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I welcome the fact that, in the case of the Galloway national park proposal, local opposition was taken on board, but ministers must ask why there was such a crucial failure in the consultation process, which lacked transparency and left many people in Dumfries and Galloway and Ayrshire in the dark and concerned about the proposal, which I am glad to say was rejected last week.

If the SNP learns anything from those examples, it ought to be that listening to local people—those who will be directly affected by developments—must now form a more intrinsic and influential part of the planning process.

On that basis, I am glad that the Government has called in the Flamingo Land application, but it must now reject the proposals. It must ensure that it brings common sense to the planning process; listens to the concerns of local people, not only in this case but in others; and stops unwanted plans going ahead in Scotland’s communities today.

The Scottish Government’s own figures reveal that Scotland spends £22.7 billion more than the country raises in tax, including from our depleted oil revenues. Full fiscal autonomy would mean losing a union dividend that was worth more than £2,400 per person in 2023-24. At present, our deficit is notional; under the minister’s policy, it would become very real, indeed.

To pursue full fiscal autonomy—a reckless policy—by how much would Shona Robison be forced to raise tax, and which services would she slash?

Absolutely. That speaks to the work that I and colleagues have been doing in relation to the planning system, particularly in relation to large-scale energy development, where the voices of local people are often crowded out.

Until yesterday, it looked as if the Scottish Government’s reporter was going to go against the will of local people and the concerns of experts and approve the plans. It is welcome that common sense has prevailed, but I echo Jackie Baillie and Pam Gosal in wondering what on earth it was that changed in ministers’ heads—other than that they were about to be defeated in the chamber, as they will be in the next five or 10 minutes.

I am concerned that the Government is following a worrying pattern of ignoring the concerns of those who would be directly impacted by large-scale planning proposals, in pursuit of what can at times be read as agenda-backed plans. I welcome the fact that Ross Greer has been supportive of the efforts to campaign against the proposal and has, in many respects, helped to lead that campaign. However, if we listen to the residents in Loch Lomond, we should also listen to residents in the Scottish Borders and the north-east when they oppose large-scale energy developments that the Government insists it must push through in order to meet its net zero and energy targets.

For example, the Government recently gave consent to plans for the replacement of overhead power lines between Fort Augustus and Skye. Although that will bring greater connectivity, the opposition of local people appears to have been ignored, as were the objections from Highland Council.

Briefly, yes.

Does the minister not realise the problem? If businesses believe that they will get good public services and a good quality of infrastructure, they might think about investing in Scotland despite the SNP’s high taxes. However, in Scotland, we have high tax but poor quality public services.

Do I need to change, Presiding Officer, or can I simply self-declare?

I thank colleagues across the chamber for their contributions to the debate, which is a genuinely important one for Scotland. Without entrepreneurs who are willing to invest and take risks in Scotland, Scotland will not be able to succeed and the bill for the social contract that Lorna Slater mentioned will go unpaid.

However, under the SNP, we are missing opportunities to deliver a culture that would allow entrepreneurship to flourish. Too often, it is clear that Scotland plc is not actually open for business. The entrepreneurs, risk takers and wealth creators go where the opportunities exist. To deliver that culture, the Government must seriously rethink the way that it thinks and start to think like business thinks.

Lorna Slater’s contribution revealed that there is a gulf between some of the parties in the chamber and those who would, and could, set up businesses in Scotland if the operating environment were different. We need to create the culture and atmosphere here, in Scotland, that will allow those businesses to grow. As has been said in the debate, that means bringing higher education institutions with us and making sure that they are not only well funded but global and entrepreneurial in their outlook. To respond to the Deputy First Minister, there is no point in our having the best R and D in Scotland’s universities if those universities can barely afford to turn the lights on.

Like many across the chamber, I have read the recommendations of the Hunter Foundation’s report “Lessons from Singapore for Scotland’s Economy”, and I found those recommendations incredibly useful. The points that the report makes about Scotland are true. For example, it says that workers in Singapore are almost twice as productive as their Scottish counterparts. That and many of the other points that were made by Sir Tom Hunter should be lessons that the SNP learns—and quickly—otherwise Scotland will continue to fall behind our international competitors and the worrying trend that we are seeing in business registrations and failures will continue, particularly among the SMEs that should be the engine for growth now and in the future.

