Seòmar agus comataidhean

That is fine.

Good morning. I will go back to some of the answers that James Withers gave to Maggie Chapman on apprenticeships. Your report has a lot on apprenticeships and apprenticeship funding, and you have expressed your view on graduate apprenticeships, which are an exciting development for people who want to experience work and also get a qualification.

One frustration that I find when I speak to employers is that they offer apprenticeships but feel that they do not get any funding support from the public sector. When I speak to Skills Development Scotland about that issue, they recognise it and they say that apprenticeship places are oversubscribed.

I hear what you say about funding, but is it fair to say that apprenticeships have become the poor relation in the skills landscape? Do we need to do more to level up the funding for apprenticeships?

Good morning. I will have to say sorry to Becca Stacey as I think that the questions that I am going to ask are outwith her remit, so I will just direct them to Sarah-Jayne Dunn. I apologise, but you are on your own for this, Sarah-Jayne, if that is all right.

I will broaden out the issues a little bit and consider some of the other things that are in the bill as well as what is not in it.

An issue that we have picked up in evidence is the minimal asset process bankruptcy. As you know, there is a rule that an individual can apply for that only once every 10 years, and it has been suggested to us that the bill could be amended to relax that. I am interested to get the perspective of Citizens Advice Scotland on that.

That was a clear answer.

Are there any risks in moving away from 10 years? I ask the question as a member of the predecessor committee that dealt with the Bankruptcy and Diligence etc (Scotland) Act 2007, which I think introduced the policy in the first place. If I remember correctly, one of the concerns that came up at that point was that if people on a very low income and with very low assets were not able to access mainstream lending in any form, they would, potentially, be left in the hands of the illegal loan shark sector. Might there be some risk of that, if the 10-year rule were relaxed?

That was very clear. Thank you.

Finally, do you have any comments on bankruptcy reform in the bill, or should anything else be put into the bill that is not currently there?

I will follow up on a couple of issues based on Gordon MacDonald’s line of questioning.

I would like to get something clear in my head. Adam McGeoch, your report says that

“Scotland lags behind other parts of the UK in generating life science spinouts”

but the number that Gordon MacDonald alluded to suggests that we perform well. Is that because the overall level of investment is lower?

Is it all right to call you Sir Mike?

You identified two key barriers, one of which was infrastructure while the second was access to venture capital.

I will take infrastructure first, by which I assume that you mean access to facilities, building space and so on. What do we have to do to fill that gap? What is the role of local authorities and of agencies such as Scottish Enterprise? What role might the public sector have in addressing those issues?

The second thing that you talked about was access to venture capital, which is a perennial issue. I remember sitting on the predecessor to this committee two decades ago. We were talking about that issue then and we are still talking about it. What role, if any, do you think the Scottish National Investment Bank has in attracting more venture capital into the sector?