Chamber and committees

There have been three in two years.

Mr Grisewood, in what way numerically has Scotland’s economy improved as a result of your strategy?

Either the Auditor General was incorrect in his analysis of the arrangements or what you are describing does not exist. One of those must be true.

Let us point to page 10 of the report. There is a very helpful—

Is that not part of the problem? It is not a direct criticism of those involved in the delivery of the strategy, but you have something that is impossible to measure because it feeds into a much wider macroeconomic situation. Therefore, it is very difficult to quantify whether you are doing well, whether the strategy is working, whether it is performing relative to value for money and whether many of the criticisms that are in the Auditor General’s report are valid or not. Is that not an impossible task that you have, to prove to us, to the Auditor General and to the Government that the strategy is working and is worth while? How can you refresh something if you do not know what effect it is having on the economy?

If you scrap the economic leadership group, what do you think you would replace it with? What would be a suitable way to oversee the delivery of the strategy?

Yes, but your strategy has been lauded as having had success. Numerically, what economic success do we have?

I think that the importance of the economic leadership group has unearthed itself in the course of the meeting. I am sure that it is regrettable that the group has failed to give the leadership that it has been given its due place. I am sure that that is something that you will consider, moving forward.

I am sure that colleagues will mention other areas of interest on which it sounds as though you might not particularly agree with the Audit Scotland report. I am sure that we will elicit those from you over the course of the meeting.

Convener—I am happy to pass on to colleagues.

The risk is that you are hanging on the coat tails of other things that were happening anyway. I heard in your opening statement that the roll-out of R100 was one of your great successes. That was happening anyway: it was a Government project that was funded centrally from the United Kingdom Government, so of course it was going to happen at some point. However, whether it is a measure of success of NSET is debatable.

On that note, director general, I apologise if I do not use the specific wording, but I think that you said that you “welcome” the recommendations and “accept the broad thrust”. That, as the convener mentioned, does not sound entirely like acceptance of the recommendations. I would like you to be specific as to which of the comments, phrases, criticisms, recommendations or summaries in the Audit Scotland report you do not agree with, and why.

That is all good work and I think it is to be commended. You cannot detract from positives in that respect.

Our point of view is that we are reflecting on the Auditor General’s commentary. I will come to some of the specifics. Two things have jumped out that were flagged by the Auditor General and which seem to have come to pass. One is the clear inability to monitor progress through specific targets and the other is the lack of political leadership.

In the first 20 minutes of the meeting we have heard that there is clearly a lack of political leadership. You are the accountable officer—you are not accountable for ministers and what they do—but we certainly have not seen political leadership in this respect in the last two years.

As for monitoring progress—you mentioned some successes—it is very hard to measure success if you do not know what you are measuring against. Why are there no clear, specific economic output metrics or targets that NSET is working towards? Could you enlighten me, for example, on how many jobs have been created through the strategy? How has gross domestic product improved? How has productivity improved? How many new start-ups are there and how much economic growth has occurred as a result of the strategy? If we do not know that, it is very difficult to say whether you have been successful or not.