Chamber and committees

As announced on 20 August, indoor activities for children and young people (unregulated) can begin from Monday, 31 August, subject to adhering to the guidance for these activities. This guidance, for activities that are voluntary, third sector, parent or peer led, is currently being developed and its principles will apply to home educators.

The guidance on re-opening school age childcare services , small and micro businesses guidance and Phase 3: staying safe and protecting others is also applicable for home educators.

The Brand Scotland collaboration supports the Scottish Government and key partners in presenting Scotland as the best place to live/work, study, visit and do business. The collaboration builds Scotland’s brand value by promoting our strengths with a clear, consistent narrative and suite of marketing collateral.

Brand Scotland’s business pillar partners use the marketing collateral to support both inward investment and international exports, particularly to our top 15 priority markets as outlined in A Trading Nation, including our trade with the rest of the UK. Business pillar partners are currently developing fresh campaign material and a toolkit of sector specific collateral that will give our network of offices outside of Scotland access to the materials they need to promote Scotland’s trade and investment capacity. This campaign and toolkit will be launched to further help promote Scotland’s key business sectors as part of the Economic Recovery. This is aimed at building brand value internationally and across the rest of the UK.

The Scottish Government’s enterprise agencies are implementing economic recovery plans with significant programmes of support aimed at supporting Scottish exporters and attracting inward investment from across the UK. This includes ensuring optimal coordination of support, working with external stakeholders and partners (including Department of International Trade, CBI, Business Gateway, Scottish Chambers and Scottish Universities) both nationally, regionally and globally. This helps ensure the export support available to businesses in Scotland is co-ordinated with each stakeholder and partner playing a clear and well-defined role.

We can confirm that work with Scottish Futures Trust on developing the strategy with the datacentre and international connectivity industry has started.

It is currently expected that the strategy will be published by the end of this year.

The Scottish Government has supported the delivery of two Internet of Things (IoT) networks in collaboration with a number of academic and private sector partners.

IoT Scotland is a three-year collaborative project in which the Scottish Government is investing £2.7 million, alongside funding partners Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Boston Networks. IoT Scotland will support non-commercial research applications and facilitates a seamless transition from research and development activity through to full commercial operation.

The Scottish Wide Area Network (SWAN), delivered by Capita, is a digital aggregator programme providing services to the public sector. In 2018, Capita and the Innovation Centre for Sensor and Imaging Systems (CENSIS) successfully trialled IoT services on the SWAN network and a growing portfolio of suppliers and services is now on offer to SWAN members.

CENSIS is part of the University of Glasgow and is closely engaged with Scottish universities and research institutes. The Scottish Government is also engaged with the University of Edinburgh which is leading the development of an IoT network spanning the South-East Scotland City Region. This is an integral part of the City Region Deal’s Data-Driven Innovation Network.

Privately funded IoT networks are also being deployed in Scotland including those by Sigfox and Vodafone.

The delivery of Internet of Things (IoT) service offerings will be market driven, however to encourage their delivery, the Scottish Government invested over £269,000 in the IoT Support Programme which operated from March 2019 to March 2020. The programme was co-designed with the Innovation Centre for Sensor and Information Systems (CENSIS), and promoted IoT in the health, cities, tourism, food and drink and transport sectors. CENSIS identified these five as priority sectors as all have clearly defined applications and were assessed as having strong IoT growth potential. The programme consisted of several interlinked components including workshops, publications, an IoT starter kit for businesses, market scoping reports and development and delivery of Scottish use cases.

Figures published in the Public Contracts Scotland Summary Report https://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/Guides/Guide_Download.aspx?id=2898

for 2019-2020 reveal that 79% of suppliers awarded contracts in 2019-20 were SMEs, and 63% were SMEs located in Scotland.

Public sector contracts are awarded following open and fair competition and spend fluctuates due to numbers of contracts, their size and nature. So, we do not set targets for SME spend in Scotland. Instead, our approach is to improve access to public contracts for SMEs, the third sector and supported businesses as a key part of meeting our sustainable procurement duty obligations.

This includes developing and signposting sources of support to enable SME and third sector organisations who wish to tender for public contracts to engage with the public sector and to be more successful in winning contracts. For example, we invest in the Supplier Development Programme which assists businesses to become tender ready for public procurement and improves their prospects of success when competing for contracts. Our approach provides practical support to enhance the opportunities for smaller firms that might otherwise not be able to bid.

We are working through how best to achieve the aim of greater private sector representation on agency and public boards including consideration of an inclusive approach encompassing businesses of all sizes.

The Scottish Government’s youth employment strategy, ‘Developing the Young Workforce’, has transformed how employers engage with young people through the education and skills system, improving the work readiness of Scotland’s young people. DYW Regional Groups bring local employers together to take an industry led approach to further improving the relationship between employers and young people in the senior phase at school.

We have appointed Sandy Begbie to advise on the implementation of a Youth Guarantee, which will promote the importance of giving young people the opportunity to access employment, education and training. In line with the Advisory Group on Economic Recovery this work will be led by employers. We engage regularly with a wide range of employers and business organisations and will continue to do this as the Youth Guarantee is implemented.

We have committed to make £60 million available to support the delivery of the Guarantee this year. We recognise the need for this to work alongside the UK Government KickStart scheme. Although we regret that Kickstart was announced with no opportunity for the Scottish Government to contribute or influence it, we are working with DWP to ensure our investment adds value and delivers better outcomes for young people in Scotland.

It is essential that we grow our working age population to support our economy and society now and into the future as people live for longer. NRS projections indicate that in the next 25 years Scotland’s population growth will be reliant on inward migration, with 49% of migrants coming from the rest of the UK.

The Scottish Government is working with partners including SDS, the enterprise agencies and CosLA to develop proposals for a talent attraction service for Scotland, to promote Scotland as an attractive and competitive place to work and to provide welcome and integration support for individuals and their families.