Chamber and committees

I am a member of Unison. That information appears in my entry in the register of members’ interests.

Thank you; I think that it was important to go over some of the issues around conditions, particularly given some of the commentary that has been made this week about maternity pay, from certain quarters.

I want to change tack a little bit. We talked about conditionality, and I think that we would all agree that that can work to a degree, but we have not said a huge amount about sectoral bargaining and the part that it can play. I will ask a devil’s advocate question about sectoral bargaining. Let us take the example of social care, the issues around which we are all pretty well aware of. If we look at trade union membership and social care, the bulk of trade union membership exists in the public sector and local government, and not so much in the private and third sectors. Should trade unions have a greater role in persuading people to join them and trying to increase membership in the third sector and the private sector, so that we can get a real balance when it comes to sectoral bargaining?

Will the cabinet secretary also reflect on the fact that, if those exemptions are in the bill itself, it will be much more difficult to add exemptions in the future?

Convener, before we move on, I do not think that we agreed to section 16 before the break.

As they always do, the words, “dignity”, “fairness” and “respect” have come into play today. As the person who first got those three words into legislation as an amendment to the Welfare Funds (Scotland) Bill, I recognise how important they are. I also recognise that we should not pay lip service to them but should ensure that dignity, fairness and respect are at the very heart of all that we do.

I want to hear from the cabinet secretary, in her summing up, about certain aspects of what is proposed, because various things have been said this morning. I recognise that the Government has a duty to steward public funds appropriately, and I am concerned about scenarios in which people could ignore requests for information, which in itself would cause real difficulties from an audit point of view. The amendments of Mr Balfour and Ms Chapman could mean that there would be an inability to produce robust fraud and error estimates, which I think that others would want to have as part of the audit process.

I would like to hear more from the cabinet secretary about the commentary in which it has been said that there are adequate procedures to deal with fraud. I would also like to hear from her on the exemptions, because I think that that is an extremely important area. Overall, I would like to know how else the Government could come up with robust fraud and error estimates, which I think that everyone would require the Government to do, if Mr Balfour and Ms Chapman’s amendments were to be agreed to.

Okay. What about the critics?

The strategy is long term, and everything is about delivery. How are you monitoring whether that strategy and the missions that you have set yourself are delivering for companies and for the people of Scotland?

Good morning. My questions are for Scottish Enterprise in the main.

Mr Gillespie, you have mentioned the three missions in your new strategy. In light of the budget impacts that you have talked about, particularly from the cuts to financial transactions, I am interested in hearing about what you will not be doing in the future that you would want to do, as a result of that hit, particularly to FT funding. Have you looked at the economic impact of all of that?

Moreover, as far as the strategy is concerned, I sometimes hear critical voices both in my constituency and beyond that your concentration is far too much on inward investment instead of growing our own. What would you say to those critics?

Maybe you have to deal with those media commentaries, but I also think that you need to do more in letting folk know what you are up to.

You said that you would not invest so much in incremental growth in the future. However, what if that growth includes innovation? How will you invest in innovation in companies that already exist in Scotland?

Beyond the company aspect, there has been a lot of talk this morning about co-operation. What is your co-operation with the research sector in our universities, so that the knowledge and innovation that we come up with here leads to manufacturing and jobs here?

You will publish a report on how you think you have done. How do you gather information from folks out there on how they think you have done?