Chamber and committees

Good morning. I should begin by saying that I am a bit of procurement anorak. When I was the convener of finance for Aberdeen City Council, I used to have the PECOS software system for procurement on my computer; it annoyed a great number of people, it must be said, but it did teach me a few things.

First, on Colin Smith’s points about frameworks and agreements, it is fair to say that, in my day, I would get frustrated when some of those agreements were more in the hands of the solicitors and accountants than the end users of the product. Is that a frustration for your members?

Just tell us what you think.

We need to get rid of some of that perception, too.

Yes, I am talking about the local authority in this case.

Let us be brutally honest: cost is always going to be an issue, particularly in these tough times. However, what you do not want is additional cost as a result of some of the bureaucracy that you have described. You also do not want additional costs arising from procuring products that, at the end of the day, might not be the best ones.

Let me give you an example of where I was coming from when I talked about things being in the hands of solicitors and accountants rather than the end users. One of the most interesting things that I found was that the folks who were the most canny and who knew what they wanted were the school cooks. You could see in the system exactly what they were going for and what they were choosing to miss out; they knew what was best in following the guidance at that point. What you saw at points, though, was that the framework for procuring certain foodstuffs did not match the needs of the school cooks, who I think knew best, because others were involved in the procurement who should, quite frankly, have probably kept their noses out. Is that something that you and your members have found?

I think that we get the point. Basically, what you are saying is that some of the regulation does not make sense at the moment, because the product is not available and it is not what people want anyway.

That brings me to the next part of my question, which is about feedback to unsuccessful bidders. Has that improved? Is there room for further improvement? What do your members think about what they are told after an unsuccessful bid?

Stacey Dingwall, what feedback have you had on that from your members?

My final question fits in well with your answer about the green industrial strategy and our investment proposals from it. We know that, in certain sectors, there is huge potential. We have huge potential with hydrogen, particularly for export. We know that the German economy will require substantial amounts of hydrogen and we have the ability to produce it here in Scotland. Obviously, we then have to get it to Germany. Colleagues, including Mr Beattie, and I have had conversations with folk who are very excited about our potential and what can be done here. It would not be difficult to get private investment for a number of the projects if the seedcorn money were there initially. Will the cabinet secretary comment on that? Will we peruse and pick some of those projects to ensure that we get the private sector investment that is required in order to move some of those things forward?

To move forward to net zero and achieve a just transition we will have to invest in innovation. I have heard you and other members of the Government say that we will have to be much more focused with investment. We saw the budget decisions that, unfortunately, had to be taken on reducing enterprise agency money. Looking at everything in the round, however, with enterprise agency investment and just transition fund investment, how do we ensure that we allocate the resource to the right companies and entrepreneurs so that we make sure that we reach our goal of net zero and that just transition?

I will give you an example. The other week, I met Zephyrus Aerolabs, which is a very smart tech company in my constituency. Sometimes, it is difficult for those companies to get seed funding for that initial spurt of growth. How will we ensure that the enterprise agencies moneys and the other moneys that are allocated go to the right places to create that spark so that we get what we all want to see, which is that growing green economy?