Chamber and committees

Thank you—you have highlighted some of the issues that other committee members will pick up on as we move through the meeting.

Before I move on, I will give Professor Bell the opportunity to respond to the questions, if he has anything additional to say.

Thank you for all those replies. I will move on to Michelle Thomson, and then other members will pick up on some of the issues that have been raised so far.

Iain Bomphray wanted to respond on this line of questioning. I will let you come in, Iain, but I will throw something else in relating to procurement. Other panel members have talked about far-east imports, and we have heard suggestions that we should be doing whole-life carbon costing and that those costs should be included in the costs for importing goods, given that Scotland has ambitious net zero targets. Could you pick up on that, too, please, Iain?

Do you have any views on whether carbon costing should be included?

Thank you. I will move on now.

I had planned to bring in Colin Beattie, but I understand that Fiona Hyslop was going to ask about carbon miles. I am happy to bring her in at this point, followed by Colin Beattie. Apologies for moving you twice, Colin, but I will pass over to Fiona Hyslop now to keep the flow going, if that is okay.

I will ask Professor Ridgway a similar question. Your organisation has been established to address issues in Scotland’s supply chain, but the circumstances that we are living through have changed dramatically due to Covid, post-Brexit trade and inflation, which, as we have heard this morning, is putting pressure on lots of different sectors. How have your organisation’s aims changed? I know that the aims are about growing domestic supply chains, but is the current situation making that easier or more difficult?

I thank all the witnesses for sharing their experience and expertise. If they would like to do so, they should feel free to provide any supplementary evidence following this session.

Could we get some further evidence from Scottish Enterprise? We are interested in how many businesses the Scottish manufacturing advisory service supports annually and how its impact is monitored. We can send you a note to outline the further information that we are looking for, because it might be easier to provide that in writing rather than at committee this morning.

We will now move into private session.

Good morning, and welcome to the 15th meeting in 2021 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee. Following advice that was issued by Parliament last week, the committee meeting is being held virtually.

The first item of business is a decision to take items 3 and 4 in private. Are committee members content to do that?

Members indicated agreement.

Last week, we heard evidence from the construction and house-building sectors that supply chain pressures are causing a degree of sluggishness in those sectors because they cannot get jobs completed or started. Do you see that among the businesses that you deal with? Are downward pressures being created on their ability to grow?

As procurement has been mentioned, I will bring in Colin Smyth at this point—earlier than expected—as I know that he wants to efxplore that issue.