Seòmar agus comataidhean

In June 2023 the Scottish Government published the National Innovation Strategy which sets out our ten year vision for Scotland to once again become one of the most innovative small nations in the world.

The Strategy sets out a number of programmes to enable us to achieve our vision and ensure all of our businesses, people and institutions are ready and able to meet the global economic challenges and opportunities we face over the next ten years. These include a National Productivity Programme, a Research Commercialisation Programme and the publication of an annual Innovation Scorecard.

Work on implementing the Strategy has begun, in close partnership with our enterprise agencies, and the Programme for Government recently announced an additional £15m enterprise package which will be utilised to help deliver the Strategy.

Further details will be announced following the conclusion of delivery discussions between the Scottish Government, it’s agencies and institutions.

On 6 April 2022 we published an independent analysis of the responses to our consultation on developing an aviation strategy. Amongst other topics, the consultation invited views on the transition to low and zero emission aviation and the role that the Scottish Government could potentially play. Decarbonising aviation is also relevant to the ongoing development of the Scottish Government’s climate change plan and it is important to ensure policy coherence between the two documents. We are also considering the appropriate time to publish the aviation strategy given this context.

In the interim we continue to support the aviation sector in line with our commitment to making Scotland as well connected as its peer nations and regions, and to support and improve lifeline air services for our rural and island communities.

The Scottish Government agreed to include targeted Land and Buildings Transaction Tax relief and Non-Domestic Rates relief, alongside UK Government reserved tax reliefs and seed capital funding, to ensure that the offer to Green Freeports in Scotland was competitive with Freeports elsewhere in the UK.

Culture & Business Scotland (C&BS) received 39 applications for the Marketplace pilot programmes. 24 of these were successful and awarded places in the Marketplace pilot. Three of the successful applicants to participate in Marketplace had developed one of their proposed products to a business before.

C&BS state that they do not ask applicants to Marketplace about their contractual relationships with funders, and therefore they do not know if applicants have previously been unsuccessful for funding or had funding reduced by Creative Scotland.

FY 2022-23 - £150k was spent on internal development costs for the website. In the FY 2022-23 - £15k for hosting and support, we anticipate 2023-24 this will be £25k. Costs of c£5k was paid for misc. services such as legal advice, security certificates and promotional items.

In total 63 submissions have been closed – 36 were closed during the 2022-23 FY and 27 have been closed during the 2023-24 FY so far. Of those, 45 have been deemed “unsuccessful”; 27 in the 2022-23 FY and 18 in the 2023-24 FY so far.

For the purposes of Scotland Innovates the following defined closure reasons have been considered “unsuccessful”:

The Scottish Government is committed to paying its contractors promptly, and has a commitment to pay all valid invoices within 10 days of receipt, going beyond the contractual responsibility to pay within 30 days. Systems and processes are in place to monitor and maintain performance data against this 10 day prompt payment target for each Director General area within the core Scottish Government and where payment services are provided centrally for relevant agencies.

Since 2014, the Scottish Government has also maintained a top level figure for the percentage of valid invoices paid within 5 days across the whole of the Scottish Government and its agencies, as shown in the table below. However, as systems are calibrated to report on the 10 prompt payment commitment, it is not possible to break this down further into directorate or agency reports.

The Emerging Energy Technologies Fund (EETF) is a £180m package of funding up to 2025/26 that will provide capital support to accelerate low-carbon infrastructure projects and unlock private sector co-investment that will be essential to deliver net zero.

Through the EETF, we have committed up to £100 million to renewable hydrogen funding this Parliamentary term. I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-21610 on 29 September 2023.

The remaining up to £80m has been made available for Carbon Capture Utilisation and Support (CCUS). Due to the unfortunate delays from the UK Government in confirming Acorn and the associated emitter projects, it has not yet been possible to deploy support from the EETF for CCUS. We are committed to supporting and accelerating the deployment of the Acorn project and the Scottish Cluster but until the UK Government award Acorn and the emitter projects, it is not possible to move forward with investment decisions.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Scottish Government is committed to implementing the recommendations of the Pathways report.

In this financial year we have:

• Continued to provide funding to Women’s Enterprise Scotland, Investing Women and Business Women Scotland to allow existing programmes to continue ahead of a shift to competitive funding in future years;
• Renewed funding to Scotland’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, with a further round of the Scottish Ecosystem Fund, widened to offer support to projects that address the Pathways review’s key themes; and
• As the first phase of work to develop Pre-Start and Pop-Up business supports we have launched the £1.5 million Pathways Pre-Start Fund allocating funding to projects that offer pre-start support and advice to individuals or groups, with emphasis on widening access to primary carers and under-represented groups.

The Scottish Government will work with our agencies and delivery partners to further develop proposals for the report’s core recommendations on pre-start centres and pop-up business supports, incorporating the knowledge gained from the Ecosystem and Pathways Pre-Start funds with the intention to allow broader services to commence in 2024.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-21629 on 2 October 2023. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers