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Good morning. I want to address some questions to Charles Hammond. You commented earlier that Scotland is “peripheral” to Europe. With regard to comparative shipping figures—I do not know how up to date these figures are now—there were reports that Reykjavik in Iceland, which has a population of about 350,000, shipped as much as Grangemouth. What are the current comparable figures, and what might be the reason for that?

With regard to the performance of all the ports that you own, where does Grangemouth fit relative to the others? What ranking would you give it?

Where stuff is shipped out of some of your other ports down south, do you have a sense of the percentage of leakage?

The just transition commission made a statement about moving beyond gross domestic product as a measure of Scotland’s progress. We have all wrestled with GDP being a crude but internationally recognised measure. How might you be able to move beyond it and how might that play into the work of other agencies, such as the Scottish Fiscal Commission? At a previous meeting, I asked witnesses from the SFC how they reflected the risks of climate change in doing their forecasts. I appreciate that the matter is complex, but I would also appreciate your latest thinking on that complexity, particularly in regard to GDP and other measures.

Given the undoubted complexities that have been introduced by Covid and Brexit, and the challenging themes around net zero, just transition, human rights, equalities and wellbeing, what plans—if any—are you able to outline today with regard to your thinking about how you might develop the NPF?

Like you, Mr Swinney, we are all aware of the NPF’s history and development; I accord it value in and of itself, while understanding how it started. However, when I went through the NPF, I found that it was incredibly difficult to derive any meaning from an assessment of whether performance was maintaining or worsening.

In reading anything, I look first for an outline of the methodology. You might not want to give a multitude of data sets away, but I had no sense of how you arrived at the conclusions. From an academic perspective, if I read anything with no sense of the methodology that is used, I am inclined to ask, “How do I know that this is true?” That follows on from Daniel Johnson’s point. Would you, in considering the NPF’s development, be prepared to set out some indication of the methodology as an aid?

To evaluate where we are, there has been a lot of debate since the starting point, which you recall, on determining the value that is added by public spend and, therefore, arriving at the national performance framework. I appreciate the complexity, but do you see a further drift towards making the link between public spend and outcomes, or do you largely conclude that that is incredibly complex—a view with which I have a lot of sympathy—and that we will carry on as we are with a broad framework? That relates to a point that Daniel Thomson made.

Thank you. Malcolm Roughead, would you like to come in at this point?

First, I will take us back a bit and explore budget positions. You have submitted written information, so I want to keep this snappy. I am interested in getting a brief summary of what both organisations believe their current budget positions to be. It might be more appropriate for Douglas Colquhoun to comment on behalf of Scottish Enterprise. You will be looking at next year in the light of a very uncertain trading environment for everybody. I am particularly interested in the forward-looking aspect, the mitigations that you are anticipating and your confidence in them, given the uncertainty about Scottish Government funding.

That is very helpful. Thank you.

I want to bring in Jane Morrison-Ross and Carroll Buxton. Nick Kenton used a term “golden threads”. One of my golden threads to obtain diversity in our economic output is ensuring that women-led businesses are adequately represented. There has been a lot of chat. We know that women have been disproportionately affected, and I suspect that women-led businesses have been disproportionately affected. I would like Jane Morrison-Ross’s and Carroll Buxton’s observations on that.