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Excellent—thank you. David, as someone who is based in France, could you add a bit about what it means in Paris?

Ewen, do you want to add anything?

Thank you. Catherine, do you have any thoughts?

Our next agenda item is to continue to take evidence on the committee’s inquiry into the review of the European Union-United Kingdom trade and co-operation agreement—the TCA. We have two panels this morning. For our first panel, we are joined in person by Gareth Williams, head of policy for Prosper, and Catherine McWilliam, national director of the Institute of Directors Scotland. Online, we are joined by Kate Foster, senior international affairs adviser, Federation of Small Businesses, and William Bain, head of trade policy, British Chambers of Commerce. A warm welcome to you all this morning.

I will open the questioning. Thank you for your written submissions, but I would like to get a sense of the current challenges in trading with the EU. What would you like to see in a review of the TCA, and which issues would your members prioritise? What are the challenges ahead that you see on the horizon? There is a lot in that. I will go to Mr Bain first.

You mentioned 350 companies. How many of those would you class as SMEs?

That is super. We have exhausted our questions, and I am conscious of the time. I thank you all for your attendance, which has been really helpful.

We will move into private session for a short time.

That is helpful, thank you. Kate, do you want to comment on that question?

Yes, we can.

I want to finish with some questions about the challenges that you have laid out. A while back, the committee had a visit to Ireland, including to Dublin. The food producers there talked about automation and the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning and cobots in production to stay on a competitive level with European partners. That is a special interest for me, because New College Lanarkshire’s smart hub, which works with SMEs on that area, is in my constituency.

Is there enough understanding among SMEs of the need to adopt such innovations? Is it still a challenge to get that message across? The other side of that is whether, if we are moving towards a service industry, with different challenges and new emerging technologies, the strategy behind that for Scotland is strong enough. Do businesses understand where that movement is going?

Finally, I want to touch on a topic—I think that it was Jan Robertson who mentioned it—that is sometimes politically controversial. You talked about the importance of having a presence through the networks and the international offices and the work that they do, and about the importance of ministerial support for what is happening. Will you explain more about the added value that that brings for Scotland’s businesses?

Thank you very much. That has exhausted the questions for our first panel. Thank you all for your attendance. It has been really helpful. I will suspend for five minutes while we change the panels over.