We need to address what is generally perceived to be a hostile tax environment: the Government is not pro-business, pro-development or pro-investment. We also need to target those sectors that can potentially grow.

That was more of a lecture than an intervention. It is, pitifully, the case that only 9 per cent of Scottish businesses think that the SNP Government understands the business environment. That is the reality of the situation. The mood music and the operating environment are critical to attracting entrepreneurs and investment, and I have first-hand experience of that.

At the age of 33, after nearly a decade of running a publishing and conference business in London, I took out a mortgage on my house and flew out to Hong Kong with £50,000 to establish my own communications and conference business. The first stop was Hong Kong, which, like Singapore back in 2008—it has changed a bit since then—was avowedly international, low tax and pro-business. I recall the company formation process, which was very simple and easy, even for a resident. Through the grapevine—most likely, the grapevine in the Foreign Correspondents Club—the chief executive of Invest Hong Kong, who was an avuncular Brit called Mike Rowse, called me in to welcome who he thought was another large-scale British investor to the city. He maintained an interest in my venture even when he found out that the “50” that I was referring to was £50,000 rather than £50 million. However, as Mike said, from small acorns grow mighty oaks.

It is often the smaller start-ups that need the greatest support. Mike’s message then was very simple, and it can be articulated as, “Welcome to Hong Kong. Invest in Hong Kong. Tax is low. Regulation is light touch.” There were incentives to invest—for example, there was a tax holiday for SMEs in their first five years, which meant that, if they made a profit, they did not pay tax, up to a certain level. There was a two-tier profits tax—today, the lower level is just 8.25 per cent on the first £200,000 in profits. There were double taxation treaties in place to make sure that entrepreneurs and their companies could not be taxed twice. There was no VAT, and there were attractive tax deductions for capital expenditure. There was a low income tax rate, and no income tax had to be paid on earnings that were generated overseas. Those were all concrete measures that encouraged me to set up a business there, and Invest Hong Kong provided support for businesses big and small.

After growing that business in Hong Kong, I set up a similar business in Singapore. Again, the message was quite clear: Singapore was open for business, and, when you walked in through the door, there were people there to help you. In a very Singaporean way, there was a slightly more draconian set of rules to abide by, but, once you understood the nature of the legal system there, it was easy to navigate. Again, taxation was low.

I welcome the aspiration in the Scottish Government’s programme for government to establish an organisation called “InvestScotland”, which the Government says will be a one-stop shop for investors who are looking to come to Scotland. However, providing the mechanism to bring people here will not cut it if entrepreneurs and investors get to Scotland and realise that our taxes are too high, our skills base is not fit for purpose and our infrastructure and planning system will hold them back—and that is leaving aside the constitutional uncertainty that has been created by the SNP’s on-going obsession with independence, which I believe has been an issue.

When the most recent Scottish Government budget was considered, we advocated for tax cuts for individuals and businesses. We also advocate for a cull of the quangos that are producing the red tape that is holding many businesses back. There is a recognition that the Government needs to do more to ensure that we have the right skills, which will involve properly funding our colleges, universities and apprenticeship schemes. The Scottish Government must make that an absolute priority, otherwise there will be massive skills gaps that will prevent people from locating and growing their businesses here.

The Scottish Government has not thought seriously about the business environment in this country, nor has it thought seriously about the international lessons that—as Sir Tom Hunter said—it can learn from Singapore and other Asian nations, as well as from nations closer to home.

There is a commonsense solution to the fact that the SNP is failing to create the space and the environment in which Scottish entrepreneurs and those whom we might want to attract here to set up businesses can thrive. However, there is a template that would enable the Government to do that, and I urge it to adopt that template quickly.

Will the Deputy First Minister take an intervention?

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the scale of online bullying in schools. (S6O-04758)