Chamber and committees

Thank you, Carolyn. We will discuss at a future meeting some of the issues that you have raised.

I ask witnesses to be concise in their replies, so that we can get through as much business as possible.

Are you undertaking work to support businesses to understand the new trading environment?

Thank you, Peter. Carolyn, would you like to come in?

Thank you. Would Peter Mowforth like to come in?

We are coming up to an election this week, so there might be some questions that you are not comfortable addressing, but do you find that there is variation across Scotland in the support that Business Gateway is asked to provide to retail—you do not have to mention places—or is it the same?

That is no problem.

I will bring in Michelle Thomson, who is interested in some of the issues that you have raised, and I will then bring in Gordon MacDonald.

A level playing field has been mentioned. Stuart Mackinnon mentioned the giants in online retailing that have been seen as drawing business away from high streets and bricks-and-mortar businesses. Is this the wrong time to introduce an online sales tax? Are we in a more mixed phase of retail, in which we are trying to encourage businesses on high streets to do more online sales, or should online-only sales be taxed and feed into taxation on an equivalent basis to bricks-and-mortar businesses?

Thank you. Finally, Gillian Crawford talked about the example of Schuh, which is combining its retail sales with online sales. Because the committee is looking at town centres, we are interested in the places where people live, work and socialise. The move to online sales affects the fabric of high streets. What is the way forward on that? Is it the combined model that Gillian spoke about? Are businesses moving towards that? Are there barriers to that?

When we visited Dumfries, we heard about a big retailer that had moved from having a physical shop to having a kind of locker, and that there are advantages in having a locker-type system. How do we encourage businesses to remain on the high street and to deliver two services from the same place?

Following up on Stuart Mackinnon’s answer, some of the local businesses that we had at our round-table session and businesses in my region have spoken about how they started to sell online during the pandemic, when their online sales were really positive and a growth part of their business, but they are now seeing what they describe as a significant dip in online sales. The cost of living crisis could be a factor, but they are trying to understand why it is happening. They are small businesses, so when they are making investment decisions, they seem to be trying to decide whether to invest in their online offer to make that more attractive or to focus on their local market, which was their market prior to the pandemic. Is that a common story that the FSB is hearing from small businesses and what advice would you give to them?