Chamber and committees

It sounds like Paul Johnston is offering himself as the go-to person if people come across any silos or barriers.

I am the MSP for Midlothian North and Musselburgh.

My questions are an extension of what we have been talking about. The Scottish Government and local government have key roles and it is important that they work well together. Do they work well together? Do they work well with their third sector partners? Is there evidence of a shift away from the silos that used to exist—are they being broken down? Are we seeing joined-up thinking and joined-up working? Bill Scott might like to comment.

Ryan McQuigg, what is your view?

Paul Johnston, that does not make it sound as though there is as seamless an operation between the different agencies as you indicated. Do you want to comment on that?

I will move on to a slightly different issue. How is the cost crisis hitting Scotland’s supply chain? How challenging for industry are the energy and material price increases? Are there particular sectors that are especially exposed to that?

Given that this is a crisis for all our businesses, are any meaningful talks going on between the UK Government and the other three nations, especially Scotland, to try to manage the situation, reach a common result and make improvements?

Given the complexity of the digital requirements in the market, it must be quite difficult to provide a one-size-fits-all solution. We see in different segments of the market different needs and priorities, and there are different speeds of development. For example, I will just throw in e-commerce and the speed with which that is moving. How can we keep up with that to ensure that the skills that are being taught and passed on by our institutions and agencies are right up to date and at the correct level?

The Scottish Government is clearly doing everything that it can to support businesses, but how much capability is in its hands to make a truly significant impact on costs? Are we a big player in that regard, or are things out of our hands?

Good morning. There are a number of areas that I would like to explore a little bit, but I want to begin by saying that many of the issues around supply chains and everything that goes with them seem to come back to the incredibly poorly managed hard Brexit that we have been forced to go through. The knock-on effect of that seems to resonate all the way through our papers.

Specific skills gaps have been highlighted to the committee in this inquiry and, indeed, in other inquiries that we have carried out. One such area is digital skills. I note that, in your response, you say that a report on the Scottish technology ecosystem review is due to be published in the autumn. Can you provide any update on that work?