then be utilised in future years for long-term patient investment.

Use of financial transactions is relevant to the United Kingdom Government’s current arrangements and plans. The Scottish National Investment Bank is an effective means for the Government to utilise the financial transactions funding that is made available by the United Kingdom Government. Financial transactions cannot be readily used for many other aspects of public sector activity, so that arrangement is quite suitable.

I am not privy to the future direction of United Kingdom Government policy on the matter, but the option remains available for the Scottish Government to continue its investment alternatively through traditional capital investment in the Scottish National Investment Bank.

For completeness I point out, on the earlier points that I made on levering in investment, that the bank has so far committed £366 million to 24 projects, which has levered in £526 million of private sector investment. I say that to provide some detail on the point that I made about the bank being an enabler—its being able, by its actions, to encourage and enable investment from other sources.

I want to provide reassurance to the committee on that question. One of VisitScotland’s formidable strengths is the brand marketing activity that it has done by itself. VisitScotland has also gathered together the marketing activity of a range of organisations—essentially, to promote Scotland to a wider audience. That has been a long-term ambition of the Government; Ms Hyslop played a significant role in enabling it to happen.

VisitScotland’s record speaks for itself. It has an absolutely colossal reputation for marketing success and marketing recognition from many of its activities. That has persuaded a number of organisations to collaborate with VisitScotland through pooling resources to support international marketing activity.

I can reassure the committee on two fronts. First, VisitScotland is able to undertake domestic and international marketing activity. Secondly, it can do so in concert with a range of other organisations and can, I contend, as a consequence deliver much more effectively.

To put VisitScotland’s financial position into context, I highlight the fact that there has in recent years been a strategic shift in VisitScotland’s activity, in the direction of digital marketing. I do not mean this disrespectfully but, in some respects, the model for distribution of tourism and marketing information around the country in the past was a bit of a bricks-and-mortar model. Now, it is a much more digital model that can deliver much greater value for public expenditure.

It does not necessarily follow that spending more money achieves better results. I do not think that follows. What matters is effectiveness, and VisitScotland is a supremely effective organisation.

That will vary around the country. Let me provide the committee with an example of a discussion that I had with the convention of the Highlands and Islands last autumn. I have chaired the convention of the Highlands and Islands on every occasion that it has met in the past 15 years—since we entered Government in 2007. I have rarely taken part in a more optimistic conversation about economic prospects in the Highlands and Islands; despite all the challenges, it really was a very buoyant conversation about opportunities.

However, one of the common themes of concern about the realisation of those economic opportunities was the availability of housing and of people. It was not just about the availability of affordable housing; it was about housing across all the different strands of the market, simply because of the challenges of delivery in more sparsely populated areas.

It is a different proposition to develop sites in West Lothian, for example, where vast housing expansion is being undertaken, compared to sites that might be 10 or 12 houses in a rural part of the Highlands and Islands. The availability of housing and the ability to put in place specific solutions—I stress that it is not just about the affordable housing programme but applies to other stages of the market—as well as the availability of people, are concerns. That is a challenge in many other parts of the country.

The committee will be familiar with the Government’s concerns about the loss of migration as a consequence of the Brexit process. We are undoubtedly seeing greater pressure on our labour market as a consequence of the reduction in the number of people who are available. That emphasises the importance of trying to maximise the potential of the people who are living here and enabling them to be economically active.

As I said, I think that we are seeing the early signs of progress on that. It is a fundamental part of the Government’s policy programme to do more in that respect, because that will help us to address the issue of child poverty in our society by enabling parents to enter the labour market. By ensuring that there are good economic and employment opportunities for young people in our economy, we can enable more people to join the labour market.

For the record, the VisitScotland resource budget has gone from £41.4 million to £41.6 million, so it has increased slightly in cash terms. I put that on the record.

VisitScotland does a fabulous job. It is a really successful agency. It is well led and its marketing propositions are absolutely first class and inspiring. VisitScotland wins a host of global awards and recognition because of its strengths, which helps our competitiveness.

We will set out letters of guidance to the boards of the three organisations that are involved, which will reflect the priorities of the national strategy for economic transformation. The agenda will be entirely consistent with the Government’s wider agenda. We will look to those organisations to take forward those priorities, as they always do, within the constraints of the resources that we are able to make available to them. That might involve organisations changing the way in which they work and moving to more digital propositions—there is scope for greater digital propositions in the delivery of services.

Fundamentally, as I said in answer to Fiona Hyslop, we want the enterprise agencies to be engaged in working directly with companies to increase and improve their performance.