Chamber and committees

Since I took over interim responsibilities, the NSET board has met on at least two occasions, if my memory serves me right. I know that another meeting is coming up, because I have preparatory discussions for it tomorrow. Mr Halcro Johnston is absolutely correct that minutes should be published. If they are not up there, I apologise for that, and we will rectify the situation as soon as we can.

The investor panel met in December. I am not sure when the next meeting is. Richard Rollinson might be able to help with that.

The process has been ongoing. In the bank’s last appointment consideration a candidate emerged, but decided not to take the post. That is the fairest way for me to capture what happened. Sarah Roughead continues to exercise chief executive responsibilities, under the leadership of Willie Watt as chair of the Scottish National Investment Bank, and the bank continues to make the progress that the Government envisaged. The recruitment process continues.

It will be about assisting the domestic supply chain. Just before Christmas, a range of interested parties, principally from the Government and Scottish Enterprise, along with ministers—Michael Matheson and Ivan McKee were involved in the discussions—met to ensure that we have an aligned approach to the development of the hydrogen proposition in Scotland. Mr McKee and I met the board of Scottish Enterprise shortly before Christmas for its annual strategy discussion, and we spent most of that meeting speaking about hydrogen and the net zero opportunities. Scottish Enterprise, with the leadership of Adrian Gillespie as chief executive, who has formidable experience in that area, will be concentrating and focusing on that proposition.

It is important that I put a few things on the record about those numbers. For example, the Scottish Enterprise resource budget is projected to increase from £135 million to £141 million. The budget for Highlands and Islands Enterprise is projected and resourced to increase from £29.6 million to £29.8 million. The South of Scotland Enterprise budget is projected to increase from £14.8 million to £15.1 million. All three of the enterprise agencies’ budgets are projected to increase in cash terms.

The process is being undertaken by recruitment consultants, so the short answer is yes.

We would like the process to be completed as soon as possible, but only with the right candidate.

I cannot allocate money that I do not have, Mr Halcro Johnston. I can do my level best to fulfil the needs of the budget cycle. I have had to increase tax to enable myself to meet all the commitments that I am taking forward. I have taken some hard decisions to enable us to have the position that we have. I have great confidence in VisitScotland.

It is also really important to recognise the strength of the investment and commitment made by the tourism sector itself. Scotland’s tourism proposition is of formidably better quality now because of the investments that have been made by a range of private organisations over many years. The Scottish National Investment Bank has taken some significant steps to assist that. VisitScotland has invested in a major tourism and visitor development that will enable people to develop their surfing skills at Ratho, on the outskirts of Edinburgh. That is not a sentence that I ever thought I would utter, but I have uttered it.

I very much agree with that. I saw the comments that Mark Logan put on record about his involvement in the company, so I assume that to be correct. There should be transparency on these points. The directors of any public bodies such as Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and South of Scotland Enterprise will have publicly declarable registers of interest. That should all be done transparently.

However, to make a slightly different point, I do not view it as inappropriate for people in those roles to be involved in wider activity, because if they were not, they would not bring as much experience and expertise to the work. It is almost a catch-22 situation. The way to manage that is to have transparent declarations of such things.

We will see it from the significant amount of data that is available on the labour market, quite a lot of which I have gone through this morning. We will see, at a sectoral level, the numbers of jobs and the gross value added that will come from particular employment. That will clearly flow into the productive capacity of the Scottish economy. Data sets are available that will enable us to see all that information and to make a judgment about how much has been realised in Scotland. It will also be clear from the implications for supply chains the extent to which we are seeing such projects turning into economic reality on the ground.

There are two distinct questions in the points that Fiona Hyslop raises. First, on the range of the chief entrepreneur, I want to ensure that he has the widest possible scope within Government to try to help us improve the technological transformation of Government and ensure that our ways of working are as efficient as they possibly can be. I talk to Mark Logan regularly and benefit from his thinking. I am doing a lot of work on public sector reform, which will be essential in the realisation of the budget, so there will be ever more involvement. I want to see that happen within the broadest possible range.

On the second question, on intellectual property, I think that our universities are slightly more relaxed about such questions than they used to be. That does not mean to say that the position is perfect. Obviously intellectual property is a formidable asset in some circumstances, and some start-ups that have emerged from universities have generated enormous economic benefit because they have involved such good developments.

Mark Logan’s work is partly about trying to encourage more of that, and more university research and business dialogue. We might look at universities now, and some of the arrangements that they have in place. Just a few weeks ago, I was visiting the Mazumdar-Shaw advanced research centre at the University of Glasgow. The centre is a fabulous investment, resulting from a significant financial donation by Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and her late husband John Shaw. In partnership with the University of Glasgow, it is developing an exciting research collaborative environment. Other universities will have such facilities—for example, the University of Edinburgh has the Bayes centre, which is modelled on a similar concept.

Those meeting points—if I can call them that—are a great forum for the development of research propositions. I think that we can be optimistic that those propositions will generate significant and productive benefits for the Scottish economy.