Chamber and committees

Have you given any active consideration to recording specific interviews throughout the process? Traditionally, we have note takers but, to go back to my point about hierarchy, a more junior member of staff tends to take the notes, which cannot reflect the nuance that a recording would do. Obviously, permissions would need to be sought but would you consider that? In other processes, every word is documented verbatim. It strikes me that note taking is still a potential gap.

Given that the bill has been through its third reading, the suggestion is that it will be left to officials in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to further define the rules. We have our own constitutional consideration in the Scottish Parliament, but I suggest that, regardless of where you sit, having an unelected official in BEIS making the decisions, without reference to the House of Commons or to the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish ministers, is not entirely desirable from a democratic perspective. What is your view on that?

I will ask a final wee question. Have you had any discussions about the potential cooling effect on much-needed investment in the light of post-Covid recovery? Surely any Government would want to encourage investment. It would surprise me if it did not. I say “cooling effect” because we have been told that the rules not being clear could lead to legal battles, which are obviously expensive, so the likes of local councils would probably not want to take the risk. Have you had any discussions about that? Have you made that point clear? Is it understood?

I note that there is also a role for the private sector. We need to consider getting it to change its behaviour, given that only 1 per cent of private equity funding goes to female-led businesses while 99 per cent goes to male-led businesses.

Moving on quickly, I have some questions about the Scottish National Investment Bank, which I am very interested in. Some people are not clear about the fact that the Scottish Government has no control over most regulations on property and labour markets, the international migration regime or overall macro monetary policy. However, one of the key ways in which the Scottish Government can really make a difference—I am glad to see this happening—is by protecting the funding for SNIB after the withdrawal of FTs.

Despite that, the chair said in November that the bank would still like to be able to raise third-party funds. Have you considered that? The consumer prices index, which is reported today to have reached 5.4 per cent and is probably only going to get higher, will have an impact on the difference that the bank can make. Have you given any further thought to whether SNIB can raise money from private sources? Are you constrained in any way in allowing that?

Thank you for joining us, cabinet secretary. There are only a couple of areas that I want to explore. I will try to be quick so that all committee members can get in.

The first area is women in business, which the committee has discussed a number of times. It first came up when I put what I thought was a simple question to one of the business development agencies about the extent to which it routinely disaggregated its data for all business services by gender. After some humming and hawing, the answer came back that it did not really do that.

In your response to the committee, you say that

“preparatory work is being undertaken now to establish the actions needed to overcome, and ultimately remove barriers to participation”

for women in business. Will you give me a bit more flavour of that? What consideration is being given to putting conditionality in grant funding at some point in the future? How might data collection and perhaps conditionality work in public procurement? I appreciate that it is early days for the work that you are doing, so I am just looking for a flavour of that.

Thank you for that clarification.

I want to focus on the specific example of the Scottish National Investment Bank. The rules are certainly not yet clear as to what determines market failure. SNIB was set up when we were in the EU, when there was a clear set of rules in that regard. The bill has now passed its third reading in the House of Commons, but we have no certainty whatsoever on the rules relating to market failure. We heard in last week’s evidence that that could impact and limit our net zero ambitions. Do you have any specific concerns about SNIB, given its importance to Scotland’s economic development?

I noticed that, when you appeared in front of the Public Bill Committee at Westminster on 26 October, you stated:

“From the point of the view of the devolved Administrations, for example, the passage of the Bill will still leave them pretty much in the dark as to what they can and cannot do.”—[Official Report, Subsidy Control Public Bill Committee, 26 October 2021; c 12, Q8.]

Do you stand by the observation that you made then?

Thank you. I am aware of time, so I will stop there.

How have we ended up in the position in which the bill will go through its second reading later this month—next week, I think—yet we still do not have the necessary level of definition? It is possible that the bill could go all the way through and, under what is proposed at the moment, it will be left to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to make the decisions. I do not want to put words in your mouth, but the bill seems to have the potential for bypassing ministers in the UK Government, never mind the Scottish Parliament, altogether. How on earth have we ended up in this position?