Chamber and committees

The idea of presenting net zero as the path to growth, not the barrier to it is interesting.

Ben Howarth, you have said that the ABI has done research that showed that you can contribute up to £1 trillion towards some of these long term projects. Why is the Government not biting your hand off to get that to happen?

I will bring in Adam Gillies to give a view on whether the community feels that it is involved in those initiatives, but maybe you can get your rebuttal in first, Diarmaid. How do you involve the community? I detect from the delivery of the action plan that there is a lot of frustration in the community that a lot of things are happening, but they are not benefiting the community. How are you bringing the community into that?

Adam Gillies, the greener Grangemouth project sounds like a great thing, with heavy community involvement. In what way could the community be better involved in some of that work?

But the option should be there.

Good morning, panel. I will follow up on the points that you have made about the various initiatives that have taken place. I had a list before the meeting started, and I have just added to it. We have the green freeport, which Malcolm Bennie mentioned, the local hydrogen action plan, the Falkirk growth deal, the United Kingdom Government’s levelling up agenda, the shared prosperity fund and the Scottish Government’s national strategy for economic transformation. You have just mentioned that you would like to see a master plan for the Grangemouth area. The letter that we got from the SFT this morning talked about the greener Grangemouth initiative.

There are a lot of initiatives. How can conflict between the various policy programmes and initiatives be properly managed to ensure that we have joined-up working towards our goal?

How would that be managed if there was a potential conflict between what Ineos said and what the local council wanted to achieve?

I am not going to suggest another committee or group, because you already have quite a lot of them—for example, you talked earlier about the future industry board—but is there a need for more co-ordination?

It is not on the Grangemouth future industry board, for example. Only public sector bodies are on that.

Diarmaid Lawlor touched on some of the initiatives. It looked like you were trying to co-ordinate all of that.

How would you like that to change? Should community councils be on more of those committees, or is there a need for a structure that brings some of those different organisations and initiatives together with the community? How would you bring that together? How would you align the community with all the initiatives that are taking place?