Chamber and committees

I do not think that anybody is unaware that Scotland and the United Kingdom are seeing fairly substantial labour shortages across the board. The transition to net zero will increase the demand for certain skills and occupations. How significant will that constraint on skilled labour be on the renewable energy sector?

On the back of that, how confident are you that the skills and education system will deliver the pipeline of people and skills that you need?

I ask Claire Mack to kick off on that.

James, what is your experience?

Thank you for that clarification. Let me move on. We were talking about which sectors of the Scottish economy are vulnerable, and obvious ones such as hospitality were mentioned. We are in a cost of living crisis that is affecting businesses across Scotland. Which sectors in the Scottish economy are being affected most by the cost of living crisis itself, by which I mean the actual increase in prices?

Fergus Mutch might want to comment on that.

Stacey Dingwall, would you like to come in?

There is doom and gloom in your survey results. How are your members responding to that? How are they reacting?

Clare Reid, do you want to comment?

I do not have a question on the particular issues that the minister has raised. However, in the previous parliamentary session, the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee looked at debt arrangement schemes and produced a report.

One of the key things that came out of the report was the question of independent advice before someone enters into one of those arrangements. The current arrangement does not allow for that; the financial advisers are all in-house to various interested parties.

The question of independent advice came up against a bit of a brick wall in relation to who would pay the cost. However, the committee found that many people were going into debt arrangement schemes that were possibly inappropriate and did not work for them. Will the Government therefore look at that again to see whether there is a solution to that issue?

Let me move on logically from that and ask you to get your crystal ball out. What is your expectation with respect to consumer spending in 2023?

Our economy is consumer led to a greater extent than practically any other economy in Europe. We rely on people having disposable income to spend, which drives the economy. I will start by asking Carolyn Currie whether she has any thoughts on that. How much of a concern is that for businesses? How are they factoring in that risk on the consumer side? Alternatively, is there reasonable confidence that people will have that disposable income and that it will be spent as it has been in the past?

Fergus Mutch, do you have a more cheery approach to this?

My first question is a request for clarification from Carolyn Currie. You mentioned the difficulty that female-led businesses had in accessing venture capital and investment capital. How many applications did women-led businesses make and how many were turned down?