Chamber and committees

Please see MA Starts by Local Authority in the following table.

Community Benefit Clauses are operated widely across the public sector in Scotland and the information sought, detailing how many Apprenticeships have been established through Community Benefit Clauses is not centrally held by the Scottish Government.

Funding through the implementation of the UK Construction Sector Deal is routed through several avenues, including research councils and Innovate UK. Complete data is not shared with the Scottish Government and we do not hold details of all of the funding allocated to businesses in Scotland.

In line with the commitment made in the 2017 Programme for Government, the Scottish Government is currently involved in development of two projects, one in Glasgow and one in Ayrshire.

In Glasgow, we are working with the Glasgow Procurement Collaboration Group – a group of “anchor” institutions with a significant employment and purchasing impact footprints in the city economy and beyond. This group, led by Strathclyde University, includes Glasgow City Council, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, University of Glasgow, Glasgow Caledonian University, City of Glasgow College, and Glasgow Clyde College. The project focuses on opportunities to use procurement practice and detailed procurement data provided by the Scottish Government to help increase spending by these anchor institutions which will directly affect small and medium enterprises in the city.

Secondly, on 8 April the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity announced £103 million of Scottish Government investment in the Ayrshire Growth Deal. As part of this, the Scottish Government will be investing up to £3 million in a Community Wealth Building Fund for Ayrshire. This fund will be made available regionally, with activity co-designed between the Scottish Government and the new Ayrshire Regional Economic Partnership. The programme will seek to deliver inclusive growth and galvanise the regional economy through initiatives which could include:

• Development of local skills pipelines to “anchor” employers;
• Development of local SME supplier base with “anchor” employers;
• Increased local procurement spend;
• Increased support for local entrepreneurship;
• Potential Community Asset Transfers;
• Levering of private sector funding to support community business and entrepreneurship.

We will work closely over the coming months with the Ayrshire Regional Economic Partnership to co-design this innovative programme, and we expect to be able to agree and provide details of this when the final Ayrshire Growth Deal document is completed later in 2019.

The Scottish Government does not set targets for public spending with SMEs, however we have introduced legislation through the Procurement Reform Act which requires public contracting authorities to consider how they can facilitate involvement of SMEs and promote innovation.

As contracts can have multiple suppliers, the Scottish Government’s Public Contracts Scotland (PCS) portal does not report on the number of individual contracts won by size of supplier. We do report on the number and size of suppliers winning awards. This information for the last five years is provided in the following table.

The following table shows the poundage, Large Business Supplement, and Large Business Supplement threshold (rateable value) for each year from 2010-11 to 2019-20:

Local authorities are not required to notify the Scottish Government of any local relief schemes they intend to put in place in advance of the financial year, that is rightly a matter for each local authority to determine themselves based on their own local circumstances. We recognise that Local Authorities are independent bodies, democratically elected and accountable to their local electorate, and the administering of all reliefs under these powers is a matter for them.

In 2019-20 we will continue to encourage all local authorities to use their powers under the Community Empowerment Act 2015, which grants them wide-ranging flexibility to offer bespoke local non-domestic rates relief schemes. For our part the 2019-20 Local Government finance settlement which totals £11.2 billion will provide local authorities with a real terms increase in funding of £310 million (2.9%).

Scottish Government through SDI support will provide assistance to businesses. We will be announcing the details of the available programmes along with particular pieces of activities shortly.

It is anticipated that opportunities will be significantly trade-focussed and with inward investment opportunities being explored and exploited where relevant and possible. Specific objectives include:

• Exploring engagement opportunities with individual Scottish companies to help them gain exposure in the Japanese market;
• Creating a pull and demand for Scottish products and services in Japan;
• Building awareness of Scotland as an attractive location for inward investment and Scottish companies as dynamic partners.

Scotland will have a presence in Yokahama during the Rugby World Cup and in the lead up to the Ireland and Japan games we will use it as a platform for engagement.

During 2018-2019 SDI have supported 86 Scottish companies in Japan. Current SDI activity to support Scottish businesses in Japan include trade events focussed on Food & Drink with SDI having a presence at FoodEx Tokyo (March 2019) and Seafood Scotland will attend Japan International Seafood and Technology Show in Tokyo (August 2019).

The number of Chinese students enrolled in Scottish HEIS over the last two years is as follows.

Chinese domiciled enrolments at Scottish HEIs