Seòmar agus comataidhean

You were cut off at the beginning.

Yes. Do you want details of that?

Yes, but, fundamentally, we deceive ourselves if we do not say that certain policies that are implemented for particular outcomes will not be popular in certain sectors. I do not think that any of us is saying that we expect every policy to be universally welcomed by every citizen in Scotland. That just cannot be the case.

The aim of the new deal for business is to bring business in at the beginning, to ensure that implementation is as streamlined and as straightforward as possible. That is very different from saying that every policy will be universally welcomed, especially when we are trying to achieve multiple different aims, as we are through MUP. MUP aims to reduce alcohol dependency, poor health outcomes from alcohol misuse and so on. I think that businesses are largely on board with those policy objectives, but we need to make sure that the implementation has their input.

I am sure that Dr Malik will have some thoughts to add, but I absolutely agree with that point about mainstreaming those models rather than their being an add-on. I was not here when the membership of the new deal was determined or invited, so I am not sure what the thinking was at that point as to who to involve and who not to involve. My colleagues may have thoughts on that. However, I agree with the point about mainstreaming.

As I have reiterated a few times this morning, we also need to reject the notion that the business community is homogenous and has the same views on everything. That is not the case. Business owners and workers of different kinds are citizens with lots of views on the various policies that the Government is engaged with, and we engage with them as citizens and take their views into account irrespective of their roles in business. Business is not a homogenous whole. We need to have the means to allow feedback, input and consultation and we then need to come to a conclusion that weighs all of that up, including the input from those alternative business models.

Dr Malik, do you have any thoughts on that?

It is on my agenda, because skills are very high on my agenda. We take a different approach to the apprenticeship levy here, and I would argue that businesses do see the benefit of it. They may not see the input/output equation in the same way as businesses might see it in an English context, but the funding is clearly reinvested in apprenticeships of different types—foundation apprenticeships and graduate apprenticeships—and in different skills.

Right now, we have a huge opportunity to look at the whole skills landscape and understand how it is meeting our growth objectives. We have a really good problem at the moment because we have high growth in particular sectors. We have massive potential growth in aerospace, in renewables and in other sectors. If I am engaging with a developer right now, they are saying that the scale of potential construction across Scotland makes them question whether they will be able to access the skills that they need. In other words, there is a lot of growth happening.

Graeme Dey is very involved in the conversations that we are having, and we have done specific things on the side, such as allocating £3.5 million for offshore wind. I have been working with advanced manufacturing, and we are contributing specific funding for a skills effort there. So, there are things that we are doing on the side of the general skills landscape.

Graeme Dey is keeping all of this under review, and I know that a different approach is being taken to the apprenticeship levy here, but I would argue that the benefit is still there; it is just that a business cannot see output leading to input individually.

I hope so, yes. That is the aim; that is the ambition. There are particular flash points where that is tested with new policies and so on. With the previous budget and the programme for government, we tried to give some breathing space, with no surprises for businesses or anything that has caught them out and so on. There is something about this being a particularly tumultuous time, and giving business some space to be able to respond to those challenges is a good thing for Government to do.

I disagree fundamentally with the point about their incentivisation. I think that local authorities are incentivised to take such action. There is an extensive focus on what the Scottish Government is or is not doing to incentivise economic prosperity and growth, but a lot of levers lie with local government, and I do not think that there is always the same level of scrutiny of local government in that respect.

The visitor levy is one of the first examples of a measure in relation to which a local authority needs to consult extensively with local businesses before implementing a new economic intervention. Although it might be easy to keep coming back to the root, I invite all members to work with local government, too. Often, on planning, local taxation and local consultation, the levers lie with local government, and if we keep coming back to central Government, that undermines local government’s responsibility and duty to take action on those things.

This is a good bookend. In response to your first question, I said that the key for the new deal for business is the extent to which it filters down to other organisations. With things such as local taxation, there is a duty in law on local government to engage and consult well with local businesses. I will be quite bold and say that it is, therefore, the lazy option to keep saying to Government that the problem is with what we have or have not done on the legislation, given that there are extensive flexibilities in the legislation and there is a new responsibility on local government through which it is incentivised to engage well on these points.

Part of the answer is that when there is a new opportunity and a new responsibility on local government, local citizens should hold the relevant and appropriate level of government responsible for what it does. In this case it is local authorities. The same goes for planning and local transport decisions.

No, there will not be. The point of the new deal for business was to make systemic change. That is slightly different from setting policy outcomes; it was about processes. The next stage is that those processes should work, be effective and lead to different outcomes for Government with regard to what happens and what does not happen.

I hope that extensive engagement will continue, and that there will be different and better means by which different businesses can feed in to processes. That would be my objective.

It is a good question, and I would like to hear responses from the people on either side of me. What happens next, Judith?

That is fine.